One of the great things about social media (beyond just keeping up with friends and family) is being able to hear from a variety of voices on topics I find interesting (both professionally and personally). In the past week or so, two such posts have caught my eye and got me thinking a bit about how Americans in the early twenty-first century view religion.
The first came from a Twitter post of an academic who studies politics and economics. Essentially the poster said the following: since there are so many religions, maybe believers should ask themselves if there is any way that theirs can be the only true faith, or if all faiths are just "man-invented." The second was a story (you can read it here) in which it was reported that the former head of the National Council of Churches (Joan Brown Campbell), who said that it was time for American Christians to not be "exclusive" in the faith beliefs -- that is, that there really is no point in trying to win people to Christ.
Here then, are two extremes present in the religious discussion of America today. The first argues that faith is just a creation of man, and perhaps, should have no standing in our decision making process (ie in the world of politics). The second argues that there are no real differences between faiths, and so we should all just get along. While both are very different (one arguing that faith does not matter because it is all just made up, the other saying that faith does matter -- but it doesn't matter what faith you follow because they are all the same), they are also very much the same (well, because, religion is all the same).
I would assert that both positions have very little basis in either world or American History.
The notion that faith is just a man-made invention is an atheistic line of course, with a rationalistic/Enlightenment heritage that truly started to blossom in the late nineteenth century with higher criticism (in the West), the scientific study of religion, and the rise of Marxist thought (amongst other trends). Of course where this line of thought breaks down is the following. Under it, religion isn't "special" in the sense that it tells us something more about our spiritual nature nor offers any sort of divine revelation, and as such, it is merely an ideology (of sorts). But the flip side then comes in, though an ideology, religion isn't supposed to have any sort of pull on policy making. It should be shunted aside (presumably into a "private sphere", where if it has no role to play in the public discourse.
The notion that faith, no matter what creed or doctrine, is essentially all the same, is also more of a recent development. But regardless of when it first appeared, it is not religious toleration (though toleration may be a part of its message and even its appeal to some). This is stating that there is no "one way to Heaven", just multiple paths to the same end(s). In some ways, it is also a very Humanistic statement.
Neither would historically have been found amongst the majority of Americans, however. The first line, that religion is man-made and has no role in the public sphere was hardly what the colonists, Founders, evangelicals of the Second Great Awakening, or the reformers of the Social Gospel period (nor, for that matter of the Moral Majority/Religious Right....and one would assume the Religious Left of today) believed. Likewise, the idea that difference between faiths (or even denominations) don't matter is also suspect historically. Now, the differences between Christian denominations may not matter as much as say the differences between Christianity and Islam, but to dismiss all doctrinal differences as moot is to not take seriously doctrine to begin with. Indeed, I'd assert that many who hold this idea (that all faiths are equal) really know very little about the faiths they claim to be bringing together. While we can surely learn things from people of different backgrounds and faiths, and while faith should not be a reason for, say, violence, we can respectfully disagree about things, while agreeing on other things. We can, in other words, meet somewhere in the middle of these two extreme views.
At least, that's what I'm thinking about on this final Friday of my summer vacation!
Friday, August 23, 2013
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Kingdom of God
I have spent much of my professional life grappling with the Progressives. My introduction came while working on my first book, Prohibition is Here to Stay, in which I had to discuss how the Reverend Edward S. Shumaker became Indiana's leading dry. The answer, I found was the intermixing of temperance sentiment within his own Methodist tradition with the emerging Progressive political and Social Gospel theological movements. To me it seemed then, as it still does today, that it was a rather easy leap for him to make from the pulpit to political activist, leading his (largely) evangelical dry crusade, via the Anti-Saloon League (whose slogan was "the Church in action") against the forces of "demon rum."
Of course one of the fun things about studying the Progressives is that scholars (not unlike the Progressives themselves) argue over what is or was a "real" Progressive reform. Our problem is that there was no checklist, no requirements, to being a Progressive. Really (and this no doubt will gall some of my colleagues) the only requirement was that you be a reformer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century advocating that your reform would make American society better. Hence, reforms ran the gambit from Prohibition, to worker's rights, to child labor laws, to eugenics, to food and drug regulation, to many, many more. You did not need to advocate all of these things to be a Progressive, you did not even need to support all of them. Likewise, you did not have to be politically liberal (really by the standards of the time, and most assuredly by today's definition) to be a reformer either. Such ambiguity can be maddening at times when you are trying to write or teach about the Progressives. It can also make it difficult to define or even defend the term within its modern use versus its historical context (note how many twenty-first century political liberals have attempted to adopt the term "Progressive" for themselves).
But, I have been thinking about the Progressives again because I have been reading posts this week about whether or not Christians can hope (or even should hope) to be able to transform their culture or not. Hence, in the past week there have been calls for Christians to re-engage the fine arts (as a means to transform the culture), rather than seek a political solution (see here), calls to be "realistic" at what Christians can actually hope to accomplish (see here), and doubts that Christians can ever hope to actually transform secular culture at all (see here). Perhaps interestingly, these posts come from what might be called the more conservative theological spectrum, and dovetail nicely with this piece from the Wall Street Journal in which Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention asserts that "the Bible Belt is collapsing." Rather than a "moral majority", Moore says American Christians must now be prepared to be a "prophetic minority."
Such a discussion is healthy to have of course. What is the role of God's people on this earth? Is it to save society? Or merely save souls? Can it do both? Can committed Christians actually live their faith and NOT affect wider society? While some of the discussion above is related to notions of such debates over "two kingdoms theology" (see here) and what that means for Christians and culture, there is also a tinge of dejection -- that despite the best efforts of the Religious Right since the late 1970s, America seems to be only getting more secular, that perhaps they have failed to recapture or transform the culture at all, and that the best that can be hoped for is to hold on to what God has given them individually.
The Progressives grappled with this kind of dejection--of falling short of their goals--as well. For religiously inspired reformers, what they were striving for was to establish God's kingdom on this earth. Some believed that by perfecting American society (not unlike their parents or grandparents during the Second Great Awakening) they would literally be preparing the world for Christ's Second Coming. Hence to them, reform work was both their Christian duty to their fellow man and a divine mandate. That their reforms sometimes worked, sometimes failed, and sometimes never got very far was, eventually, a source of confusion and disappointment (coupled with the theological controversies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) that caused many denominations to pull back from the wider world and from each other by the time of the Great Depression.
The pull back by some and the coasting of others led to a lack of cultural engagement and involvement unprecedented in American History. As I argue in The Mainline this contributed to the decline of the Seven Sisters and the rise of what has been called the Religious Right (and to a lesser extent, the Religious Left perhaps). Disengagement from the culture might feel nice in the short term, but holds the potential to do far greater damage to both the Church and the wider culture than staying engaged does. And to hear one of the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention talk about being a "prophetic minority" is to remind me of some within the Episcopal Church (including some affiliated with retired Bishop John Shelby Spong) who, in the late 1990s claimed that they were a "righteous remnant" in the face of dwindling membership within the denomination and attacks on liberal theology. Considering that I placed the Southern Baptists within the new Mainline, it causes one to wonder if they will not lead, who will? And if Christians will not engage the culture, who will?
Of course one of the fun things about studying the Progressives is that scholars (not unlike the Progressives themselves) argue over what is or was a "real" Progressive reform. Our problem is that there was no checklist, no requirements, to being a Progressive. Really (and this no doubt will gall some of my colleagues) the only requirement was that you be a reformer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century advocating that your reform would make American society better. Hence, reforms ran the gambit from Prohibition, to worker's rights, to child labor laws, to eugenics, to food and drug regulation, to many, many more. You did not need to advocate all of these things to be a Progressive, you did not even need to support all of them. Likewise, you did not have to be politically liberal (really by the standards of the time, and most assuredly by today's definition) to be a reformer either. Such ambiguity can be maddening at times when you are trying to write or teach about the Progressives. It can also make it difficult to define or even defend the term within its modern use versus its historical context (note how many twenty-first century political liberals have attempted to adopt the term "Progressive" for themselves).
But, I have been thinking about the Progressives again because I have been reading posts this week about whether or not Christians can hope (or even should hope) to be able to transform their culture or not. Hence, in the past week there have been calls for Christians to re-engage the fine arts (as a means to transform the culture), rather than seek a political solution (see here), calls to be "realistic" at what Christians can actually hope to accomplish (see here), and doubts that Christians can ever hope to actually transform secular culture at all (see here). Perhaps interestingly, these posts come from what might be called the more conservative theological spectrum, and dovetail nicely with this piece from the Wall Street Journal in which Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention asserts that "the Bible Belt is collapsing." Rather than a "moral majority", Moore says American Christians must now be prepared to be a "prophetic minority."
Such a discussion is healthy to have of course. What is the role of God's people on this earth? Is it to save society? Or merely save souls? Can it do both? Can committed Christians actually live their faith and NOT affect wider society? While some of the discussion above is related to notions of such debates over "two kingdoms theology" (see here) and what that means for Christians and culture, there is also a tinge of dejection -- that despite the best efforts of the Religious Right since the late 1970s, America seems to be only getting more secular, that perhaps they have failed to recapture or transform the culture at all, and that the best that can be hoped for is to hold on to what God has given them individually.
The Progressives grappled with this kind of dejection--of falling short of their goals--as well. For religiously inspired reformers, what they were striving for was to establish God's kingdom on this earth. Some believed that by perfecting American society (not unlike their parents or grandparents during the Second Great Awakening) they would literally be preparing the world for Christ's Second Coming. Hence to them, reform work was both their Christian duty to their fellow man and a divine mandate. That their reforms sometimes worked, sometimes failed, and sometimes never got very far was, eventually, a source of confusion and disappointment (coupled with the theological controversies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) that caused many denominations to pull back from the wider world and from each other by the time of the Great Depression.
The pull back by some and the coasting of others led to a lack of cultural engagement and involvement unprecedented in American History. As I argue in The Mainline this contributed to the decline of the Seven Sisters and the rise of what has been called the Religious Right (and to a lesser extent, the Religious Left perhaps). Disengagement from the culture might feel nice in the short term, but holds the potential to do far greater damage to both the Church and the wider culture than staying engaged does. And to hear one of the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention talk about being a "prophetic minority" is to remind me of some within the Episcopal Church (including some affiliated with retired Bishop John Shelby Spong) who, in the late 1990s claimed that they were a "righteous remnant" in the face of dwindling membership within the denomination and attacks on liberal theology. Considering that I placed the Southern Baptists within the new Mainline, it causes one to wonder if they will not lead, who will? And if Christians will not engage the culture, who will?
Monday, August 5, 2013
Enough with the Nones?
Dating back to October, when the then most recent Pew Study came out, there has been increasing chatter about "The Nones" -- the perhaps 20% of respondents who told Pew that they were not part of organized religion in modern America. Over those months, there has been growing clamor over what this means (Has decline of all religious institutions no set in? Has secularization in the form of militant secular humanism now not just taken root in the United States, as it has in Europe, but also starting to bloom?), as well as (at times in a tepid manner, at times overtly) linking the Nones to the Millenials (and thus, crafting a narrative of the current and future decline of organized religion, or at least a lost generation).
But, as I and others have pointed out, maybe this narrative isn't quite what some (in particular as put forth in some sensationalistic journalistic accounts) have made it out to be. Indeed, if you spend time with the Pew study, you quickly find that the Nones they focus on aren't anti-religious at all. And for every story about the decline of a particular church, you also find many that are growing (and full of young families to boot). One of the arguments I tried to make in The Mainline was that we focus, in American Religious History on decline that we often miss out on stories that don't fit that narrative (hence the importance of a new Mainline for the twenty-first century).
No sooner did my most recent post go up Saturday night (where it has helped the blog garner some attention in Latvia apparently -- Es ceru, ka kādu dienu mēs varam apspriest maģistrālēm, un salīdzināt amerikāņu reliģijas vēsturē ar to, kas ir nesalocītā Latvijā.) than Professor Rodney Stark entered the fray. The Baylor University professor has a new book out in which he talks about polls such as the one Pew conducted and why it (and they) may very well be skewed against actually counting the religious voice of the nation. You can read Stark's interview with St. John's University Law School's Center for Law and Religion Forum here. It is well worth the read, and well worth thinking about when it comes to the Nones and everyone else.
But, as I and others have pointed out, maybe this narrative isn't quite what some (in particular as put forth in some sensationalistic journalistic accounts) have made it out to be. Indeed, if you spend time with the Pew study, you quickly find that the Nones they focus on aren't anti-religious at all. And for every story about the decline of a particular church, you also find many that are growing (and full of young families to boot). One of the arguments I tried to make in The Mainline was that we focus, in American Religious History on decline that we often miss out on stories that don't fit that narrative (hence the importance of a new Mainline for the twenty-first century).
No sooner did my most recent post go up Saturday night (where it has helped the blog garner some attention in Latvia apparently -- Es ceru, ka kādu dienu mēs varam apspriest maģistrālēm, un salīdzināt amerikāņu reliģijas vēsturē ar to, kas ir nesalocītā Latvijā.) than Professor Rodney Stark entered the fray. The Baylor University professor has a new book out in which he talks about polls such as the one Pew conducted and why it (and they) may very well be skewed against actually counting the religious voice of the nation. You can read Stark's interview with St. John's University Law School's Center for Law and Religion Forum here. It is well worth the read, and well worth thinking about when it comes to the Nones and everyone else.
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Tides of Time
Vacation is a time of rest, relaxation, reflection, and re-invigoration. But that doesn't stop relevant stories from popping up, just me from commentating on them. While I was enjoying good times with good friends and family "Up North" in Michigan (see above), the following came my way -- I was just delayed in offering my two cents. So, here some ramblings from one who is "tanned, rested, and ready" to engage once again!
The first article that came my way was by Rachel Held Evans about why Millennials are leaving churches. Let me start by saying that I enjoy reading her stuff, whether I always agree with it or not. She often asks good questions about American evangelicalism and raises good points that contribute to conversation and soul searching. That being said, and I won't rehash the (at times I think devastating) critiques offered here or here about her article, I will say that I really don't think we know enough about Millennials and their habits/feelings about faith, religion (organized or not), and what not to be writing to deeply about them. Perhaps, that is because (I guess) I am a member of Generation X -- and don't feel all that ready to talk to much about my generation, let alone the one my younger sister, brother, and cousins (again, I guess) belong to. But in our media driven society, I can't say that I'm surprised that based on a few polls and blog posts, this kind of article could be written or have gotten the attention that it has. If you don't believe me, just take the time to read or look at the comments in the three articles linked above. And yet the thing that jumped out at me the most about RHE's article was something I've talked about before when it comes to some in the Emergent Church and their critique of the Religious Right: A surprising amount of naivete when it comes to politics and the culture wars. One of the points RHE makes is that Millennials have been turned off by the culture wars of their parents, but at the same time, she asserts that Millennials want the Church to be active in the pursuit of "social justice." Her chief example of working for social justice (as I read her article) is pushing for the rights of the LGBT community. The problem is that the moment laws become involved or become the goal, you have entered into the world of politics, and hence the very culture war that RHE claims Millennials want no part of. It is, at best, an ill conceived argument, or at least a very under developed one.
The second article that caught my eye was also over a debate, this one over a hymn. The Presbyterian Church (USA) is currently working on a new hymnal and was considering including a song by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend entitled "In Christ Alone." The problem for some members of the committee was a line in which Getty and Townend talk about Christ's death on the cross appeasing the wrath of God for sinners. You can take a look at the full lyrics here. Wanting to include the popular praise and worship song in the hymnal, the committee proposed changing the lyrics to talking about God's love instead. The songwriters said no, word leaked out, and controversy ensued (you can read more here and here). One can see it as either a major change (and thus an attack on the theological message of the song) or a minor one. Either way, the story is a reminder of two major problems for the Mainline of the Seven Sisters: The first is that the inclusion of the song (altered or not) might be seen as an attempt at a "cosmetic change" to attract younger people (such as the Millennials RHE talks about) -- perhaps in a genuine attempt at outreach, perhaps in a somewhat cynical one. The other is that the entire debate speaks (as the linked articles argue) the theological "wishy- washy-ness" of the Seven Sisters, in particular the Presbyterian Church (USA) in this case (one wonders what they would omit if the Westminster Shorter Catechism was proposed today). Or, perhaps John Turner's call to "end the hymnal wars" with the recognition that serving on such a committee to begin with is sure to be a thankless job no matter what your theology is what we should take away from this dust up.
The final article was an interesting one about Pope Francis and the Press. Is it possible, in this day and age to get a religious message out through the secular press? Pope Francis seems to think so. How long this will continue remains to be seen. After all, the press seemed initially reluctant to comment on how many young people showed up for World Youth Day in Brazil. The figure that is now coming out in reports is 3 million. Not to bad for his first such event -- and one that could be even more important in the years to come, not just for Roman Catholicism but also for Christians of whatever denomination.
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