Spiritual Nuggets of Faith and Ethical Leadership
1. Think positive thoughts about yourself and you will find new strength and beauty in your inner self.
2. Don’t spend so much time waiting for a large voice from on high to speak to you that you stumble over the whispers that are right at your feet.
3. By way of love, we add to morality and justice both mercy and integrity—the foundations of our spiritual being that enable us to appreciate the uniqueness of other persons and their situations.
4. The gift of honest dialogue is the richest and most enduring gift we can give to others.
5. The experiences that we have and share with each other are how we reveal ourselves and give meaning to our lives. Sharing also authenticates who we are and those with whom we share. Relationships are the way we think; they connect life to life and are the foundations of ethics.
6. Kindness to others may be the first moral step we take.
7. A positive sense of self is needed for building bridges to others.
8. Our character is revealed in our actions.
9. Life is an invention; live it with diligent wisdom.
10. Listen to your inner voice, to your dreams. Play with their possible meanings for your life. Listen with purpose. This is our pathway to tomorrow.
11. Dialogue has in it the initiative to expose the subtlety of our prejudices and identify the distortions in our own worldview so that we might look and listen to our cultural heritage with greater care. Listen to others, and listen with care.
12. Allow your soul to awaken to the music that lies within you.
13. Hope is our foundation, and hard work and consistency are the values that will sustain us through the good times and the difficult periods of our life.
14. Living with a commitment to compassion and integrity is living from the foundations of our faith while reaching to our moral horizons.
15. Our ethical purpose challenges us to allow dignity and moral integrity to influence our actions in positive and responsible ways.
16. Nothing essential in human life can be changed for the better without first attending to our inner disharmony.
17. As we bring unity and harmony to our inner lives, we give birth to those moral and spiritual values that connect our lives to others and bring creative power to our community.
18. Hope asks us to see the best in other people, to connect with cultures that differ from our own, and reminds us not to condemn or make fun of that which seems different.
19. We can never find wholeness if some of the pieces of ourselves are missing.
20. Our humanity compels us to recognize the dignity of others and their ability to make choices.
21. Without human respect and responsibility, leadership becomes merely a celebration of disorder and superficiality.
22. Get hold of your humanity, and, in so doing, learn to serve others with dignity and purpose.
23. In trusting, giving, and loving we create community.
24. By trusting we add value to others even as value is being added to us.
25. In our relationships with others we give birth to our inner and communal lives—new birth such as this is always possible. There is joy when it is experienced.
26. Servant leadership is a moral deepening that frees us from the defenses and masks we wear.
27. The life you live is a gift; share your gifts and let others share their gifts with you.
28. If we view the struggle for perspective positively, we can see that it provides an opportunity for growth and renewal.
29. All of us need time for renewal. Our physical, mental, social, and emotional health depends on the attention we give to this activity.
30. Beliefs literally create our reality; they are the lenses through which we interpret the world.
31. Giving, not taking, exemplifies a moral life.
32. Accepting our own humanity is recognizing our connection to others.
33. Our faith enables us to understand the dignity and worth of other persons. It is our criteria for behaving; our life expectancy in a complex world. By turning inside we discover that faith is no mere addendum to life and work, or to reason and wisdom. Rather, faith is the foundation, and provides the purpose, meaning, and ability to respect and treat properly the life that is in the image of God.
34. We are what we hope for, what we imagine, and what we are committed to work for. Nothing comes easy, and, in this life, nothing is cheap.
35. Love is not love until we give it away.
36. This is the reality of our ethical lives—we are others and what we do always affects them and us.
37. Freedom requires courage.
38. Generosity is contagious. It’s the essence of servant leadership.
39. Potential leaders learn to listen and respect the ideas of others.
40. Friendships help us sustain our spirituality.
41. Internal freedom has a spiritual dimension. Somehow we are never happier than when we are expressing the deepest gifts that reflect both our vision and purpose of living a good life.
42. Leadership is a moral expression of our inner life and our communal relationships, one that moves outward into a life of action and one that turns inward to the endless sources of our consciousness and being.
43. Purpose doesn’t have to be grandiose and magnanimous; it is often found in the simple behaviors of good people going about their daily lives.
44. Our values spring from the interaction of reason with belief and belief with our perceived purposes. Get in touch with, clarify, understand, and grasp your ultimate meaning. Know that there are fundamental values. Understand them. There will be limits, so let your faith guide you.
45. We need to understand that until our individual inner disharmony is healed by spiritual energy, there can be no harmony, no enduring love, in relation to our neighbor.
46. Morality, like spirituality, is built on transcendence—transcending our prejudices and willing the good for all people, avoiding the narrowing of belief and accepting our human commonalities.
47. Faith can provide the story line for our lives and thus a sense of continuity and coherence in the midst of a fragmented and confusing world.
48. The ultimate challenge is sharing your gifts, bringing your inner resources, your highest Self, out into the world for others.
49. Moral leadership is an act of creation where both the knower and the known are changed, hopefully for the better.
50. Forget the dangers and focus on the opportunities that ethical commitment brings your way. Here you will find the purpose that only giving and service provide.
51. The promise of moral community calls for integration, protection of diversity, and reconciliation of interests. It also demands responsible choice and civility.
52. When there is civility, differences are adjudicated, not erased, and discord is channeled into self-preserving paths.
53. When leaders commit themselves to their work and to respect those whom they serve, wonderful and magical things happen.
54. It is no longer a secret, what we value determines very largely what we do. Others will want to be a part of it.
55. Providing service and support for others will guide your leadership potential. Anchor your leadership in the context of your spirituality and let moral truth be your guide.
56. Without supportive contexts of nurture and sustenance, and of inspiration as well, our very selfhood is at risk.
57. To be civil is to exercise morality in public affairs, which includes moderation in pursuing one’s own interests, and concern for the common good.
58. Moral leadership requires seeking a balance and in that seeking, finding a way to govern that improves those with whom we work.
59. Civility is the virtue of the person who shares responsibility in his own self-governance.
60. Respect is perhaps the key to our developing moral civility. Respect levels the playing field and engenders our moral response to our community and environment.
61. We are capable of continual growth, but growth demands openness to the environment.
62. Endurance, achievement and dedication in the face of adversity and loss accompany the individual who follows his or her own spiritual map. Life is not easy. To stay on the spiritual and moral course to accomplishment requires much sacrifice and diligence.
63. As you stand on the edge of achievement let go of past restrictions and discover the knowledge and certainty that sets you apart from the ordinary. Understand the importance of who you are and what you are doing; follow your spiritual map; break away from the age-old constraints of narrow doctrine and accepted instruction. What you can become is perhaps much more than you are ready to believe.
64. A goal of leadership is to also become a positive force in the transformation of others. The choice is ours.
65. To sustain the relationships that give meaning and significance to our life requires constant moral maintenance.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
A Deeper Look
Character: Take a Deeper Look
Do for others what you would like them to do for you. This is a summary of all that is taught in the law and the prophets. … Anyone who listens to my teaching and obeys me is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. … But anyone who hears my teaching and ignores it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. Matthew 7: 12-27
Character
This morning let’s talk about character – our innermost values and beliefs exercised with courage. In this century we have witnessed the growth of a movement in our schools and involving our children known as “character education.” Prior to its emergence, something of a taboo had fallen over any discussion of values, ethics, and character. Along with the rise of multiculturalism came the dictum that truth and value are relative. We’ve already discussed relativism, but to put it plainly, relativism isolates us in private values, and in individualism where we think we have a right to believe and do anything “our” values permit. Chaos and a lack of human community and fellowship often are the results.
Our children really believe they are communicating when they use their cell phones and in particular, when they are texting. Texting has become the conditio sine qua non of teenage communication – “without which (there is) nothing” that refers to an indispensable and essential action, condition, or ingredient. The sad thing is that our youngsters are missing out on 80% of the communicative environment—human association with the indispensable involvement of eye contact and the reading of body language. Our Christian emphasis on community and fellowship are being chipped away, one pixel at a time!
Much of our contemporary crisis was possibly anticipated by Allan Bloom as “a closing of the American mind.” Relativism, the undergirding support of the postmodern movement, was promoted as necessary to openness, a mindset that puts all values and cultures on an equal par with tolerance and acceptance of individual differences without overt evaluation being the key to understanding and objectivity. Relativism is possibly one of the most misunderstood and dangerous ideas to emerge in the 20th century. Bloom warned us, Actually openness results in American conformism—out there in the rest of the world is a drab diversity that teaches only that values are relative, whereas here we can create all the life-styles we want. Our openness means we do not need others. Thus what is advertised as a great opening is a great closing. The point [in education] is to propagandize acceptance of different ways, and indifference to their real content is as good a means as any. Openness used to be the virtue that permitted us to seek the good by using reason. It now means accepting everything and denying reason’s power.
Crisis
What brought the need of character education to our schools? Why does the Christian church need to promote the essentials of the Christian character with its literature, its Sunday school classes, and from the pulpit? Philosopher Paul Kurtz may have hit on the answer when he said it is book Exuberance, It is the drive of the individual, the unflinching persistence of the will, and the enduring strength of character that is the dynamic factor of achievement. And wasn’t this what Jesus was talking about in the Sermon on the Mount? Our character, our inner self, is the “dynamic factor” that pushes and pulls us through life. In the teaching of Jesus, “building a house on a solid foundation” is a reference to building our lives and our families and communities on the basic elements of the Christian Character.
It’s difficult to pinpoint when dramatic changes in the American character began. Some cite the end of World War II; others drop it back to the end of Reconstruction. These were watershed decades during which the fabric of the American soul underwent reevaluation and substantial modification. There are those who point to the Depression of the 1930s, while others use the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan as a point of departure. In the second half of the 20th century, it was the Vietnam War and Watergate—thought of as watershed years when tension and change moved American values off center. Every era is important, but more significant than the tension brought by the events of a particular time, is to remember the inner meaning of democracy, liberty, and justice; and the inner meaning of Christian living. Joseph Needleman, in his book The American Soul, Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders, says, “To a significant extent, democracy in its specifically American form was created to allow men and women to seek their own higher principle within themselves. Without that inner meaning, democracy becomes . . . a celebration of disorder and superficiality.” And remember, for Christians, “higher principles” are found within the church and within Scripture as well as among people who are committed to these principles and live them naturally throughout their lives.
I believe we are forced to acknowledge that this new openness, mentioned above, has created a values shift in our society. Openness can sometimes be a blind acceptance of any point of view in the desire to accommodate the opinions of others. Openness, conceived in this way, is the rationale for accepting any idea, any culture, any person, and any value on the grounds of tolerance, acceptance, and the politically correct thing to do. Openness has become a new virtue, but it has also resulted in values confusion. So we ask, “What ethic other than openness is important for us to follow today?” The proliferation of experiences and images each of us receives from the print, audio, and video media serves this new openness to the extent that we find ourselves entrapped in a stereophonically televised ethnocentrism, and subsequently, in the morass of constant values conflict. Our need is to find a more solid ground, but not an inflexible one, from which we can begin to rebuild our homes, our churches, and our nation. Jesus tells us to begin this journey within ourselves.
Looking on the Inside
For just a moment, let’s take a look back in history at the heroes and leaders we have admired – from times of war to statesmen in times of peace, to a friend or someone who has struggled to overcome a debilitating illness. We don’t have to look far, maybe just down the street or across the dinner table. Some of us have greatly admired presidents like Washington and Lincoln. Others have admired a parent or grandparent, a brother or sister. We admire their courage, their strength, and their persistence. We often wonder why we aren’t like these individuals. Take a deeper look!
Just recently, the Charlotte Observer newspaper told the story of how a group of people in southeast Charlotte gave aid to one of their neighbors, 84-year old Bill Judge. Bill had been a loner and not a very good neighbor with five old cars in his driveway and his eccentric habits. But when he injured his knee, his neighbors pulled together to help by cutting his grass, driving him to the store, and bringing him food. The story goes on to say that his neighbors changed the course of his life, and in doing so, changed their lives as well. They discovered that Bill had served in the Navy, earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from Duke University, and worked with a chemical company in Charlotte. One neighbor said, “He brought the best out in us all. We became extra close neighbors.”
The story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers as told by David Wright and David Zoby in their book, Fire on the Beach, is another story of courage and character. Wright and Zoby tell the story of the U.S. Life-Saving Service, formed in 1871 on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Etheridge—the only African-American to lead a lifesaving crew—was its captain. He was a former slave and a Civil War veteran. His crew was among the most courageous surfmen in the service. It is a story of character, dedication, courage, and determination. We learn from Etheridge that character is built over time and its strength comes, not from being successful in every adventure, but in our persistence and will to achieve. It is a mental attitude that expects good and favorable results. A positive mind anticipates happiness, joy, health and a successful outcome of every situation and action. Whatever the mind expects, it finds.
The Golden Rule and Christian Fellowship
Another good place to look for support is in the meaning of the Golden Rule cited above. To put into contemporary words we can say that in the seventh chapter of Matthew, Jesus is actually talking about enhancing our (Christian) social capital. Much of Jesus’ teaching is about (Christian) morality and, hence, about character. Jesus points out that we should build our churches and families on the solid ground of morality; the Golden Rule is an essential part of this foundation. He understands the Golden Rule as a societal good, as a personal and collective necessity, and as a major component of personal, societal, and public health. Following the Golden Rule is not a command, but an item of Christian common sense. In their book, Loneliness, Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick comment, “Civic engagement is the chunk of ice we see floating above the surface; below the water line lurks the much deeper issue of individual feelings of isolation…What individuals need is meaningful connection, not superficial glad-handing.” “Meaningful connection” is a major theme of the Sermon on the Mount.
When we speak about a person’s character, we are trying to capture something of their essence as a human being, the major traits or characteristics of the person, what the person typically does or says, the person’s major beliefs, and the person’s values or ethical principles. If we probe deeply enough, we find a human self with its flaws and compromises and with its immense courage and moral vision. The Golden Rule is an ancient prescription with religious significance. It is designed to promote civil cooperation among people and groups of people. Even more, it suggests that our behaviors toward others ought to be consistent and conversational so that understanding and behavioral expectation will not be frustrated. Added to these prescriptive measures, the Golden Rule challenges us to think critically about our own good and the good of others. In this way, it paves the way for civility and just behaviors.
Jesus noted in the Sermon on the Mount that character is a distinctive combination of personal qualities by which someone is known (Matthew 5:1-12), and the moral strength and integrity by which a person strikes a balance between his or her moral senses and prudent self-interest (Matthew 5:13-48). Notably, the names used for the early Christian church reflected these ideas: the early Christian church was called “community” or “fellowship”; in the Greek, Koinonia, and means communion by intimate participation; and Ekklesia, meaning “assembly.” Thus, this interpretation of the Golden Rule suggests that community and fellowship are primary ways to express our relationship to God. It denotes both the personal or intimate and the communal nature of Christianity. Both are significant, for the mission and message of the Christianity can only be moved forward by people in association – the church.
As Jesus said when recruiting his disciples, Follow me now! Let those who are spiritually dead care for their own dead. Ours is a spiritual mission that knows no boundaries. Begin it today.
Do for others what you would like them to do for you. This is a summary of all that is taught in the law and the prophets. … Anyone who listens to my teaching and obeys me is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. … But anyone who hears my teaching and ignores it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. Matthew 7: 12-27
Character
This morning let’s talk about character – our innermost values and beliefs exercised with courage. In this century we have witnessed the growth of a movement in our schools and involving our children known as “character education.” Prior to its emergence, something of a taboo had fallen over any discussion of values, ethics, and character. Along with the rise of multiculturalism came the dictum that truth and value are relative. We’ve already discussed relativism, but to put it plainly, relativism isolates us in private values, and in individualism where we think we have a right to believe and do anything “our” values permit. Chaos and a lack of human community and fellowship often are the results.
Our children really believe they are communicating when they use their cell phones and in particular, when they are texting. Texting has become the conditio sine qua non of teenage communication – “without which (there is) nothing” that refers to an indispensable and essential action, condition, or ingredient. The sad thing is that our youngsters are missing out on 80% of the communicative environment—human association with the indispensable involvement of eye contact and the reading of body language. Our Christian emphasis on community and fellowship are being chipped away, one pixel at a time!
Much of our contemporary crisis was possibly anticipated by Allan Bloom as “a closing of the American mind.” Relativism, the undergirding support of the postmodern movement, was promoted as necessary to openness, a mindset that puts all values and cultures on an equal par with tolerance and acceptance of individual differences without overt evaluation being the key to understanding and objectivity. Relativism is possibly one of the most misunderstood and dangerous ideas to emerge in the 20th century. Bloom warned us, Actually openness results in American conformism—out there in the rest of the world is a drab diversity that teaches only that values are relative, whereas here we can create all the life-styles we want. Our openness means we do not need others. Thus what is advertised as a great opening is a great closing. The point [in education] is to propagandize acceptance of different ways, and indifference to their real content is as good a means as any. Openness used to be the virtue that permitted us to seek the good by using reason. It now means accepting everything and denying reason’s power.
Crisis
What brought the need of character education to our schools? Why does the Christian church need to promote the essentials of the Christian character with its literature, its Sunday school classes, and from the pulpit? Philosopher Paul Kurtz may have hit on the answer when he said it is book Exuberance, It is the drive of the individual, the unflinching persistence of the will, and the enduring strength of character that is the dynamic factor of achievement. And wasn’t this what Jesus was talking about in the Sermon on the Mount? Our character, our inner self, is the “dynamic factor” that pushes and pulls us through life. In the teaching of Jesus, “building a house on a solid foundation” is a reference to building our lives and our families and communities on the basic elements of the Christian Character.
It’s difficult to pinpoint when dramatic changes in the American character began. Some cite the end of World War II; others drop it back to the end of Reconstruction. These were watershed decades during which the fabric of the American soul underwent reevaluation and substantial modification. There are those who point to the Depression of the 1930s, while others use the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan as a point of departure. In the second half of the 20th century, it was the Vietnam War and Watergate—thought of as watershed years when tension and change moved American values off center. Every era is important, but more significant than the tension brought by the events of a particular time, is to remember the inner meaning of democracy, liberty, and justice; and the inner meaning of Christian living. Joseph Needleman, in his book The American Soul, Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders, says, “To a significant extent, democracy in its specifically American form was created to allow men and women to seek their own higher principle within themselves. Without that inner meaning, democracy becomes . . . a celebration of disorder and superficiality.” And remember, for Christians, “higher principles” are found within the church and within Scripture as well as among people who are committed to these principles and live them naturally throughout their lives.
I believe we are forced to acknowledge that this new openness, mentioned above, has created a values shift in our society. Openness can sometimes be a blind acceptance of any point of view in the desire to accommodate the opinions of others. Openness, conceived in this way, is the rationale for accepting any idea, any culture, any person, and any value on the grounds of tolerance, acceptance, and the politically correct thing to do. Openness has become a new virtue, but it has also resulted in values confusion. So we ask, “What ethic other than openness is important for us to follow today?” The proliferation of experiences and images each of us receives from the print, audio, and video media serves this new openness to the extent that we find ourselves entrapped in a stereophonically televised ethnocentrism, and subsequently, in the morass of constant values conflict. Our need is to find a more solid ground, but not an inflexible one, from which we can begin to rebuild our homes, our churches, and our nation. Jesus tells us to begin this journey within ourselves.
Looking on the Inside
For just a moment, let’s take a look back in history at the heroes and leaders we have admired – from times of war to statesmen in times of peace, to a friend or someone who has struggled to overcome a debilitating illness. We don’t have to look far, maybe just down the street or across the dinner table. Some of us have greatly admired presidents like Washington and Lincoln. Others have admired a parent or grandparent, a brother or sister. We admire their courage, their strength, and their persistence. We often wonder why we aren’t like these individuals. Take a deeper look!
Just recently, the Charlotte Observer newspaper told the story of how a group of people in southeast Charlotte gave aid to one of their neighbors, 84-year old Bill Judge. Bill had been a loner and not a very good neighbor with five old cars in his driveway and his eccentric habits. But when he injured his knee, his neighbors pulled together to help by cutting his grass, driving him to the store, and bringing him food. The story goes on to say that his neighbors changed the course of his life, and in doing so, changed their lives as well. They discovered that Bill had served in the Navy, earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from Duke University, and worked with a chemical company in Charlotte. One neighbor said, “He brought the best out in us all. We became extra close neighbors.”
The story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers as told by David Wright and David Zoby in their book, Fire on the Beach, is another story of courage and character. Wright and Zoby tell the story of the U.S. Life-Saving Service, formed in 1871 on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Etheridge—the only African-American to lead a lifesaving crew—was its captain. He was a former slave and a Civil War veteran. His crew was among the most courageous surfmen in the service. It is a story of character, dedication, courage, and determination. We learn from Etheridge that character is built over time and its strength comes, not from being successful in every adventure, but in our persistence and will to achieve. It is a mental attitude that expects good and favorable results. A positive mind anticipates happiness, joy, health and a successful outcome of every situation and action. Whatever the mind expects, it finds.
The Golden Rule and Christian Fellowship
Another good place to look for support is in the meaning of the Golden Rule cited above. To put into contemporary words we can say that in the seventh chapter of Matthew, Jesus is actually talking about enhancing our (Christian) social capital. Much of Jesus’ teaching is about (Christian) morality and, hence, about character. Jesus points out that we should build our churches and families on the solid ground of morality; the Golden Rule is an essential part of this foundation. He understands the Golden Rule as a societal good, as a personal and collective necessity, and as a major component of personal, societal, and public health. Following the Golden Rule is not a command, but an item of Christian common sense. In their book, Loneliness, Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick comment, “Civic engagement is the chunk of ice we see floating above the surface; below the water line lurks the much deeper issue of individual feelings of isolation…What individuals need is meaningful connection, not superficial glad-handing.” “Meaningful connection” is a major theme of the Sermon on the Mount.
When we speak about a person’s character, we are trying to capture something of their essence as a human being, the major traits or characteristics of the person, what the person typically does or says, the person’s major beliefs, and the person’s values or ethical principles. If we probe deeply enough, we find a human self with its flaws and compromises and with its immense courage and moral vision. The Golden Rule is an ancient prescription with religious significance. It is designed to promote civil cooperation among people and groups of people. Even more, it suggests that our behaviors toward others ought to be consistent and conversational so that understanding and behavioral expectation will not be frustrated. Added to these prescriptive measures, the Golden Rule challenges us to think critically about our own good and the good of others. In this way, it paves the way for civility and just behaviors.
Jesus noted in the Sermon on the Mount that character is a distinctive combination of personal qualities by which someone is known (Matthew 5:1-12), and the moral strength and integrity by which a person strikes a balance between his or her moral senses and prudent self-interest (Matthew 5:13-48). Notably, the names used for the early Christian church reflected these ideas: the early Christian church was called “community” or “fellowship”; in the Greek, Koinonia, and means communion by intimate participation; and Ekklesia, meaning “assembly.” Thus, this interpretation of the Golden Rule suggests that community and fellowship are primary ways to express our relationship to God. It denotes both the personal or intimate and the communal nature of Christianity. Both are significant, for the mission and message of the Christianity can only be moved forward by people in association – the church.
As Jesus said when recruiting his disciples, Follow me now! Let those who are spiritually dead care for their own dead. Ours is a spiritual mission that knows no boundaries. Begin it today.
New Meanings are Required
Old Words, Ancient Symbols, and New Meaning
“You are a king, then!” said Pilate. Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” “What is truth?” Pilate asked. With this he went out again to the Jews and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him.” John 18:37-38 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6; Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. James 1:26
“Truth” is a difficult word to define and more difficult to discover in the rumble of human existence. The way we interpret the above passages more often than not tells more about us than the meaning of truth. About “truth,” Galileo said, “All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” And we learn from Emerson that “Reform is affirmative, conservatism negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth.” Finally, Anais Nin (a Cuban French author) points out, “When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.” From the Scripture above and from these quotes we discover that truth does not simply mean “verified fact.” Religious truth is personal and active, a way of life, a choice. Pilot didn’t understand this when he asked Jesus, “What is truth?” Jesus’ answer was about living and doing and not about some kind of uninteresting fact.
This brings me to my point: Many Christians take Pilot’s side on the nature of truth. They are coming down on the side of verified fact and are usually scoffed at by the scientific and analytical communities. Jesus was referring to a way of life, a commitment. Jesus came as a reformer and his message of truth was uncomfortable. A state of mind that is defined as “reforming,” induces growth and fulfillment. It is neither static, nor satisfied to sit on ancient words. James says that we shouldn't deceive ourselves but get on our feet and live the truth. Most fundamentalist and conservative Christian don’t understand this or can’t; I don’t know.
Biblical history is sprinkled with metaphor and parable; very little of it can be taken literally or we miss its meaning and its theological truth. And of course it was edited by those with a theo-political agenda; books were thrown out, some left in and words were changed to suit the authorities in the Roman church; it was for the most part written from a dominant male point of view and is steeped in the ancient culture which gave it birth and life. To search for literal truth here is like search for water in the middle of the desert. It’s not literal truth that is the concern, but theological and spiritual truth which is ageless and meaningful.
I find it difficult to maintain that anyone who either belongs to a mainline Christian church or attends a mainline Christian church is more than a conservative with regard to his or her religious faith. They are not reformation-minded. I’m not sure what a liberal Christian would be like, for either you are a Christian or you are not! The issues that divide the conservative from the fundamentalist or orthodox Christian are not theological issues; rather, they are social and political issues such as abortion, homosexuality, stem cell research, capital punishment, and the like. The news media calls these people “value voters.” I rather like the term, “issue voters.” When a Christian takes a position on one of these “hot-button” topics, he or she is then labeled a “liberal” or a “conservative.” Still, I think these are mislabels, referring to sociological issues and not to religious ones.
The problem with values voters is that have yet to emerged from Plato’s cave of assumptions and therefore, have not aligned their values with the point of view of morality which includes commitments to the dignity of all human beings, freedom of speech, and that moral values are values that are applied to everyone alike, and avoids ideas and behaviors that discriminate against others. Moral values are human values and they are Christian values, taught by Jesus himself and promoted by his most famous first century follower, the Apostle Paul.
Let’s discuss theology for just a moment. An orthodox position is that “Jesus is God,” or “belief in the Triune God is the sole path to salvation.” Nothing else matters to the fundamentalist except the belief that the Bible is the “literal Word of God.” I really don’t see how they can say this in light of the copyist-tradition in which the Bible was produced and the amount of editing that took place to rid itself of anything Gnostic or docetic. After all, some of the earliest Bibles that have been discovered carried books/letters in them that are not in today’s traditional New Testament. We have only part of the historical Christian message and some believe that is enough. Ignorance, I guess, is bliss.
A conservative position is somewhat different, but not so much different as to boot one out of the church – but that’s happening in Baptist and Presbyterian circles. The conservative position still focuses on salvation through the sacrificial life of Jesus Christ (an ancient totemic belief). The rest of scripture is up for interpretation and debate. This is not a literal position but one that recognizes the eternal truths of the scriptures without agreeing with the cultural and social contexts in which they were produced. The conservatives also understand the scientific approach to Biblical or “textual” criticism and recognize the changes in scripture over the centuries. They know that the Scriptures have meaning only within the context of real living, not in some abstract, cultural vacuum.
A liberal Christian is much different. The liberal is a pluralist who says that Christianity is only one route to God and that God has provided many paths to salvation, maybe through other religions and cults, and maybe outside anything that is recognized as “church” today. The pluralist says there are many paths, but only one God. Like Paul, there is an element of hope in this belief because of its spiritual and non-scientific nature. The liberal finds it difficult to believe that God would have created all of nature and humankind, but welcomes only a “select” few to eternal life. “What kind of God is this?” asks the liberal. The liberal maintains a universal approach to religion and does not claim that their conception of God is the only one or that the Christian path to God is the only path. They believe that God has provided a way for everyone to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The fundamentalist calls the liberal an atheist and the conservative calls the liberal an agnostic. Either way, the liberal is not invited to teach Sunday School at the local Christian church nor speak from the pulpit on layman’s Sunday. I have found a real liberal to be left of center of many southern Universalist Unitarians. Many of the UU’s like to think they are open-minded and liberal, but just scratch them a bit and you will find that much of it is smoke and mirrors.
Only those with a narrow view of God’s love and grace would exclude those from heaven who do not believe in their creeds and dogmas, rules and regulations. And who are they to exclude anyway? Who gave them the right to speak for God? For example, the Catholic Church traces its authority to speak for God back to a guy named Peter whom they assumed was commissioned by Jesus as the official spokesperson for Christianity. What about the other apostles; this is kind of strange isn’t it? Church legitimacy and religious meaning are not the same and never will be.
Perhaps under Constantine the fourth century Christians needed an “official” religion. They didn’t have the long tradition of the Hebrews and they didn’t have a book – the Torah and the rest of the Old Testament, the books of which were politically selected to screen off the early Christians and define whom they believed they are. What’s a church with out papal authority to do? Make it up for God’s sake and edit out of the New Testament books that were deemed “inappropriate.” Surprisingly, many believe that it’s the way things have always been and our so-called trained pulpiteers do not have the courage to teach them the truth.
Its no wonder the Asian world thinks we’re stupid and gullible – we are! Today the church and its many offshoots (denominations, etc.) are in turmoil for lack of attendance, liberal issues like female and gay rights, and even the idea that salvation may be a relative value and that it may be a commitment to a way of life rather than just saying “I believe” in a deathbed conversion. Boy, I hate that word “conversion.”
Spiritual the church is not. For the most part, members live in a black and white world of theology, dogma, creed, and official books. Even their hymns are a part of this propaganda machine as their have misrepresented history (especially the birth of Jesus) to indoctrinate the young. Where was all of this during the time of Jesus? It was in Judaism, a religion to which he belonged, but which kicked him out on the street. The new religion founded on his teaching had no dogmas, creeds, buildings, programs, or priestly hierarchy until it got involved in Roman politics. Jerry Falwell, the church could have used you then!
I have documented over 150 disputes within and among churches in America since the 1950s. Most of these disputes and controversies are institutional and hierarchical – you either believe or act the way we do or the way the “church” says to believe and act, or out you go. I wonder what Jesus would say to the modern day Pharisees among us? This material is in an unpublished manuscript entitled "Religious Issues and Controversies Since 1950."
I remain a simple Christian; that is, the message of the New Testament is an ethical message—just read the Sermon on the Mount (Plain). For me, salvation is a commitment to an ethical way of life, the one taught by Jesus, and not the result of saying a few magical words and getting touched by a preacher or priest or doused with water. For me, these ancient symbols have lost their meaning and at the same time have taken on a life of their on to define the church and its club-like practices. All clubs have rules and initiation rites and so does the church.
In my book An Ethic of Hope I write, "Faith is foundational and provides a pathway for our ethics, our step into eternity. Hope articulates faith in a life well lived and defines what it means to be a Christian as it generates the power of Christian ethics in our lives. Using this sense of hope—hope as promise, fulfillment, spiritual, and as a positive directive—we are able to understand how faith and ethics are inter-connected. Hope then is the Pauline metaphor for the life of kindness and compassion, of altruism, goodwill, understanding, and benevolence. Hope is faith actualized in a life of benevolence and compassion for others."
So you see, I’m a heretic, not in spirit or truth, but in the ways of the organized church. Today people believe more in their church and its practices than they do the teachings of the New Testament. Read what Jesus says about prayer in the Sermon on the Mount. If you take this seriously, you will never pray in public again and you will put your robes and other church-garnished stuff away. The fundamentalist only take parts of the Bible literally. They tend to ignore the most important pieces. That’s because with have become an issue-centered faith where spiritually has been shoved aside for more politically definable topic.
Enough said.
“You are a king, then!” said Pilate. Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” “What is truth?” Pilate asked. With this he went out again to the Jews and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him.” John 18:37-38 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6; Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. James 1:26
“Truth” is a difficult word to define and more difficult to discover in the rumble of human existence. The way we interpret the above passages more often than not tells more about us than the meaning of truth. About “truth,” Galileo said, “All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” And we learn from Emerson that “Reform is affirmative, conservatism negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth.” Finally, Anais Nin (a Cuban French author) points out, “When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.” From the Scripture above and from these quotes we discover that truth does not simply mean “verified fact.” Religious truth is personal and active, a way of life, a choice. Pilot didn’t understand this when he asked Jesus, “What is truth?” Jesus’ answer was about living and doing and not about some kind of uninteresting fact.
This brings me to my point: Many Christians take Pilot’s side on the nature of truth. They are coming down on the side of verified fact and are usually scoffed at by the scientific and analytical communities. Jesus was referring to a way of life, a commitment. Jesus came as a reformer and his message of truth was uncomfortable. A state of mind that is defined as “reforming,” induces growth and fulfillment. It is neither static, nor satisfied to sit on ancient words. James says that we shouldn't deceive ourselves but get on our feet and live the truth. Most fundamentalist and conservative Christian don’t understand this or can’t; I don’t know.
Biblical history is sprinkled with metaphor and parable; very little of it can be taken literally or we miss its meaning and its theological truth. And of course it was edited by those with a theo-political agenda; books were thrown out, some left in and words were changed to suit the authorities in the Roman church; it was for the most part written from a dominant male point of view and is steeped in the ancient culture which gave it birth and life. To search for literal truth here is like search for water in the middle of the desert. It’s not literal truth that is the concern, but theological and spiritual truth which is ageless and meaningful.
I find it difficult to maintain that anyone who either belongs to a mainline Christian church or attends a mainline Christian church is more than a conservative with regard to his or her religious faith. They are not reformation-minded. I’m not sure what a liberal Christian would be like, for either you are a Christian or you are not! The issues that divide the conservative from the fundamentalist or orthodox Christian are not theological issues; rather, they are social and political issues such as abortion, homosexuality, stem cell research, capital punishment, and the like. The news media calls these people “value voters.” I rather like the term, “issue voters.” When a Christian takes a position on one of these “hot-button” topics, he or she is then labeled a “liberal” or a “conservative.” Still, I think these are mislabels, referring to sociological issues and not to religious ones.
The problem with values voters is that have yet to emerged from Plato’s cave of assumptions and therefore, have not aligned their values with the point of view of morality which includes commitments to the dignity of all human beings, freedom of speech, and that moral values are values that are applied to everyone alike, and avoids ideas and behaviors that discriminate against others. Moral values are human values and they are Christian values, taught by Jesus himself and promoted by his most famous first century follower, the Apostle Paul.
Let’s discuss theology for just a moment. An orthodox position is that “Jesus is God,” or “belief in the Triune God is the sole path to salvation.” Nothing else matters to the fundamentalist except the belief that the Bible is the “literal Word of God.” I really don’t see how they can say this in light of the copyist-tradition in which the Bible was produced and the amount of editing that took place to rid itself of anything Gnostic or docetic. After all, some of the earliest Bibles that have been discovered carried books/letters in them that are not in today’s traditional New Testament. We have only part of the historical Christian message and some believe that is enough. Ignorance, I guess, is bliss.
A conservative position is somewhat different, but not so much different as to boot one out of the church – but that’s happening in Baptist and Presbyterian circles. The conservative position still focuses on salvation through the sacrificial life of Jesus Christ (an ancient totemic belief). The rest of scripture is up for interpretation and debate. This is not a literal position but one that recognizes the eternal truths of the scriptures without agreeing with the cultural and social contexts in which they were produced. The conservatives also understand the scientific approach to Biblical or “textual” criticism and recognize the changes in scripture over the centuries. They know that the Scriptures have meaning only within the context of real living, not in some abstract, cultural vacuum.
A liberal Christian is much different. The liberal is a pluralist who says that Christianity is only one route to God and that God has provided many paths to salvation, maybe through other religions and cults, and maybe outside anything that is recognized as “church” today. The pluralist says there are many paths, but only one God. Like Paul, there is an element of hope in this belief because of its spiritual and non-scientific nature. The liberal finds it difficult to believe that God would have created all of nature and humankind, but welcomes only a “select” few to eternal life. “What kind of God is this?” asks the liberal. The liberal maintains a universal approach to religion and does not claim that their conception of God is the only one or that the Christian path to God is the only path. They believe that God has provided a way for everyone to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The fundamentalist calls the liberal an atheist and the conservative calls the liberal an agnostic. Either way, the liberal is not invited to teach Sunday School at the local Christian church nor speak from the pulpit on layman’s Sunday. I have found a real liberal to be left of center of many southern Universalist Unitarians. Many of the UU’s like to think they are open-minded and liberal, but just scratch them a bit and you will find that much of it is smoke and mirrors.
Only those with a narrow view of God’s love and grace would exclude those from heaven who do not believe in their creeds and dogmas, rules and regulations. And who are they to exclude anyway? Who gave them the right to speak for God? For example, the Catholic Church traces its authority to speak for God back to a guy named Peter whom they assumed was commissioned by Jesus as the official spokesperson for Christianity. What about the other apostles; this is kind of strange isn’t it? Church legitimacy and religious meaning are not the same and never will be.
Perhaps under Constantine the fourth century Christians needed an “official” religion. They didn’t have the long tradition of the Hebrews and they didn’t have a book – the Torah and the rest of the Old Testament, the books of which were politically selected to screen off the early Christians and define whom they believed they are. What’s a church with out papal authority to do? Make it up for God’s sake and edit out of the New Testament books that were deemed “inappropriate.” Surprisingly, many believe that it’s the way things have always been and our so-called trained pulpiteers do not have the courage to teach them the truth.
Its no wonder the Asian world thinks we’re stupid and gullible – we are! Today the church and its many offshoots (denominations, etc.) are in turmoil for lack of attendance, liberal issues like female and gay rights, and even the idea that salvation may be a relative value and that it may be a commitment to a way of life rather than just saying “I believe” in a deathbed conversion. Boy, I hate that word “conversion.”
Spiritual the church is not. For the most part, members live in a black and white world of theology, dogma, creed, and official books. Even their hymns are a part of this propaganda machine as their have misrepresented history (especially the birth of Jesus) to indoctrinate the young. Where was all of this during the time of Jesus? It was in Judaism, a religion to which he belonged, but which kicked him out on the street. The new religion founded on his teaching had no dogmas, creeds, buildings, programs, or priestly hierarchy until it got involved in Roman politics. Jerry Falwell, the church could have used you then!
I have documented over 150 disputes within and among churches in America since the 1950s. Most of these disputes and controversies are institutional and hierarchical – you either believe or act the way we do or the way the “church” says to believe and act, or out you go. I wonder what Jesus would say to the modern day Pharisees among us? This material is in an unpublished manuscript entitled "Religious Issues and Controversies Since 1950."
I remain a simple Christian; that is, the message of the New Testament is an ethical message—just read the Sermon on the Mount (Plain). For me, salvation is a commitment to an ethical way of life, the one taught by Jesus, and not the result of saying a few magical words and getting touched by a preacher or priest or doused with water. For me, these ancient symbols have lost their meaning and at the same time have taken on a life of their on to define the church and its club-like practices. All clubs have rules and initiation rites and so does the church.
In my book An Ethic of Hope I write, "Faith is foundational and provides a pathway for our ethics, our step into eternity. Hope articulates faith in a life well lived and defines what it means to be a Christian as it generates the power of Christian ethics in our lives. Using this sense of hope—hope as promise, fulfillment, spiritual, and as a positive directive—we are able to understand how faith and ethics are inter-connected. Hope then is the Pauline metaphor for the life of kindness and compassion, of altruism, goodwill, understanding, and benevolence. Hope is faith actualized in a life of benevolence and compassion for others."
So you see, I’m a heretic, not in spirit or truth, but in the ways of the organized church. Today people believe more in their church and its practices than they do the teachings of the New Testament. Read what Jesus says about prayer in the Sermon on the Mount. If you take this seriously, you will never pray in public again and you will put your robes and other church-garnished stuff away. The fundamentalist only take parts of the Bible literally. They tend to ignore the most important pieces. That’s because with have become an issue-centered faith where spiritually has been shoved aside for more politically definable topic.
Enough said.
Common Sense
This Way to Common Sense, Part One
If you are wise and understand God’s ways, live a life of steady goodness so that only good deeds will pour forth. … the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure. It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and good deeds. It shows no partiality and is always sincere. And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of goodness. James 3: 13 & 17-18
Just the other morning I was driving to the doctor’s office when a truck passed me. As we stopped at a red light, I couldn’t help but notice the green lettering on its rear doors. It read: “This way to common sense.” In these terrible economic times, and in these times when there is killing and war throughout the Middle East and in parts of Africa, I thought this is just the remedy we need, common sense. When I returned home, I turned to the letter of James in the New Testament and there read the words printed above; indeed, I thought, these are words of common sense, and not just for Christians, but all people.
James may be a bit redundant in these verses, and perhaps idealistic, but his conception of the Christian life bears repeating. In these verses James explicates the distinctly ethical nature of Christian living. Christian ethics has not always been a popular pulpit topic. Sin and salvation usually dominate the words of most evangelical churches. Some are purely issue oriented telling us most of the time what they are against rather than what they are for. But James has a positive message, a message of Christian common sense, which says, “This is the way.” James mentions six areas of Christian living that he believes are important. We will examine these in two parts.
As we look at the subject of Christian ethics it’s important that we carefully define what we mean. Biblical scholar William Barclay says, “If you want to put it in one sentence, ethics is the science of behaviour. Ethics is the bit of religion that tells us how we ought to behave.” Christian theologians have always bothered me. They seem to spend much of their time trying to define “god,” explicate the boundaries of sin, and describe heaven, rather than offering us common sense advice about Christian living. I find theology generally speculative, impersonal, and analytic; but the message of the Bible and from Christian leaders I have found to be both personal and profound. Fundamentally, Christian ethics points to a way of living. It is practical, offering guidance and it is forgiving, seeking justice and mercy for us and those who are less fortunate.
There are some basic ethical themes that have emerged in the history of Christianity. These can be reduced to questions of human relationships, freedom, love and responsibility; in other words, what James is talking about in the above scripture verses. One thing is sure, the message of Jesus and the words of Paul, John, James and other New Testament letter writers view Christians as moral agents and Christian communities as having collective moral responsibility, and both are called upon by God to serve all humankind.
James’ letter impresses us with six major themes for Christian living. I will talk about the first three in this essay.
Wisdom and Understanding
Wisdom and understanding are the first parts of a “Christian common sense.” When we apply these words to families, schools, churches, communities, and nations we understand that we need leaders who are wise and whose knowledge is vast. From wisdom and knowledge, together with reflective thinking comes understanding. When we utilize knowledge and experience with common sense and insight, prudence and sensibility, an ethical wisdom is the result. But this is not all there is because for the Christian, wisdom and understanding – common sense – are grounded in God’s love for us and in our response to God. As God acts in and on the world, we are called upon to answer His call and respond to His commands. Herein we find the source of our own wisdom that enables us to work together, with Christian common sense, to complete our purpose and mission.
E. A. Burtt, in his book The Search for Understanding, provides this ethical insight, “True understanding of a person is gained only through the positive response to his presence. Only when one’s interaction with him becomes an active participation in his growth toward fulfillment can one come to know his full self, because only in the medium of such a response is that full self coming to be.” The implications of this for spiritual understanding are obvious: ethics is a conscious sensitivity and interaction with God and others. When nurtured by our faith, ethics is the substance of hope expressed in attitudes of kindness and benevolence. As we respond to God’s presence, we are preparing ourselves to engage the world and become – with God – active participants in his creation.
Steady Goodness & Good Deeds
If my “steady” we mean “consistency,” then James is calling on Christians to exhibit a consistent goodness or benevolence toward others. This means showing kindness and good will, doing charitable acts, and actually possessing a disposition to do good. Let me emphasize this point: Christian living is not about obeying rules, attending church, or responding to certain hot button issues because we think that’s the way we’re suppose to act as Christians. Christian living and taking moral responsibility for the welfare of our neighbor comes from the inside out. It begins with the presence of God in our lives and overflows quite naturally to others. Think of the possibilities! Do you remember Jesus’ parables of the “Mustard Seed” and “Unleavened Bread”? This is the way we grow our faith, one seed, one piece (person) at a time.
Here is another illustration Jesus used: “The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed planted in a field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but it becomes the largest of garden plants and grows into a tree where birds can come and find shelter in its branches.” Jesus also used this illustration: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast used by a woman making bread. Even though she used a large amount of flour, the yeast permeated every part of the dough.” Matthew 13: 31-33
Kevin Cashman, in his book Leadership from the Inside Out, asks us to “become leaders for life.” He says, “When your commitments are aligned with your purpose then great things will happen.” Indeed, as our faith provides the substance of this purpose we learn to serve and to use the wisdom and understanding providing by faith to make a difference in the world. We add Christian value to others and this is our Christian self-expression that creates value for those around us. It comes from the inside (faith) out (benevolence toward others).
Jesus knew this; he appealed only to his followers’ basic humanity when he stated: “Blessed are the poor in spirit…they that mourn…the meek…the righteous…the merciful…the pure in heart…and the peacemakers.” And even though Jesus held up the standard of God’s perfection as a goal to shoot at, He knew that we are imperfect and would require many chances at being moral. He demonstrated his charity toward us with mercy and forgiveness and provided a real-life model for us to follow. The essence of the Lord’s Prayer is forgiveness and forgiveness is perhaps the connection that holds human relationships together.
When deeply felt, Christian ethics is a journey of growth in humility, integrity, and compassion. It recognizes our weaknesses and includes an inclusive and non-condemning plane of growth in human interactions. Over the years a positive response to others seems to have always paid dividends, and not just for the one making the response, but for others as well.
Peace Loving & Gentle
I know from my working career that those in the work environment who are perceived as gentle and kind often end up on the losing end of decisions. They are perceived as weak for our capitalistic environment is often one of strength and aggression. On the other hand, if we believe that being peace loving and gentle is God’s message to us, then the true mission of Christians is to try to live lives that will bring peace and happiness to others. This is the way to Christian common sense. I emphasize “happiness” because happiness means “a state of well being,” and is this not the goal of everyone? This is perhaps what James means by being “gentle.” It is living a living of giving, of sympathy, understanding, and generosity toward others, of making sure that we have done all we are able to do in helping our friends and neighbors, and perhaps many whom we don’t know personally. On the other hand, being gentle doesn’t demand that we give up our strength of character and purpose. We should be practical and strong, but, at the same time, kind and gentle in our behavior toward others.
Although personal value has limits, to give life meaning is to seek to transcend the limits of one’s individual life, to add spiritual value and moral surplus, and share one’s personal bounty with others. This is the focal point of Christian living and common sense, for it’s the valued-centered life that connects people to other people and provides hope for a better tomorrow. When we connect with others, we bring them into ourselves while enlarging our identity and significantly lifting the horizon of our ethical lives; as Soren Kierkegaard said: Hope is passion for what is possible.
There are two things in which we can have confidence. The first is that love and our expanding awareness of others intrinsically belong together. Hate, fear, greed, bitterness, and other dark emotions blind those whom they dominate. The second is that the nature of love is to awaken love in others. Love is not love until we share it in self-giving activities. Once it is present anywhere, its redeeming power – like the leaven and mustard seed – is at work everywhere; love transforms the destructive passions born of our frustrated self-seeking into energies that are wholly creative.
Gandhi felt that love is not only the supreme ideal in individual relations, but is a force for the conquest of social injustices of every kind. Love is the nature of God; it is peace loving and gentle, and was made alive in the personhood of Jesus. This love energizes our faith with both hope and giving to others, which is a brush with eternity, as it engages the positive possibilities of human behavior in the life we now live. As the prophet Isaiah said, But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. Isaiah 40:3
This is our ethical hope!
If you are wise and understand God’s ways, live a life of steady goodness so that only good deeds will pour forth. … the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure. It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and good deeds. It shows no partiality and is always sincere. And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of goodness. James 3: 13 & 17-18
Just the other morning I was driving to the doctor’s office when a truck passed me. As we stopped at a red light, I couldn’t help but notice the green lettering on its rear doors. It read: “This way to common sense.” In these terrible economic times, and in these times when there is killing and war throughout the Middle East and in parts of Africa, I thought this is just the remedy we need, common sense. When I returned home, I turned to the letter of James in the New Testament and there read the words printed above; indeed, I thought, these are words of common sense, and not just for Christians, but all people.
James may be a bit redundant in these verses, and perhaps idealistic, but his conception of the Christian life bears repeating. In these verses James explicates the distinctly ethical nature of Christian living. Christian ethics has not always been a popular pulpit topic. Sin and salvation usually dominate the words of most evangelical churches. Some are purely issue oriented telling us most of the time what they are against rather than what they are for. But James has a positive message, a message of Christian common sense, which says, “This is the way.” James mentions six areas of Christian living that he believes are important. We will examine these in two parts.
As we look at the subject of Christian ethics it’s important that we carefully define what we mean. Biblical scholar William Barclay says, “If you want to put it in one sentence, ethics is the science of behaviour. Ethics is the bit of religion that tells us how we ought to behave.” Christian theologians have always bothered me. They seem to spend much of their time trying to define “god,” explicate the boundaries of sin, and describe heaven, rather than offering us common sense advice about Christian living. I find theology generally speculative, impersonal, and analytic; but the message of the Bible and from Christian leaders I have found to be both personal and profound. Fundamentally, Christian ethics points to a way of living. It is practical, offering guidance and it is forgiving, seeking justice and mercy for us and those who are less fortunate.
There are some basic ethical themes that have emerged in the history of Christianity. These can be reduced to questions of human relationships, freedom, love and responsibility; in other words, what James is talking about in the above scripture verses. One thing is sure, the message of Jesus and the words of Paul, John, James and other New Testament letter writers view Christians as moral agents and Christian communities as having collective moral responsibility, and both are called upon by God to serve all humankind.
James’ letter impresses us with six major themes for Christian living. I will talk about the first three in this essay.
Wisdom and Understanding
Wisdom and understanding are the first parts of a “Christian common sense.” When we apply these words to families, schools, churches, communities, and nations we understand that we need leaders who are wise and whose knowledge is vast. From wisdom and knowledge, together with reflective thinking comes understanding. When we utilize knowledge and experience with common sense and insight, prudence and sensibility, an ethical wisdom is the result. But this is not all there is because for the Christian, wisdom and understanding – common sense – are grounded in God’s love for us and in our response to God. As God acts in and on the world, we are called upon to answer His call and respond to His commands. Herein we find the source of our own wisdom that enables us to work together, with Christian common sense, to complete our purpose and mission.
E. A. Burtt, in his book The Search for Understanding, provides this ethical insight, “True understanding of a person is gained only through the positive response to his presence. Only when one’s interaction with him becomes an active participation in his growth toward fulfillment can one come to know his full self, because only in the medium of such a response is that full self coming to be.” The implications of this for spiritual understanding are obvious: ethics is a conscious sensitivity and interaction with God and others. When nurtured by our faith, ethics is the substance of hope expressed in attitudes of kindness and benevolence. As we respond to God’s presence, we are preparing ourselves to engage the world and become – with God – active participants in his creation.
Steady Goodness & Good Deeds
If my “steady” we mean “consistency,” then James is calling on Christians to exhibit a consistent goodness or benevolence toward others. This means showing kindness and good will, doing charitable acts, and actually possessing a disposition to do good. Let me emphasize this point: Christian living is not about obeying rules, attending church, or responding to certain hot button issues because we think that’s the way we’re suppose to act as Christians. Christian living and taking moral responsibility for the welfare of our neighbor comes from the inside out. It begins with the presence of God in our lives and overflows quite naturally to others. Think of the possibilities! Do you remember Jesus’ parables of the “Mustard Seed” and “Unleavened Bread”? This is the way we grow our faith, one seed, one piece (person) at a time.
Here is another illustration Jesus used: “The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed planted in a field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but it becomes the largest of garden plants and grows into a tree where birds can come and find shelter in its branches.” Jesus also used this illustration: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast used by a woman making bread. Even though she used a large amount of flour, the yeast permeated every part of the dough.” Matthew 13: 31-33
Kevin Cashman, in his book Leadership from the Inside Out, asks us to “become leaders for life.” He says, “When your commitments are aligned with your purpose then great things will happen.” Indeed, as our faith provides the substance of this purpose we learn to serve and to use the wisdom and understanding providing by faith to make a difference in the world. We add Christian value to others and this is our Christian self-expression that creates value for those around us. It comes from the inside (faith) out (benevolence toward others).
Jesus knew this; he appealed only to his followers’ basic humanity when he stated: “Blessed are the poor in spirit…they that mourn…the meek…the righteous…the merciful…the pure in heart…and the peacemakers.” And even though Jesus held up the standard of God’s perfection as a goal to shoot at, He knew that we are imperfect and would require many chances at being moral. He demonstrated his charity toward us with mercy and forgiveness and provided a real-life model for us to follow. The essence of the Lord’s Prayer is forgiveness and forgiveness is perhaps the connection that holds human relationships together.
When deeply felt, Christian ethics is a journey of growth in humility, integrity, and compassion. It recognizes our weaknesses and includes an inclusive and non-condemning plane of growth in human interactions. Over the years a positive response to others seems to have always paid dividends, and not just for the one making the response, but for others as well.
Peace Loving & Gentle
I know from my working career that those in the work environment who are perceived as gentle and kind often end up on the losing end of decisions. They are perceived as weak for our capitalistic environment is often one of strength and aggression. On the other hand, if we believe that being peace loving and gentle is God’s message to us, then the true mission of Christians is to try to live lives that will bring peace and happiness to others. This is the way to Christian common sense. I emphasize “happiness” because happiness means “a state of well being,” and is this not the goal of everyone? This is perhaps what James means by being “gentle.” It is living a living of giving, of sympathy, understanding, and generosity toward others, of making sure that we have done all we are able to do in helping our friends and neighbors, and perhaps many whom we don’t know personally. On the other hand, being gentle doesn’t demand that we give up our strength of character and purpose. We should be practical and strong, but, at the same time, kind and gentle in our behavior toward others.
Although personal value has limits, to give life meaning is to seek to transcend the limits of one’s individual life, to add spiritual value and moral surplus, and share one’s personal bounty with others. This is the focal point of Christian living and common sense, for it’s the valued-centered life that connects people to other people and provides hope for a better tomorrow. When we connect with others, we bring them into ourselves while enlarging our identity and significantly lifting the horizon of our ethical lives; as Soren Kierkegaard said: Hope is passion for what is possible.
There are two things in which we can have confidence. The first is that love and our expanding awareness of others intrinsically belong together. Hate, fear, greed, bitterness, and other dark emotions blind those whom they dominate. The second is that the nature of love is to awaken love in others. Love is not love until we share it in self-giving activities. Once it is present anywhere, its redeeming power – like the leaven and mustard seed – is at work everywhere; love transforms the destructive passions born of our frustrated self-seeking into energies that are wholly creative.
Gandhi felt that love is not only the supreme ideal in individual relations, but is a force for the conquest of social injustices of every kind. Love is the nature of God; it is peace loving and gentle, and was made alive in the personhood of Jesus. This love energizes our faith with both hope and giving to others, which is a brush with eternity, as it engages the positive possibilities of human behavior in the life we now live. As the prophet Isaiah said, But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. Isaiah 40:3
This is our ethical hope!
Leading By Serving
Servant Leadership
Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. But now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son. God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance, and through the Son he made the universe and everything in it. The Son reflects God’s own glory, and everything about him represents God exactly. Hebrews 1:1-3
The greatest among you must be a servant. But those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Matthew 23:11-12
Agape & Eros
In his 1953 book, Agape and Eros, Anders Nygren, a bishop in the Church of Sweden, took two Greek words, which can both be translated “love” and used them to underscore two views of God’s relationship with his human creation. Both of these meanings have coexisted within the Christian church since its inception. They are agape and eros.
Nygren traced the meanings of these two words from classical Greek philosophy, through its influence on Judaism, the early church and up to the Reformation. The first of these words, a word denoting the freely given and forgiving love of God, is agape. Agape is based on the character of the one loving rather than any merit in the object of the love. We are challenged by Jesus to love both our neighbors and our enemies, regardless of who they are or what they have done. Agape is, therefore, both an unselfish and a selfless love in which there is no expectation of gain or recognition. Selfless love is indicative of our moral integrity. It pulls from our personal values those attitudes and behaviors that support others and the community—the loved and the unloved—so that by way of unselfish love, we add to morality and justice both mercy and integrity – the foundations of our spiritual beings that enable us to appreciate the uniqueness of other persons and their situations.
Eros, on the other hand, typifies the Greek philosophy of Aristotle, Plato and the Gnostics. Eros denotes an envious love, one which responds and aspires to the beauty or perfection of its object. Eros can be a selfish love or a self-centered love. Either way, Eros puts the interests of the one giving the love first and the one receiving the love last. Potentially, it neglects the needs of others all together. At its heart, selfish love focuses on the needs and the personal agenda of the one doing the loving. Selfish love of this kind seeks submission and can be smothering; it is neither uplifting nor forgiving. St. Augustine believed that selfish love resulted in monasticism, legalism, and ritualism, which exemplify man’s attempts to reach up to God (eros), rather than glorying in God’s reaching down to man (agape). Selfish love begins and ends with me as it asks, “What will I get out of this relationship?”
Nygren explained that the restoration of God-centered theology in Martin Luther was a key to the Reformation. In a God-filled relationship, meaning becomes an understanding of oneself in relationship to both God and others. It is concerned with the most fundamental conditions of our being in the world. In this relationship Christians become servant leaders wherever they work and wherever they go.
In his book, Servant Leadership, Michael Greenleaf says, I believe that caring for persons, the more able and the less able … is what makes a good society. Most caring was once person to person. Now much of it is mediated through institutions—often large, powerful, impersonal; not always competent; sometimes corrupt. If a better society is to be built, one more just and more caring and providing opportunity for people to grow, the most effective and economical way, while supportive of the social order, is to raise the performance as servant of as many institutions as possible by new voluntary regenerative forces initiated within them by committed individuals, servants. Such servants may never predominate or even be numerous; but their influence may form a leaven that makes possible a reasonably civilized society.
For Christians, Jesus was the model of servant leadership and through Jesus we learn that agape love is the engine that drives the desire to serve others. Leanna Traill, a New Zealand educator, took the title of her 1993 book—Highlight My Strengths—from the Maori saying, “Highlight my strengths and my weaknesses will disappear.” She commented, “The fundamental goal of teaching and learning in schools should be that every learner is guaranteed optimal instruction and opportunity to reach his or her educational potential.”
Psychologist Joseph R. Royce says that many of us are too one-sided, too tied up in our own cocoons, too serve this purpose. He calls this “encapsulation” and he labels those who exhibit these characteristics as “encapsulated.” He reminds us, “De-capsulation demands that we are able to get inside and outside ourselves, our culture, and our time,” that we are able to lead from the inside out with foresight, followship, and by listening to and understanding the world in which we live. This is the attitude of agape love. Although we may never perfect such unselfish and selfless behavior, just beginning down this road will open us to a new world of human possibilities. It will free us from a mentality of hopelessness and from our current prejudices of race, color, religion, and political party.
A Crisis of Perception
Our relationship with God is a conditional relationship. Thus, Christian scriptures and theology must be adapted and recreated by every generation of Christians. Our spirituality is personal and in one sense practical. It is the no nonsense, functional side of Christianity that ought to guide our understanding and commitment. In this sense, a faith-based Christian ethic will always bear the stamp of human an investment risk. Being a Christian in the contemporary world puts us in jeopardy of being ostracized and overlooked.
Yet, through Agape we gain the insight that the world is a totality of meaning and is God’s purposeful creation. We come to God by faith. We cannot buy our way to God’s grace. God’s love is “self-giving, requiring no reciprocity” and challenges us to live life within the depths of our spirituality and become an ethical force within our society. This is not a surface-living of mutual exchange and negotiation. Living life on the surface adds little ethical value to others or us and often leaves our lives empty and unforgiving. We are challenged to look beneath the surface and find God in the small things that add quality to each day.
Spiritual and ethical meaning, like purpose, is found beneath the surface within the depths of human experience. They come through the interplay of self-understanding and our understanding of the world. This is an existential task with which each of us is confronted. What matters is our attempt to engage the world in an ethical way with a willingness to appreciate that the ethical life is a gift which finds significance as it is shared. In our relationships with others we give birth to our inner and communal lives—new birth such as this is always possible. There is joy when it is experienced.
In our quest for pleasure, we sometimes forget that real happiness and joy—that which endures—is found in our active and purposeful participation with others. The deeper values that really count are available to all of us. In our daily lives, time must be taken to personally express our care for others in positive actions, receive from others graciously, and show appreciation to our friends and loved ones. William Arthur Ward has observed, “We must be silent before we can listen. We must listen before we can learn. We must learn before we can prepare. We must prepare before we can serve. We must serve before we can lead.”
Building other-affirmative and constructive relationships means engaging others in ways that are not disingenuous and do not prove disadvantageous to their personal well being. Here we find our spiritual and ethical foundations. We should remember that to help others become something that they could never become on their own, is putting value into that other person. The most valuable currency of this church or any organization is the initiative and creativity of its members. As William Arthur Ward said, “The adventure of life is to learn. The purpose of life is to grow. The nature of life is to change. The challenge of life is to overcome. The essence of life is to care. The opportunity of like is to serve. The secret of life is to dare. The spice of life is to befriend. The beauty of life is to give.”
The Divine Dance
Loving and serving others as God loves us is more like an unspoken and understood capacity, which we acquire by following positive ethical examples, by working at friendships, and living with ethical intentions. Meaning is communicative; it is real-world knowledge laced with our own spirituality. The expansive qualities of the Christian ethical life are immeasurable and contagious.
Just recently, the Charlotte Observer newspaper told the story of how a group of people in southeast Charlotte gave aid to one of their neighbors, 84-year old Bill Judge. Bill had been a loner and not a very good neighbor with five old cars in his driveway and his eccentric habits. But when he injured his knee, his neighbors pulled together to help by cutting his grass, driving him to the store, and bringing him food. The story goes on to say that his neighbors changed the course of his life, and in doing so, changed their lives as well. They discovered that Bill had served in the Navy, earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from Duke University, and worked with a chemical company in Charlotte. One neighbor said, “He brought the best out in us all. We became extra close neighbors.” Serving is like that.
The story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers as told by David Wright and David Zoby in their book, Fire on the Beach, is another story of courage and character. Wright and Zoby tell the story of the U.S. Life-Saving Service, formed in 1871 on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Etheridge—the only African-American to lead a lifesaving crew—was its captain. He was a former slave and a Civil War veteran. His crew was among the most courageous surfmen in the service. It is a story of character, dedication, courage, and determination. We learn from Etheridge that character is built over time and its strength comes, not from being successful in every adventure, but in our persistence and will to achieve. It is a mental attitude that expects good and favorable results. A positive mind anticipates happiness, joy, health and a successful outcome of every situation and action. Whatever the mind expects, it finds.
As you start your week, think of it as a fresh start, a new beginning. And when you think this way, try to imagine that all the pain of yesterday is left behind. Listen beneath the surface, down by your roots. In a quiet time of reflection set a goal, make a decision, decide on a course of action; follow a dream. Don’t spend so much time waiting for a large voice from on high to speak to you that you stumble over the whispers that are right at your feet. Small voices often speak loudly.
Understand that leadership capacity and spiritual maturity are ethical competencies definitive of the moral life. As our lives affect the lives of others, we need to take the lead in redefining the meaning of “community” and “service” as normal activities. We need to take the lead and affirm life’s riches and make loving and serving others the divine dance at the center of our lives. In this way we are helping recreate our communities as caring, loving, and joyous places to live and work.
Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. But now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son. God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance, and through the Son he made the universe and everything in it. The Son reflects God’s own glory, and everything about him represents God exactly. Hebrews 1:1-3
The greatest among you must be a servant. But those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Matthew 23:11-12
Agape & Eros
In his 1953 book, Agape and Eros, Anders Nygren, a bishop in the Church of Sweden, took two Greek words, which can both be translated “love” and used them to underscore two views of God’s relationship with his human creation. Both of these meanings have coexisted within the Christian church since its inception. They are agape and eros.
Nygren traced the meanings of these two words from classical Greek philosophy, through its influence on Judaism, the early church and up to the Reformation. The first of these words, a word denoting the freely given and forgiving love of God, is agape. Agape is based on the character of the one loving rather than any merit in the object of the love. We are challenged by Jesus to love both our neighbors and our enemies, regardless of who they are or what they have done. Agape is, therefore, both an unselfish and a selfless love in which there is no expectation of gain or recognition. Selfless love is indicative of our moral integrity. It pulls from our personal values those attitudes and behaviors that support others and the community—the loved and the unloved—so that by way of unselfish love, we add to morality and justice both mercy and integrity – the foundations of our spiritual beings that enable us to appreciate the uniqueness of other persons and their situations.
Eros, on the other hand, typifies the Greek philosophy of Aristotle, Plato and the Gnostics. Eros denotes an envious love, one which responds and aspires to the beauty or perfection of its object. Eros can be a selfish love or a self-centered love. Either way, Eros puts the interests of the one giving the love first and the one receiving the love last. Potentially, it neglects the needs of others all together. At its heart, selfish love focuses on the needs and the personal agenda of the one doing the loving. Selfish love of this kind seeks submission and can be smothering; it is neither uplifting nor forgiving. St. Augustine believed that selfish love resulted in monasticism, legalism, and ritualism, which exemplify man’s attempts to reach up to God (eros), rather than glorying in God’s reaching down to man (agape). Selfish love begins and ends with me as it asks, “What will I get out of this relationship?”
Nygren explained that the restoration of God-centered theology in Martin Luther was a key to the Reformation. In a God-filled relationship, meaning becomes an understanding of oneself in relationship to both God and others. It is concerned with the most fundamental conditions of our being in the world. In this relationship Christians become servant leaders wherever they work and wherever they go.
In his book, Servant Leadership, Michael Greenleaf says, I believe that caring for persons, the more able and the less able … is what makes a good society. Most caring was once person to person. Now much of it is mediated through institutions—often large, powerful, impersonal; not always competent; sometimes corrupt. If a better society is to be built, one more just and more caring and providing opportunity for people to grow, the most effective and economical way, while supportive of the social order, is to raise the performance as servant of as many institutions as possible by new voluntary regenerative forces initiated within them by committed individuals, servants. Such servants may never predominate or even be numerous; but their influence may form a leaven that makes possible a reasonably civilized society.
For Christians, Jesus was the model of servant leadership and through Jesus we learn that agape love is the engine that drives the desire to serve others. Leanna Traill, a New Zealand educator, took the title of her 1993 book—Highlight My Strengths—from the Maori saying, “Highlight my strengths and my weaknesses will disappear.” She commented, “The fundamental goal of teaching and learning in schools should be that every learner is guaranteed optimal instruction and opportunity to reach his or her educational potential.”
Psychologist Joseph R. Royce says that many of us are too one-sided, too tied up in our own cocoons, too serve this purpose. He calls this “encapsulation” and he labels those who exhibit these characteristics as “encapsulated.” He reminds us, “De-capsulation demands that we are able to get inside and outside ourselves, our culture, and our time,” that we are able to lead from the inside out with foresight, followship, and by listening to and understanding the world in which we live. This is the attitude of agape love. Although we may never perfect such unselfish and selfless behavior, just beginning down this road will open us to a new world of human possibilities. It will free us from a mentality of hopelessness and from our current prejudices of race, color, religion, and political party.
A Crisis of Perception
Our relationship with God is a conditional relationship. Thus, Christian scriptures and theology must be adapted and recreated by every generation of Christians. Our spirituality is personal and in one sense practical. It is the no nonsense, functional side of Christianity that ought to guide our understanding and commitment. In this sense, a faith-based Christian ethic will always bear the stamp of human an investment risk. Being a Christian in the contemporary world puts us in jeopardy of being ostracized and overlooked.
Yet, through Agape we gain the insight that the world is a totality of meaning and is God’s purposeful creation. We come to God by faith. We cannot buy our way to God’s grace. God’s love is “self-giving, requiring no reciprocity” and challenges us to live life within the depths of our spirituality and become an ethical force within our society. This is not a surface-living of mutual exchange and negotiation. Living life on the surface adds little ethical value to others or us and often leaves our lives empty and unforgiving. We are challenged to look beneath the surface and find God in the small things that add quality to each day.
Spiritual and ethical meaning, like purpose, is found beneath the surface within the depths of human experience. They come through the interplay of self-understanding and our understanding of the world. This is an existential task with which each of us is confronted. What matters is our attempt to engage the world in an ethical way with a willingness to appreciate that the ethical life is a gift which finds significance as it is shared. In our relationships with others we give birth to our inner and communal lives—new birth such as this is always possible. There is joy when it is experienced.
In our quest for pleasure, we sometimes forget that real happiness and joy—that which endures—is found in our active and purposeful participation with others. The deeper values that really count are available to all of us. In our daily lives, time must be taken to personally express our care for others in positive actions, receive from others graciously, and show appreciation to our friends and loved ones. William Arthur Ward has observed, “We must be silent before we can listen. We must listen before we can learn. We must learn before we can prepare. We must prepare before we can serve. We must serve before we can lead.”
Building other-affirmative and constructive relationships means engaging others in ways that are not disingenuous and do not prove disadvantageous to their personal well being. Here we find our spiritual and ethical foundations. We should remember that to help others become something that they could never become on their own, is putting value into that other person. The most valuable currency of this church or any organization is the initiative and creativity of its members. As William Arthur Ward said, “The adventure of life is to learn. The purpose of life is to grow. The nature of life is to change. The challenge of life is to overcome. The essence of life is to care. The opportunity of like is to serve. The secret of life is to dare. The spice of life is to befriend. The beauty of life is to give.”
The Divine Dance
Loving and serving others as God loves us is more like an unspoken and understood capacity, which we acquire by following positive ethical examples, by working at friendships, and living with ethical intentions. Meaning is communicative; it is real-world knowledge laced with our own spirituality. The expansive qualities of the Christian ethical life are immeasurable and contagious.
Just recently, the Charlotte Observer newspaper told the story of how a group of people in southeast Charlotte gave aid to one of their neighbors, 84-year old Bill Judge. Bill had been a loner and not a very good neighbor with five old cars in his driveway and his eccentric habits. But when he injured his knee, his neighbors pulled together to help by cutting his grass, driving him to the store, and bringing him food. The story goes on to say that his neighbors changed the course of his life, and in doing so, changed their lives as well. They discovered that Bill had served in the Navy, earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from Duke University, and worked with a chemical company in Charlotte. One neighbor said, “He brought the best out in us all. We became extra close neighbors.” Serving is like that.
The story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers as told by David Wright and David Zoby in their book, Fire on the Beach, is another story of courage and character. Wright and Zoby tell the story of the U.S. Life-Saving Service, formed in 1871 on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Etheridge—the only African-American to lead a lifesaving crew—was its captain. He was a former slave and a Civil War veteran. His crew was among the most courageous surfmen in the service. It is a story of character, dedication, courage, and determination. We learn from Etheridge that character is built over time and its strength comes, not from being successful in every adventure, but in our persistence and will to achieve. It is a mental attitude that expects good and favorable results. A positive mind anticipates happiness, joy, health and a successful outcome of every situation and action. Whatever the mind expects, it finds.
As you start your week, think of it as a fresh start, a new beginning. And when you think this way, try to imagine that all the pain of yesterday is left behind. Listen beneath the surface, down by your roots. In a quiet time of reflection set a goal, make a decision, decide on a course of action; follow a dream. Don’t spend so much time waiting for a large voice from on high to speak to you that you stumble over the whispers that are right at your feet. Small voices often speak loudly.
Understand that leadership capacity and spiritual maturity are ethical competencies definitive of the moral life. As our lives affect the lives of others, we need to take the lead in redefining the meaning of “community” and “service” as normal activities. We need to take the lead and affirm life’s riches and make loving and serving others the divine dance at the center of our lives. In this way we are helping recreate our communities as caring, loving, and joyous places to live and work.
Reaching for the Stars or Plowing the Ground
But Moses protested, “If I go to the people of Israel and tell them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ they won’t believe me. They will ask, ‘Which god are you talking about? What is his name?’ Then what should I tell them?” God replied, “I Am the One Who Always Is. Just tell them, ‘I Am has sent me to you’.” Exodus 3:13 & 14
“I Am That I Am” has been translated in many different ways. Consider the following: “The Unborn One.” “God gave birth from within himself to a reasoning power.” “The Ground of All Being.” “I am, that is who I am.” “I am the One who is.” “I am that which is.” “I am what I am.” “I am becoming, being, and still working.” “God is something always active and within His activity He reveals himself.” See: “Being and Hayah” by Ariga Tetsutaro and “Existential-Hayatological Theism” by William L. Power.
Power says, Exodus 3:14 “…has been interpreted by many to support the notion of the primacy of being over a sense of action and becoming and a sense of temporal events and significant history. The Hebrew verb haya, which classical theology translated and interpreted with the help of Greek notions of on, being, and onta, particular actual existing things [ontology], came to influence Christian theology and therefore helped to undermine a more appropriate representation of God and His relation to and with the world.”
This error of representation was the basis on which some theologians used “Being” rather than “human existence” as the horizon of interpreting God’s nature. Wm. Power renders Exodus 3:14 in the following ways: “I am the one who is present,” I am the one who acts and is acted upon,” “I am the one who is present to and with you,” and “I am with you as I was with your fathers.”
Questions
In his book, Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl wrote, “Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.” We all are questioned by life and we know that it is God who questions and we who must answer for ourselves. Responsibility is difficult and there is no way a responsible person can avoid this. What is life really about? What are we really here to do?
These are big questions. Nobody can pretend to have the answers for anyone else. As Viktor Frankl once said, it is like asking a Chess Grandmaster what THE best move in the game of Chess is. The answer is - it depends. It depends on the specifics of who is playing whom, the situation on the board, and a myriad other factors. Likewise, the answers to these questions depend upon the person who is asking them. Nevertheless, it’s vital that you seek the specific answers for your individual life. Without true meaning to your life, anything you do or become is ultimately hollow and without any depth of satisfaction. However long it takes, the answers must be found.
This is why I took seriously the question of a young lady who asked me some time ago why I believe in God. I felt that she was “searching” for something, maybe something that would give her a sense of fulfillment; maybe she was looking for a bigger purpose than her work. She asked why she should believe in God when I couldn’t prove that God exists either by scientific means or by reason (logic). There were perhaps two assumptions behind her question: first, without proof of God’s existence, why bother with religion and spiritual meaning because God doesn’t exist. On the other hand, she may have been assuming that life’s meaning carried the weight of something much larger than she could imagine. I thought then of St. Anselm who defined God “as one greater than which cannot be imagined or conceived.”
A five-year old child once asked, “Daddy, where’s God?” You will notice the difference in this question and the one asked by the young lady. The young lady was trying to confirm her unbelief or searching for answers to an empty life, while the child – who believed already – just wanted to know how to experience God’s revelation. This was not a question based on doubt and asking for scientific or logical proof; rather, it was a question about how to understand and experience God’s presence.
For the religious person, it is quite natural to turn to the sources of one’s faith for understanding and meaning. I can’t imagine looking any where else. In faith we discover the truth that sustains ordinary living, truth conceived not in a logical or scientific sense, but in a theo-cultural sense of God’s love and presence with us. Truth gains its universal authority from God who is always present and interacting within His creation. Truth, goodness, and ethical principles make up the nourishment of the human community. I think we must agree that within the human ferment of dialogue with God and others, we discover the meaning and principles that guide our lives.
Foundations
Every person, no matter how rational or objective, has a frame of reference that gives meaning to his or her beliefs and behavior. We usually gain this capacity at home and have it reinforced by our church and extended family. Our responsibility is to grow this capacity throughout our lives and leverage as a force for caring for others. For many this is an interactive process, not a static and impersonal principle. It is distinctly human and rests on a flexible foundation. Reason, science, spirituality, religion, common sense, and human experience provide the key multiple dynamics of both Christian and non-Christian ways of living. And we should understand that we don’t always pick and choose the beliefs that guide our lives; rather, they sometimes choose us. Our births are a testimony to this deficiency of choice. We are reared within various un-chosen moral currents whose flow significantly affects our lives. This fact magnifies the importance of the Christian witness in the world and the many benevolent programs developed by church families.
As creatures of reason, we are able to evaluate some of our beliefs and inherited behaviors; throw off some and add new ones. For the most part, we remain bound to the general beliefs that stamped our behavior early in life—common minds adhering to common values, and this is okay as long as we continue to inhale the richness and variety of the human ferment. We are challenged by God’s creative energy to plumb the depths of our unexamined lives, there plow its ground, and perhaps unearth a new dimension of our spiritual lives.
Given the challenges of life, it’s secularizing and dehumanizing influences, it’s no wonder that we struggle against God and against those who would try to keep us in our place? What we perceive as our reality is a reflection of trans-personal principles developed in our relationship with God and others. We should realize that Christianity is not only about “born-again” or “twice-born” Christians, because we are re-born again and again in our relationship with God and others. This Trinitarian idea is more than doctrine or creed; rather, it is an active social principle of rebirth and revelation.
Shadow Bags
We are often trapped within ideas and beliefs from our past. These beliefs literally create our reality; they are the lenses through which we interpret the world. But sometimes that which we think we understand, we really don’t comprehend; they are shadows that reveal our limited knowledge, shallow experiences; and all of this traps us in a limited view of God and others. In their book, Creating Community Anywhere, Carolyn Shaffer and Kristen Anundsen comment, “The problem is a common one for groups of all sizes … that identify themselves with high aims. They strive so hard to be ideal that they deny, and throw into that invisible shadow bag, anything in themselves or their group that does not fit.”
Every person wears at least two kinds of shadow masks that deflect attention from deeper issues and imbalances. The first usually appears shiny and bright; the second is often dark and menacing. Our tendency is to believe that we’re wearing the bright mask while others are wearing the dark and menacing one. These shadows conceal our natural connections with others. They are artificial and inauthentic. We need to expose them for what they are. We can never find wholeness if some of our pieces are missing. What we put into our shadow bag, intentionally or unintentionally, can be destructive. Shadows act like psychic immune systems, telling us everything is okay while masking important internal feelings and attitudes.
George Soros, in his book Open Society, Reforming Global Capitalism, advises us to be careful what we put into our shadow bag under the name of truth. He observes, “The recognition of our fallibility is what makes a society open; but it is not sufficient, by itself, to keep society together. Something else is needed—some concern for others, some shared values. These values have to be infused by the recognition of our fallibility, but they cannot be derived from it by logic.” Our challenge is to examine our relationships with each other and discover the God who is interactive, who understands, and provides wisdom and knowledge for living vigorous ethical lives. There too we might recover what Charles Taylor labeled “the horizon of our significance,” the recognition and understanding of which is perhaps our greatest challenge.
The Interactive God
Perhaps what we have failed to understand is that God speaks to us in the language of our own culture and it is within our culture that our spirituality emerges. Our spiritual intelligence is perhaps the best resource we have for engaging the world. God engages us in the here and now; God is always becoming and his spiritual force is both His and our creative power. Paul Weiss, in his book The God We Seek, is convinced that we are “ensouled beings with a conscience.” He says, “Faith is the assurance that God will use, assess, and complete a person’s concern for what he believes to be eternal.” In reality, God not only is the foundation of our lives and the creator, but works with us as a persuasive force and a loving reality in the ongoing process of human creation.
In Exodus 3:14 God says, “I am the one who is present, who acts and is acted upon, who is present to and with you; I am with you as I was with your fathers.” God is the living God who is forever doing for and suffering with His creation and it is God on whom his creation depends for its existence and ultimate value. The God of the scriptures is not only the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of all humankind, but He is the God of the entire world, the Cosmos.
The Trinitarian doctrine identifies God as the creator (father), redeemer (son), and sanctifier (spirit). God is viewed as the Father, the two hands of God as the Son and the Spirit, or the Word (Logos, reason of God) and Wisdom of God (Sophia). And as children of God we share in this theo-social experience. God is a personal god who speaks to us and is still creating and affecting the world through us. God’s nature is in His everlasting becoming. Within God these relationships are engaged in creation, redemption, and sanctification to maximize good in the world and minimize or eliminate evil. From this we learn that the experiences that we have and share with each other are how we reveal ourselves and give meaning to our lives. It is God working in and through us. Sharing authenticates our connection to God as a part of his creative power.
Relationships are the way we think; they connect life to life and are the foundations of God’s creative power.
But Moses protested, “If I go to the people of Israel and tell them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ they won’t believe me. They will ask, ‘Which god are you talking about? What is his name?’ Then what should I tell them?” God replied, “I Am the One Who Always Is. Just tell them, ‘I Am has sent me to you’.” Exodus 3:13 & 14
“I Am That I Am” has been translated in many different ways. Consider the following: “The Unborn One.” “God gave birth from within himself to a reasoning power.” “The Ground of All Being.” “I am, that is who I am.” “I am the One who is.” “I am that which is.” “I am what I am.” “I am becoming, being, and still working.” “God is something always active and within His activity He reveals himself.” See: “Being and Hayah” by Ariga Tetsutaro and “Existential-Hayatological Theism” by William L. Power.
Power says, Exodus 3:14 “…has been interpreted by many to support the notion of the primacy of being over a sense of action and becoming and a sense of temporal events and significant history. The Hebrew verb haya, which classical theology translated and interpreted with the help of Greek notions of on, being, and onta, particular actual existing things [ontology], came to influence Christian theology and therefore helped to undermine a more appropriate representation of God and His relation to and with the world.”
This error of representation was the basis on which some theologians used “Being” rather than “human existence” as the horizon of interpreting God’s nature. Wm. Power renders Exodus 3:14 in the following ways: “I am the one who is present,” I am the one who acts and is acted upon,” “I am the one who is present to and with you,” and “I am with you as I was with your fathers.”
Questions
In his book, Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl wrote, “Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.” We all are questioned by life and we know that it is God who questions and we who must answer for ourselves. Responsibility is difficult and there is no way a responsible person can avoid this. What is life really about? What are we really here to do?
These are big questions. Nobody can pretend to have the answers for anyone else. As Viktor Frankl once said, it is like asking a Chess Grandmaster what THE best move in the game of Chess is. The answer is - it depends. It depends on the specifics of who is playing whom, the situation on the board, and a myriad other factors. Likewise, the answers to these questions depend upon the person who is asking them. Nevertheless, it’s vital that you seek the specific answers for your individual life. Without true meaning to your life, anything you do or become is ultimately hollow and without any depth of satisfaction. However long it takes, the answers must be found.
This is why I took seriously the question of a young lady who asked me some time ago why I believe in God. I felt that she was “searching” for something, maybe something that would give her a sense of fulfillment; maybe she was looking for a bigger purpose than her work. She asked why she should believe in God when I couldn’t prove that God exists either by scientific means or by reason (logic). There were perhaps two assumptions behind her question: first, without proof of God’s existence, why bother with religion and spiritual meaning because God doesn’t exist. On the other hand, she may have been assuming that life’s meaning carried the weight of something much larger than she could imagine. I thought then of St. Anselm who defined God “as one greater than which cannot be imagined or conceived.”
A five-year old child once asked, “Daddy, where’s God?” You will notice the difference in this question and the one asked by the young lady. The young lady was trying to confirm her unbelief or searching for answers to an empty life, while the child – who believed already – just wanted to know how to experience God’s revelation. This was not a question based on doubt and asking for scientific or logical proof; rather, it was a question about how to understand and experience God’s presence.
For the religious person, it is quite natural to turn to the sources of one’s faith for understanding and meaning. I can’t imagine looking any where else. In faith we discover the truth that sustains ordinary living, truth conceived not in a logical or scientific sense, but in a theo-cultural sense of God’s love and presence with us. Truth gains its universal authority from God who is always present and interacting within His creation. Truth, goodness, and ethical principles make up the nourishment of the human community. I think we must agree that within the human ferment of dialogue with God and others, we discover the meaning and principles that guide our lives.
Foundations
Every person, no matter how rational or objective, has a frame of reference that gives meaning to his or her beliefs and behavior. We usually gain this capacity at home and have it reinforced by our church and extended family. Our responsibility is to grow this capacity throughout our lives and leverage as a force for caring for others. For many this is an interactive process, not a static and impersonal principle. It is distinctly human and rests on a flexible foundation. Reason, science, spirituality, religion, common sense, and human experience provide the key multiple dynamics of both Christian and non-Christian ways of living. And we should understand that we don’t always pick and choose the beliefs that guide our lives; rather, they sometimes choose us. Our births are a testimony to this deficiency of choice. We are reared within various un-chosen moral currents whose flow significantly affects our lives. This fact magnifies the importance of the Christian witness in the world and the many benevolent programs developed by church families.
As creatures of reason, we are able to evaluate some of our beliefs and inherited behaviors; throw off some and add new ones. For the most part, we remain bound to the general beliefs that stamped our behavior early in life—common minds adhering to common values, and this is okay as long as we continue to inhale the richness and variety of the human ferment. We are challenged by God’s creative energy to plumb the depths of our unexamined lives, there plow its ground, and perhaps unearth a new dimension of our spiritual lives.
Given the challenges of life, it’s secularizing and dehumanizing influences, it’s no wonder that we struggle against God and against those who would try to keep us in our place? What we perceive as our reality is a reflection of trans-personal principles developed in our relationship with God and others. We should realize that Christianity is not only about “born-again” or “twice-born” Christians, because we are re-born again and again in our relationship with God and others. This Trinitarian idea is more than doctrine or creed; rather, it is an active social principle of rebirth and revelation.
Shadow Bags
We are often trapped within ideas and beliefs from our past. These beliefs literally create our reality; they are the lenses through which we interpret the world. But sometimes that which we think we understand, we really don’t comprehend; they are shadows that reveal our limited knowledge, shallow experiences; and all of this traps us in a limited view of God and others. In their book, Creating Community Anywhere, Carolyn Shaffer and Kristen Anundsen comment, “The problem is a common one for groups of all sizes … that identify themselves with high aims. They strive so hard to be ideal that they deny, and throw into that invisible shadow bag, anything in themselves or their group that does not fit.”
Every person wears at least two kinds of shadow masks that deflect attention from deeper issues and imbalances. The first usually appears shiny and bright; the second is often dark and menacing. Our tendency is to believe that we’re wearing the bright mask while others are wearing the dark and menacing one. These shadows conceal our natural connections with others. They are artificial and inauthentic. We need to expose them for what they are. We can never find wholeness if some of our pieces are missing. What we put into our shadow bag, intentionally or unintentionally, can be destructive. Shadows act like psychic immune systems, telling us everything is okay while masking important internal feelings and attitudes.
George Soros, in his book Open Society, Reforming Global Capitalism, advises us to be careful what we put into our shadow bag under the name of truth. He observes, “The recognition of our fallibility is what makes a society open; but it is not sufficient, by itself, to keep society together. Something else is needed—some concern for others, some shared values. These values have to be infused by the recognition of our fallibility, but they cannot be derived from it by logic.” Our challenge is to examine our relationships with each other and discover the God who is interactive, who understands, and provides wisdom and knowledge for living vigorous ethical lives. There too we might recover what Charles Taylor labeled “the horizon of our significance,” the recognition and understanding of which is perhaps our greatest challenge.
The Interactive God
Perhaps what we have failed to understand is that God speaks to us in the language of our own culture and it is within our culture that our spirituality emerges. Our spiritual intelligence is perhaps the best resource we have for engaging the world. God engages us in the here and now; God is always becoming and his spiritual force is both His and our creative power. Paul Weiss, in his book The God We Seek, is convinced that we are “ensouled beings with a conscience.” He says, “Faith is the assurance that God will use, assess, and complete a person’s concern for what he believes to be eternal.” In reality, God not only is the foundation of our lives and the creator, but works with us as a persuasive force and a loving reality in the ongoing process of human creation.
In Exodus 3:14 God says, “I am the one who is present, who acts and is acted upon, who is present to and with you; I am with you as I was with your fathers.” God is the living God who is forever doing for and suffering with His creation and it is God on whom his creation depends for its existence and ultimate value. The God of the scriptures is not only the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of all humankind, but He is the God of the entire world, the Cosmos.
The Trinitarian doctrine identifies God as the creator (father), redeemer (son), and sanctifier (spirit). God is viewed as the Father, the two hands of God as the Son and the Spirit, or the Word (Logos, reason of God) and Wisdom of God (Sophia). And as children of God we share in this theo-social experience. God is a personal god who speaks to us and is still creating and affecting the world through us. God’s nature is in His everlasting becoming. Within God these relationships are engaged in creation, redemption, and sanctification to maximize good in the world and minimize or eliminate evil. From this we learn that the experiences that we have and share with each other are how we reveal ourselves and give meaning to our lives. It is God working in and through us. Sharing authenticates our connection to God as a part of his creative power.
Relationships are the way we think; they connect life to life and are the foundations of God’s creative power.
Unintentional Conversation
A Teachable Moment
Then God said, “Let us make people in our image, to be like ourselves. They will be masters over all life—the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the livestock, wild animals, and small animals.” So God created people in his own image; God patterned them after himself; male and female he created them. And the Lord God formed a man’s body from the dust of the ground and breathed into it the breath of life. And the man became a living soul. Genesis 1: 26-27 & 2:7
If you’re a teacher or a minister, then you know that there are times when “a teachable moment” occurs. This is a magical time, a time you don’t want to waste. It may be a moment of shared experience in a classroom or a Sunday school class, or an informal discussion, but when the light bulb of excitement turns on, your adrenaline rises and you don’t want to waste the opportunity.
Just the other day I had such an opportunity. I had made a call to a credit card company about an unwanted charge to my account. When I finally got to the correct operator, the young man was extremely helpful. Unknown to me he had typed my name into Google and saw that I was a writer and had a back ground in both religion and philosophy. When we had finished our business, he asked, “Do you have a minute?” I said, “Certainly.” He then proceeded to his next question: “Seeing that you have a background in both religion and philosophy,” he said, “do you believe in absolutes?”
Immediately my cognitive antenna went up. I became mentally aroused. I knew then that I was in “a teachable moment.” He told me that he had attended Ohio State University, but never graduated; that he believed in God; and that in discussions with his friends, he had a need to know that God is absolute and unchanging. He said I need a place to put my “foot” down and say, “This is my starting place; this is where my faith begins.”
Our discussion went something like this:
“Have you read the Genesis story of God creating earth, including all humankind?”
“Yes,” he assured me, “I have.”
“Do you remember the passage where God said, “Let us make man in our own image, to be like ourselves”? He didn’t remember this so I proceeded to read it to him—the passage above.
I asked, “And how is God defined in this passage?”
He couldn’t seem to figure it out so I said, “The writer says that we are made in the image of God. Now theologians shutter when they hear this because they have instilled in us that God is absolute and perfect in everyway. This is what you believe, right?”
The young man agreed.
“But this isn’t the message of the Old Testament,” I said, “The primary and holy name of God in the Old Testament comes from the Hebrew haya, which is the perfect tense indicating not only that God is, but that God has always been and will always be; that God is always interacting with his creation.”
I than reminded him that according to Genesis we know God because we are like Him, made in his image. I asked, “Are we absolute?” “Are we perfect in every way?” Do we have absolute power over the world?”
He answered, “No.”
“Then why do you think God is unlike us? The Bible is clear on this point that we are made in God’s image. I assume this means that we are free to make decisions, are emotional and cognitive, feel joy, love, and anger. The Bible says that God did too. Our knowledge of God is like our knowledge of our friends; it is conversational, involves close contact, dialogic, and personal.”
I went on to say to him that God both acts on the world with purpose (intention) and reactions to the world with anger and love, the same way we act and react to the world. In this sense God is not the absolute God of the theologians and pulpiteers, but a personal loving and forgiving God, one who is with us because we are made from God-stuff – I said I assume that that’s all God had before creation to make us with.
I gave the young man my telephone number and told him to call me sometime from up in Ohio and we would talk some more. He told me he was confused. I said to him that most people are confused about God because they have depersonalized God into some kind of logic premises or Aristotelian prime mover. God can be absolute if we make God the “first principle” of our faith and belief, but if we believe in an interacting, loving, and forgiving God, then God may just be more human (in the image of God) than we think or want to think.
And John wrote, So the Word became human and lived here on earth among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness … But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.”
I may disagree somewhat with this rendering for “right” is the word exousian in Greek meaning “in the sense of ability,” “capacity,” “competency,” or “mastery” (this last usage indicates authority, power, and right.
If we use “ability” or “capacity” then we can say that our faith in God is the foundation of our lives and provides us with the ability or capacity to show—through our lives—the love of God to others—always interacting within the world. Who needs absolutes? They’re so sterile and remind one of logical arguments rather than personal encounters.
Then God said, “Let us make people in our image, to be like ourselves. They will be masters over all life—the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the livestock, wild animals, and small animals.” So God created people in his own image; God patterned them after himself; male and female he created them. And the Lord God formed a man’s body from the dust of the ground and breathed into it the breath of life. And the man became a living soul. Genesis 1: 26-27 & 2:7
If you’re a teacher or a minister, then you know that there are times when “a teachable moment” occurs. This is a magical time, a time you don’t want to waste. It may be a moment of shared experience in a classroom or a Sunday school class, or an informal discussion, but when the light bulb of excitement turns on, your adrenaline rises and you don’t want to waste the opportunity.
Just the other day I had such an opportunity. I had made a call to a credit card company about an unwanted charge to my account. When I finally got to the correct operator, the young man was extremely helpful. Unknown to me he had typed my name into Google and saw that I was a writer and had a back ground in both religion and philosophy. When we had finished our business, he asked, “Do you have a minute?” I said, “Certainly.” He then proceeded to his next question: “Seeing that you have a background in both religion and philosophy,” he said, “do you believe in absolutes?”
Immediately my cognitive antenna went up. I became mentally aroused. I knew then that I was in “a teachable moment.” He told me that he had attended Ohio State University, but never graduated; that he believed in God; and that in discussions with his friends, he had a need to know that God is absolute and unchanging. He said I need a place to put my “foot” down and say, “This is my starting place; this is where my faith begins.”
Our discussion went something like this:
“Have you read the Genesis story of God creating earth, including all humankind?”
“Yes,” he assured me, “I have.”
“Do you remember the passage where God said, “Let us make man in our own image, to be like ourselves”? He didn’t remember this so I proceeded to read it to him—the passage above.
I asked, “And how is God defined in this passage?”
He couldn’t seem to figure it out so I said, “The writer says that we are made in the image of God. Now theologians shutter when they hear this because they have instilled in us that God is absolute and perfect in everyway. This is what you believe, right?”
The young man agreed.
“But this isn’t the message of the Old Testament,” I said, “The primary and holy name of God in the Old Testament comes from the Hebrew haya, which is the perfect tense indicating not only that God is, but that God has always been and will always be; that God is always interacting with his creation.”
I than reminded him that according to Genesis we know God because we are like Him, made in his image. I asked, “Are we absolute?” “Are we perfect in every way?” Do we have absolute power over the world?”
He answered, “No.”
“Then why do you think God is unlike us? The Bible is clear on this point that we are made in God’s image. I assume this means that we are free to make decisions, are emotional and cognitive, feel joy, love, and anger. The Bible says that God did too. Our knowledge of God is like our knowledge of our friends; it is conversational, involves close contact, dialogic, and personal.”
I went on to say to him that God both acts on the world with purpose (intention) and reactions to the world with anger and love, the same way we act and react to the world. In this sense God is not the absolute God of the theologians and pulpiteers, but a personal loving and forgiving God, one who is with us because we are made from God-stuff – I said I assume that that’s all God had before creation to make us with.
I gave the young man my telephone number and told him to call me sometime from up in Ohio and we would talk some more. He told me he was confused. I said to him that most people are confused about God because they have depersonalized God into some kind of logic premises or Aristotelian prime mover. God can be absolute if we make God the “first principle” of our faith and belief, but if we believe in an interacting, loving, and forgiving God, then God may just be more human (in the image of God) than we think or want to think.
And John wrote, So the Word became human and lived here on earth among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness … But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.”
I may disagree somewhat with this rendering for “right” is the word exousian in Greek meaning “in the sense of ability,” “capacity,” “competency,” or “mastery” (this last usage indicates authority, power, and right.
If we use “ability” or “capacity” then we can say that our faith in God is the foundation of our lives and provides us with the ability or capacity to show—through our lives—the love of God to others—always interacting within the world. Who needs absolutes? They’re so sterile and remind one of logical arguments rather than personal encounters.
A Confessional Church
IN RESPONSE:
Being a “confessional” church means that those who adhere to that denomination have taken an oath of allegiance (baptism, confirmation, etc.) to “certain” interpretations – confessions – of scripture. These confessions define their beliefs and are absolute – without blemish or error – despite what later research uncovers or science reveals. They hold on to their beliefs because without a community of believers, there would be no church and no salvation. They don't care about research and scholarship--just the preverted stuff of their denomination.
It's kinda like what Bush said the other day when he was told that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. He said, "Who cares."
My interpretation of confessional churches is that most members are uneducated, don’t want to be educated, and are easily led by dogma and dogmatic ministers. This affects every organization, not just churches, but the patterns are the same.
The one dogma that separates Roman Catholics, Missouri Lutherans, and the Episcopalians from other Protestant groups is the confession that the “juice” and “ho-cake” served at communion is really – I mean really – the “blood” and “body” of Christ. Thus, they call communion a “sacrament,” which makes it a sacred and untouchable formality and a key indicator that a member is superstitious enough to be a “real” believing (but unthinking) member. Watch closely as the last crumbs and droppings are consumed by the "annointed one." Are we so stupid to think that God calls some and not all; that because I wear a fancy gown and have a high collar that I'm more special to God than you pew dwellers; that Jesus touched Peter and Peter touched the first Pope; and from such touching special magical powers are transmitted down through the ages? Do people really believe this stuff?
The odd thing about this is that these groups don’t share communion with each other and consider Christians who are not members of their “in-group” just short of being infidels. The rules and regulations of the church, like the country club, are designed to keep people out, not in.
Another important superstition they “confess” is the belief in the Trinity; although the Trinity is a post-Biblical doctrine or theological expression. Check out my Trinity essay on the blog, "Speaking Freely."
I spoke to a Missouri Lutheran not long ago (might as well have been a Baptist) about these matters and he said to me that if a person doesn’t believe in the Trinity, then they are not Christian and will go to hell – wherever that is. I pointed out that the “trinity” is not mentioned as such in the New Testament, but he pointed to Genesis 1:1 where God said “Let us make man in our own image.” The plural reference he said was evidence that God was talking to Jesus and the Holy Spirit. But I questioned, if the trinity is three in one and one in three, wasn’t God just talking to him- or maybe herself since “spirit” in the Greek is always used in the feminine voice? He had no response.
The reality of the 1st century is that many of the early Christians were Gnostics (Coptic in Egypt). Gnostics believed that the God of Hebrew Scripture was evil because he created matter and was not the God of the NT who is a God of love. Is it any wonder why the Catholics ordered all Gnostic Gospels burned (thank god some survived) and created all those faux dogmas and creeds we still “confess” in our churches?
The joke is that all who belong to a “confessional” church keep the faith by ignoring history and scientific research; close their minds to truth; and usually vote Republican! Their confessions are based on a great hoax that began in the 4th century CE and they continue to perpetuate those myths through the narrow lenses of “church” truth.
For me, the church is little more than a country club and membership has its rules and regulations. We can dress our ministers in elaborate robes and gowns, wave flags, burn candles, and carry crosses. We can genuflex and cross ourselves or chant and sing, but the fact remains: it’s a hoax, an elaborate myth that has lasted for centuries because we are all scare of the unknown – death.
Being a “confessional” church means that those who adhere to that denomination have taken an oath of allegiance (baptism, confirmation, etc.) to “certain” interpretations – confessions – of scripture. These confessions define their beliefs and are absolute – without blemish or error – despite what later research uncovers or science reveals. They hold on to their beliefs because without a community of believers, there would be no church and no salvation. They don't care about research and scholarship--just the preverted stuff of their denomination.
It's kinda like what Bush said the other day when he was told that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. He said, "Who cares."
My interpretation of confessional churches is that most members are uneducated, don’t want to be educated, and are easily led by dogma and dogmatic ministers. This affects every organization, not just churches, but the patterns are the same.
The one dogma that separates Roman Catholics, Missouri Lutherans, and the Episcopalians from other Protestant groups is the confession that the “juice” and “ho-cake” served at communion is really – I mean really – the “blood” and “body” of Christ. Thus, they call communion a “sacrament,” which makes it a sacred and untouchable formality and a key indicator that a member is superstitious enough to be a “real” believing (but unthinking) member. Watch closely as the last crumbs and droppings are consumed by the "annointed one." Are we so stupid to think that God calls some and not all; that because I wear a fancy gown and have a high collar that I'm more special to God than you pew dwellers; that Jesus touched Peter and Peter touched the first Pope; and from such touching special magical powers are transmitted down through the ages? Do people really believe this stuff?
The odd thing about this is that these groups don’t share communion with each other and consider Christians who are not members of their “in-group” just short of being infidels. The rules and regulations of the church, like the country club, are designed to keep people out, not in.
Another important superstition they “confess” is the belief in the Trinity; although the Trinity is a post-Biblical doctrine or theological expression. Check out my Trinity essay on the blog, "Speaking Freely."
I spoke to a Missouri Lutheran not long ago (might as well have been a Baptist) about these matters and he said to me that if a person doesn’t believe in the Trinity, then they are not Christian and will go to hell – wherever that is. I pointed out that the “trinity” is not mentioned as such in the New Testament, but he pointed to Genesis 1:1 where God said “Let us make man in our own image.” The plural reference he said was evidence that God was talking to Jesus and the Holy Spirit. But I questioned, if the trinity is three in one and one in three, wasn’t God just talking to him- or maybe herself since “spirit” in the Greek is always used in the feminine voice? He had no response.
The reality of the 1st century is that many of the early Christians were Gnostics (Coptic in Egypt). Gnostics believed that the God of Hebrew Scripture was evil because he created matter and was not the God of the NT who is a God of love. Is it any wonder why the Catholics ordered all Gnostic Gospels burned (thank god some survived) and created all those faux dogmas and creeds we still “confess” in our churches?
The joke is that all who belong to a “confessional” church keep the faith by ignoring history and scientific research; close their minds to truth; and usually vote Republican! Their confessions are based on a great hoax that began in the 4th century CE and they continue to perpetuate those myths through the narrow lenses of “church” truth.
For me, the church is little more than a country club and membership has its rules and regulations. We can dress our ministers in elaborate robes and gowns, wave flags, burn candles, and carry crosses. We can genuflex and cross ourselves or chant and sing, but the fact remains: it’s a hoax, an elaborate myth that has lasted for centuries because we are all scare of the unknown – death.
The Three Levels of Ethics
Ethics
Any discussion of ethics will occur on one of three levels, perhaps all three. It is important that students understand these levels as discussions move forward and has various students move back and forth often confusing one level with another.
Level One:
Level One is what is called the “meta-level.” “Meta” means “before” when used in the term “meta-ethics.” That is, before we can clearly discuss issues of good and bad or right and wrong, we must be clear about the meaning of our terms, including the words “ethics” and “morals.”
At the meta-level the purpose is to seek out and give reasons for the point of view of morality. Once that foundation has been established, one can generate the basic terminology of ethics from it.
The meta-level of ethics is therefore a discussion of the meaning or meanings of the language and terms being used in ethics. These will include the following but are not limited to them:
Right
Wrong
Good
Bad
Ethical
Moral
Responsibility
Honesty
Fair-minded
Discrimination
Nondiscrimination
Reciprocal
Truth
Level Two:
Level Two is where general principles are developed from the basic concepts of ethics and morality. Level Two seeks a foundation for ethics in general principles. An example of these is the Golden Rule from eight of the world’s great religions and Kant’s Categorical Imperative.
Christianity: “All things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you even unto them for this is the law of the prophets.”
Brahmanism: “This is the sum of duty; do naught unto others which would cause pain if done unto you.”
Buddhism: “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.”
Judaism: “What is hateful to you; do not to your fellow men. That is the entire law, all the rest is commentary.”
Confucianism: “There is one maxim of loving kindness: do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you.”
Taoism: “Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.”
Zoroastrianism: “That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good for itself.”
Islam: “No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.”
Kant’s Categorical Imperative is a similar principle:
Any discussion of ethics will occur on one of three levels, perhaps all three. It is important that students understand these levels as discussions move forward and has various students move back and forth often confusing one level with another.
Level One:
Level One is what is called the “meta-level.” “Meta” means “before” when used in the term “meta-ethics.” That is, before we can clearly discuss issues of good and bad or right and wrong, we must be clear about the meaning of our terms, including the words “ethics” and “morals.”
At the meta-level the purpose is to seek out and give reasons for the point of view of morality. Once that foundation has been established, one can generate the basic terminology of ethics from it.
The meta-level of ethics is therefore a discussion of the meaning or meanings of the language and terms being used in ethics. These will include the following but are not limited to them:
Right
Wrong
Good
Bad
Ethical
Moral
Responsibility
Honesty
Fair-minded
Discrimination
Nondiscrimination
Reciprocal
Truth
Level Two:
Level Two is where general principles are developed from the basic concepts of ethics and morality. Level Two seeks a foundation for ethics in general principles. An example of these is the Golden Rule from eight of the world’s great religions and Kant’s Categorical Imperative.
The Golden Rule reads as the following:
Christianity: “All things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you even unto them for this is the law of the prophets.”
Brahmanism: “This is the sum of duty; do naught unto others which would cause pain if done unto you.”
Buddhism: “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.”
Judaism: “What is hateful to you; do not to your fellow men. That is the entire law, all the rest is commentary.”
Confucianism: “There is one maxim of loving kindness: do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you.”
Taoism: “Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.”
Zoroastrianism: “That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good for itself.”
Islam: “No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.”
Kant’s Categorical Imperative is a similar principle:
“Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.” We also gather from Kant that ethical duties cannot be externally imposed on us; we must impose them on ourselves. What we learn is that other people are not to be used as means to our selfish or self-centered ends. This is thought of as immoral behavior because it not only violates the rule of the categorical imperative, but its spirit—that all people are spiritually and ethically significant.
Kurt Baier also has developed a moral principle that is consistent with these and has some promise:
Baier understands that “principles of behavior can be recommended to everybody (universally) if they successfully promote the best possible life for everybody, and that the best possible life for everybody cannot be achieved in isolation but only in social contexts in which the pursuits of each impinge on the pursuits of others.” According to Baier, the moral point of view looks and treats all people as “equally important centers of craving, impulses, desires, needs, aims, and aspirations; as people with ends of their own, all of which are entitled, prima facie, to be attained,” and he notes, that “from this point of view everyone of those individuals is required to modify his impulsive behavior, his endeavors and his plans by observing certain rules, the genuinely moral rules.”
Level Three
At level three we find the social, institutional, and personal rule-making power of ethics. This is the level of moral judgment. It should be understood that whatever ethical rules we generate, they should be consistent with the principles in Level Two and the definitions in Level One. If they are not, then serious discussion needs to be entered into. A lack of consistency and foundation renders our personal or social or institutional moral judgments arbitrary and irrelevant.
If a person or church says that gay marriage is wrong, they have made a moral judgment, but what is their definition of “right” and “wrong”? Also, what moral principle has been violated by a gay marriage?
If the appeal is to one’s religion or religious teachings, then one can say that according to my faith, gay marriage is wrong. Unless they are willing to reexamine the principles of their faith against a background of moral principles and precepts, no objective or rational discussion can move forward. The most one can say is that this is a judgment of faith and not of reason.
Success is Hard Work
"The difference between people who exercise initiative and those who don't is literally the difference between night and day. I'm not talking about a 25 to 50 percent difference in effectiveness; I'm talking about a 5000-plus percent difference, particularly if they are smart, aware, and sensitive to others."
- Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
I believe in America. The American Constitution and Declaration of Independence outline the values by which Americans live. America is aptly called the “land of opportunity,” because anyone who is an American citizen is provided the opportunity to achieve his or her dreams and goals.
This situation has not come easily. Americans of color, of minority ethnic backgrounds, women, and the poor have had to struggle for the freedoms and opportunities they today enjoy in the 21st century. America has been built – life-by-life – from the struggles exhibited by our nation’s founders, the liability suffered by those for supporting the underground railroad in the 19th century, the protests and campaigns for gender rights in the 20th century, the civil rights campaigns of the 1960s, and the millions of poor and middle class students who have struggled and are struggling for equal opportunities and an equal playing field in getting a college education and entrance to the professions.
Success in America comes through dedication and hard work. The opportunity is a gift
won by those who struggled for freedom and equality in the past. The actualization of this opportunity has to be won over and over again by each person. Achievement comes with a price. Whether a person is a professional athlete or a local druggist, a price was paid for his or her successful rise to achieve his or her goal.
America is about opportunity and struggle, dedication and, yes, hard work. As my friend Don Killian said, “It’s about passion, but how do we get students passionate about learning and achievement?” As a college professor for over 40 years, Don still has a passion for teaching and working with young people. He often wonders why students neglect developing their skills at an early age and view college, and perhaps public school education, as just something to “pass through” on the way to somewhere else.
Not many who have achieved at the highest levels have done it alone. There are parents and teachers, mentors and friends, who motivated and prepared them for the rigors of their success. That’s another lesson we learn as we struggle to achieve our goals – there are those who have helped us and we have the responsibility of returning this initiative by helping ourselves and others.
The Politics of Religion Drives Me Nuts
Some thoughts …
The reality of the Bible is that there is little left that is real. Written in a time of crisis when the Romans decapitated Israel and destroyed its Temple, the Jewish Christians or Ebonites had finally realized that Jesus wasn’t their earthly savior and a more spiritual interpretation was required.
Before this could be completed, the male-dominated institutional church of the 4th and 5th centuries edited the gospels and letters to render them unintelligible to the first century Christian. The Roman emperors also added that the scriptures must be consistent with their ancient beliefs – and the rest is pseudo-history.
So, who is this Jesus that Christians worship? Surely the Jesus of the scriptures that has come down to us is a mere adaptation or accommodation of the Jesus of history of the first century. Therefore, it makes no sense to be a literalist with regard to the New Testament. Too much has changed. To say that Jesus is “God” is also to misappropriate the scriptures. When the concept of the Trinity was formulated in the 3rd-5th centuries CE, the Catholics tried to wipe out the Holy Spirit as the feminine side of God (Sophia). The emperors tried to keep Mary as a part of the Trinity. Finally, Sophia was changed to the neuter form of the word “spirit.”
Perhaps Coptic Christianity and its Gnostic or docetic counterpart is closer to the ancient interpretation of Jesus that what was handed to us in the West. It scared the per-gi-bers out of the Western Church and so they had their books burned. Luckily some were buried and some survived. Just maybe the interpretation of the God-Christ-Messiah who was implanted in the earthly Jesus resolves a lot of the difficulties with the Apostles’ Creed and the like – you know the “begotten but not begotten” passages or “Homousia (man stuff created by God) and ousia (God stuff which is uncreated).” So close we are to the ancient myths and mystery religions that the Jesus of scripture is more metaphor than fact, a metaphor in need of interpretation by each Christian generation.
I find it difficult, as one who has studied such stuff in college, seminary, and university to take fundamentalism seriously as a "faith." I see it more like the ancient Roman group: a political power movement with relgious symbolism. We don't teach this in the church. Divinity schools and seminaries must also heed to appropriate non-intellectual path or be closed down. There is scholarship out there and much of it has uncovered the real story behind the myths, lies, and legends. The problem is that most preachers who know want say, but there are more who don't know and condemn those who do.
Therefore, we keep laypeople in the church in blissful ignorance because we really don't believe their faith is strong enough for the truth. Political correctness has infiltrated the church and so Biblical and historical scholarship falls on deaf ears. Just think, if the church is anti-education, then our schools are also in that schools of education are recipients of such shallow scholarship and historical facts and conceptual ideas.
What then is the purpose of religion? That's another blog.
The reality of the Bible is that there is little left that is real. Written in a time of crisis when the Romans decapitated Israel and destroyed its Temple, the Jewish Christians or Ebonites had finally realized that Jesus wasn’t their earthly savior and a more spiritual interpretation was required.
Before this could be completed, the male-dominated institutional church of the 4th and 5th centuries edited the gospels and letters to render them unintelligible to the first century Christian. The Roman emperors also added that the scriptures must be consistent with their ancient beliefs – and the rest is pseudo-history.
So, who is this Jesus that Christians worship? Surely the Jesus of the scriptures that has come down to us is a mere adaptation or accommodation of the Jesus of history of the first century. Therefore, it makes no sense to be a literalist with regard to the New Testament. Too much has changed. To say that Jesus is “God” is also to misappropriate the scriptures. When the concept of the Trinity was formulated in the 3rd-5th centuries CE, the Catholics tried to wipe out the Holy Spirit as the feminine side of God (Sophia). The emperors tried to keep Mary as a part of the Trinity. Finally, Sophia was changed to the neuter form of the word “spirit.”
Perhaps Coptic Christianity and its Gnostic or docetic counterpart is closer to the ancient interpretation of Jesus that what was handed to us in the West. It scared the per-gi-bers out of the Western Church and so they had their books burned. Luckily some were buried and some survived. Just maybe the interpretation of the God-Christ-Messiah who was implanted in the earthly Jesus resolves a lot of the difficulties with the Apostles’ Creed and the like – you know the “begotten but not begotten” passages or “Homousia (man stuff created by God) and ousia (God stuff which is uncreated).” So close we are to the ancient myths and mystery religions that the Jesus of scripture is more metaphor than fact, a metaphor in need of interpretation by each Christian generation.
I find it difficult, as one who has studied such stuff in college, seminary, and university to take fundamentalism seriously as a "faith." I see it more like the ancient Roman group: a political power movement with relgious symbolism. We don't teach this in the church. Divinity schools and seminaries must also heed to appropriate non-intellectual path or be closed down. There is scholarship out there and much of it has uncovered the real story behind the myths, lies, and legends. The problem is that most preachers who know want say, but there are more who don't know and condemn those who do.
Therefore, we keep laypeople in the church in blissful ignorance because we really don't believe their faith is strong enough for the truth. Political correctness has infiltrated the church and so Biblical and historical scholarship falls on deaf ears. Just think, if the church is anti-education, then our schools are also in that schools of education are recipients of such shallow scholarship and historical facts and conceptual ideas.
What then is the purpose of religion? That's another blog.
My Friend Spinoza
From Spinoza
In 1656, Amsterdam’s Jewish community excommunicated Baruch Spinoza and, at the age of 23, he became the most famous heretic in Judaism. He was already creating a secularist challenge to religion that would be as radical as it was original.
I highly recommend Betraying Spinoza, the renegade Jew who gave us modernity by Rebecca Goldstein.
This short book provides the cultural and historical background for understanding Spinoza and is readable for the non-philosopher.
Quotes from the book I found intriguing:
On Metaphysics
“What Spinoza has to say about the importance of allowing the discovery of nature to proceed unimpeded by religious dogma could not speak more pertinently to some of the raging controversies of our day, including the recurring public debate in America over Darwin’s theory of evolution.”
“The social frame of reference enclosing every individual of the pre-modern era was inherently religious. Spinoza’s choice was an instance of a principle (secularized spirituality) that had yet to be discerned in even the vaguest outline.”
“Without intelligence there is not rational life, and things are only good in so far as they aid man in his enjoyment of the intellectual life which is defined by intelligence.” {Thus, Spinoza’s ethics will be logic-based and proceed from first principles (axioms) the purest of which is God.}
Because God is identical with nature – that is, God created nature from ‘himself’ – our understanding of nature cannot appeal to dogma or creed but must remain a part of this world itself.
“Soul” or neshama in the Hebrew only means the life of anything that is living and this principle does not commit us to believing that the soul survives the body’s death.
“Metaphysics” is the attempt to use pure reason as opposed to experience to arrive at a description of reality (this is the way Spinoza used logic). In a looser sense, “metaphysics” refers just to our ontological commitments – commitments concerning what sorts of things exist in the world. In the latter sense, even analytic philosophers have a metaphysics but analytic philosophers reject the very possibility of a non-empirical deduction of the nature of reality.
In Spinoza’s view, logic alone is the fabric of reality and into this fabric is woven not only the descriptive facts of what is, but the normative facts of what ought to be. Many believe that this is a metaphysical delusions because science cannot be bypassed to reach a priori certainty about the nature of reality. This is called the naturalistic fallacy or that of ignoring the “is-ought gap.”
Not even reason can produce something out of nothing – It can’t get more out of the premises than what is already implicitly deposited with them. That is, conceptual truths – stating logical possibilities – cannot entail descriptive or ontological truths – describing the way the world really is. The “is-ought gap” might better be explained as the “if-is gap.”
On Ethics
“We can survive our death to the extent that we have already let go of being our singular solitary selves.” I find that this idea lies at the heart of not only ethics, but of servant leadership as well.
“Paradoxically, the only way to flourish in one’s being is to cease being only that being. That singular self, that localized “I,” that “me” which is “me” and no other…that is my substance, my identity, by very being.” But for Spinoza, “that thing is to be cast off into the mists of unreality, outgrown as one stretches outward into reality. The distinctive singular self is not what we ought to think about. It is not even what we ought to be.”
P1 – I am me. No one else can do for me what I am doing in being me. When there will be no one that has this same stake in my persisting, then there won’t be me. This is a fact of my identity. This is a selfish or self-centered commitment to my life’s going well and I make judgments about how various things affect my life for better or for worse.
P2 – Because our emotions intrinsically involve judgments, we can critically evaluate the judgments that they contain and, if they are wrong, correct them.
P3 – Since the process of correcting erroneous judgments is expansive – to understand is to expand ourselves into the world, reproducing (using imagination) the world in our own minds. This requires getting out of oneself and seeing oneself as just another thing in the world, treating one’s own emotions as dispassionately as a problem in mathematics.
P4 – To maneuvering outside oneself and correlate one’s vision of the world with one’s commitment to oneself means that one can never inhabit one’s own self quite the same way again, which is to say that one has changed – one has moved from an inward vision to an outward vision; from selfish and self-centered interest to unselfish and perhaps selfless interest.
P5 – There is an inverse relationship between expanding to become more than what you were and the degree of importance with which you regard yourself. The more expansive one’s self, the less the sense of self-importance. The tendency to over inflate one’s significance in the world, simply because of the forces of inward attention and devotion keeping one oneself, undergoes corrective adjustments in the light of the objective point of view moving us from an “is” (or a “me”) to an “ought.” Virtue follows quite naturally. In Spinoza’s view, as a part of nature, created by God, “We are others.” The point for Spinoza is not to become insiders – always thinking about one’s self importance – but rather outsiders – to identify with others and serve them whenever possible. “Our common human nature reveals why we must treat one another with utmost dignity, and, too, that our common human nature is itself transformed in our knowing of it, so that we become only more like one another as we think our way toward radical objectivity.”
“Conatus, our essence, which dictates that all of our intentions derive from our concerns with our own selves, leads us, if we truly attempt to fulfill ourselves, to see ourselves from the outside, as it were, from the point of view of the infinite system (God) that explains all.” Spinoza says, “A free man, thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.”
“The new men of genius construct explanations out of the certainty of mathematics, not the make-believe of teleological storytelling.”
“The world must somehow offer an explanation for itself; or otherwise we fall back on the explanatory hollowness of divine final causes.”
Pieter Balling, in the same vain as Spinoza blasted organized religion for placing dogma at its center where the soul ought to have been.
“The problem of evil comes down to the stubborn stupidity of mankind.”
Spinoza said that we should “shake off all fears of servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear. … The way that we go about the human business of believing leads to the best and the worst in our species.”
In 1656, Amsterdam’s Jewish community excommunicated Baruch Spinoza and, at the age of 23, he became the most famous heretic in Judaism. He was already creating a secularist challenge to religion that would be as radical as it was original.
I highly recommend Betraying Spinoza, the renegade Jew who gave us modernity by Rebecca Goldstein.
This short book provides the cultural and historical background for understanding Spinoza and is readable for the non-philosopher.
Quotes from the book I found intriguing:
On Metaphysics
“What Spinoza has to say about the importance of allowing the discovery of nature to proceed unimpeded by religious dogma could not speak more pertinently to some of the raging controversies of our day, including the recurring public debate in America over Darwin’s theory of evolution.”
“The social frame of reference enclosing every individual of the pre-modern era was inherently religious. Spinoza’s choice was an instance of a principle (secularized spirituality) that had yet to be discerned in even the vaguest outline.”
“Without intelligence there is not rational life, and things are only good in so far as they aid man in his enjoyment of the intellectual life which is defined by intelligence.” {Thus, Spinoza’s ethics will be logic-based and proceed from first principles (axioms) the purest of which is God.}
Because God is identical with nature – that is, God created nature from ‘himself’ – our understanding of nature cannot appeal to dogma or creed but must remain a part of this world itself.
“Soul” or neshama in the Hebrew only means the life of anything that is living and this principle does not commit us to believing that the soul survives the body’s death.
“Metaphysics” is the attempt to use pure reason as opposed to experience to arrive at a description of reality (this is the way Spinoza used logic). In a looser sense, “metaphysics” refers just to our ontological commitments – commitments concerning what sorts of things exist in the world. In the latter sense, even analytic philosophers have a metaphysics but analytic philosophers reject the very possibility of a non-empirical deduction of the nature of reality.
In Spinoza’s view, logic alone is the fabric of reality and into this fabric is woven not only the descriptive facts of what is, but the normative facts of what ought to be. Many believe that this is a metaphysical delusions because science cannot be bypassed to reach a priori certainty about the nature of reality. This is called the naturalistic fallacy or that of ignoring the “is-ought gap.”
Not even reason can produce something out of nothing – It can’t get more out of the premises than what is already implicitly deposited with them. That is, conceptual truths – stating logical possibilities – cannot entail descriptive or ontological truths – describing the way the world really is. The “is-ought gap” might better be explained as the “if-is gap.”
On Ethics
“We can survive our death to the extent that we have already let go of being our singular solitary selves.” I find that this idea lies at the heart of not only ethics, but of servant leadership as well.
“Paradoxically, the only way to flourish in one’s being is to cease being only that being. That singular self, that localized “I,” that “me” which is “me” and no other…that is my substance, my identity, by very being.” But for Spinoza, “that thing is to be cast off into the mists of unreality, outgrown as one stretches outward into reality. The distinctive singular self is not what we ought to think about. It is not even what we ought to be.”
P1 – I am me. No one else can do for me what I am doing in being me. When there will be no one that has this same stake in my persisting, then there won’t be me. This is a fact of my identity. This is a selfish or self-centered commitment to my life’s going well and I make judgments about how various things affect my life for better or for worse.
P2 – Because our emotions intrinsically involve judgments, we can critically evaluate the judgments that they contain and, if they are wrong, correct them.
P3 – Since the process of correcting erroneous judgments is expansive – to understand is to expand ourselves into the world, reproducing (using imagination) the world in our own minds. This requires getting out of oneself and seeing oneself as just another thing in the world, treating one’s own emotions as dispassionately as a problem in mathematics.
P4 – To maneuvering outside oneself and correlate one’s vision of the world with one’s commitment to oneself means that one can never inhabit one’s own self quite the same way again, which is to say that one has changed – one has moved from an inward vision to an outward vision; from selfish and self-centered interest to unselfish and perhaps selfless interest.
P5 – There is an inverse relationship between expanding to become more than what you were and the degree of importance with which you regard yourself. The more expansive one’s self, the less the sense of self-importance. The tendency to over inflate one’s significance in the world, simply because of the forces of inward attention and devotion keeping one oneself, undergoes corrective adjustments in the light of the objective point of view moving us from an “is” (or a “me”) to an “ought.” Virtue follows quite naturally. In Spinoza’s view, as a part of nature, created by God, “We are others.” The point for Spinoza is not to become insiders – always thinking about one’s self importance – but rather outsiders – to identify with others and serve them whenever possible. “Our common human nature reveals why we must treat one another with utmost dignity, and, too, that our common human nature is itself transformed in our knowing of it, so that we become only more like one another as we think our way toward radical objectivity.”
“Conatus, our essence, which dictates that all of our intentions derive from our concerns with our own selves, leads us, if we truly attempt to fulfill ourselves, to see ourselves from the outside, as it were, from the point of view of the infinite system (God) that explains all.” Spinoza says, “A free man, thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.”
“The new men of genius construct explanations out of the certainty of mathematics, not the make-believe of teleological storytelling.”
“The world must somehow offer an explanation for itself; or otherwise we fall back on the explanatory hollowness of divine final causes.”
Pieter Balling, in the same vain as Spinoza blasted organized religion for placing dogma at its center where the soul ought to have been.
“The problem of evil comes down to the stubborn stupidity of mankind.”
Spinoza said that we should “shake off all fears of servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear. … The way that we go about the human business of believing leads to the best and the worst in our species.”
The War Within
Religious Conflict and Cultural Wars in America
Introduction
The variety of religious beliefs in the United States surpasses the nation’s multitude of ethnicities, nationalities, and races, making religion another source of diversity rather than a unifying force. This is true even though the vast majority of Americans—83 percent—identify themselves as Christian. One-third of these self-identified Christians are unaffiliated with any church. Moreover, practicing Christians belong to a wide variety of churches that differ on theology, organization, programs, and policies. The largest number of Christians in the United States belongs to one of the many Protestant denominations—groups that vary widely in their beliefs and practices. Roman Catholics constitute the next largest group of American Christians, followed by the Eastern Orthodox. These differences and the politicalization of religion, in not only recent times, but also during the second half of the 20th century, have led to multifarious conflicts among and between religious groups throughout America and between religious factions and the political structures of states and the nation.
Eminent French sociologists Emile Durkheim (1857-1917) defined religion as a more or less coherent system of beliefs (monotheism, polytheism) and practices (fasts, feasts) that concern a supernatural order of things (gods, goddesses, angels), places (heaven, hell, purgatory), and forces (mana). This definition, being sterile and generic, goes along way in explaining what religion is but does not explain why it is a universal phenomenon. Neither does it explain the extent of religious conflict in a nation, the United States that claims to be religiously tolerant. Religion wields extraordinary influence in public affairs. Although a rich reservoir of values, principles, and ideals, it is also a powerful source of conflict and violence as diverse religious and secular traditions collide. Globalizing trends that are making the world smaller are also unleashing dynamics that are creating some of the most complex and challenging problems of the 21st century.
Religious Differences
Since September 11, 2001, religious news and religious controversy have been constants on American airwaves, newspapers, and books. From Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and the controversy that has surrounded its interpretation to the political insurgence of the Christian Right, editorials, books, and talk shows have highlighted the religious differences found among the American public. For example, in the fall of 2004, Larry King, host of Larry King Live, asked a panel of religious leaders why they thought there is so much anger, hate, and horror in the world. This panel included Deepak Chopra, religious radio personality Dennis Prager, Reverend R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Dr. Maher Nathout, scholar and advisor to the Muslim Public Affairs Council. In the middle of the discussion, King, mentioned that religion has been singled out as the cause of the problem and not its cure. The answers coming from the panel ranged from “our ideas of God are based on primitive ideas,” to blaming secular ideologies and beliefs for the widespread murder and torture of individuals world wide. One panel member said that it is a mistake to single out religion as the only cause for world conflict.
Interestingly, as this debate about religious conflict was taking place, two significant stories about religious conflict appeared in American newspapers The first came from the Associated Press in New Orleans and announced, “School Board in Prayer Dispute.” A federal lawsuit to stop the local school board from having Christian prayers at its meetings found both sides citing First Amendment rights in arguing their stands. In this case, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) represented a parent who contended that prayers at Tangipahoa Parish School Board meetings violate constitutional separation of church and state under the First Amendment. The ACLU added another complaint about using religious music during meetings. On the other side, members of the school board argued that “free-speech rights allow them to have the public prayers.” They cited another case in which the United States Supreme Court upheld the right of legislatures and other “deliberative bodies” to allow such prayers. The attorney for the school board appealed to tradition to support his case for allowing prayer at the school board meetings.
Another incident reported by the American press was a planned marriage rally at Hickory Motor Speedway in Hickory, North Carolina. Civic leaders and church members from different denominations throughout North Carolina came together on September 25, 2004 at the speedway to support “the traditional definition of marriage as the union between a man and a woman.” The event was advertised as a “We Are United Rally” and promoted its purpose as wanting to educate people about the issue of same-sex marriage and provide information on participating in the national rally in Washington, D.C., on October 15, 2004.
Also, in 2004, the Associated Press (AP) reported that the Gorham, New Hampshire School Board has approved a high school senior’s after-school Bible study classes, pending review by the school attorney. Liz Woodward, who planed to study biblical counseling at Lancaster, Pennsylvania Bible College, told the school board she needed to hold weekly classes at her school for a required senior project. The school board was concerned about the First Amendment issue of separation of church and state. The board debated the request at length before voting unanimous approval so long as those attending have parents’ permission and an adult supervises the classes. The high school principal reported that the legality of the Bible classes was researched and found to be within federal law because attendance is voluntary and it is an after school activity.
At the University level, it was claimed that the University of North Carolina’s Chancellor James Moeser “excommunicated” a Christian fraternity with an evangelical Protestant theology because it teaches that sexual activity ought to be limited to marriage between a man and a woman. Moeser noted that this standard obviously excluded extramarital and homosexual conduct, which is an espousal of traditional Christian morals. Moeser referred to a 2001 policy statement on “nondiscrimination,” which affirmed no discrimination in employment decisions or educational programs based on age, sex, race, color, national origin, religion, or disability.
Also, the university had adopted an internal policy on non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This statement was added, the report said, to ensure that only relevant factors are considered and that equitable and consistent standards of conduct and performance are applied. Notably, Chancellor Moeser exempted from its operation outside organizations, including the federal government, the military, ROTC and private employers. In 2003, the fraternity in question – AIO – came up for renewal of its official status to make sure that it complied with “university policies on non-discrimination,” including the one on sexual orientation. Based on their rules and consciences, AIO members decided that they could not admit students who disagree with their religious tenets and who are unwilling to adhere to traditional standards of sexual morality. They noted that this would go against the fraternity’s stated purpose. Jon Curtis, assistant director for student activities and organization went forward and pulled the plug on the AIO, a decision that was affirmed by Chancellor Moeser on August 12, 2004. AIO sued the university on August 25, “claiming violation of its rights to freedom of association, speech, and religion.” It was the opinion of some that this is a case study in secular intolerance. Notably, the United States Supreme Court has not yet addressed this issue in the context of student groups at public institutions. Lawyers argued that Moeser ignored the central role that religion and morality have played in America, and where these conscientious students fit into that history. They noted that in Moeser’s world, “traditional Christian religion does not exist.”
Religious differences are the cause of much conflict in the modern world. Conflict has been documented within religious groups, between religious groups, and between religious groups and other social/government organizations. Conflicts between Protestants and Catholics in Latin America and between Christians and Muslims in Indonesia, Africa, and the Middle East have called into question the mission and direction of America’s churches. These conflicts do not occur on foreign soil only, but in America as well, in that America is now itself a global village in which non-Protestant and non-Christian religions are on the rise. The belief that many Americans have professed in cultural and religious tolerance—an open-mindedness that has welcomed many diverse cultures to her shores—is now a source of religious and economic conflict.
Personal and Social Benefits of Religion. Even when evidence is provided about religious conflict in America, sociologists quickly point out that religion has many personal and social benefits: it allows for the transcendence of human life, provides a perspective that gives people a means of dealing with death and other conditions of uncertainty, helps people overcome feelings of powerlessness to control the conditions that affect their well-being, and provides a means of coping with unfulfilled personal needs. The values associated with religion account for a loyalty that transcends national loyalty. Explaining this phenomenon is difficult. Religious petitions continue to have priority, especially for evangelicals who tend to rally around a theological flag. On the other hand, theological liberals have a tendency to promote political and social justice with little mention of God or church. Also, people in organized religious congregations tend to participate in larger numbers and are more generous of their time and resources to these organizations than any other organization outside the family. Not only are religious people organized by virtue of their membership in a church, mosque, or synagogue, but also on the conservative side, they are ready to bring their theological and moral beliefs to bear on all political and social issues.
Roger Finke and Rodney Stark have documented the growth in religious adherence, from 1776 to 1980, in their study of religion in America:
Religious Adherence in America: 1776-1980
Year % Adherence
in America
1980 62%
1952 59%
1926 56%
1916 53%
1906 51%
1890 45%
1870 35%
1860 37%
1850 34%
1876 17%
Although sociologists predicted that secularization would diminish religious adherence and church affiliation, by the end of the 20th century, over 80 percent of Americans said they were connected to some religious organization. Interestingly, in 2006, Gallop reported church attendance at 68 percent for members of the United Church of Christ, 67 percent for Mormons, 65 percent for Pentecostals, 60 percent for Southern Baptists, 45 percent for Roman Catholics, 44 percent for Methodists and Presbyterians, 43 percent for Lutherans, 32 percent for Episcopalians, and 15 percent for those of the Jewish faith.
Faiths in Conflict. In the aftermath of World War II in America, citizens of every region drew together to affirm their common inheritance as a people and to celebrate the nation’s military and moral victories. Such triumphs seemed to substantiate America’s position, with its robust capitalism and growing Christian community, as a beacon to other nations, the leader of the free world, and a “city on a hill.” This vision sustained America through the years of the Cold War, the Korean Conflict, and the debacle of the war in Vietnam. In the 21st century, this triumph may have become a source of hate and perhaps over confidence as global awareness began to “flatten” the world so that America began to lose its economic and moral might. The conflict with Iraq and the differences between America and such countries as France and Germany appear to confirm, not their envy of America and American values, but detestation for them as America’s actions began to speak louder than her words. The weakening of America’s religio-politico-moral message was obvious.
In their book, Hating America: A History, Barry and Judith Rubin cite five phases of anti-Americanism: (1) Up to 1800, due to extreme environmental conditions, America was deemed so inhospitable that civilization was impossible. Even by 1776, Europeans thought Americans lacked culture, its soil was poisonous, its “lowered orders” were “rude,” and its animals stunted. (2) From 1800 to 1860, America was thought of as a failure and its freedom, an insidious form of slavery. For many Europeans, the horrors of the French Revolution confirmed that democracy didn’t work or at best produced a dreadful society ruled by the lower orders of humanity. (3) From 1860 to 1940, America’s industrialization heightened fear that its populist democracy, mass culture, and economic strength would have a negative impact on the world. America was now thought of as an object of dread. It was described as soulless, capitalist, anti-intellectual, mob-ruled, and culturally inferior. (4) From 1945 until the Soviet Union’s 1991 implosion, the fear of American domination deepened. Soviet Communism, Latin American anti-Americanism, and Islamic fundamentalism added new dimensions to this anti-American fever. (5) Finally, from 1991, the juggernaut of globalization, thought of as a thinly disguised Americanization, coupled with developments in communications, technology and weaponry, made America the world’s sole superpower and the object of resentment throughout the world.
In addition to these five phases, the Rubins have identified four reasons for this resentment: (1) An idealistic strain in American culture has produced a missionary zeal that is often perceived as a superiority complex resulting in an extreme ethnocentrism basically claiming that “our way is better than your way because it is our way.” (2) Americans are optimistic and possess a can-do attitude that has fashioned unparalleled progress. (3) Americans are problem solvers and their capacity for renewal proves that change is possible. (4) Finally, they say that America does not want to run the world—trade with it and travel in it, yes—but not rule it. Their conclusion is that America is an empire, but a reluctant one.
In his historical analysis of religion in America, Andrew M. Manis observed that when America and particularly the South turned inward to think about “the American dilemma” of race, the South became a battlefield of conflicting civil and religious faiths. In Southern Civil Religion in Conflict, Manis points out that during the 1950s and 1960s, the growing civil rights movement, calling on the nation to “live out the true meaning of its creed,” revealed within the South two separate civic doctrines—one based on freedom by law and equality under God; the other, finding in the Constitution a guarantee of individual rights and in the Bible a divine sanction of segregation. During the second half of the 20th century, this conflict became perceptible as many African-Americans returned to their Muslim roots and others, to even earlier expressions of faith found in their African heritage. Among those African-Americans defining themselves religiously in relation to the great religions of the Mideast, some have looked to Judaism rather than Christianity or Islam. A number of movements have emerged, some ambiguously related to both Christianity and Judaism that have identified African-Americans as the true descendants of the ancient Hebrews.
Well before Martin Luther King, Jr. made Gandhian nonviolence a central feature of the civil rights movement, there was serious African-American interest in Gandhi and his teachings. Father Divine’s Peace Mission Movement, a powerful religious force in urban black America in the second quarter of the twentieth century, drew on “harmonial” religious currents in American religion which had roots in eastern faiths. Also, it has been estimated that about one-fourth the membership of the Soka Gakkai International–USA, the American offshoot of a Japanese Buddhist movement, is African-American.
The religion of African-Americans has always been a source of conflict in America, especially the American south. Albert J. Raboteau, in his study of African-American Religion observed that of all American stories, the African-American Religious narrative, which includes fourteen percent of the nation’s population, is a unique blend of cultures and continents. He called attention to both the cultural diversity of the African continent from which the slaves were taken and to the varied points of view defining the white, at times religious, slave owners. He described how Africans were inspired to reject a theology of white superiority, while they simultaneously incorporated religious rituals such as the ring shout, rhythmic patterns of musical and oratorical cadence, and the identification of Christian Saints with regional gods of rain or war. He mentioned that while one might assume that the white response to this religious expression would be universal in its condemnation and repression, there was instead distinct ambivalence and differences. In April 2008, this response showed some changes in reaction to remarks made by presidential candidate Barack Obama’s minister, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
Political Involvement. In contemporary America, politicians have used religious conflict to promote their personal and party ideals as they have continued to recognize that religion provides a means for social control and for promoting certain “conservative” agendas. This overt mingling of politics and religion has compounded the convulsions within religious communities and between divergent religions. From putting “In God We Trust” on coins in the 1950s, to the League of Conservative Voters, the Christian Coalition, Moral Majority, the 700 Hundred Club, and to the faith-based initiatives of 21st century political campaigns, religion has been and is being used for political purposes.
Another issue is that of school prayer, which illustrates the intermingling of politics and religion. School prayer was a regular part of the school day until 1962 when the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional (Engel v. Vitale). Justice Hugo Black, entrusted with writing the Court’s opinion provided the following rationale for the decision. He wrote that the union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion. He said that the Establishment clause of the First Amendment expressed a basic Constitutional principle that religion is “too sacred” to be perverted by the civil government. The intent of “no establishment” is separation of church and state, however, the “free exercise” clause provides a privileged status for religion. Justice Black had earlier commented that a state or the Federal Government could not set up a church; pass laws to aid any religion, or force a person to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. He concluded that “the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect ‘a wall of separation between church and state’.”
The Supreme Court has also noted that this wall of separation between church and state has never been so tall as to prevent the accommodation of religion by the federal government and state governments. Section 1201 – an amendment to – H.R. 1501, The Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 1999, reads “…The power to display the Ten Commandments on or within property owned or administered by the several States or political subdivisions thereof is hereby declared to be among the powers reserved to the States respectively.” The “wall” of separation between church and state seems to have been bridged, if not crossed, at this point. Representative Robert Aderholt of Alabama wrote this amendment. He reasoned that posting the Ten Commandments in public schools (as “political subdivisions thereof”) would help prevent acts of violence like the Columbine High School shooting, and, in general, promote the ethical/civil character of youth.
Although the political thrust of conservative theology is a unifying force, such a political use of religion is also a cause of much religious and political dysfunction in the United States. Differences in religious beliefs have led to discrimination, political upheaval, and even to justifying war on those who are not of the same faith. In 2001, the terrorists’ acts of September 11 had a religious, as well as a political cause. Other issues such as abortion, capital punishment, stem cell research, and gay marriage are thought of as not only political issues, but religious issues as well. In the case of abortion, the last quarter of the 20th century was burdened with many acts of violence at abortion clinics, violence in the name of religion. One of the knotted features of mixing politics and religion has been the use of violence in the name of God as a cure-all for practices thought to be unethical and un-Christian.
Religion as a Social Institution. From a sociological perspective, the church is not only a religious institution, but also a social institution which interacts with and influences other social institutions in society; namely, the family, education, and politics. During the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, both African-American and white Christian churches organized to combat racial inequality. During this time, some churches stood against the increased concentration of wealth and power in America. Peace churches (the Brethren) vigorously opposed the arms race and the Vietnam War. In 1985, The Universal House of Justice, the supreme governing body of the Baha’i Faith, published a statement “to the peoples of the world,” proclaiming “the promise of world peace.” Although the Baha’i Faith believes that humankind has evolved to a stage of peace, they also claim, that large numbers of people believe that religion is irrelevant to the modern world. In their view, man made ideologies, designed to save society from the evils, is the source of much human conflict.
Evangelical Protestants have also opposed the Supreme Court’s ruling against prayer in public schools. Catholics and evangelicals have found themselves on the same side of the pro-life movement against abortion. These prophetic stands—both left and right—have precipitated prolonged debates, volatile rallies, political battles, and even violence between opposing forces. A mark of the resurgence of the evangelical movement has been the popularity of the book The Purpose Driven Life, which author and pastor Rick Warren calls “A groundbreaking manifesto on the meaning of life,” and has sold over 20.5 million copies in the United States alone, and can be read in twenty-eight different languages.
The existence of conflict in the interaction of society’s major institutions means that religion and politics are changing in America. New churches—some as small storefront congregations and others as large community-based and innovative groups—have been formed to fulfill important personal functions that traditional religions are no longer fulfilling as new human needs have emerged. New, religion-oriented educational institutions have been developed and are attracting a K-12 student body from families who desire their children to be educated in schools that profess both an academic and religious purpose. And these congregations are drawn from across the body of different denominations and from the Catholic Church.
Moral education with an emphasis on character and civility and with an unspoken foundation in the Christian religion is also on the rise. Approximately 12 percent of American children are being educated in private schools, 80 percent of which are of some religious affiliation. Also, approximately 630,000 children are being educated through home-schooling. A 1992 Gallup poll showed that 70 percent of Americans support choice in education, and that Christian parents “have been the vanguard of the educational choice and parental rights movement.” These figures document a culture- or values-shift in America, and the public schools has been one of the battlegrounds.
A New Paradigm: Religious Economy
A new paradigm has emerged among sociologists to shed light on the growth of religion in the 20th and 21st centuries. For most of the 20th century, secularization theory (“secularization” refers to the process of the separation of state and church and in most of the Western world there has been at least sufficient separation of church and state that people are capable both of living their lives apart from direct interference on the part of religion and may choose among various religions without suffering civil disabilities) was the dominant theoretical view of religion in the modern world. In spite of the appearance of overwhelming evidence for the secularization thesis, since 1975, there is evidence that challenges this taken-for-granted position. This evidence is both historical and contemporary. To date, much of the evidence is limited to North America, but there is growing documentation from around the globe to support the challenge to secularization theory. The new paradigm, which is a theory of religious economy, does not deny that secularization is a powerful force in the modern world but argues that secularization theory does not adequately explain the increase in religious affiliation, especially in the United States.
In 1993, Stephen Warner pointed to the proportion of the population enrolled in churches that grew hugely throughout the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. This was also a time of rapid secularization and modernization. Scholars of the new paradigm attribute the growth of religious affiliation in the U.S. to the disestablishment clause of the Constitution. Sociologists have concluded that by radically separating church and state, religious pluralism has been and is being encouraged; the United States Constitution guarantees pluralism.
Today, the United States has the largest number of religious groups in the world. The largest, most comprehensive surveys on religious identification were done by sociologists Barry A. Kosmin and Seymour P. Lachman and associates at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. Their first major study was done in 1990: the National Survey of Religious Identification (NSRI). This scientific nationwide survey of 113,000 Americans asked about religious preference, along with other questions. They followed this up, with even more sophisticated methodology and more questions, with the American Religious Identity Survey (ARIS) conducted in 2001, with a sample size of 50,000 Americans. The following table comes from the NSRI and ARIS data:
Top Twenty Religions in the United States, 2001
(Self-identification, ARIS)
RELIGION 1990 Est. 2001 Est. % of U. S. Pop., % Change
Adult Pop. Adult Pop. 2000 1990 – 2000
Christianity 151,225,000 159,030,000 76.5% +5%
Secular 13,116,000 27,539,000 13.2% +110%
Judaism 3,137,000 2,831,000 1.3% -10%
Islam 527,000 1,104,000 0.5% +109%
Buddhism 401,000 1,082,000 0.5% +170%
Agnostic 1,186,000 991,000 0.5% -16% Atheist 902,000 0.4%
Hinduism 227,000 766,000 0.4% +237%
Unitarian Universalist 502,000 629,000 0.3% +25%
Wiccan/Pagan/Druid 307,000 0.1%
Spiritualist 116,000
Native American 47,000 103,000 +119%
Baha’i 28,000 84,000 +200% New Age 20,000 68,000 +240%
Sikhism 13,000 57,000 +338%
Scientology 45,000 55,000 +22%
Humanist 29,000 49,000 +69%
Deist 6,000 49,000 +717%
Taoist 23,000 40,000 +74%
Eckankar 18,000 26,000 +44%
Although the United States Constitution may insist on a separation of church and state and that in America there is a right to religious expression, no religion is guaranteed favored governmental dominance. This does not mean that religion is not involved in the political institutions that govern American society. Constitutionally, religion and government are separated; that is, in America, there can be no state-run religious institutions. Given this fact, there remains some doubt that religion and politics can ever be separated. The conflicts over abortion, and the other issues mentioned above, alerts one to the relationship of religious and politics. In politics, at least, religion has become a major source of political conflict. As theologically conservative Christians denounce the threat of “secular humanism” in the United States, as the Catholic Church struggles with pedophilic priests, and as Muslims and conservative Christians struggle with issues of tolerance and civility, religious conflict is a persistent issue that dominates American life and religious practice. As a result, more and more the social-moral agenda of education and government is correlated with a theological orientation.
Different interpretations of religious conflict point to different causes. Robert Wuthnow has written that religious conservatives and liberals disagree not only about religion but also about the role of government in public life. He says that many of the most hotly debated issues of the past several decades (e.g., civil rights, women’s rights, homosexual rights, military and social spending, abortion, pornography, school prayer, and the teaching of creationism) arise out of differences rooted ultimately in their two ways of viewing God and the world. The first is a conservative public theology that champions strong traditional morality, strong national defenses and a heady brew of free enterprise. It claims that its authority comes from a literal interpretation of the Bible and has the goal of returning America to biblical ideals “on which it was founded.” The opposing view is a liberal public theology and puts forward a more relativistic code of personal morality, a cooperative multilateral spirit in foreign relations, and strong government initiatives capable of infusing norms of social justice into the capitalist mind. The liberal view is also biblically oriented, but projects its view as cultural wisdom rather than divine revelation.
Sociologist Stephen R. Warner provides a different analysis. Warner’s research suggests that it is theology, not politics that unites conservatives, and that their political views are diverse and vary in much the same ways as those of the general public. He also perceives religious liberals as united not by religious doctrine but by an optimistic and socially responsible attitude. He calls this a “worldly morality.” The research provided by both of these scholars continues to inform and make available insights about religious differences, conflicts, and politic-religious involvement. Religious scholars and socio-theorists understand that both theology and politics are forces that unite and divide Americans on an array of issues. These forces exist as causes of conflict inside and outside the sphere of religious organizations.
Historical Background: America’s National Identity
Samuel P. Huntington, in his 2004 book, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity, places religious conflict in the United States in the larger context of changes occurring “in the salience and substance of American national identity.” He makes the observation that “salience,” or projection, is the importance that Americans ascribe to their national identity compared to their many other identities, and “substance” conveys what Americans believe they have in common and distinguishes them from other nations and cultures. With reference to “substance,” Huntington says that race and ethnicity have largely been eliminated as Americans are accustomed to seeing their country as a multiethnic, multiracial society. He notes that this isn’t the way it has always been nor is it the way might continue. For example, since the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01, many Americans have begun to re-emphasized race and ethnicity in an effort to tighten their conception of what it means to be an American. One of these is stressing that “real” Americans adhere to Christian beliefs and values.
By 1950, the dominant theme in American culture was “White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant,” or WASP. The Anglo-Protestant culture, says Huntington, has been central to American identity and was crucial in defining the American Creed. The first American Creed was articulated by Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These are still magic words in American history; words that set the tone for what some have called “American values.” For many, to question them is to commit some combination of sacrilege and treason. Actually, they are not quite the words Jefferson first composed in June of 1776. His original draft, the pure Jeffersonian version of the message, before editorial changes were made by the Continental Congress, makes it even clearer that Jefferson intended to express an essentially moral or spiritual vision. He writes, “We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness.”
The American Creed makes two monumental claims, one explicit and the other implicit. The explicit claim is that the individual is the sovereign unit in society. His natural state is freedom and equality with all other individuals. This is the natural order of things. All restrictions on this natural order are illegal and immoral transgressions, violations of what God intended. The implicit claim is that the removal of those artificial and arbitrary restraints on individual freedom will release unprecedented amounts of energy into the world. The liberated individual will, in effect, interact with his fellows in a harmonious scheme that recovers the natural order and allows for the fullest realization of human potential. Jefferson’s optimism was perhaps itself an unrealistic judgment at the time as the evolution of democracy (and liberation) brought with it conflict and an intermingling of religion and government in almost every part of the American republic.
In 1918, another, broader American creed was written as a result of a nationwide contest. It said, “I believe in the United States of America as a Government of the People, by the People, for the People; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; A democracy in a republic, a sovereign Nation of many Sovereign States; a perfect Union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of Freedom, Equality, Justice, and Humanity for which American Patriots sacrificed their Lives and Fortunes. I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to Love it; to Support its Constitution; to obey its laws; to Respect its Flag; and to defend it against all enemies.” This version of the American Creed was intended to be a brief summary of the American political faith founded upon documents and events fundamental in American history and tradition.
The American Creed. For more than three centuries, the Anglo-Protestant culture—in its many variant forms—has been central to the American Creed and subsequent American identity. It is what Americans believe they have in common and what distinguishes them from other people. Understandably, the American Creed, like the Constitution itself, has been a fluid concept adapting itself to cultural changes and major events in American life. For this reason its interpretation and importance remain at the center of conflict in American society. Also, since the passing of the 1965 Immigration Law, the salience and substance of American culture have been and are being embattled on both the political and religious fronts. A new wave of immigrants from Latin America and Asia, the popularity of multiculturalism and diversity, the spread of Spanish as the second American language, the Hispanization trends in American society, the assertion of group identities based on race, ethnicity, and gender, the impact of diasporas and their homeland governments, and the growing commitment of community and government leaders to cosmopolitan and transnational identities continue to challenge traditional American values.
In 1986, Peter L. Berger observed that the results of the U.S. Constitution amendment, “that there will be no law establishing a particular religion,” created not only religious pluralism but also, moral pluralism in the United States. He concluded that this amendment resulted in religious conflict in America because religious pluralism has perhaps entailed political efforts to enforce particular moral beliefs, many with religious implications. Berger pointed to three religio-political controversies that defined the second half of the 20th century: (1) the civil rights movement, (2) the antiwar (Vietnam War) movement with its various Left-leaning offshoots, and (3) what he calls the “bourgeois insurgency” with the anti-abortion movement at its core.
With reference to the “bourgeois insurgency,” there is data to support the fact that evangelicals are moving from the lower economic class in American society and away from what sociologists have called society’s “economic margins.” Young Americans who are driving this trend are generally not products of a “religious ghetto” or fundamentalists; rather, they are the “new faithful” who have been exposed at every turn to America’s broader, pluralistic culture. The new faithful tend to be highly educated and worldly-wise and can be found in the most diverse cities and at some of the most demanding secular colleges. Many of the new faithful tend to be campus leaders and are intellectually serious. Berger finds that all three of the movements which he mentioned are characterized by a “moral fervor sustained by religious certitude.”
A Wall of Separation. Key legal and political decisions of the past twenty-five years reveal these religious conflicts in action. For example, in 2002, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco decided by a 2-to-1 vote that the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance were a violation of the separation of church and state. The judges said that these words were an endorsement of religion and a profession of religious belief in monotheism. Although consistent with the words of Jefferson, the 1918 American Creed, and with the 1954 act of Congress that added them to the Pledge in 2002, they were ruled unconstitutional with the stipulation that public school teachers, as state employees, could not recite them in class.
The Supreme Court’s decision in this case stimulated vigorous controversy on an issue central to America’s identity. Supporters of the decision agreed that the United States is a secular country, that the First Amendment prohibits governmental rhetorical and material support for religion, and that American citizens should be able to pledge allegiance to their country without affirming a belief in God. Some disagree, affirming the view that America is fundamentally a religious country with a secular government. This was Huntington’s thesis. He notes that atheists continue to be “outsiders” in the American community. Although they do not have to recite the Pledge or engage in any religious practice of which they disapprove, they do not have the right to impose their atheism on others.
An interesting corollary of this debate is whether the “separation of church and state,” was meant to establish a government free from religious domination or to establish freedom for religion anywhere and in any place in the United States. This debate continues to stimulate questions about America’s identity, of whether America is a religious state with a secular government or vice versa. Huntington’s interpretation is clear, but it is not universally accepted, that “the framers of the American Constitution prohibited an established national church in order to limit the power of government and to protect and strengthen religion.”
James Chester Antieau, Arthur T. Downey and Edward C. Roberts in Freedom from Federal Establishment, have recommended caution when interpreting the intentions of the persons responsible for the First Amendment. Some social theorists have taken note of statements made by separationists who believe that the founders intended to separate church and state by depriving the state of its power to either aid or hinder religion, and the words of accomodationists, who believe that the state retains that power and so is constitutionally able to advance religion as a moral good.
Religious Conflict as a Present Reality
Historians of American religious history believe that current religious conflict in America was perhaps unforeseen by our nation’s founders or maybe something they were willing to let future generations workout. The current reality is that since 1950, religious conflict has initiated a cultural shift in American society—a shift in the way America is defined and will be defined in the future. Since 1950, the historical context of religious conflict has taken two basic forms: conflict within religious groups, which may be defined as theological conflict or conflict about religious beliefs particular to one religious group or another, and conflict between religious groups (people of faith) and other social or government institutions. The issue of the separation of church and state may itself be considered an over-arching category of religious conflict that is both belief-oriented and socio-political. Issues such as prayer in public/government buildings and events, posting the Ten Commandments and other religious paraphernalia in government buildings and in state schools and colleges, and references to God in the Pledge of Allegiance or on money are examples of such issues.
States’ Rights and the First Amendment. Social theories, politicians, and legal experts have made it clear that the men who drafted the First Amendment not only did not have in mind what later Constitutional scholars have said they meant, but different ones among them had quite different things in mind. They reasoned that the “establishment” clause and the “free-exercise” clause implied a balanced theory of church-state relations. The overriding issue was to make sure that the new national government and its institutions would not usurp the rights and powers won in several states. Their decision has been interpreted by some as more politically motivated by issues of states’ rights issues than theological or belief issues.
Thomas Curry, a Constitutional historian, interprets the passage of the First Amendment as a symbolic act, a declaration for the future, guaranteeing the religious liberty won by the revolutionary states. Curry’s understanding of these matters is that the colonies were both sectarian and varied in their religious beliefs, from the Puritans that dominated New England, although with a sharp divergence between theocratic Massachusetts and latitudinarian Rhode Island. There was Virginia and the Carolinas with their Anglican establishment, and Pennsylvania, which was first dominated by Catholic libertarianism and then by Quaker ideology. New York was led by a tradition of Dutch mercantilism and demonstrated that religious liberty could be the fruit as much of commercial pragmatism as of lofty ideas. One conclusion reached by historians is that one of the miracles of American history is that the representatives of these divergent political philosophies could agree on anything. Agreement on their interpretation of the First Amendment was one of their less miraculous concurrences. Curry concludes that America’s founders were mainly united in what they were against.
Evangelical Rejuvenation. Theodore Caplow’s research, which spans a broad range from abstract social geometry (Two Against One: Coalitions in Trials) to the study of armed conflict (Systems of War and Peace), focuses mainly on social change. Caplow’s American Social Trends, published in 1991, examined changes in the family, education, work, religion, leisure and government between 1960 and 1990, together with trends regarding money, sex, health, intoxication, and social conflict. He was senior author of Recent Social Trends in the United States 1960-1990, a reference book published in the same year, and of The First Measured Century, an inventory and interpretation of American social trends from 1900 to 2000 that was published in 2001.
The Social Change Report, a quarterly newsletter which Caplow edits, is distributed to more than six thousand opinion-leaders in North America and Europe and shows that the majority of Americans are as furiously religious as ever and probably more religious than they were in the 19th century. The upswing of church membership, the report states, finds its most dramatic expression in the upsurge of evangelicalism in its various forms. With the Jimmy Carter campaign for the Presidency in the mid-1970’s Caplow finds a convenient marker when traditional religious and moral beliefs erupted into the center of public life. Marked for death in the middle 1960’s and early 1970’s by the rise of secular humanism and the emphasis among the “beat” culture on Eastern religions, evangelical Christianity came soaring back into predominance and became mobilized in the service of Right-of-Center political causes.
Caplow also interprets evangelical rejuvenation as perhaps the most spectacular expression of the hidden religiosity of the American people. Evangelicalism has manifested itself everywhere and finds support in both the Protestant and Catholic communities of faith and in Judaism. Both Caplow and Berger conclude that, for the most part, Americans are not secular atheists. Sociologists have concluded that secularization in America is class-specific, and characterized by a new class of people who derive their livelihood from the production and distribution of symbolic knowledge. They observe that the evangelical reawakening may be understood, in part, as a rebellion of other groups against the culture of the secularized New Class, and especially against the coercive imposition of that culture on children in the public schools. Therefore, it makes sense then that education has been one of the major battlefields in this conflict, with attention focused on such issues as prayer in the public schools, posting the Ten Commandments in schools, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, and making Bible reading an important part of the moral education of children.
This trend may be called “counter-secularization” and is observed, not only in America, but also in many parts of the world, especially in Muslim societies. Sociologists point out that in America the “ironic fact” is that a climate of tolerance and relativism is constantly being disturbed by “eruptions of unbridled fanaticism” with their absolute claims, non-negotiable demands, and a determination to pursue their objectives by any means necessary. But not all evangelicals or conservatives are disruptive or fanatical. Many of today’s young adults are adopting the teachings and traditions of an orthodox Christian faith. More and more, private religious experiences are evolving into public declarations of faith. There is, some say, an ill-defined longing for God evolving in American life. Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago with its multiple church locations and the thousands who attend its services each week, and Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California with its 16,000 members are a testimony to this spiritual search. In Atlanta, Georgia and outside its perimeter is the growing population of North Point Community Church now approaching 20,000 members and attracting middle and upper middle class Georgians to its contemporary, Broadway type Sunday productions and performances.
2004 Presidential Election. American churches have been involved in public policy debates, from abolition to temperance to civil rights. In 2004, when religious groups began to mobilize for the presidential election, the Southern Baptist Convention – the nation’s largest Protestant denomination – and the Promise Keepers men’s spiritual renewal movement began their first major voter registration and turnout drives. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said, “To be uninformed or to not be involved in the process is to be irresponsible and to become part of the problem rather than part of the solution.”
The National Council of Churches, an organization that represents mainline Christian denominations, mounted numerous rallies in its first registration and turnout effort, called “Let Justice Roll.” Assisted by the Center for Community Change, their goal was to keep the issue of ending poverty before the American people. Associated Press religion writer Richard N. Ostling observed that 2004 witnessed unprecedented outreach by the Republican campaigns to voters who regularly worship at their church or synagogue. In 2000, an exit poll done for The Associated Press and other news organizations showed that George W. Bush beat Al Gore by more than 15 percentage points among white voters who attended church weekly or more.
Although debates over gay marriage and abortion have kept religious groups involved in the political process, Steven Waldman, editor of the website Beliefnet, saw a broader issue at play in the 2004 political process. He believes that keeping the Republican Party in power is a major battle in the larger culture war between religious conservatives and those who advocate a “constitutional” separation of church and state. This controversy centered on certain key moral issues. Thus, the voter registration sponsored by Southern Baptist not only focused on the family media ministry, but named its drive to register voters the “I Vote Values” drive.
Another religious group with the goal of fighting poverty, named their voter registration drive “Call to Renewal.” Call to Renewal is a national network of churches, faith-based organizations, and individuals working to overcome poverty in America. Through local and national partnerships with groups from across the theological and political spectrum, they have convened a broad table of Christians focused on anti-poverty efforts. Their purpose is to influence local and national public policies and priorities, while growing and developing a movement of Christians committed to overcoming poverty. Their stated purpose was to make poverty a religious and electoral issue in the 2004 elections. They organized a six-state and 12-city tour in order to increase awareness about the needs of people living in poverty and inspire, encourage, motivate and engage them in a renewed commitment to seek justice.
The get out the vote campaign in 2004 was merely the tip of religion’s involvement in politics. Evangelicals created Rock the Vote campaign which registered over 50,000 voters. Bishop T. D. James of The Potter’s House in Dallas is an example of African Americans getting involved in the election through their churches. Among Catholics, Priests for Life is an anti-abortion network which, in 2004, addressed the issue of abortion, spending one million dollars on newspaper ads, training 1,000 get-out-the-vote volunteers, and faxing all United States parishes, urging Roman Catholic clergy to preach about the election. The Reverend Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who monitors religious politicking, remarked that the registration drives were inherently partisan. Also, Jerry Jones of the nonreligious Center for Community Change Voting Project observed that there were really no equals to the faith-based drives for votes in the political election of 2004.
Conflicts within Religious Groups. Conflicts within religious groups are not as pronounced politically in American society as conflicts between religious groups and other social and government agencies, but are culturally important nonetheless. Between 1950 and 2001, major denominations tended to return to or to adopt more traditional (conservative) religious practices. Theodore Caplow and his research associates found that with respect to doctrine or belief, there is little difference between Protestant denominations. The largest change during the last half of the 20th century has been between sacramental and evangelical denominations. Caplow admits that this distinction is not absolute and recognizes a charismatic revival among Catholics, Episcopalians, and Lutherans. He also notes that some Methodist services today have a more sacramental tone.
In American Social Trends, Caplow revealed that evangelicals are more reactionary than mainline churches. He concluded that the effects of the liberal drift in the mainline churches and the conservative countercurrent among Evangelicals and Fundamentalists have stimulated political participation by churches and church-related organizations. Caplow noted that at both extremes of the liberal-conservative spectrum in religion linkages are being developed between conservative and liberal political groups that have the potential for changing the religious and political landscape of American life. One example of the conservative countercurrent is the actions of Southern Baptists. From the late 1970s forward, Southern Baptists came to view themselves as fundamentalists and moderates (those against the fundamentalists). Doctrinally they were not terribly different, but the differences were enough to cause a great conflict that even today threatens to cause a schism that would divide the largest Protestant denomination in the United States into two groups. The biggest issue on which the two sides differed is biblical authority. Both sides view the Bible as the central authority in one’s life but the fundamentalists believe the history and religious teachings of the Bible to be without error, while the moderates believe only the religious truths of the Bible to be without error. This controversy continues to occupy the denomination’s attention in the 21st century.
Another intra-religious battle has also taken place among Catholics and the revelation of child molestation by a considerable number of Catholic priests and a subsequent cover up by higher-ups among the Catholic clergy in America. The Boston Globe reported in 2003 that when abuse cases became public in the early 1990s, and again in January 2002 when the Globe revealed the extent of Rev. John Geoghan’s abusive behavior, “Cardinal Bernard F. Law characterized these as isolated incidents.” When more alleged victims came forward, it became clear that clergy abuse was a systemic problem in the Boston Archdiocese, involving scores of priests and hundreds of victims across the metropolitan area.
In an elaborate culture of secrecy, deception, and intimidation, the Catholic Church kept tales of abuse away from the public. Victims who came forward with abuse claims were ignored or paid off, while accused priests were quietly transferred from parish to parish or sent for brief periods of psychological counseling. Despite reports of child rape and other criminal behavior by clergymen, church leaders made no apparent effort to inform law enforcement authorities.
By the end of 2002, some 1,200 priests had been accused of abuse nationwide, according to a study by The New York Times. Over the course of that year, five U.S. prelates resigned in connection with sex scandals, including Boston’s Cardinal Law – joining four others who had resigned in previous years. As word of the sexual abuses spread, bishops in many other countries were forced to resign. The significance of this problem is illustrated by the April 2008 visit to America by the Pope and is subsequent prayer on behalf of the victims of this abuse and his vow to change the culture that precipitate it.
The sexual scandal in the Catholic Church and the split among Southern Baptists are just two of the intra-religious battles that will be chronicled in the next section of this book. With the death of Pope John Paul in the spring of 2005, another controversy is beginning to seethe between America Catholics and the more conservative Catholics represented by John Paul. Issues such as homosexuality, marriage of Catholic priests, a larger role in church affairs for the laity – especially women – and birth control are at the forefront of this potential clash.
Cultural War
James Davidson Hunter’s Cultural War, The Struggle to Define America, which was published in 1991, to some extent has been brought up-to-date by Dale McConkey in his “Whither Hunter’s culture War? Shifts in Evangelical Morality, 1988-1998 – Statistical Data Included.” The purpose of McConkey’s paper is to examine both the current state of the culture war and its precipitating trends over the past decade. He asks the question whether evangelicals have been softening their traditionalist moral positions on issues like women’s roles, homosexuality, nonmarital sexuality, birth control, abortion, suicide, and euthanasia. In his lengthy and comprehensive report, McConkey addresses three fundamental questions: (1) Are evangelicals leaving the socioeconomic margins of society? (2) Is evangelical morality becoming more liberal? and (3) Is the culture war dissipating?
For his analysis and conclusions, McConkey utilized data from the 1988 and 1998 General Social Surveys, which show that evangelicals are capitulating on some – though not all – arenas of moral conflict, and says, that “the cultural tension between evangelicals and religious progressives remains strong.” He also explains that “evangelicals will likely continue to experience a cultural tension with the larger culture, but this tension is not likely to result in anything resembling warfare.”
Subcultural Identity Theory. Focusing on religion, the subcultural identity theory maintains that religion survives and can thrive in a pluralistic, modern society by embedding itself in subcultures that offer satisfying, morally orienting collective identities which provide adherents meaning and belonging. The theory also concludes that those religious groups will be relatively stronger which better possess and employ the cultural tools needed to create both clear distinction from and significant engagement and tension with other relevant outgroups, short of becoming genuinely countercultural.
Hunter also supports this thesis. His book, Culture Wars is an attempt to understand and appreciate the gravity of the religious realignment that has occurred in postwar America. It is Hunter who views the tensions among religions conservatives and religious liberals as both deeper and more significant than many have been led to believe. Hunter believes that a cultural schism has now divided each major faith tradition and has bifurcated the United States into two camps. On one side of the divide are the orthodox, those who are committed to “an external, definable, and transcendent authority.” Evangelical Christians are the dominant group in this camp, though traditional Catholics, orthodox and conservative Jews, and political allies like the Christian Coalition and the National Right to Life Committee would also be included. On the other side of the battlefield are the progressivists – more often than not called “liberals” – who share the tendency to resymbolize historic faiths according to the prevailing assumptions of contemporary life. These would include most of the mainline churches that comprise the World Council of Churches, as well as secular organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, People for the American Way, and the National Organization of Women.
In his effort to understand this religious bifurcation, Neal Christopherson explores the relationship between religion and secular culture, which he says has often been one filled with tension. Christopherson focuses on religious literature and gender roles and utilizes subgroup identity theory for understanding the tensions and divisions often expressed in youth literature. His point is that among conservative Protestants there is a growing tension between resisting secular culture, and accommodating certain aspects of faith to secular ideals. As a sociologist, Christopherson observes that the actions of religious groups are often shaped by their relationship and interaction with other social structures, and with the dominant secular culture. He notes that this relationship has created a dilemma for conservative Protestants. Some want to resist modern secular culture and its many sinful ways, but others understand the necessity of adapting to modern cultural and understanding the values of others. He says that religious groups like evangelicals will be stronger if they find an “a complex balance of accommodation and resistance.”
Tensions and Conflicts. The tensions and conflicts within religion and between religious groups and secular organizations are an ongoing reality. Florida preacher Reverend James Kennedy, of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church and the Coral Ridge Hour television program, at a national conference on “Reclaiming America for Christ” said, in 1998, that the time has come to reclaim America for Christ. The feeling at this conference was that America will self-destruct if laws in the United States laws have no correlation with the laws of the Creator. The only hope, according to the message of the conference, is to make America righteous again by reclaiming it for Christ through grassroots Christian activism.
While many will agree with Kennedy’s words, Christian Smith has asked, “To what extent do the views and commitments of people like James Kennedy and his conference participants actually represent those of the tens of millions of ordinary American evangelicals?” and “Are most evangelicals really committed to defending an exclusively Christian America?” and “Are American evangelicals in fact hostile to religious and cultural pluralism?” and finally, “How do most evangelicals think about America’s past and envision its future when it comes to issues of national cultural identity and moral diversity?”
To answer these questions, Smith conducted more than two hundred personal interviews with evangelicals on the subject of “Christian America.” He reveals a surprisingly diverse range of perspectives on the matter. He found that evangelicals are not unanimous that America was once a Christian nation and that about 30 percent were uncertain whether American was ever a Christian nation. Altogether, about 40 percent of those interviewed either denied or somewhat doubted the idea that America was once a Christian nation. Smith was quick to point out that many of them answered otherwise on the Religious Identity and Influence telephone survey.
Smith concluded that a significant minority of evangelicals does not possess a strong image of a Christian American past. For this reason, young people have no model of what needs to be “reclaimed” by the Christian Right. Smith says that Kennedy’s exhortation to “reclaim America for Christ” does not make much sense. Yet, there are a few evangelicals who believe that America should definitely not be a Christian nation in the sense that the Christian Right often uses the term. Despite varying opinions, Smith found that the majority of those interviewed did believe that America was once a Christian nation, and many of them felt that America still should be a Christian nation.
Counter Opinions. The anomalies and exceptions that Smith found in his survey are important because they point out the counter-opinions for every conventional view. For example, evangelicals are generally opposed to the gay and lesbian rights movements, yet some interviewees took a different view admitting that there needs to be a certain amount of tolerance and advocating a live-and-let-live attitude. Still, some were more accepting of human sexual differences saying that its not their place to judge a person and that homosexuality is neither right or wrong.
American evangelicals are also strong for their pro-Life views on abortion, yet, here to, there were contrary opinions. Some respondents redefined child protection, using a utilitarian calculus of suffering, in order to justify some abortions, but most of the pro-Choice evangelical minority cited belief in individual freedom to make moral choices and the futility of forcing morality on those who disagree with them. Most of the evangelicals, says Smith, fall on the conservative side of the political spectrum and support the Republican Party, but not all. Evangelicals also think that liberals and secularists are the people who most oppose Christianity and Christian moral causes. At the same time, most evangelicals endorse American capitalism, although some see capitalism at the root of moral evils in society.
Smith also found that evangelicals are generally civil and non-violent in their political and religious disagreements with liberals. He found that they have simply absorbed a fair amount of liberal American tolerance, and embraced many central features of the dominant American political culture. This includes respect for individual autonomy and tolerance of differences—even as they criticize and resist these traits in other ways.
Smith also says that the anti-establishment, decentralized, voluntaristic, fragmented, and individualistic culture that has permeated most sectors of the broad American evangelical church tradition for nearly two centuries has influenced the beliefs and attitudes of many evangelicals. Many feel that the ancient traditions of Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism are extraneous and irrelevant to American evangelicalism. The background of many contemporary evangelicals lies outside of the religio-political establishment in America. Most are Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, Restorationists, Holiness Christians, Free Church believers, and members of smaller Presbyterian and Lutheran denominations. Many attend independent and nondenominational churches – churches that do not have “First” in their names. Taken together, he found that most evangelicals believe that America has lost its religious, collective identity—one they seek to reclaim.
Smith indicates that explaining the views of ordinary evangelicals—as opposed to a handful of outspoken evangelical elites—in all of their depth—instead of compressed and oversimplified in a rudimentary answer categories on surveys—“reveals a diversity and complexity that contradicts conventional wisdom about evangelicals.” He adds the point that American evangelicals are disturbed by social and moral issues, as are the majority of other Americans, but few evangelicals actually subscribe to James Kennedy’s program of “reclaiming America for Christ” in the way their opponents fear. Finally, Smith does not believe that the idea of a Christian America will sustain a major Christian political movement that will somehow re-Christianize America.
Rise and Fall of the Cultural War. Paul Weyrich, a longtime conservative strategist and a founding influence on the Moral Majority, believes that there is no longer a moral majority in the United States and that religious conservatives have lost the culture war. Weyrich says that there may not be a moral majority as an organized movement any longer in the United States; on the other hand, he suggests that the culture war he speaks of and the culture war that James Davison Hunter wrote about may be merely a conflict among evangelical and non-evangelical elites carried out on a political stage for more than religious reasons, and not a war among ordinary evangelicals or progressives (liberals) in cities and towns across America. The same can be said for the battles within denominations about conservatives and moderates: these battles may have been more about power issues than religious issues.
Dale McConkey reviewed Hunter’s thesis and concluded that cultural-religious disputes are more often than not fought in the political arena. He theorizes that religion and politics have led a parallel and often interconnected path, inside the “faith” and outside, between the religious body and other social and political institutions. McConkey provides a brief history of conservative Christian politics to illuminate the current state of the culture war beginning in 1976 —what he calls the “Year of the Evangelical.” The essays which follow in this volume establish a historical path that defines the issues and controversies that these scholars pointed to and reveal this politico-religious intermingling.
McConkey’s views are important for understanding the interplay of religion and politics in contemporary America. He points out that the phrase “culture war” did not appear on either the political or academic scene until the late 1980s, and that its origins are much earlier, perhaps two decades or more. It was, he notes, a possible reaction to the moral relativism of the 1960s. Conservative Christians became involved in politics in the 1970s and participated in electing Southern Baptist and self-proclaimed evangelical Jimmy Carter to the presidency. Thus, Time magazine declared 1976 the “Year of the Evangelical.”
The Moral Majority and Christian Coalition. By the 1980s, religious conservatives were coming of age politically. They were known as the “New Christian Right” (NCR) and became a political force in such organizations as the Moral Majority, headed by Jerry Falwell. It is ironic that Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1979 in an effort to unseat the evangelical Jimmy Carter. Disillusioned by Carter’s presidency, the Moral Majority and a network of smaller NCR groups sided with Ronald Reagan. This led to an exodus of southern Democrats who then switched to the Republican Party. McConkey says that some may doubt this but Pat Robertson’s candidacy for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1988 put this issue to rest.
It was in the 1980s that the Moral Majority reached its peak, showed signs of decline, and by the end of the decade pulled up stakes and disbanded. Sexual and financial scandals did not help their cause (Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart) and poor showings by Pat Robertson sealed the deal. McConkey points out that the 1980s were the “age of discovery and disappointment” for the NCR, but 1988 began an “age of realism.” As soon as the Moral Majority folded, Pat Robertson formed the Christian Coalition, which found grassroots success in electing religious conservatives to local and statewide offices. The Christian Coalition is credited with strengthening the success of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” that helped Republicans secure control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994. Conservative Catholic Patrick Buchanan provided a more politically refined face to the NCR and introduced Hunter’s phrase “culture war” to the lexicon of American politics in his primetime address to the 1992 Republican National Convention. He stated, “There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a culture war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as the Cold War itself. …”
By 1999, the conservative evangelicals were already admitting defeat. Even with Reagan and Bush in Control of the White House for twelve years, little progress was made toward changing the cultural momentum in the United States. Paul Weyrich, the Free Congress Foundation president and longtime right-wing strategist commented in an open letter to conservatives on his web site in 1999 that he no longer believed that there is a moral majority in American or that a majority of Americans actually shares conservative, evangelical values. McConkey observed that this admission was nothing new in that “religious conservatives have often portrayed themselves as victimized minorities.” A decade earlier, Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian Coalition, said, “[W]e know that we are not a majority.” What was new about Weyrich’s plan was his suggestion that Christian conservatives return to “the separatism practiced by conservative Christians earlier in the 20th century.”
Evangelical Megashift. It is significant that Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson, Focus on the Family president James Dobson, and former Dobson associate and 2000 Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer quickly denounced Weyrich’s surrender. By 1998, the Christian Coalition was clearly absent during the 1998 midterm elections, and in 1999, they experienced considerable financial, legal, and administrative difficulties. McConkey concluded that the optimism of the NCR in 1988 had been replaced only a decade later with at best a questionable future.
Hunter called this softening or erosion of traditional, orthodox evangelicalism an “evangelical megashift.” By the end of the Clinton administration, at least, the New Conservative Right had become disorganized politically and theologically. Some said they were more open to the possibility of historic and scientific flaws in the Bible, though they hold firm on the historical accuracy of the New Testament narratives, thus revealing a theological shift in the conservative religious world view. Also, on moral issues like drinking, smoking, gambling, dancing, movie-going, and card-playing, evangelicals took more moderate positions. Politically, they are still more conservative than the rest of society, but Hunter’s research demonstrated that they were clearly more moderate and less activist than the leading spokesmen in the Religious right might have others believe.
The Tide Turns. On December 24, 2001, Dana Milbank reported in the Washington Post that Pat Robertson’s resignation as president of the Christian Coalition clearly confirmed that President George Bush was the new leader of the Christian Right. For the first time in American history, Milbank saw that the United States President was also the evangelical leader of the nation. Milbank provides several reasons for the adulation. First, religious conservatives have thought of Bush as one of their own since the presidential campaign, when he spoke during a debate of the guidance of Jesus. Second, key figures in the religious right such as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, Billy Graham and Franklin Graham have seen their political influence diminish, in part because they are no longer mobilized by their opposition to a president. Finally, Bush’s handling of the anti-terrorism campaign since September 11, 2001 has solidified his standing by painting him in stark terms as the leader in a fight of good against evil.
In 2004, Ralph Z. Hallow reported that many evangelicals were complaining that President Bush hasn’t been the evangelical leader they expected him to be. Robert H. Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute, speculated that many evangelical conservatives are upset with the President’s runaway budget and his failure to strongly condemn illegal homosexual marriage in California. A little known meeting with the religious right and President Bush was reported by The American Atheists web site and took place one month before the 2004 Presidential election. The Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report picked up the item for its daily dispatch. The 90-minute meeting was held to “assuage concerns that he (Bush) might be soft on abortion, homosexual rights, school choice, state-church separation and other issues.”
Thus, during the 2004 presidential election, the evangelical movement became solidly identified with the Republican Party. As the election approached, Guardian Newspapers reported that the Bush campaign was now calling in favors in the battleground states. Ralph Reed, formerly a central figure in the Christian Coalition movement, was recruited to coordinate its work in the southeast. It sent a mass email to evangelical pastors in Pennsylvania, asking to use their church halls for party organizing. And, according to the New York Times, he urged religious volunteers to turn church directories over to the campaign, distribute guides on political issues and persuade their pastors to hold voter registration drives, with deadlines for each task. Critics of the administration have complained that this new level of politicization violates the separation between church and state, and endangers the tax-exempt status of the churches.
The question is “Has the ‘evangelical megashift’ of 1987 begun to drift back into old and familiar territory?” ABC News reported that President Bush made the case for his plan to let religious groups compete for federal aid to a very sympathetic audience at the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. Bush said, “The days of discriminating against religious institutions simply because they are religious is over.”
Religious Diversity
Samuel Huntington explains that several scholars in the 1980s and 1990s advanced the idea that America is losing its Christian identity due to the spread of non-Christian religions. These scholars documented the growth of Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, and Buddhists in American society. With their growth, the idea of religious diversity has shattered the paradigm of America as an overwhelmingly Christian country with a small Jewish minority. Huntington also notes that some scholars have suggested that public holidays should be adjusted to accommodate this increasing religious diversity and that Easter and Thanksgiving should be replaced with a Muslim and Jewish holiday. But he does not believe that increases in the membership of some non-Christian religions have had any significant effect on America’s Christian identity. He says, “Americans are still a Christian people, as they have been throughout their history.”
Religious controversy in America did not begin in 1950. The concern of this book is the issues from that time forward, but religious controversy is nothing new. In 1927, the concern for understanding the issues and controversies of the day were widely shared, as demonstrated by H. H. Hemming and Doris Hemming’s “Translator’s Introduction” to Andre Siegfried’s America Comes of Age. They pointed in length to the first world war as the momentous occasion that brought about sudden and unexpected changes in American life, and then the great depression when America’s religious faith and political doctrines were put to the test.
World War II brought prosperity to America and with it, a deepening religious commitment; although Peter Berger documents that the mid-century rise in American church attendance probably had more to do with social status than with religious conversion. The silent majority was a product of military training and the Cold War – translated as “the organization man” – and transformed into “the corporate man,” but was on a collision course with more deeply rooted aspects of the American character: individuality, eccentricity, kinship, and autonomy. E. J. Dionne and Allen Carlson have noted that perhaps the central tragedy of the 1960s was the distortion of these authentic American traits by the political and cultural left.
Were the 1950s “a house of cards,” impressive on the surface, but fragile within? Did the yearning for stability after the turbulent years of World War II mask a growing unrest, an unrest that, as it continued to bubble up from the baseline of society, was extinguished by the church with support from other social institutions and the government? In Chapter 13 of The End of Ideology, Daniel Bell reviews the decades of the forties, fifties, and sixties and laments that dissent, questioning, and radicalism in the form of new ideas were disappearing from the American scene. He says that it was the breakup of the old Left, and in reaction to these re-evaluations, that Dissent [the magazine] arose. Dissent focused on those who were calling the old radical clichés into question. Much of this debate was carried on in the New York intellectual world. Unfortunately, while Dissent talked of conformism in American society, and the need for “new ideas,” there was little path-breaking thought on radicalism. Dissent itself attacked Partisan Review and Commentary for not being radical enough, but there was little in Dissent itself that was new. David Bell has observed that Dissent never exemplified the radicalism that it professed; that it never – at least in politics – opposed anything.
Questioning the status quo or another’s beliefs has not ended in America, especially among those interested in the nuisances of democracy and religion. There remains a struggle in the minds of Americans concerning this relationship: some would make America a theocracy, while others would give religion no political considerations at all. In 2005, Albert J. Raboteau in the Boston Review noted that American democracy offers religion an opportunity and American pluralism provides it with a challenge. Pluralism challenges Americans to experience its religious values and attitudes, and the beliefs of others with respect and dignity. Pluralism means a respect for difference and implies tolerance for the views of others. It rejects relativism in values but seeks to understand what values people of different faiths share in common.
For Further Reading
Albert J. Raboteau. African-American Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Andrew M. Manis. Southern Civil Religions in Conflict, Civil Rights and the Culture Wars. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2002.
Antieau, Chester James, Arthur T. Downey, and Edward C. Roberts. Freedom from Federal Establishment: Formation and Early History of the First Amendment Religion Clauses. Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company, 1964.
Barry A. Kosmin and Seymour P. Lachman. Religious identity Survey (ARIS), 2001. http://www.gc.cuny.edu/studies/aris_index.htm.
Barry Rubin and Judith Rubin. Hating America: A History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Center for Religion and American Culture. Charlottesville: The University of Virginia. http://www.iupui.edu/~raac/ .
Christian Smith, “Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want,” California: The University of California Press, 2000.
Christopher Lasch and Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn. Women and the Common Life. New York: W. W. Norton & Co Inc., 1997.
Colleen Campbell. The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy. Chicago: Loyola Press, 2002.
Dale McConkey. “Whither Hunter's Culture War? Shifts in Evangelical Morality, 1988-1998 - Statistical Data Included.” http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_ m0SOR/is_2_62/ai_ 76759006/print.
Dana Milbank. “Religious Right Finds Its Center in Oval Office, Bush Emerges as Movement’s Leader After Robertson Leaves Christian Coalition.” Washington Post December 24, 2001, A02.
Daniel Bell. The End of Ideology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Daniel V.A. Olson and Jackson W. Carroll. “Religiously Based Politics,” in Leonard Cargan and Jeanne H. Ballantine. Sociological Footprints, Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1994.
E. J. Dionne and Allan Carlson. “Two Views: How Did the '50s Ever Beget the '60s?” The American Enterprise, May/June, 1997.
James Davison Hunter. Culture Wars, The Struggle to Define America, New York: BasicBooks, 1990.
James H. Hutson. The Founders on Religion. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Jason Smith. “The Strange History of the Decade: Modernity, Nostalgia, and the Perils of Periodization.” Journal of Social History, Winter 1998.
Jeffrey K. Hadden, “Religion and the Quest for Meaning and Order: Old Paradigms, New Realities.” Sociological Focus, 28:1. February 1995.
Joseph P. Hester. Ten Commandments: A Handbook of Legal and Social Issues. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company Publishers, Inc., 2004.
Joseph P. Hester. An Ethic of Hope: Christian and Secular Ethics Crisis and Transformation. West Conshohocken, PA: Infinity Publishing Company, 2008.
Neal Christopherson. “Accommodation and Resistance in Religious Fiction: Family Structures and Gender Roles.” Sociology of Religion, Winter 1999.
Peter L. Berger. “Religion in Post-Protestant America,” in Leonard Cargan and Jeanne H. Ballantine, eds. Sociological Footprints. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1994.
Ralph Pyle and James Davidson. The Search for Common Ground: What Unites and Divides Catholic Americans. Charlotte, NC: Our Sunday Visitor, 1997.
Ralph Z. Hallow. “Evangelicals frustrated by Bush,” The Washington Times, February 20, 2004.
Robert Bellah, et al. The Good Society. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.
Roger Finke and Rodney Stark. The Churching of America: 1776-1990. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992.
Robert Wuthnow. One Nation Under Whose God? Hartford Courant, March 12, 1989.
Roger Finke and Rodney Stark. The Churching of America 1776-1980. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992.
Samuel P. Huntington. Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.
Stephen R. Warner, “Works in Progress Toward a New Paradigm for the Sociology of Religion in the United States,” American Journal of Sociology, 1993.
Stephen R. Warner. New Wine in Old Wineskins: Evangelicals and Liberals in a Small-Town Church. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
Susan Adler. “Education in America.” The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, 1993.
“The American Creed.” http://www.ushistory.org/documents/creed.htm and http://www.usflag.org/american.creed.html.
Theodore Caplow, Louis Hicks, and Ben J. Wattenberg. The First Measured Century. Washington, D. C., The AEI Press, 2001. See also, All Faithful People. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota press, 1983; Middletown Families. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota press, 1982; and American Social Trends. New York: HBJ, 1991.
Tom Peters, “Separation of Church and State Home Page.” http://members.tripod.com/~candst/tnppage/tnpidx.htm.
Introduction
The variety of religious beliefs in the United States surpasses the nation’s multitude of ethnicities, nationalities, and races, making religion another source of diversity rather than a unifying force. This is true even though the vast majority of Americans—83 percent—identify themselves as Christian. One-third of these self-identified Christians are unaffiliated with any church. Moreover, practicing Christians belong to a wide variety of churches that differ on theology, organization, programs, and policies. The largest number of Christians in the United States belongs to one of the many Protestant denominations—groups that vary widely in their beliefs and practices. Roman Catholics constitute the next largest group of American Christians, followed by the Eastern Orthodox. These differences and the politicalization of religion, in not only recent times, but also during the second half of the 20th century, have led to multifarious conflicts among and between religious groups throughout America and between religious factions and the political structures of states and the nation.
Eminent French sociologists Emile Durkheim (1857-1917) defined religion as a more or less coherent system of beliefs (monotheism, polytheism) and practices (fasts, feasts) that concern a supernatural order of things (gods, goddesses, angels), places (heaven, hell, purgatory), and forces (mana). This definition, being sterile and generic, goes along way in explaining what religion is but does not explain why it is a universal phenomenon. Neither does it explain the extent of religious conflict in a nation, the United States that claims to be religiously tolerant. Religion wields extraordinary influence in public affairs. Although a rich reservoir of values, principles, and ideals, it is also a powerful source of conflict and violence as diverse religious and secular traditions collide. Globalizing trends that are making the world smaller are also unleashing dynamics that are creating some of the most complex and challenging problems of the 21st century.
Religious Differences
Since September 11, 2001, religious news and religious controversy have been constants on American airwaves, newspapers, and books. From Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and the controversy that has surrounded its interpretation to the political insurgence of the Christian Right, editorials, books, and talk shows have highlighted the religious differences found among the American public. For example, in the fall of 2004, Larry King, host of Larry King Live, asked a panel of religious leaders why they thought there is so much anger, hate, and horror in the world. This panel included Deepak Chopra, religious radio personality Dennis Prager, Reverend R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Dr. Maher Nathout, scholar and advisor to the Muslim Public Affairs Council. In the middle of the discussion, King, mentioned that religion has been singled out as the cause of the problem and not its cure. The answers coming from the panel ranged from “our ideas of God are based on primitive ideas,” to blaming secular ideologies and beliefs for the widespread murder and torture of individuals world wide. One panel member said that it is a mistake to single out religion as the only cause for world conflict.
Interestingly, as this debate about religious conflict was taking place, two significant stories about religious conflict appeared in American newspapers The first came from the Associated Press in New Orleans and announced, “School Board in Prayer Dispute.” A federal lawsuit to stop the local school board from having Christian prayers at its meetings found both sides citing First Amendment rights in arguing their stands. In this case, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) represented a parent who contended that prayers at Tangipahoa Parish School Board meetings violate constitutional separation of church and state under the First Amendment. The ACLU added another complaint about using religious music during meetings. On the other side, members of the school board argued that “free-speech rights allow them to have the public prayers.” They cited another case in which the United States Supreme Court upheld the right of legislatures and other “deliberative bodies” to allow such prayers. The attorney for the school board appealed to tradition to support his case for allowing prayer at the school board meetings.
Another incident reported by the American press was a planned marriage rally at Hickory Motor Speedway in Hickory, North Carolina. Civic leaders and church members from different denominations throughout North Carolina came together on September 25, 2004 at the speedway to support “the traditional definition of marriage as the union between a man and a woman.” The event was advertised as a “We Are United Rally” and promoted its purpose as wanting to educate people about the issue of same-sex marriage and provide information on participating in the national rally in Washington, D.C., on October 15, 2004.
Also, in 2004, the Associated Press (AP) reported that the Gorham, New Hampshire School Board has approved a high school senior’s after-school Bible study classes, pending review by the school attorney. Liz Woodward, who planed to study biblical counseling at Lancaster, Pennsylvania Bible College, told the school board she needed to hold weekly classes at her school for a required senior project. The school board was concerned about the First Amendment issue of separation of church and state. The board debated the request at length before voting unanimous approval so long as those attending have parents’ permission and an adult supervises the classes. The high school principal reported that the legality of the Bible classes was researched and found to be within federal law because attendance is voluntary and it is an after school activity.
At the University level, it was claimed that the University of North Carolina’s Chancellor James Moeser “excommunicated” a Christian fraternity with an evangelical Protestant theology because it teaches that sexual activity ought to be limited to marriage between a man and a woman. Moeser noted that this standard obviously excluded extramarital and homosexual conduct, which is an espousal of traditional Christian morals. Moeser referred to a 2001 policy statement on “nondiscrimination,” which affirmed no discrimination in employment decisions or educational programs based on age, sex, race, color, national origin, religion, or disability.
Also, the university had adopted an internal policy on non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This statement was added, the report said, to ensure that only relevant factors are considered and that equitable and consistent standards of conduct and performance are applied. Notably, Chancellor Moeser exempted from its operation outside organizations, including the federal government, the military, ROTC and private employers. In 2003, the fraternity in question – AIO – came up for renewal of its official status to make sure that it complied with “university policies on non-discrimination,” including the one on sexual orientation. Based on their rules and consciences, AIO members decided that they could not admit students who disagree with their religious tenets and who are unwilling to adhere to traditional standards of sexual morality. They noted that this would go against the fraternity’s stated purpose. Jon Curtis, assistant director for student activities and organization went forward and pulled the plug on the AIO, a decision that was affirmed by Chancellor Moeser on August 12, 2004. AIO sued the university on August 25, “claiming violation of its rights to freedom of association, speech, and religion.” It was the opinion of some that this is a case study in secular intolerance. Notably, the United States Supreme Court has not yet addressed this issue in the context of student groups at public institutions. Lawyers argued that Moeser ignored the central role that religion and morality have played in America, and where these conscientious students fit into that history. They noted that in Moeser’s world, “traditional Christian religion does not exist.”
Religious differences are the cause of much conflict in the modern world. Conflict has been documented within religious groups, between religious groups, and between religious groups and other social/government organizations. Conflicts between Protestants and Catholics in Latin America and between Christians and Muslims in Indonesia, Africa, and the Middle East have called into question the mission and direction of America’s churches. These conflicts do not occur on foreign soil only, but in America as well, in that America is now itself a global village in which non-Protestant and non-Christian religions are on the rise. The belief that many Americans have professed in cultural and religious tolerance—an open-mindedness that has welcomed many diverse cultures to her shores—is now a source of religious and economic conflict.
Personal and Social Benefits of Religion. Even when evidence is provided about religious conflict in America, sociologists quickly point out that religion has many personal and social benefits: it allows for the transcendence of human life, provides a perspective that gives people a means of dealing with death and other conditions of uncertainty, helps people overcome feelings of powerlessness to control the conditions that affect their well-being, and provides a means of coping with unfulfilled personal needs. The values associated with religion account for a loyalty that transcends national loyalty. Explaining this phenomenon is difficult. Religious petitions continue to have priority, especially for evangelicals who tend to rally around a theological flag. On the other hand, theological liberals have a tendency to promote political and social justice with little mention of God or church. Also, people in organized religious congregations tend to participate in larger numbers and are more generous of their time and resources to these organizations than any other organization outside the family. Not only are religious people organized by virtue of their membership in a church, mosque, or synagogue, but also on the conservative side, they are ready to bring their theological and moral beliefs to bear on all political and social issues.
Roger Finke and Rodney Stark have documented the growth in religious adherence, from 1776 to 1980, in their study of religion in America:
Religious Adherence in America: 1776-1980
Year % Adherence
in America
1980 62%
1952 59%
1926 56%
1916 53%
1906 51%
1890 45%
1870 35%
1860 37%
1850 34%
1876 17%
Although sociologists predicted that secularization would diminish religious adherence and church affiliation, by the end of the 20th century, over 80 percent of Americans said they were connected to some religious organization. Interestingly, in 2006, Gallop reported church attendance at 68 percent for members of the United Church of Christ, 67 percent for Mormons, 65 percent for Pentecostals, 60 percent for Southern Baptists, 45 percent for Roman Catholics, 44 percent for Methodists and Presbyterians, 43 percent for Lutherans, 32 percent for Episcopalians, and 15 percent for those of the Jewish faith.
Faiths in Conflict. In the aftermath of World War II in America, citizens of every region drew together to affirm their common inheritance as a people and to celebrate the nation’s military and moral victories. Such triumphs seemed to substantiate America’s position, with its robust capitalism and growing Christian community, as a beacon to other nations, the leader of the free world, and a “city on a hill.” This vision sustained America through the years of the Cold War, the Korean Conflict, and the debacle of the war in Vietnam. In the 21st century, this triumph may have become a source of hate and perhaps over confidence as global awareness began to “flatten” the world so that America began to lose its economic and moral might. The conflict with Iraq and the differences between America and such countries as France and Germany appear to confirm, not their envy of America and American values, but detestation for them as America’s actions began to speak louder than her words. The weakening of America’s religio-politico-moral message was obvious.
In their book, Hating America: A History, Barry and Judith Rubin cite five phases of anti-Americanism: (1) Up to 1800, due to extreme environmental conditions, America was deemed so inhospitable that civilization was impossible. Even by 1776, Europeans thought Americans lacked culture, its soil was poisonous, its “lowered orders” were “rude,” and its animals stunted. (2) From 1800 to 1860, America was thought of as a failure and its freedom, an insidious form of slavery. For many Europeans, the horrors of the French Revolution confirmed that democracy didn’t work or at best produced a dreadful society ruled by the lower orders of humanity. (3) From 1860 to 1940, America’s industrialization heightened fear that its populist democracy, mass culture, and economic strength would have a negative impact on the world. America was now thought of as an object of dread. It was described as soulless, capitalist, anti-intellectual, mob-ruled, and culturally inferior. (4) From 1945 until the Soviet Union’s 1991 implosion, the fear of American domination deepened. Soviet Communism, Latin American anti-Americanism, and Islamic fundamentalism added new dimensions to this anti-American fever. (5) Finally, from 1991, the juggernaut of globalization, thought of as a thinly disguised Americanization, coupled with developments in communications, technology and weaponry, made America the world’s sole superpower and the object of resentment throughout the world.
In addition to these five phases, the Rubins have identified four reasons for this resentment: (1) An idealistic strain in American culture has produced a missionary zeal that is often perceived as a superiority complex resulting in an extreme ethnocentrism basically claiming that “our way is better than your way because it is our way.” (2) Americans are optimistic and possess a can-do attitude that has fashioned unparalleled progress. (3) Americans are problem solvers and their capacity for renewal proves that change is possible. (4) Finally, they say that America does not want to run the world—trade with it and travel in it, yes—but not rule it. Their conclusion is that America is an empire, but a reluctant one.
In his historical analysis of religion in America, Andrew M. Manis observed that when America and particularly the South turned inward to think about “the American dilemma” of race, the South became a battlefield of conflicting civil and religious faiths. In Southern Civil Religion in Conflict, Manis points out that during the 1950s and 1960s, the growing civil rights movement, calling on the nation to “live out the true meaning of its creed,” revealed within the South two separate civic doctrines—one based on freedom by law and equality under God; the other, finding in the Constitution a guarantee of individual rights and in the Bible a divine sanction of segregation. During the second half of the 20th century, this conflict became perceptible as many African-Americans returned to their Muslim roots and others, to even earlier expressions of faith found in their African heritage. Among those African-Americans defining themselves religiously in relation to the great religions of the Mideast, some have looked to Judaism rather than Christianity or Islam. A number of movements have emerged, some ambiguously related to both Christianity and Judaism that have identified African-Americans as the true descendants of the ancient Hebrews.
Well before Martin Luther King, Jr. made Gandhian nonviolence a central feature of the civil rights movement, there was serious African-American interest in Gandhi and his teachings. Father Divine’s Peace Mission Movement, a powerful religious force in urban black America in the second quarter of the twentieth century, drew on “harmonial” religious currents in American religion which had roots in eastern faiths. Also, it has been estimated that about one-fourth the membership of the Soka Gakkai International–USA, the American offshoot of a Japanese Buddhist movement, is African-American.
The religion of African-Americans has always been a source of conflict in America, especially the American south. Albert J. Raboteau, in his study of African-American Religion observed that of all American stories, the African-American Religious narrative, which includes fourteen percent of the nation’s population, is a unique blend of cultures and continents. He called attention to both the cultural diversity of the African continent from which the slaves were taken and to the varied points of view defining the white, at times religious, slave owners. He described how Africans were inspired to reject a theology of white superiority, while they simultaneously incorporated religious rituals such as the ring shout, rhythmic patterns of musical and oratorical cadence, and the identification of Christian Saints with regional gods of rain or war. He mentioned that while one might assume that the white response to this religious expression would be universal in its condemnation and repression, there was instead distinct ambivalence and differences. In April 2008, this response showed some changes in reaction to remarks made by presidential candidate Barack Obama’s minister, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
Political Involvement. In contemporary America, politicians have used religious conflict to promote their personal and party ideals as they have continued to recognize that religion provides a means for social control and for promoting certain “conservative” agendas. This overt mingling of politics and religion has compounded the convulsions within religious communities and between divergent religions. From putting “In God We Trust” on coins in the 1950s, to the League of Conservative Voters, the Christian Coalition, Moral Majority, the 700 Hundred Club, and to the faith-based initiatives of 21st century political campaigns, religion has been and is being used for political purposes.
Another issue is that of school prayer, which illustrates the intermingling of politics and religion. School prayer was a regular part of the school day until 1962 when the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional (Engel v. Vitale). Justice Hugo Black, entrusted with writing the Court’s opinion provided the following rationale for the decision. He wrote that the union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion. He said that the Establishment clause of the First Amendment expressed a basic Constitutional principle that religion is “too sacred” to be perverted by the civil government. The intent of “no establishment” is separation of church and state, however, the “free exercise” clause provides a privileged status for religion. Justice Black had earlier commented that a state or the Federal Government could not set up a church; pass laws to aid any religion, or force a person to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. He concluded that “the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect ‘a wall of separation between church and state’.”
The Supreme Court has also noted that this wall of separation between church and state has never been so tall as to prevent the accommodation of religion by the federal government and state governments. Section 1201 – an amendment to – H.R. 1501, The Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 1999, reads “…The power to display the Ten Commandments on or within property owned or administered by the several States or political subdivisions thereof is hereby declared to be among the powers reserved to the States respectively.” The “wall” of separation between church and state seems to have been bridged, if not crossed, at this point. Representative Robert Aderholt of Alabama wrote this amendment. He reasoned that posting the Ten Commandments in public schools (as “political subdivisions thereof”) would help prevent acts of violence like the Columbine High School shooting, and, in general, promote the ethical/civil character of youth.
Although the political thrust of conservative theology is a unifying force, such a political use of religion is also a cause of much religious and political dysfunction in the United States. Differences in religious beliefs have led to discrimination, political upheaval, and even to justifying war on those who are not of the same faith. In 2001, the terrorists’ acts of September 11 had a religious, as well as a political cause. Other issues such as abortion, capital punishment, stem cell research, and gay marriage are thought of as not only political issues, but religious issues as well. In the case of abortion, the last quarter of the 20th century was burdened with many acts of violence at abortion clinics, violence in the name of religion. One of the knotted features of mixing politics and religion has been the use of violence in the name of God as a cure-all for practices thought to be unethical and un-Christian.
Religion as a Social Institution. From a sociological perspective, the church is not only a religious institution, but also a social institution which interacts with and influences other social institutions in society; namely, the family, education, and politics. During the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, both African-American and white Christian churches organized to combat racial inequality. During this time, some churches stood against the increased concentration of wealth and power in America. Peace churches (the Brethren) vigorously opposed the arms race and the Vietnam War. In 1985, The Universal House of Justice, the supreme governing body of the Baha’i Faith, published a statement “to the peoples of the world,” proclaiming “the promise of world peace.” Although the Baha’i Faith believes that humankind has evolved to a stage of peace, they also claim, that large numbers of people believe that religion is irrelevant to the modern world. In their view, man made ideologies, designed to save society from the evils, is the source of much human conflict.
Evangelical Protestants have also opposed the Supreme Court’s ruling against prayer in public schools. Catholics and evangelicals have found themselves on the same side of the pro-life movement against abortion. These prophetic stands—both left and right—have precipitated prolonged debates, volatile rallies, political battles, and even violence between opposing forces. A mark of the resurgence of the evangelical movement has been the popularity of the book The Purpose Driven Life, which author and pastor Rick Warren calls “A groundbreaking manifesto on the meaning of life,” and has sold over 20.5 million copies in the United States alone, and can be read in twenty-eight different languages.
The existence of conflict in the interaction of society’s major institutions means that religion and politics are changing in America. New churches—some as small storefront congregations and others as large community-based and innovative groups—have been formed to fulfill important personal functions that traditional religions are no longer fulfilling as new human needs have emerged. New, religion-oriented educational institutions have been developed and are attracting a K-12 student body from families who desire their children to be educated in schools that profess both an academic and religious purpose. And these congregations are drawn from across the body of different denominations and from the Catholic Church.
Moral education with an emphasis on character and civility and with an unspoken foundation in the Christian religion is also on the rise. Approximately 12 percent of American children are being educated in private schools, 80 percent of which are of some religious affiliation. Also, approximately 630,000 children are being educated through home-schooling. A 1992 Gallup poll showed that 70 percent of Americans support choice in education, and that Christian parents “have been the vanguard of the educational choice and parental rights movement.” These figures document a culture- or values-shift in America, and the public schools has been one of the battlegrounds.
A New Paradigm: Religious Economy
A new paradigm has emerged among sociologists to shed light on the growth of religion in the 20th and 21st centuries. For most of the 20th century, secularization theory (“secularization” refers to the process of the separation of state and church and in most of the Western world there has been at least sufficient separation of church and state that people are capable both of living their lives apart from direct interference on the part of religion and may choose among various religions without suffering civil disabilities) was the dominant theoretical view of religion in the modern world. In spite of the appearance of overwhelming evidence for the secularization thesis, since 1975, there is evidence that challenges this taken-for-granted position. This evidence is both historical and contemporary. To date, much of the evidence is limited to North America, but there is growing documentation from around the globe to support the challenge to secularization theory. The new paradigm, which is a theory of religious economy, does not deny that secularization is a powerful force in the modern world but argues that secularization theory does not adequately explain the increase in religious affiliation, especially in the United States.
In 1993, Stephen Warner pointed to the proportion of the population enrolled in churches that grew hugely throughout the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. This was also a time of rapid secularization and modernization. Scholars of the new paradigm attribute the growth of religious affiliation in the U.S. to the disestablishment clause of the Constitution. Sociologists have concluded that by radically separating church and state, religious pluralism has been and is being encouraged; the United States Constitution guarantees pluralism.
Today, the United States has the largest number of religious groups in the world. The largest, most comprehensive surveys on religious identification were done by sociologists Barry A. Kosmin and Seymour P. Lachman and associates at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. Their first major study was done in 1990: the National Survey of Religious Identification (NSRI). This scientific nationwide survey of 113,000 Americans asked about religious preference, along with other questions. They followed this up, with even more sophisticated methodology and more questions, with the American Religious Identity Survey (ARIS) conducted in 2001, with a sample size of 50,000 Americans. The following table comes from the NSRI and ARIS data:
Top Twenty Religions in the United States, 2001
(Self-identification, ARIS)
RELIGION 1990 Est. 2001 Est. % of U. S. Pop., % Change
Adult Pop. Adult Pop. 2000 1990 – 2000
Christianity 151,225,000 159,030,000 76.5% +5%
Secular 13,116,000 27,539,000 13.2% +110%
Judaism 3,137,000 2,831,000 1.3% -10%
Islam 527,000 1,104,000 0.5% +109%
Buddhism 401,000 1,082,000 0.5% +170%
Agnostic 1,186,000 991,000 0.5% -16% Atheist 902,000 0.4%
Hinduism 227,000 766,000 0.4% +237%
Unitarian Universalist 502,000 629,000 0.3% +25%
Wiccan/Pagan/Druid 307,000 0.1%
Spiritualist 116,000
Native American 47,000 103,000 +119%
Baha’i 28,000 84,000 +200% New Age 20,000 68,000 +240%
Sikhism 13,000 57,000 +338%
Scientology 45,000 55,000 +22%
Humanist 29,000 49,000 +69%
Deist 6,000 49,000 +717%
Taoist 23,000 40,000 +74%
Eckankar 18,000 26,000 +44%
Although the United States Constitution may insist on a separation of church and state and that in America there is a right to religious expression, no religion is guaranteed favored governmental dominance. This does not mean that religion is not involved in the political institutions that govern American society. Constitutionally, religion and government are separated; that is, in America, there can be no state-run religious institutions. Given this fact, there remains some doubt that religion and politics can ever be separated. The conflicts over abortion, and the other issues mentioned above, alerts one to the relationship of religious and politics. In politics, at least, religion has become a major source of political conflict. As theologically conservative Christians denounce the threat of “secular humanism” in the United States, as the Catholic Church struggles with pedophilic priests, and as Muslims and conservative Christians struggle with issues of tolerance and civility, religious conflict is a persistent issue that dominates American life and religious practice. As a result, more and more the social-moral agenda of education and government is correlated with a theological orientation.
Different interpretations of religious conflict point to different causes. Robert Wuthnow has written that religious conservatives and liberals disagree not only about religion but also about the role of government in public life. He says that many of the most hotly debated issues of the past several decades (e.g., civil rights, women’s rights, homosexual rights, military and social spending, abortion, pornography, school prayer, and the teaching of creationism) arise out of differences rooted ultimately in their two ways of viewing God and the world. The first is a conservative public theology that champions strong traditional morality, strong national defenses and a heady brew of free enterprise. It claims that its authority comes from a literal interpretation of the Bible and has the goal of returning America to biblical ideals “on which it was founded.” The opposing view is a liberal public theology and puts forward a more relativistic code of personal morality, a cooperative multilateral spirit in foreign relations, and strong government initiatives capable of infusing norms of social justice into the capitalist mind. The liberal view is also biblically oriented, but projects its view as cultural wisdom rather than divine revelation.
Sociologist Stephen R. Warner provides a different analysis. Warner’s research suggests that it is theology, not politics that unites conservatives, and that their political views are diverse and vary in much the same ways as those of the general public. He also perceives religious liberals as united not by religious doctrine but by an optimistic and socially responsible attitude. He calls this a “worldly morality.” The research provided by both of these scholars continues to inform and make available insights about religious differences, conflicts, and politic-religious involvement. Religious scholars and socio-theorists understand that both theology and politics are forces that unite and divide Americans on an array of issues. These forces exist as causes of conflict inside and outside the sphere of religious organizations.
Historical Background: America’s National Identity
Samuel P. Huntington, in his 2004 book, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity, places religious conflict in the United States in the larger context of changes occurring “in the salience and substance of American national identity.” He makes the observation that “salience,” or projection, is the importance that Americans ascribe to their national identity compared to their many other identities, and “substance” conveys what Americans believe they have in common and distinguishes them from other nations and cultures. With reference to “substance,” Huntington says that race and ethnicity have largely been eliminated as Americans are accustomed to seeing their country as a multiethnic, multiracial society. He notes that this isn’t the way it has always been nor is it the way might continue. For example, since the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01, many Americans have begun to re-emphasized race and ethnicity in an effort to tighten their conception of what it means to be an American. One of these is stressing that “real” Americans adhere to Christian beliefs and values.
By 1950, the dominant theme in American culture was “White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant,” or WASP. The Anglo-Protestant culture, says Huntington, has been central to American identity and was crucial in defining the American Creed. The first American Creed was articulated by Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These are still magic words in American history; words that set the tone for what some have called “American values.” For many, to question them is to commit some combination of sacrilege and treason. Actually, they are not quite the words Jefferson first composed in June of 1776. His original draft, the pure Jeffersonian version of the message, before editorial changes were made by the Continental Congress, makes it even clearer that Jefferson intended to express an essentially moral or spiritual vision. He writes, “We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness.”
The American Creed makes two monumental claims, one explicit and the other implicit. The explicit claim is that the individual is the sovereign unit in society. His natural state is freedom and equality with all other individuals. This is the natural order of things. All restrictions on this natural order are illegal and immoral transgressions, violations of what God intended. The implicit claim is that the removal of those artificial and arbitrary restraints on individual freedom will release unprecedented amounts of energy into the world. The liberated individual will, in effect, interact with his fellows in a harmonious scheme that recovers the natural order and allows for the fullest realization of human potential. Jefferson’s optimism was perhaps itself an unrealistic judgment at the time as the evolution of democracy (and liberation) brought with it conflict and an intermingling of religion and government in almost every part of the American republic.
In 1918, another, broader American creed was written as a result of a nationwide contest. It said, “I believe in the United States of America as a Government of the People, by the People, for the People; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; A democracy in a republic, a sovereign Nation of many Sovereign States; a perfect Union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of Freedom, Equality, Justice, and Humanity for which American Patriots sacrificed their Lives and Fortunes. I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to Love it; to Support its Constitution; to obey its laws; to Respect its Flag; and to defend it against all enemies.” This version of the American Creed was intended to be a brief summary of the American political faith founded upon documents and events fundamental in American history and tradition.
The American Creed. For more than three centuries, the Anglo-Protestant culture—in its many variant forms—has been central to the American Creed and subsequent American identity. It is what Americans believe they have in common and what distinguishes them from other people. Understandably, the American Creed, like the Constitution itself, has been a fluid concept adapting itself to cultural changes and major events in American life. For this reason its interpretation and importance remain at the center of conflict in American society. Also, since the passing of the 1965 Immigration Law, the salience and substance of American culture have been and are being embattled on both the political and religious fronts. A new wave of immigrants from Latin America and Asia, the popularity of multiculturalism and diversity, the spread of Spanish as the second American language, the Hispanization trends in American society, the assertion of group identities based on race, ethnicity, and gender, the impact of diasporas and their homeland governments, and the growing commitment of community and government leaders to cosmopolitan and transnational identities continue to challenge traditional American values.
In 1986, Peter L. Berger observed that the results of the U.S. Constitution amendment, “that there will be no law establishing a particular religion,” created not only religious pluralism but also, moral pluralism in the United States. He concluded that this amendment resulted in religious conflict in America because religious pluralism has perhaps entailed political efforts to enforce particular moral beliefs, many with religious implications. Berger pointed to three religio-political controversies that defined the second half of the 20th century: (1) the civil rights movement, (2) the antiwar (Vietnam War) movement with its various Left-leaning offshoots, and (3) what he calls the “bourgeois insurgency” with the anti-abortion movement at its core.
With reference to the “bourgeois insurgency,” there is data to support the fact that evangelicals are moving from the lower economic class in American society and away from what sociologists have called society’s “economic margins.” Young Americans who are driving this trend are generally not products of a “religious ghetto” or fundamentalists; rather, they are the “new faithful” who have been exposed at every turn to America’s broader, pluralistic culture. The new faithful tend to be highly educated and worldly-wise and can be found in the most diverse cities and at some of the most demanding secular colleges. Many of the new faithful tend to be campus leaders and are intellectually serious. Berger finds that all three of the movements which he mentioned are characterized by a “moral fervor sustained by religious certitude.”
A Wall of Separation. Key legal and political decisions of the past twenty-five years reveal these religious conflicts in action. For example, in 2002, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco decided by a 2-to-1 vote that the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance were a violation of the separation of church and state. The judges said that these words were an endorsement of religion and a profession of religious belief in monotheism. Although consistent with the words of Jefferson, the 1918 American Creed, and with the 1954 act of Congress that added them to the Pledge in 2002, they were ruled unconstitutional with the stipulation that public school teachers, as state employees, could not recite them in class.
The Supreme Court’s decision in this case stimulated vigorous controversy on an issue central to America’s identity. Supporters of the decision agreed that the United States is a secular country, that the First Amendment prohibits governmental rhetorical and material support for religion, and that American citizens should be able to pledge allegiance to their country without affirming a belief in God. Some disagree, affirming the view that America is fundamentally a religious country with a secular government. This was Huntington’s thesis. He notes that atheists continue to be “outsiders” in the American community. Although they do not have to recite the Pledge or engage in any religious practice of which they disapprove, they do not have the right to impose their atheism on others.
An interesting corollary of this debate is whether the “separation of church and state,” was meant to establish a government free from religious domination or to establish freedom for religion anywhere and in any place in the United States. This debate continues to stimulate questions about America’s identity, of whether America is a religious state with a secular government or vice versa. Huntington’s interpretation is clear, but it is not universally accepted, that “the framers of the American Constitution prohibited an established national church in order to limit the power of government and to protect and strengthen religion.”
James Chester Antieau, Arthur T. Downey and Edward C. Roberts in Freedom from Federal Establishment, have recommended caution when interpreting the intentions of the persons responsible for the First Amendment. Some social theorists have taken note of statements made by separationists who believe that the founders intended to separate church and state by depriving the state of its power to either aid or hinder religion, and the words of accomodationists, who believe that the state retains that power and so is constitutionally able to advance religion as a moral good.
Religious Conflict as a Present Reality
Historians of American religious history believe that current religious conflict in America was perhaps unforeseen by our nation’s founders or maybe something they were willing to let future generations workout. The current reality is that since 1950, religious conflict has initiated a cultural shift in American society—a shift in the way America is defined and will be defined in the future. Since 1950, the historical context of religious conflict has taken two basic forms: conflict within religious groups, which may be defined as theological conflict or conflict about religious beliefs particular to one religious group or another, and conflict between religious groups (people of faith) and other social or government institutions. The issue of the separation of church and state may itself be considered an over-arching category of religious conflict that is both belief-oriented and socio-political. Issues such as prayer in public/government buildings and events, posting the Ten Commandments and other religious paraphernalia in government buildings and in state schools and colleges, and references to God in the Pledge of Allegiance or on money are examples of such issues.
States’ Rights and the First Amendment. Social theories, politicians, and legal experts have made it clear that the men who drafted the First Amendment not only did not have in mind what later Constitutional scholars have said they meant, but different ones among them had quite different things in mind. They reasoned that the “establishment” clause and the “free-exercise” clause implied a balanced theory of church-state relations. The overriding issue was to make sure that the new national government and its institutions would not usurp the rights and powers won in several states. Their decision has been interpreted by some as more politically motivated by issues of states’ rights issues than theological or belief issues.
Thomas Curry, a Constitutional historian, interprets the passage of the First Amendment as a symbolic act, a declaration for the future, guaranteeing the religious liberty won by the revolutionary states. Curry’s understanding of these matters is that the colonies were both sectarian and varied in their religious beliefs, from the Puritans that dominated New England, although with a sharp divergence between theocratic Massachusetts and latitudinarian Rhode Island. There was Virginia and the Carolinas with their Anglican establishment, and Pennsylvania, which was first dominated by Catholic libertarianism and then by Quaker ideology. New York was led by a tradition of Dutch mercantilism and demonstrated that religious liberty could be the fruit as much of commercial pragmatism as of lofty ideas. One conclusion reached by historians is that one of the miracles of American history is that the representatives of these divergent political philosophies could agree on anything. Agreement on their interpretation of the First Amendment was one of their less miraculous concurrences. Curry concludes that America’s founders were mainly united in what they were against.
Evangelical Rejuvenation. Theodore Caplow’s research, which spans a broad range from abstract social geometry (Two Against One: Coalitions in Trials) to the study of armed conflict (Systems of War and Peace), focuses mainly on social change. Caplow’s American Social Trends, published in 1991, examined changes in the family, education, work, religion, leisure and government between 1960 and 1990, together with trends regarding money, sex, health, intoxication, and social conflict. He was senior author of Recent Social Trends in the United States 1960-1990, a reference book published in the same year, and of The First Measured Century, an inventory and interpretation of American social trends from 1900 to 2000 that was published in 2001.
The Social Change Report, a quarterly newsletter which Caplow edits, is distributed to more than six thousand opinion-leaders in North America and Europe and shows that the majority of Americans are as furiously religious as ever and probably more religious than they were in the 19th century. The upswing of church membership, the report states, finds its most dramatic expression in the upsurge of evangelicalism in its various forms. With the Jimmy Carter campaign for the Presidency in the mid-1970’s Caplow finds a convenient marker when traditional religious and moral beliefs erupted into the center of public life. Marked for death in the middle 1960’s and early 1970’s by the rise of secular humanism and the emphasis among the “beat” culture on Eastern religions, evangelical Christianity came soaring back into predominance and became mobilized in the service of Right-of-Center political causes.
Caplow also interprets evangelical rejuvenation as perhaps the most spectacular expression of the hidden religiosity of the American people. Evangelicalism has manifested itself everywhere and finds support in both the Protestant and Catholic communities of faith and in Judaism. Both Caplow and Berger conclude that, for the most part, Americans are not secular atheists. Sociologists have concluded that secularization in America is class-specific, and characterized by a new class of people who derive their livelihood from the production and distribution of symbolic knowledge. They observe that the evangelical reawakening may be understood, in part, as a rebellion of other groups against the culture of the secularized New Class, and especially against the coercive imposition of that culture on children in the public schools. Therefore, it makes sense then that education has been one of the major battlefields in this conflict, with attention focused on such issues as prayer in the public schools, posting the Ten Commandments in schools, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, and making Bible reading an important part of the moral education of children.
This trend may be called “counter-secularization” and is observed, not only in America, but also in many parts of the world, especially in Muslim societies. Sociologists point out that in America the “ironic fact” is that a climate of tolerance and relativism is constantly being disturbed by “eruptions of unbridled fanaticism” with their absolute claims, non-negotiable demands, and a determination to pursue their objectives by any means necessary. But not all evangelicals or conservatives are disruptive or fanatical. Many of today’s young adults are adopting the teachings and traditions of an orthodox Christian faith. More and more, private religious experiences are evolving into public declarations of faith. There is, some say, an ill-defined longing for God evolving in American life. Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago with its multiple church locations and the thousands who attend its services each week, and Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California with its 16,000 members are a testimony to this spiritual search. In Atlanta, Georgia and outside its perimeter is the growing population of North Point Community Church now approaching 20,000 members and attracting middle and upper middle class Georgians to its contemporary, Broadway type Sunday productions and performances.
2004 Presidential Election. American churches have been involved in public policy debates, from abolition to temperance to civil rights. In 2004, when religious groups began to mobilize for the presidential election, the Southern Baptist Convention – the nation’s largest Protestant denomination – and the Promise Keepers men’s spiritual renewal movement began their first major voter registration and turnout drives. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said, “To be uninformed or to not be involved in the process is to be irresponsible and to become part of the problem rather than part of the solution.”
The National Council of Churches, an organization that represents mainline Christian denominations, mounted numerous rallies in its first registration and turnout effort, called “Let Justice Roll.” Assisted by the Center for Community Change, their goal was to keep the issue of ending poverty before the American people. Associated Press religion writer Richard N. Ostling observed that 2004 witnessed unprecedented outreach by the Republican campaigns to voters who regularly worship at their church or synagogue. In 2000, an exit poll done for The Associated Press and other news organizations showed that George W. Bush beat Al Gore by more than 15 percentage points among white voters who attended church weekly or more.
Although debates over gay marriage and abortion have kept religious groups involved in the political process, Steven Waldman, editor of the website Beliefnet, saw a broader issue at play in the 2004 political process. He believes that keeping the Republican Party in power is a major battle in the larger culture war between religious conservatives and those who advocate a “constitutional” separation of church and state. This controversy centered on certain key moral issues. Thus, the voter registration sponsored by Southern Baptist not only focused on the family media ministry, but named its drive to register voters the “I Vote Values” drive.
Another religious group with the goal of fighting poverty, named their voter registration drive “Call to Renewal.” Call to Renewal is a national network of churches, faith-based organizations, and individuals working to overcome poverty in America. Through local and national partnerships with groups from across the theological and political spectrum, they have convened a broad table of Christians focused on anti-poverty efforts. Their purpose is to influence local and national public policies and priorities, while growing and developing a movement of Christians committed to overcoming poverty. Their stated purpose was to make poverty a religious and electoral issue in the 2004 elections. They organized a six-state and 12-city tour in order to increase awareness about the needs of people living in poverty and inspire, encourage, motivate and engage them in a renewed commitment to seek justice.
The get out the vote campaign in 2004 was merely the tip of religion’s involvement in politics. Evangelicals created Rock the Vote campaign which registered over 50,000 voters. Bishop T. D. James of The Potter’s House in Dallas is an example of African Americans getting involved in the election through their churches. Among Catholics, Priests for Life is an anti-abortion network which, in 2004, addressed the issue of abortion, spending one million dollars on newspaper ads, training 1,000 get-out-the-vote volunteers, and faxing all United States parishes, urging Roman Catholic clergy to preach about the election. The Reverend Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who monitors religious politicking, remarked that the registration drives were inherently partisan. Also, Jerry Jones of the nonreligious Center for Community Change Voting Project observed that there were really no equals to the faith-based drives for votes in the political election of 2004.
Conflicts within Religious Groups. Conflicts within religious groups are not as pronounced politically in American society as conflicts between religious groups and other social and government agencies, but are culturally important nonetheless. Between 1950 and 2001, major denominations tended to return to or to adopt more traditional (conservative) religious practices. Theodore Caplow and his research associates found that with respect to doctrine or belief, there is little difference between Protestant denominations. The largest change during the last half of the 20th century has been between sacramental and evangelical denominations. Caplow admits that this distinction is not absolute and recognizes a charismatic revival among Catholics, Episcopalians, and Lutherans. He also notes that some Methodist services today have a more sacramental tone.
In American Social Trends, Caplow revealed that evangelicals are more reactionary than mainline churches. He concluded that the effects of the liberal drift in the mainline churches and the conservative countercurrent among Evangelicals and Fundamentalists have stimulated political participation by churches and church-related organizations. Caplow noted that at both extremes of the liberal-conservative spectrum in religion linkages are being developed between conservative and liberal political groups that have the potential for changing the religious and political landscape of American life. One example of the conservative countercurrent is the actions of Southern Baptists. From the late 1970s forward, Southern Baptists came to view themselves as fundamentalists and moderates (those against the fundamentalists). Doctrinally they were not terribly different, but the differences were enough to cause a great conflict that even today threatens to cause a schism that would divide the largest Protestant denomination in the United States into two groups. The biggest issue on which the two sides differed is biblical authority. Both sides view the Bible as the central authority in one’s life but the fundamentalists believe the history and religious teachings of the Bible to be without error, while the moderates believe only the religious truths of the Bible to be without error. This controversy continues to occupy the denomination’s attention in the 21st century.
Another intra-religious battle has also taken place among Catholics and the revelation of child molestation by a considerable number of Catholic priests and a subsequent cover up by higher-ups among the Catholic clergy in America. The Boston Globe reported in 2003 that when abuse cases became public in the early 1990s, and again in January 2002 when the Globe revealed the extent of Rev. John Geoghan’s abusive behavior, “Cardinal Bernard F. Law characterized these as isolated incidents.” When more alleged victims came forward, it became clear that clergy abuse was a systemic problem in the Boston Archdiocese, involving scores of priests and hundreds of victims across the metropolitan area.
In an elaborate culture of secrecy, deception, and intimidation, the Catholic Church kept tales of abuse away from the public. Victims who came forward with abuse claims were ignored or paid off, while accused priests were quietly transferred from parish to parish or sent for brief periods of psychological counseling. Despite reports of child rape and other criminal behavior by clergymen, church leaders made no apparent effort to inform law enforcement authorities.
By the end of 2002, some 1,200 priests had been accused of abuse nationwide, according to a study by The New York Times. Over the course of that year, five U.S. prelates resigned in connection with sex scandals, including Boston’s Cardinal Law – joining four others who had resigned in previous years. As word of the sexual abuses spread, bishops in many other countries were forced to resign. The significance of this problem is illustrated by the April 2008 visit to America by the Pope and is subsequent prayer on behalf of the victims of this abuse and his vow to change the culture that precipitate it.
The sexual scandal in the Catholic Church and the split among Southern Baptists are just two of the intra-religious battles that will be chronicled in the next section of this book. With the death of Pope John Paul in the spring of 2005, another controversy is beginning to seethe between America Catholics and the more conservative Catholics represented by John Paul. Issues such as homosexuality, marriage of Catholic priests, a larger role in church affairs for the laity – especially women – and birth control are at the forefront of this potential clash.
Cultural War
James Davidson Hunter’s Cultural War, The Struggle to Define America, which was published in 1991, to some extent has been brought up-to-date by Dale McConkey in his “Whither Hunter’s culture War? Shifts in Evangelical Morality, 1988-1998 – Statistical Data Included.” The purpose of McConkey’s paper is to examine both the current state of the culture war and its precipitating trends over the past decade. He asks the question whether evangelicals have been softening their traditionalist moral positions on issues like women’s roles, homosexuality, nonmarital sexuality, birth control, abortion, suicide, and euthanasia. In his lengthy and comprehensive report, McConkey addresses three fundamental questions: (1) Are evangelicals leaving the socioeconomic margins of society? (2) Is evangelical morality becoming more liberal? and (3) Is the culture war dissipating?
For his analysis and conclusions, McConkey utilized data from the 1988 and 1998 General Social Surveys, which show that evangelicals are capitulating on some – though not all – arenas of moral conflict, and says, that “the cultural tension between evangelicals and religious progressives remains strong.” He also explains that “evangelicals will likely continue to experience a cultural tension with the larger culture, but this tension is not likely to result in anything resembling warfare.”
Subcultural Identity Theory. Focusing on religion, the subcultural identity theory maintains that religion survives and can thrive in a pluralistic, modern society by embedding itself in subcultures that offer satisfying, morally orienting collective identities which provide adherents meaning and belonging. The theory also concludes that those religious groups will be relatively stronger which better possess and employ the cultural tools needed to create both clear distinction from and significant engagement and tension with other relevant outgroups, short of becoming genuinely countercultural.
Hunter also supports this thesis. His book, Culture Wars is an attempt to understand and appreciate the gravity of the religious realignment that has occurred in postwar America. It is Hunter who views the tensions among religions conservatives and religious liberals as both deeper and more significant than many have been led to believe. Hunter believes that a cultural schism has now divided each major faith tradition and has bifurcated the United States into two camps. On one side of the divide are the orthodox, those who are committed to “an external, definable, and transcendent authority.” Evangelical Christians are the dominant group in this camp, though traditional Catholics, orthodox and conservative Jews, and political allies like the Christian Coalition and the National Right to Life Committee would also be included. On the other side of the battlefield are the progressivists – more often than not called “liberals” – who share the tendency to resymbolize historic faiths according to the prevailing assumptions of contemporary life. These would include most of the mainline churches that comprise the World Council of Churches, as well as secular organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, People for the American Way, and the National Organization of Women.
In his effort to understand this religious bifurcation, Neal Christopherson explores the relationship between religion and secular culture, which he says has often been one filled with tension. Christopherson focuses on religious literature and gender roles and utilizes subgroup identity theory for understanding the tensions and divisions often expressed in youth literature. His point is that among conservative Protestants there is a growing tension between resisting secular culture, and accommodating certain aspects of faith to secular ideals. As a sociologist, Christopherson observes that the actions of religious groups are often shaped by their relationship and interaction with other social structures, and with the dominant secular culture. He notes that this relationship has created a dilemma for conservative Protestants. Some want to resist modern secular culture and its many sinful ways, but others understand the necessity of adapting to modern cultural and understanding the values of others. He says that religious groups like evangelicals will be stronger if they find an “a complex balance of accommodation and resistance.”
Tensions and Conflicts. The tensions and conflicts within religion and between religious groups and secular organizations are an ongoing reality. Florida preacher Reverend James Kennedy, of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church and the Coral Ridge Hour television program, at a national conference on “Reclaiming America for Christ” said, in 1998, that the time has come to reclaim America for Christ. The feeling at this conference was that America will self-destruct if laws in the United States laws have no correlation with the laws of the Creator. The only hope, according to the message of the conference, is to make America righteous again by reclaiming it for Christ through grassroots Christian activism.
While many will agree with Kennedy’s words, Christian Smith has asked, “To what extent do the views and commitments of people like James Kennedy and his conference participants actually represent those of the tens of millions of ordinary American evangelicals?” and “Are most evangelicals really committed to defending an exclusively Christian America?” and “Are American evangelicals in fact hostile to religious and cultural pluralism?” and finally, “How do most evangelicals think about America’s past and envision its future when it comes to issues of national cultural identity and moral diversity?”
To answer these questions, Smith conducted more than two hundred personal interviews with evangelicals on the subject of “Christian America.” He reveals a surprisingly diverse range of perspectives on the matter. He found that evangelicals are not unanimous that America was once a Christian nation and that about 30 percent were uncertain whether American was ever a Christian nation. Altogether, about 40 percent of those interviewed either denied or somewhat doubted the idea that America was once a Christian nation. Smith was quick to point out that many of them answered otherwise on the Religious Identity and Influence telephone survey.
Smith concluded that a significant minority of evangelicals does not possess a strong image of a Christian American past. For this reason, young people have no model of what needs to be “reclaimed” by the Christian Right. Smith says that Kennedy’s exhortation to “reclaim America for Christ” does not make much sense. Yet, there are a few evangelicals who believe that America should definitely not be a Christian nation in the sense that the Christian Right often uses the term. Despite varying opinions, Smith found that the majority of those interviewed did believe that America was once a Christian nation, and many of them felt that America still should be a Christian nation.
Counter Opinions. The anomalies and exceptions that Smith found in his survey are important because they point out the counter-opinions for every conventional view. For example, evangelicals are generally opposed to the gay and lesbian rights movements, yet some interviewees took a different view admitting that there needs to be a certain amount of tolerance and advocating a live-and-let-live attitude. Still, some were more accepting of human sexual differences saying that its not their place to judge a person and that homosexuality is neither right or wrong.
American evangelicals are also strong for their pro-Life views on abortion, yet, here to, there were contrary opinions. Some respondents redefined child protection, using a utilitarian calculus of suffering, in order to justify some abortions, but most of the pro-Choice evangelical minority cited belief in individual freedom to make moral choices and the futility of forcing morality on those who disagree with them. Most of the evangelicals, says Smith, fall on the conservative side of the political spectrum and support the Republican Party, but not all. Evangelicals also think that liberals and secularists are the people who most oppose Christianity and Christian moral causes. At the same time, most evangelicals endorse American capitalism, although some see capitalism at the root of moral evils in society.
Smith also found that evangelicals are generally civil and non-violent in their political and religious disagreements with liberals. He found that they have simply absorbed a fair amount of liberal American tolerance, and embraced many central features of the dominant American political culture. This includes respect for individual autonomy and tolerance of differences—even as they criticize and resist these traits in other ways.
Smith also says that the anti-establishment, decentralized, voluntaristic, fragmented, and individualistic culture that has permeated most sectors of the broad American evangelical church tradition for nearly two centuries has influenced the beliefs and attitudes of many evangelicals. Many feel that the ancient traditions of Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism are extraneous and irrelevant to American evangelicalism. The background of many contemporary evangelicals lies outside of the religio-political establishment in America. Most are Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, Restorationists, Holiness Christians, Free Church believers, and members of smaller Presbyterian and Lutheran denominations. Many attend independent and nondenominational churches – churches that do not have “First” in their names. Taken together, he found that most evangelicals believe that America has lost its religious, collective identity—one they seek to reclaim.
Smith indicates that explaining the views of ordinary evangelicals—as opposed to a handful of outspoken evangelical elites—in all of their depth—instead of compressed and oversimplified in a rudimentary answer categories on surveys—“reveals a diversity and complexity that contradicts conventional wisdom about evangelicals.” He adds the point that American evangelicals are disturbed by social and moral issues, as are the majority of other Americans, but few evangelicals actually subscribe to James Kennedy’s program of “reclaiming America for Christ” in the way their opponents fear. Finally, Smith does not believe that the idea of a Christian America will sustain a major Christian political movement that will somehow re-Christianize America.
Rise and Fall of the Cultural War. Paul Weyrich, a longtime conservative strategist and a founding influence on the Moral Majority, believes that there is no longer a moral majority in the United States and that religious conservatives have lost the culture war. Weyrich says that there may not be a moral majority as an organized movement any longer in the United States; on the other hand, he suggests that the culture war he speaks of and the culture war that James Davison Hunter wrote about may be merely a conflict among evangelical and non-evangelical elites carried out on a political stage for more than religious reasons, and not a war among ordinary evangelicals or progressives (liberals) in cities and towns across America. The same can be said for the battles within denominations about conservatives and moderates: these battles may have been more about power issues than religious issues.
Dale McConkey reviewed Hunter’s thesis and concluded that cultural-religious disputes are more often than not fought in the political arena. He theorizes that religion and politics have led a parallel and often interconnected path, inside the “faith” and outside, between the religious body and other social and political institutions. McConkey provides a brief history of conservative Christian politics to illuminate the current state of the culture war beginning in 1976 —what he calls the “Year of the Evangelical.” The essays which follow in this volume establish a historical path that defines the issues and controversies that these scholars pointed to and reveal this politico-religious intermingling.
McConkey’s views are important for understanding the interplay of religion and politics in contemporary America. He points out that the phrase “culture war” did not appear on either the political or academic scene until the late 1980s, and that its origins are much earlier, perhaps two decades or more. It was, he notes, a possible reaction to the moral relativism of the 1960s. Conservative Christians became involved in politics in the 1970s and participated in electing Southern Baptist and self-proclaimed evangelical Jimmy Carter to the presidency. Thus, Time magazine declared 1976 the “Year of the Evangelical.”
The Moral Majority and Christian Coalition. By the 1980s, religious conservatives were coming of age politically. They were known as the “New Christian Right” (NCR) and became a political force in such organizations as the Moral Majority, headed by Jerry Falwell. It is ironic that Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1979 in an effort to unseat the evangelical Jimmy Carter. Disillusioned by Carter’s presidency, the Moral Majority and a network of smaller NCR groups sided with Ronald Reagan. This led to an exodus of southern Democrats who then switched to the Republican Party. McConkey says that some may doubt this but Pat Robertson’s candidacy for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1988 put this issue to rest.
It was in the 1980s that the Moral Majority reached its peak, showed signs of decline, and by the end of the decade pulled up stakes and disbanded. Sexual and financial scandals did not help their cause (Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart) and poor showings by Pat Robertson sealed the deal. McConkey points out that the 1980s were the “age of discovery and disappointment” for the NCR, but 1988 began an “age of realism.” As soon as the Moral Majority folded, Pat Robertson formed the Christian Coalition, which found grassroots success in electing religious conservatives to local and statewide offices. The Christian Coalition is credited with strengthening the success of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” that helped Republicans secure control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994. Conservative Catholic Patrick Buchanan provided a more politically refined face to the NCR and introduced Hunter’s phrase “culture war” to the lexicon of American politics in his primetime address to the 1992 Republican National Convention. He stated, “There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a culture war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as the Cold War itself. …”
By 1999, the conservative evangelicals were already admitting defeat. Even with Reagan and Bush in Control of the White House for twelve years, little progress was made toward changing the cultural momentum in the United States. Paul Weyrich, the Free Congress Foundation president and longtime right-wing strategist commented in an open letter to conservatives on his web site in 1999 that he no longer believed that there is a moral majority in American or that a majority of Americans actually shares conservative, evangelical values. McConkey observed that this admission was nothing new in that “religious conservatives have often portrayed themselves as victimized minorities.” A decade earlier, Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian Coalition, said, “[W]e know that we are not a majority.” What was new about Weyrich’s plan was his suggestion that Christian conservatives return to “the separatism practiced by conservative Christians earlier in the 20th century.”
Evangelical Megashift. It is significant that Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson, Focus on the Family president James Dobson, and former Dobson associate and 2000 Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer quickly denounced Weyrich’s surrender. By 1998, the Christian Coalition was clearly absent during the 1998 midterm elections, and in 1999, they experienced considerable financial, legal, and administrative difficulties. McConkey concluded that the optimism of the NCR in 1988 had been replaced only a decade later with at best a questionable future.
Hunter called this softening or erosion of traditional, orthodox evangelicalism an “evangelical megashift.” By the end of the Clinton administration, at least, the New Conservative Right had become disorganized politically and theologically. Some said they were more open to the possibility of historic and scientific flaws in the Bible, though they hold firm on the historical accuracy of the New Testament narratives, thus revealing a theological shift in the conservative religious world view. Also, on moral issues like drinking, smoking, gambling, dancing, movie-going, and card-playing, evangelicals took more moderate positions. Politically, they are still more conservative than the rest of society, but Hunter’s research demonstrated that they were clearly more moderate and less activist than the leading spokesmen in the Religious right might have others believe.
The Tide Turns. On December 24, 2001, Dana Milbank reported in the Washington Post that Pat Robertson’s resignation as president of the Christian Coalition clearly confirmed that President George Bush was the new leader of the Christian Right. For the first time in American history, Milbank saw that the United States President was also the evangelical leader of the nation. Milbank provides several reasons for the adulation. First, religious conservatives have thought of Bush as one of their own since the presidential campaign, when he spoke during a debate of the guidance of Jesus. Second, key figures in the religious right such as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, Billy Graham and Franklin Graham have seen their political influence diminish, in part because they are no longer mobilized by their opposition to a president. Finally, Bush’s handling of the anti-terrorism campaign since September 11, 2001 has solidified his standing by painting him in stark terms as the leader in a fight of good against evil.
In 2004, Ralph Z. Hallow reported that many evangelicals were complaining that President Bush hasn’t been the evangelical leader they expected him to be. Robert H. Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute, speculated that many evangelical conservatives are upset with the President’s runaway budget and his failure to strongly condemn illegal homosexual marriage in California. A little known meeting with the religious right and President Bush was reported by The American Atheists web site and took place one month before the 2004 Presidential election. The Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report picked up the item for its daily dispatch. The 90-minute meeting was held to “assuage concerns that he (Bush) might be soft on abortion, homosexual rights, school choice, state-church separation and other issues.”
Thus, during the 2004 presidential election, the evangelical movement became solidly identified with the Republican Party. As the election approached, Guardian Newspapers reported that the Bush campaign was now calling in favors in the battleground states. Ralph Reed, formerly a central figure in the Christian Coalition movement, was recruited to coordinate its work in the southeast. It sent a mass email to evangelical pastors in Pennsylvania, asking to use their church halls for party organizing. And, according to the New York Times, he urged religious volunteers to turn church directories over to the campaign, distribute guides on political issues and persuade their pastors to hold voter registration drives, with deadlines for each task. Critics of the administration have complained that this new level of politicization violates the separation between church and state, and endangers the tax-exempt status of the churches.
The question is “Has the ‘evangelical megashift’ of 1987 begun to drift back into old and familiar territory?” ABC News reported that President Bush made the case for his plan to let religious groups compete for federal aid to a very sympathetic audience at the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. Bush said, “The days of discriminating against religious institutions simply because they are religious is over.”
Religious Diversity
Samuel Huntington explains that several scholars in the 1980s and 1990s advanced the idea that America is losing its Christian identity due to the spread of non-Christian religions. These scholars documented the growth of Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, and Buddhists in American society. With their growth, the idea of religious diversity has shattered the paradigm of America as an overwhelmingly Christian country with a small Jewish minority. Huntington also notes that some scholars have suggested that public holidays should be adjusted to accommodate this increasing religious diversity and that Easter and Thanksgiving should be replaced with a Muslim and Jewish holiday. But he does not believe that increases in the membership of some non-Christian religions have had any significant effect on America’s Christian identity. He says, “Americans are still a Christian people, as they have been throughout their history.”
Religious controversy in America did not begin in 1950. The concern of this book is the issues from that time forward, but religious controversy is nothing new. In 1927, the concern for understanding the issues and controversies of the day were widely shared, as demonstrated by H. H. Hemming and Doris Hemming’s “Translator’s Introduction” to Andre Siegfried’s America Comes of Age. They pointed in length to the first world war as the momentous occasion that brought about sudden and unexpected changes in American life, and then the great depression when America’s religious faith and political doctrines were put to the test.
World War II brought prosperity to America and with it, a deepening religious commitment; although Peter Berger documents that the mid-century rise in American church attendance probably had more to do with social status than with religious conversion. The silent majority was a product of military training and the Cold War – translated as “the organization man” – and transformed into “the corporate man,” but was on a collision course with more deeply rooted aspects of the American character: individuality, eccentricity, kinship, and autonomy. E. J. Dionne and Allen Carlson have noted that perhaps the central tragedy of the 1960s was the distortion of these authentic American traits by the political and cultural left.
Were the 1950s “a house of cards,” impressive on the surface, but fragile within? Did the yearning for stability after the turbulent years of World War II mask a growing unrest, an unrest that, as it continued to bubble up from the baseline of society, was extinguished by the church with support from other social institutions and the government? In Chapter 13 of The End of Ideology, Daniel Bell reviews the decades of the forties, fifties, and sixties and laments that dissent, questioning, and radicalism in the form of new ideas were disappearing from the American scene. He says that it was the breakup of the old Left, and in reaction to these re-evaluations, that Dissent [the magazine] arose. Dissent focused on those who were calling the old radical clichés into question. Much of this debate was carried on in the New York intellectual world. Unfortunately, while Dissent talked of conformism in American society, and the need for “new ideas,” there was little path-breaking thought on radicalism. Dissent itself attacked Partisan Review and Commentary for not being radical enough, but there was little in Dissent itself that was new. David Bell has observed that Dissent never exemplified the radicalism that it professed; that it never – at least in politics – opposed anything.
Questioning the status quo or another’s beliefs has not ended in America, especially among those interested in the nuisances of democracy and religion. There remains a struggle in the minds of Americans concerning this relationship: some would make America a theocracy, while others would give religion no political considerations at all. In 2005, Albert J. Raboteau in the Boston Review noted that American democracy offers religion an opportunity and American pluralism provides it with a challenge. Pluralism challenges Americans to experience its religious values and attitudes, and the beliefs of others with respect and dignity. Pluralism means a respect for difference and implies tolerance for the views of others. It rejects relativism in values but seeks to understand what values people of different faiths share in common.
For Further Reading
Albert J. Raboteau. African-American Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Andrew M. Manis. Southern Civil Religions in Conflict, Civil Rights and the Culture Wars. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2002.
Antieau, Chester James, Arthur T. Downey, and Edward C. Roberts. Freedom from Federal Establishment: Formation and Early History of the First Amendment Religion Clauses. Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company, 1964.
Barry A. Kosmin and Seymour P. Lachman. Religious identity Survey (ARIS), 2001. http://www.gc.cuny.edu/studies/aris_index.htm.
Barry Rubin and Judith Rubin. Hating America: A History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Center for Religion and American Culture. Charlottesville: The University of Virginia. http://www.iupui.edu/~raac/ .
Christian Smith, “Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want,” California: The University of California Press, 2000.
Christopher Lasch and Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn. Women and the Common Life. New York: W. W. Norton & Co Inc., 1997.
Colleen Campbell. The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy. Chicago: Loyola Press, 2002.
Dale McConkey. “Whither Hunter's Culture War? Shifts in Evangelical Morality, 1988-1998 - Statistical Data Included.” http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_ m0SOR/is_2_62/ai_ 76759006/print.
Dana Milbank. “Religious Right Finds Its Center in Oval Office, Bush Emerges as Movement’s Leader After Robertson Leaves Christian Coalition.” Washington Post December 24, 2001, A02.
Daniel Bell. The End of Ideology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Daniel V.A. Olson and Jackson W. Carroll. “Religiously Based Politics,” in Leonard Cargan and Jeanne H. Ballantine. Sociological Footprints, Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1994.
E. J. Dionne and Allan Carlson. “Two Views: How Did the '50s Ever Beget the '60s?” The American Enterprise, May/June, 1997.
James Davison Hunter. Culture Wars, The Struggle to Define America, New York: BasicBooks, 1990.
James H. Hutson. The Founders on Religion. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Jason Smith. “The Strange History of the Decade: Modernity, Nostalgia, and the Perils of Periodization.” Journal of Social History, Winter 1998.
Jeffrey K. Hadden, “Religion and the Quest for Meaning and Order: Old Paradigms, New Realities.” Sociological Focus, 28:1. February 1995.
Joseph P. Hester. Ten Commandments: A Handbook of Legal and Social Issues. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company Publishers, Inc., 2004.
Joseph P. Hester. An Ethic of Hope: Christian and Secular Ethics Crisis and Transformation. West Conshohocken, PA: Infinity Publishing Company, 2008.
Neal Christopherson. “Accommodation and Resistance in Religious Fiction: Family Structures and Gender Roles.” Sociology of Religion, Winter 1999.
Peter L. Berger. “Religion in Post-Protestant America,” in Leonard Cargan and Jeanne H. Ballantine, eds. Sociological Footprints. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1994.
Ralph Pyle and James Davidson. The Search for Common Ground: What Unites and Divides Catholic Americans. Charlotte, NC: Our Sunday Visitor, 1997.
Ralph Z. Hallow. “Evangelicals frustrated by Bush,” The Washington Times, February 20, 2004.
Robert Bellah, et al. The Good Society. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.
Roger Finke and Rodney Stark. The Churching of America: 1776-1990. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992.
Robert Wuthnow. One Nation Under Whose God? Hartford Courant, March 12, 1989.
Roger Finke and Rodney Stark. The Churching of America 1776-1980. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992.
Samuel P. Huntington. Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.
Stephen R. Warner, “Works in Progress Toward a New Paradigm for the Sociology of Religion in the United States,” American Journal of Sociology, 1993.
Stephen R. Warner. New Wine in Old Wineskins: Evangelicals and Liberals in a Small-Town Church. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
Susan Adler. “Education in America.” The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, 1993.
“The American Creed.” http://www.ushistory.org/documents/creed.htm and http://www.usflag.org/american.creed.html.
Theodore Caplow, Louis Hicks, and Ben J. Wattenberg. The First Measured Century. Washington, D. C., The AEI Press, 2001. See also, All Faithful People. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota press, 1983; Middletown Families. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota press, 1982; and American Social Trends. New York: HBJ, 1991.
Tom Peters, “Separation of Church and State Home Page.” http://members.tripod.com/~candst/tnppage/tnpidx.htm.
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