The State of Our Nation

We are now in the middle of a growing national crisis that half of the population seems to be troubled by, a third of the country seems to celebrate, and the remainder seems to be standing idly by. Yet all seem powerless to effect any change in national trajectory, a significant investigation headed by special counsel Robert Mueller notwithstanding. Even so, there are numerous resistance groups and that continue to offer some hope that at least a moral voice can be heard.

President Trump’s recent statement casting vulgar aspersions upon Haiti and all African nations has raised the ire of many in the U. S. and across the globe as he exemplified racist and fascist attitudes long recognized from the beginning of his presidential campaign. Jonathan Alter, in a recent article, has called for Congress to censure Trump for “conduct unbecoming of a president.”

It is only the latest of disturbing trends that we have seen over the past year.

Ominous Parallels

I am reminded of my college days as a ministerial student at Samford University. It was the mid 1970’s and some of us were beginning to do some serious examination for the first time. Our parents had been part of “the greatest generation” that combated Hitler’s regime at great personal costs as they bore the brunt of the horrors of war. I remember one of my classmates commenting that Germany was the most Christian and most intellectual country in the world, and yet they were responsible for such unspeakable evil and darkness, plunging the world into the most violent and destructive war in history.

My friend’s comment did indeed reflect a great irony and a big question that we were still facing 30 years after a war that to us twenty-year-old novices seemed like ancient history. The irony was that even then, any serious theological study involved extensive reading of German theologians (and anyone pursuing a doctorate had to be able to read three languages: Hebrew, Greek, and German). It was a huge question in our minds from that day until now, “How could Hitler’s rise have happened in such a civilized, educated, and Christian country?”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was included in our studies and he was admired for his stand against Hitler when most German churches, Catholic and Protestant alike, were in support of the Nazi regime. Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church movement saw the problem early on. Those were difficult  times that we could hardly fathom, and perhaps none of us imagined ever having to endure such times in our lifetime. An article in the February edition of Sojourners Magazine asks if this is not a Bonhoeffer moment for American Christians. The authors point out:

[Trump’s] “Make America Great Again” nationalism seeks to close the borders and recover some idealized picture of what America supposedly used to be, a picture steeped in white supremacy and the misguided ideology of “separate but equal.” Disturbingly, large numbers of white evangelical Christians share in this longing for Mayberry.

The fact that today I can see a correlation between our times and those times in Nazi Germany indicates that the question, “How could this happen in such a civilized, educated and Christian country?” is not as mysterious now. That is not to say that I have any clear answer to the question. I do have a few observations, and would welcome any other observations from anyone who would care to comment.

1. Uncertain Times

With Trump’s election in November of 2016, I became more aware that fascism seems to be the default mode of government that people tend to fall back on during times of uncertainty. It never ends well, but it seems to be a basic tribal response of people when they are confronted with fear and uncertainty. We want to be with people who look like us, and we demonize the other (whoever looks different). I have watched evangelical Christians I grew up with and worshiped with expressing such fear and hatred, especially after the nation elected its first black president in 2008. I have seen them making political decisions based upon fear and hate rather than on faith and love.

2. The Paralysis of Single Issue Voting

I understand that each person must make his or her own moral choice in civic matters when going to the polls. Unfortunately, voting on the single issue of abortion blinds many to the wider issues at stake.

I attend a Roman Catholic Church and have utmost respect for Catholic social teaching regarding human dignity and the common good. I have been shocked, however, that so many of my Catholic colleagues have allowed the issue of abortion to paralyze their ability to discern other issues concerning the common good. I was dismayed to hear a colleague say with some resignation, “I guess I have to vote for Trump because he is pro-life."

I would not choose abortion, but I realize that my choice for life has not been hindered in my entire adult life since Roe v. Wade.  I also realize that the practice of my faith does not hinge upon the reversal of established law – a law which allows options for young women in dire situations.

Through the years, I have seen Catholics vote for people who have no knowledge of, or interest in, Catholic social teaching and whose agendas are even counter to that teaching. The best way to support life is in our teaching, values, and actions. We can abide by the law of the land and still uphold our faith values without thinking we have to reverse legislation in order to live a moral life.

3. The Desire for Political Power

Another factor that cannot be ignored is that with the success of the religious right in political campaigns, beginning with Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and continuing on with groups like Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, has progressed to the point where the religious right seems more concerned with political power than Christian principals.

Apparently, some conservative religious groups are now seeing Donald Trump as God’s chosen one for America. It is beyond me how a thinking, committed Christian could come to such a conclusion, but the founder of Charisma Magazine stated in an interview that Christians should tolerate no dissent when it comes to Donald Trump. If that is the case, what has become of the prophetic role of the church? Are we simply a willing arm of the state, no matter how corrupt the state becomes?

How Will We Respond?

These are a few reasons that Christian America has somehow embraced a president with no visible moral compass, no claim to a Christian faith, and has exhibited little grasp of the responsibilities of the Presidential office. The fact that we are now facing such a national moral dilemma is distressing to many and should be a call for those who are able to offer some kind of resistance, each in his or her own way. The question is, how?

I don’t think there is one way or one answer. I do think that it is important for us to affirm the better angels of our nature, our higher aspirations, and our nobler national purpose. We can do that through the arts, by way of community action, and by voting at the polls. Some of us can engage in politics at the local level, all of us can write our congressional representatives. People of faith can consider the golden rule and seek to practice acts of love, compassion and concern. In other words, churches can renew their commitment to their higher calling and “not grow weary with well doing.”

Those of us who are part of a faith community can consider the challenge that Dietrich Bonhoeffer offers us from his witness in Nazi Germany. I would challenge you to read the article in Sojourners Magazine by Lori Brant Hale and Reggie L. Williams, “Is this a Dietrich Bonhoeffer Moment? Lessons for American Christians from the Confessing Church in Germany.”

Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor of history, race and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, made an observation worth noting that gives me some hope for a way forward:

  “Donald Trump did us a favor, because he shows us how active and significant white supremacy is in this country. I mean, we needed to know it. We needed to see it. We needed to punch a hole in the mythology of post-racialism, because we need to deal with it. I mean, we think about an oncologist — we don’t want our oncologist telling us a little lie that we don’t really have cancer.”

What are your ideas? How do you see the times we are in today? I would welcome any comments reflecting your thoughts or actions in light of the current state of our national life.

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Photo: Night time view of Washington, D.C. (Public Domain)



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Dying Churches and Post-Modern Religion in a Secular Age

Predictions are Never Easy

So much is being written now about the future of the church and whether faith will be relevant in the years ahead.  Predicting the future is a tricky thing, even when predicting the near future. We can think we have all the facts that allow us to foresee how events will unfold, and still be surprised at how things really shake out. I witnessed one example of failure to predict the future when I was a senior in college. The year was 1977, and one spring day, the headline in the morning paper read, “Speed Limit will be 90 by the year 2000.” The headline caught my attention, as I am sure it was intended to do. The reasoning laid out in the lead article was that with the country converting to the metric system, the current speed limit of 55 mph would be equal to 88.5 kilometers per hour. Since dashboards would be divided in degrees of ten, 90 kilometers per hour would quite logically be the speed limit under the new metric system.

As I read the article, it made perfect sense. The country was in the process of converting to the metric system. We had been seeing Celsius temperature readings along with Fahrenheit on time-temperature clocks at banks around town for some time. We were even beginning to see a few kilometer signs posted along some highways. Furthermore, with the oil crisis that we were still emerging from, everyone knew that our 55 mph speed limit was in place to stay. It was a matter of conservation in light of limited fossil fuels and uneasy Middle East alliances. Moreover, we had found that the lower speed limit on our highways was actually reducing accidents and saving lives. There was no reason to doubt that the metric system would be fully in place and the speed limit would remain at 55 mph.

The reality turned out differently, however. Metrication soon foundered. I don’t know if people thought is was too European, to communist, or too hard to figure out, but the whole metric idea in the U.S. was abandoned. The next big surprise was that when oil prices came down, congress eventually figured that with a seemingly endless supply of cheap oil, there was no reason to keep to a 55 mph speed limit. Thus, my hometown paper’s very reasonable prediction of the near future was a total miss.   

The Future of the Church

Sojourners magazine is running an interesting series, “Letters to Dying Churches.” One recent installment by Brandon Robertson, “To the Dying Church from a Millennial,” is an interesting take from an evangelical perspective.  He expresses the idea that it is not the church that is dying, but rather “Christendom,” or the institutions and structures that propelled a triumphalist Eurocentric culture which included Christianity.  While we are seeing a death which many of us recognize, it is not necessarily the death that we imagined.  Robertson sees a church whose "best days are ahead," yet in new forms and formats that are different from the accustomed institutions of the past (you can read the essay here).  While some mainline churches are lamenting their decline in numbers, and the sight of once vibrant churches closing their doors saddens many, there are others who are proclaiming that the Christian faith is nowhere near dead.

Embrace the Secular City – Imagine No Religion

Reading the Sojourners article reminded me of my experience in college reading Harvey Cox’s The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective. Cox foresaw a kind of end to organized religion as it reconfigured to address the needs of the modern age. He stated, “The age of the secular city … is an age of no religion at all.” He focused on the positive aspects of what can happen in a secular age as long as “secularization” rather than “secularism” takes hold. Cox saw that the anonymity and mobility found in the city were changing the way we relate to one another. The author cited the parable of the Good Samaritan as an example of helping someone in need even when anonymity precludes a personal relationship. Harvey Cox was exploring the implications of how new social norms would affect the practice of faith. His book was one of the seminal documents of modern faith that was being taught when I entered college in 1973.

The Secular City still has important things to say even today.  In the mid-1960s, it presented readers with a prescient view of how urbanization and secular orientation would influence the world. The future, however, unfolded a bit differently from the way Harvey Cox envisioned. Twenty years later he would write and equally exciting book, Religion in the Secular City. In that book, Cox acknowledges that the modern city has indeed seen an expansion of religion rather than no religion. He examines two of the dynamic religious forces at work: the resurgence of fundamentalism and the rise of Liberation theology. You can read an academic review of the book here. 

Harvey Cox would later write an article for The Christian Century, “The Secular City, 25 Years Later.” It is quite interesting to read Cox’s thoughts as he takes into account unforeseen movements and so many changes, good and bad, that have occurred in the intervening time. Bear in mind, this article itself is dated, having been written in 1990. You can read the entire article here, but toward the end of the essay, Cox writes:

“Tucked away on page 177 of The Secular City comes a little-noticed paragraph that perhaps I should have used as an epigraph for this essay, or maybe it should be put in italics. Secularization, I wrote, "is not the Messiah. But neither is it anti-Christ. It is rather a dangerous liberation." It "raises the stakes," vastly increasing the range both of human freedom and of human responsibility. It poses risks "of a larger order than those it displaces. But the promise exceeds the peril, or at least makes it worth taking the risk.

“All I could add today is that we really have no choice about whether we take the risk. We already live in the world-city and there is no return. God has placed us in this urban exile, and is teaching us a more mature faith, for it is a quality of unfaith to have to flee from complexity and disruption, or to scurry around trying to relate every segment of experience to some comforting inclusive whole, as though the universe might implode unless we hold it together with our own conceptualizations. God is teaching us to approach life in the illegible city without feeling the need for a Big Key.”

Intergenerational Voices, Many possibilities

Harvey Cox has made some brilliant observations about the realities of faith lived out in the world. He is still around and represents the generation that preceded my own. Brandon Robertson, the millennial who wrote the piece for Sojourners, represents the generation after mine.  In other words, I am looking at views spanning three modern generations. The insights shared by these two writers demonstrate that faith in the modern age is quite a dynamic and multifaceted phenomenon. It is also something of a cautionary tale to see that often our best predictions are quite different from what actually unfolds (as in no religion in the secular city, or the metric system in the USA).

We are certainly witnessing a state of flux in the realm of faith and spirituality.  In addition to the position stated by Robertson in Sojourners, many evangelicals are finding new meaning in the older liturgies of the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Episcopalian churches.  People from Jewish as well as Christian backgrounds are finding their center in Buddhism. Indeed, in the U.S. many of the world's religions are living in proximity as never before. One thing about the current generation that was not seen as frequently in past generations is that people more readily move from the faith expression they inherited to another faith expression that suits them better (that's what happened with me). While some faith expressions seem to be dying, others seem to be rising. It is a great time to be alive if you are a seeker. Many of us may hazard a guess as to what faith will look like in the future, but there are sure to be surprises as the future continues to unfold.


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Photos: 
Upper: Church steeple of First Presbyterian Church, Birmingham, Ala.
Middle: Stained glass window St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, Birmingham, Ala
Lower: St. Simenon's Orthodox Church, Birmingham, Ala. 
All photographs taken by Charles Kinnaird

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