Hey, We’re Chrsitians Too, Two

Hey, We’re Chrsitians Too, Two July 1, 2015

wrong wayIt’s interesting to me that Brooks did not speak to the progressive Christian community. Why? Maybe he just thinks we should just keep on keeping on, but I wonder if he doesn’t sense some power there that he doesn’t see in our neck of the woods. I wrote a post some years ago, “An Open Letter to Evangelicals.” I’m frequently surprised to discover what I’ve written when I search my own archives, but this one was different; this one stuck in my mind.

The first line of my “Open Letter” was “I need a little help over here on the dark side in liberal, post-liberal, or whatever you want to call it, land.” “Why,” you might ask? Because evangelicals have three things that we progressives would do well to pick up. We don’t want to take them up uncritically you understand, but we do need them. Three thing: Evangelicals believe the Bible is authoritative. Evangelicals believe that faith is among other things, personal transformation. Evangelicals believe it is very important, maybe even a matter of life and death, to share your faith.

Of course we don’t want to take a literal interpretation of scripture; that would deny the truth of the critiques modernism have made about our faith. But that doesn’t mean we should just take what we like from the Bible and leave the rest as though we are the final arbiters of truth. (The church, of my church, the PCUSA, may not do it officially, but it seems to me most of our members do.) When we take up the scriptures now the authority they have comes from a conversation that’s been taking place for the thousands of years they’ve been formed and interpreted. This is not about inerrancy, it is about trajectory. The Bible provides a context for the conversation we have about God and our responsibility to God. That conversation differs from other conversations. Rather than taking what we like and leaving the rest, wrestling with all of the Bible will ground us in a deeper faith, one that can provide a context of meaning for spiritually hungry adults.

It is true that too often the evangelical focus on personal transformation is permeated with judgment, motivated by fear. It is true that too often this evangelical focus on transformation is myopic in its focus on sexuality and loses sight of the fact that as Justice Anthony Kennedy said, “The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times.” But that does not mean that we have no responsibility to provide a context in which personal growth and evolution is not only encouraged, but expected. It seems to me that the progressive church has largely abdicated its role in this regard. We are each a beautiful expression of the love intelligence that has driven creation’s evolving story for 13.82 billion years. For the first time we are aware that we have a part in that story. The church loses what moral authority it has when it abdicates the work of growing up. Please, let’s find a way to take this role seriously again.

Evangelicals think it is important to share their faith. I recognize that one of the reasons progressives don’t want to share their faith is that they don’t know what they believe. I think that if we engage in serious reflection and in the conversation with one another that is founded in scripture, we will discover what it is that we believe. But even if we do, we progressive types are a bit reluctant to do that because we don’t want to impose our faith on others. We don’t want to be seen as insisting that we are right and others are wrong. I get that. I don’t want to do that either. “Love is not arrogant or rude,” said Paul in 1st Corinthians 13 and surely insisting we are right and others are wrong when the subject is the mystery of God, is arrogant. But does that mean we cannot share our faith at all?

I ascribe to what I, and others, call a “dual-citizen” approach to religious belief and practice. I am a Christian which is to say that I’m committed to living my life in accord with Christian understandings of who God is and how God interpenetrates the world. When all is said and done, once we’ve worked out what it is that we believe I the context of that conversation with scripture, it is Christianity that provides the context of meaning for my life.

That said, I recognize that other people live within the context of meaning provided by other faiths, or more recently in an effort to develop a trans-lineage tradition. I think that is an excellent thing. I am a Christian because I think it is best for me, and because it has a tremendous amount to recommend it. I do not believe that everyone “should be” a Christian, but still, in conversation with others, I’m glad to argue its merits. I’m also glad to listen to its limitations. In fact, it is in conversations with other people, from other faith traditions, that my Christianity is deepened. That is what it means to me to be a “dual-citizen;” I am both a Christian, and a person who lives in the context of a world spirituality, a world full of beautiful expressions of God’s love that are not part of my tradition.

That is at least an outline of where I’d like to see the progressive wing of the church spread its proverbial wings because it is we who have the capacity to do what David Brooks would like the Church to do.


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