2023-09-02T18:21:52-04:00

Yesterday we blogged about a just-released book entitled The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?

In Daniel Darling’s review of the book for World Magazine, he focused on the curious phenomenon of believing, orthodox evangelicals who have just stopped going to church.  According to the research, the reasons are neither political nor theological.  The reasons they give are more “pedestrian,” basically that for whatever reason–COVID, some change in their lives–they just got out of the habit.

But why haven’t they resumed the habit?  Why has church become so unimportant to them that they no longer find it to be a necessary part of their faith?

I have argued that part of the problem might be that evangelicalism has created the impression that church is unnecessary.  What’s important is an individual’s “personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”  Furthermore, individuals are taught that all Christians can interpret the Bible for themselves.  This doesn’t cause evangelicals to leave church, but it certainly gives them permission to do so.  This contrasts with the more traditional understanding that Christians need to hear God’s Word and  receive the Sacraments continually, in fellowship with other Christians led by a called, prepared, and ordained pastor in order to stay and grow in their faith.

But I think other factors are also giving committed Christians, along with everyone else, the permission to sleep in on Sundays.

As is well-documented, the last few decades, church attendance and affiliation have dropped dramatically.  Over those same decades, evangelical congregations have changed dramatically.  It’s time to consider whether or not those changes have contributed to the decline.

I recently came across the statistic that 70% of American Christians attend only 10% of the churches.  The last few decades have been the era of the megachurch.  Even small churches have adopted the megachurch model, adopting contemporary worship, missional strategies, preaching styles, and other elements of the church growth movement.  These changes have been pervasive across the whole spectrum of contemporary Christianity.

I do not wish to reignite the worship wars.  I am not denying that these changes have been popular.  And in many cases these changes have been successful in growing very large congregations.  I just think it’s fair to ask, is there anything about these changes that might make Christians less committed to going to church?

Certainly, one church growth tactic that many churches have adopted is to do away with “membership” altogether.   People today aren’t “joiners,” we are told, so it’s best not to require people in the pews to make a formal commitment so that they “belong” to the congregation.  I’m curious how this arrangement shows up in the “affiliation” statistics.

But I have seen evidence that, even in megachurches that do have membership, there is a great deal of turnover in the people who attend.

Most of those who attend megachurches, for all of their focus on “seekers,” are not new converts to Christianity–though I praise God for those who are–but, rather, Christians who have left other churches.  Sometimes, I am told, these are small churches and sometimes they are other megachurches.

Does this create a habit of transience that weakens Christians’ tie to church?  Could this be a factor in the rise of “non-worshipping evangelicals”?

The church growth model is, again, highly oriented to “seekers.”  The emphasis on evangelism is very much to its credit.  The aim is to make converts.  That focus on new Christians can be salutary.  But for Christians who have known Christ for a long time, though they might at first appreciate the evangelistic atmosphere, after awhile, it might seem like there is not much there for them that they haven’t already heard over and over again.

Whereas, traditionally, church was oriented to the entire lives of its members, geared to their spiritual growth and sanctification.  For us Lutherans, the Christian life begins with Baptism, even for an infant, proceeding through catechesis, confirmation of faith, and all the passages of life–marriage, having children, catechizing one’s children, working in vocation, getting old, dying–and at every moment we continue to have recourse to the Law and the Gospel, the forgiveness of the various sins we commit at every stage, and a growing and deepening knowledge of Our Savior.

Does contemporary worship, with its reliance on popular musical styles, also contribute to the growth in “non-worshipping evangelicals”?  Not that many people are getting angry and leaving the church because they don’t like or approve of this new music.  On the contrary, they do like it.  But the very nature of pop music–understand, this is not a criticism, but a description of what it has to be–is to be of the moment.  One pop style must be succeeded by another pop style, as relatively simple aesthetic forms are exhausted and new ones come into fashion and take their place.  This happens because listeners get tired of music they once loved and constantly need something new.  Some churches stick with the praise songs of the last century, while others work hard to stay up to date.  Either way, what a church goer who attends a congregation for a relatively long time will pick up is one of transience.

To complicate matters, popular music today is highly segmented and compartmentalized.  There is no longer one style that appeals even to a single age group.  In virtually any group of teenagers, you will find a multitude of different musical tastes (techno, house, electropop, hard rock, soft rock, hip hop–this source lists 75).  And privileging one style alienates the fans of other styles.  As a result, it has become hard to hold people in congregations by means of “popular” styles of music.

Whereas, traditionally, church music was its own style–unconnected to what people listened to at home and representative of no particular group, other than the church itself. And the lyrics of the hymns and gospel songs, as well as the multi-part melodies, exemplified a classical aesthetic, designed not just for a “moment” but for all time, expressing universal and inexhaustible truths and emotions.

To be sure, the megachurches are still mega, even though total church attendance is plummeting.  How do we account for that contradiction?

Yes, traditional congregations are losing members too.  There are many reasons for that, as The Great Dechurching shows, including people no longer believing what these churches are teaching. But are they losing members who still “affirm orthodox Christian beliefs” but just don’t want to go to worship services anymore?  I don’t know.  I’d like to see some research on this.

But it is surely fair to assess the changes that have been made to church.  They certainly have not stopped the decline in the number of people going to church.  The question is whether they have contributed to it.

 

 

Photo:  Lakewood Church by ToBeDaniel at Italian Wikipedia., CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

2023-08-31T07:56:17-04:00

As the church struggles over society’s redefinitions of marriage, I stumbled across some language that can help us make distinctions and think more deeply about the issues involved.

Law and Liberty has published a book review by David Upham, a professor at the conservative Catholic school the University of Dallas, entitled Why Not Chastity?  He is reviewing a book by Katy Faust entitled Them Before Us: Why We Need a Global Children’s Rights Movement.  Here is his summary of her argument:

Children, she contends, have an affirmative right not only to life in the womb, but also to the joint care of mother and father in one common home. That is to say, the young have a right to be conceived, received, and raised by married parents. If a male and female choose to reproduce a child, the two parents should get hitched—and stay hitched.

As such, Faust takes aim at a broad array of now-accepted practices that deprive children of this right, including elective divorce (whether no-fault, low-fault, or otherwise), elective adoption (where one or both natural parents are still able to care for the child), and what some decry as “planned orphanhood” (in which children are produced through sperm donation, egg donation, or surrogacy).

Upham mostly agrees with that, but wishes that she had gone further.  Faust is fine with birth control, sex outside of marriage, and same-sex marriage.  If there are children, though, she insists that they need to be raised in a permanent marriage by their biological parents.  Upham is holding out for a Christian view of sex and marriage, including opposition to artificial contraception.

Anyway, in the course of this discussion, he says this:

Most Americans now accept sterile companionate “marriage” (including same-sex forms thereof) and are coming to accept multiparty forms thereof. But many Americans might still be able to see and acknowledge that a matrimonial marriage (formerly known as “marriage”) is the best place to conceive and receive a child.

This gives us an interesting distinction.  “Companionate marriage” is a marriage for companionship.   What is “matrimonial marriage”?  Presumably, this would be traditional Christian marriage, but Upham doesn’t go into detail about what “matrimony” means.

I realized that “matri-” is Latin for “mother.”  According to Etymology Online, “matrimony” derives  from mātrem, “mother”  + mōnium, a suffix meaning “action, state, condition.”  So “matrimony,” from the Latin word for marriage mātrimōnium, refers to the action, state, and condition fitting for motherhood.

The parallel word “patrimony,” derives from the Latin word pater, “father” + -monium, meaning action, state, condition.  But this word refers not to marriage, as such, but to property and inheritance, signifying the father’s role in providing for the family and passing down an inheritance to the children.

So a “a matrimonial marriage (formerly known as ‘marriage’)” would be a marriage oriented to the bride taking on the vocation of mother.  That is, a marriage whose purpose would involve having and caring for children, which also requires the groom taking on the vocation of father, with all of the responsibility that entails.

Interestingly, in Roman Catholicism, what creates marriage is the sacrament of matrimony.  So even though we Lutherans consider marriage a vocation rather than a sacrament, since non-Christians too can get married, that Latin mother-centered mindset has been part of the Christian tradition.

Having said all of this, it is no solution to say the state can create “companionate marriages,” while the church creates “matrimonial marriages.”  From a Christian perspective, there is only one estate of marriage, which is a temporal estate open to Christians and non-Christians alike.  And Christian marriage must include “companionate marriages” of men and women that do not produce children, since many married couples want to have children but are not able to, and since the Bible honors the “barren.”  And there are older couples who get married but, like Abram and Sarah, are “past the age of childbearing.”  Also, all marriages must be “companionate marriages” in line with God’s purpose for marriage, that it is not good for man to be alone and that he needs a “helper” (Genesis 2:18).

Still, though not all “matrimonial marriages” are blessed with children, the state of “holy matrimony” is a concept of marriage that is increasingly alien to our contemporary culture, which tends towards “companionate marriages,” in which–if the companions no longer get along–it is legitimate to walk away, even if they do have children.

 

 

Image by Natalia Lavrinenko from Pixabay

2023-08-18T08:00:22-04:00

Laments about the decline in church attendance usually focus on young people.  But it turns out that large numbers of middle aged adults, including some who were once highly committed, are also dropping out of church.

In 2020, 41% of people between 39 and 57 attended a worship service during the week, either in person or online.  In 2023, just three years later, that number has dropped to only 28%.  That was the largest drop of all age groups.

And even among members who still attend, participation in church activities is way down.  In 2020, the percentage of members who volunteered for church activities was 40%.  In 2022, a span of only two years, that rate had declined to 20%.

So reports the Wall Street Journal, which published an article By Clare Ansberry entitled Why Middle-Aged Americans Aren’t Going Back to Church [behind a paywall].

Ansberry, trying to find the reason, interviews a number of ex-church goers.  Some said they just got out of the habit because of the pandemic.  Some had gotten active because of their kids, but now that the kids are gone, they lack incentive.  Some cite disillusionment over scandals.

Some did cite their church’s opposition to LGBTQ issues or other cultural issues, with one saying that now that she is older, she has more confidence than she did when she was younger to stand up for her beliefs.

But, as social scientist Ryan Burge has shown, many Republicans and other non-progressives are also becoming “Nones.”

Or, as Christianity Today calls ex-churchgoers, “Dones.”  That magazine has also studied what it calls “the great dechurching.”

The biggest reason for the middle age dechurching, though, seems to be that people are just too busy to go to church.  According to the deck of the Wall Street Journal article, which summarizes the story, “Americans in their 40s and 50s often identify with a religion, but they’re also in the thick of raising kids, caring for aging parents and juggling demanding jobs.”

Jake Meador of Mere Orthodoxy wrote about the dechurching phenomenon for The Atlantic in an article entitled The Misunderstood Reason Millions of Americans Stopped Going to Church.  His conclusion, as expressed in that article’s deck: “The defining problem driving people out is … just how American life works in the 21st century.”

But people in this age-group have always been busy, sometimes busier than they are today!  But they still went to church.

In fact, these articles also agree that the adults who have given up on church still for the most part say they have their faith.  “It’s not like they are walking away, saying, ‘I’m now an atheist and don’t believe,’” [Sociologist Josh Packard] says. “They still believe in a God and live life with purpose but are done with the institutional church.”

To me, this is very telling.  Let me propose a theory:  The decline of church attendance is, in at least some measure, caused by the success of evangelicalism.  That movement has long been teaching that faith consists of a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”  And that individuals can form their own beliefs based on their personal Bible study.  And that the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are, at best, symbolic and not really necessary.

Related teachings also play a role.  The Baptist teaching of “once saved always saved” means that if you once “made a decision to accept Christ,” then you can never lose your salvation, no matter what.  Also the Baptist teaching of “soul sufficiency,” that individual Christians have the right and the ability to interpret the Bible for themselves.  Also the Pentecostal teaching that the Holy Spirit communicates with Christians directly in their hearts.  Also the widespread misinterpretation of the “priesthood of all believers” according to which we don’t really need pastors, reducing the office of the pastoral ministry to just that of an organizational “leader.”

All due respect to churches and Christians who believe those things.  My point here is that this type of Christianity has no real need of a church.  And people who have internalized those teachings have no real need to go to church.  People who no longer go to church but still profess Christianity will say as much.

In sacramental Christianity, we need and crave Baptism, Holy Communion, confession and absolution, and the preached Word. A worship service is where we receive God’s gifts.  But the privatized, internalized version of Christianity has also permeated sacramental churches, such as Lutheran and Catholic congregations.

The reason that privatized, internalized Christians go to church, as I have often heard expressed, is simply as a matter of obedience.  We should go because the Bible says we should in Hebrews 10:24-25. They classify worship as Law.  In fact, their version of Christianity is highly law-oriented.  They do believe the Gospel, of course, but they consign that to their conversion, the very beginning of their Christian life, conceived of not as an objective event, as in Baptism, but as an inner decision.  After conversion, though, they feel that they are under the law.

And this brings us to the other major factor in today’s de-churching:  burn out.  Congregations become centers of intense activity.  This law-orientation manifests itself not just in an imperative for good works—or, more usually, avoiding bad works—but also in the notion that we must serve God (not so much our neighbors) in church work.

I have heard it said multiple times by megachurch pastors that while the whole congregation “gathers” on Sunday, the real action in the church happens in the array of small groups that meet throughout the week.

What with Bible studies, book studies, service projects, evangelism activities, music rehearsals, committee meetings, board meetings, visitations, special services, and special programs, it is very easy for the church to take up every night of the week.

This really does take away time from one’s marriage, parenting, work, civic affairs, and other obligations.  The doctrine of vocation teaches that all of these realms—the family, the workplace, the society—are spheres in which we are called to serve God by loving and serving our neighbors.  But today’s churches are often such busy places that they do indeed take us away from our vocations.

I think that’s what the Wall Street Journal is describing when it found that “Americans in their 40s and 50s often identify with a religion, but they’re also in the thick of raising kids, caring for aging parents and juggling demanding jobs.”

When you’ve devoted yourself to so many church activities for years and years and years you may well eventually get burned out.  Especially when some of those activities involve conflict and controversy, which is not uncommon in congregations.  Add to that the constantly high emotional pitch expected in evangelical piety and worship, which is hard to sustain for long, and of course churchgoers will burn out.

That sense of physical and emotional exhaustion—indeed, spiritual exhaustion—is what I’m picking up in those articles’ interviews with long-time churchgoers who now say they are “done” with church.

Going to church used to be associated with the Sabbath; that is, with resting, not working.  This weekly rest is emblematic of the Gospel: “So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has enters God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his” (Hebrews 4:9-10).

Setting aside one hour per week to rest in Christ by receiving the Word and the Sacraments will not take time away from the obligations “of raising kids, caring for aging parents and juggling demanding jobs.” More likely it will energize you for those tasks and show you what they mean in your Christian life.

What churches need to do to reverse the current exodus of longtime church goers is to recover the doctrine of vocation, convey the sense that the Gospel—not the Law—is the essence of Christianity, and restore the centrality of Word and Sacrament worship, which brings that Gospel to us every week.

I realize that this is a very Lutheran answer, but I also acknowledge that we Lutherans are falling short in these areas just like every other theological tradition.  Not all of those traditions have the high view of the sacraments that we do, but they generally have a high view of the Word, the Gospel, and the Sabbath that can serve as the basis for their own reformations.  That would involve preaching the Gospel to believers, as well as non-believers; recasting worship to make it a place where that happens; cutting way back on extracurricular church activities; and teaching how to live out one’s faith in vocation.

 

Image by Sam Williams from Pixabay

 

2023-08-10T19:36:10-04:00

As I was trying to think through the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms and the competing schools of conservatism, Anthony Sacramone alerted me to an interview he did with Rev. Dr. Gregory Seltz.  The former Lutheran Hour speaker is the current head of the Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty. the voice of the LCMS in Washington, D.C.

The interview is from back in 2021 and was published at Religion & Liberty Online, with the perhaps surprising title Lutherans are on the front lines of the battle for religious liberty.  Read it all, but here are a couple of responses from Dr. Seitz:

What are the biggest religious liberty issues facing churches today?

With the federalization of virtually every aspect of healthcare, the government is intricately woven into issues from the beginning of life to its end. The temptation of the government to stand against clear moral teachings that are fundamental to many Christians and religious people of the country is one thing, but the coercive capability of such an expansive intrusion into areas of conscience is another. We’ve seen that in the Obamacare mandates and more recently in the COVID-19 restrictions on the Church, virtually reclassifying it as a secondary institution. Such a reclassification stands in stark contrast to the constitutional protections of religious liberty enshrined in the First Amendment.

While those issues are troubling, the most pressing issue is the reclassification of gender identity as a protected class like race, sex (male/female), ethnicity, or religion. Differences of opinion are one thing, but the notion that the Church must change its teaching regarding marriage and the healthy, biblical directives for sexual expression within the marriage bond now stands not merely as a different understanding of sex, sexual practice, and intimacy—it may become “hate speech,” defining one side of the equation as constitutional and the other as not. We are seeing this already in Europe with the prosecution of Bishop Juhana Pohjola and Paivi Rasanen in Finland merely for publicly teaching that marriage is defined as the lifelong union of a man and woman and sex is part of the marriage bond. . . .

Lutherans have a reputation for political quietism, standing on the sidelines during the great social churnings, focusing strictly on gospel proclamation. Is that reputation deserved? If so, do you see yourself as trying to alter that image, opening up a space for Lutherans as Lutherans to enter the political arena?

I’m biased here, of course, but I think that the representation isn’t well deserved. Some would point to the German Lutheran state church and Hitler, but there were plenty of churches speaking out and even acting against the secular takeover of the state church and the state itself. Here in America, many of the foundational Supreme Court cases—Hosanna TaborTrinity Lutheran, and others—are the result of Lutheran churches standing up to government encroachment when the time is right. I think the label of “quietism” comes from a misunderstanding of our teaching of “Two Kingdoms.” Richard Niebuhr’s book Christ and Culture is a good example. There the Lutheran position is defined as Christ and culture “in tension” rather than in the proper differentiation of God the Father’s preserving work (through Caesar, through people’s vocations) and God’s unique saving work in Christ for all.

Differentiation does have a limited view of what “good” government can do, and that may be why we are not leading the charge on many of the political issues of the day. Such a view also supports a healthy limitation of what government “should do.” But that doesn’t imply nonaction.

Notice the difference between this and Christian nationalism.  Dr. Seitz is indeed taking a strong position on the moral issues of our day, but he isn’t saying that Christians should rule.  Rather, he is saying that the government must stay in its lane.

With the federalization of virtually every aspect of healthcare [and, we might add, virtually every other aspect of our lives], the government is intricately woven into issues from the beginning of life to its end.

The temptation of the government to stand against clear moral teachings that are fundamental to many Christians and religious people of the country is one thing, but the coercive capability of such an expansive intrusion into areas of conscience is another.

Differentiation does have a limited view of what “good” government can do, and that may be why we are not leading the charge on many of the political issues of the day. Such a view also supports a healthy limitation of what government “should do.” But that doesn’t imply nonaction.

Many of these problems and the way they impinge on religious liberty are due to the expansion of government into nearly every area of life and its coercive power to force Christians to comply with its moral dictates even when they violate Christian teaching.

To be sure, Christians believe that the government is responsible to follow the moral law, which applies to God’s temporal kingdom.  This is why they oppose legalized abortion for everyone, not just Christians, an abdication of the government’s responsibility to protect its citizens, no matter how young.  The other big cause of Dr. Seltz’s institute is to lobby on life issues.  Christians have the right to persuade and influence by political and legal means, just as all citizens do.

The government should use its coercive power for good, but the church, as such, has no coercive power.  It has power–the power of the Holy Spirit working through the Word to change hearts–but not power over the state.

This would seem to accord better with small government conservatism, rather than big government conservatism.

 

Photo:  Rev. Dr. Gregory Seltz (LCMS/Erik M. Lunsford)

2023-07-23T11:00:15-04:00

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  That command is repeated some nine times throughout the Bible, from Leviticus, through Christ’s teachings, through the Epistles.

Luther’s ethics is centered on the neighbor.  Our good works are not services rendered to God, as such, but what God desires:  that we serve our neighbor.  That is, our good works should not consist of ascetic self-denials or spiritual exercises, as with the monks and hermits.  Rather, our good works should actually help someone.

Luther’s teachings about vocation are also focused on the neighbor.  The purpose of all of our callings is not our self-fulfillment, but loving and serving the neighbors whom our vocations in the workplace, the society, and the family bring into our lives.

So it’s an important question that the self-justifying lawyer asks Jesus: “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29).

The usual answer is “everybody.”  But some Christian nationalists are offering a different take on the question.  They are saying that our neighbor is “our own kind.”  We are to love people who are close to us and who are similar to us:  our kin, our friends, the people in our own community and country, the people with whom we share an ethnicity or even our race.

In support of this contention, at least one author quotes a passage from St. Augustine:  “Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you.”

But Jake Meador at Mere Orthodoxy challenges the notion that our neighbor has to be someone like us in his article Augustine and the Order of Love: Debunking a Dumb Christian Nationalist Argument.  Actually, he says, Augustine is saying the opposite of that restrictive use of the word “neighbor.”

Here is the context of that line in Of Christian Doctrine.  Note the first sentence, which I’ve bolded:

Further, all men are to be loved equally. But since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you. For, suppose that you had a great deal of some commodity, and felt bound to give it away to somebody who had none, and that it could not be given to more than one person; if two persons presented themselves, neither of whom had either from need or relationship a greater claim upon you than the other, you could do nothing fairer than choose by lot to which you would give what could not be given to both. Just so among men: since you cannot consult for the good of them all, you must take the matter as decided for you by a sort of lot, according as each man happens for the time being to be more closely connected with you.

Comments Meador (my bolds):

In other words, for Augustine the test is not shared ethnicity or culture, but rather simple proximity—which is regarded as a kind of “accident” of time and place ordained by providence. The reason for the order of love is not grounded in ethnic solidarity, but in simple human finitude. We do not have infinite resources of time, energy, or money, and so when we consider who we owe those resources to as acts of neighborly love, it is reasonable to regard those who live closest to us as the proper outlet for those kindnesses simply because providence has placed them in front of us. But the test is actually proximity, not ethnicity.

Augustine goes on to make the case that everyone is our neighbor with a rather brilliant exegesis of Romans 13:9: “For the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”  Augustine comments,

Whoever then supposes that the apostle did not embrace every man in this precept, is compelled to admit, what is at once most absurd and most pernicious, that the apostle thought it no sin, if a man were not a Christian or were an enemy, to commit adultery with his wife, or to kill him, or to covet his goods. And as nobody but a fool would say this, it is clear that every man is to be considered our neighbor, because we are to work no ill to any man.

Says Meador,

In other words, if we read Augustine’s concept of the orders of love as saying “some people are our neighbors and others aren’t and we only owe love to the first group,” we make Paul absurd. For Paul treats the entirety of the decalogue as being a summation of what it means to love neighbor—and if there are any people we can regard as not being our neighbors, it therefore follows that there are people we can commit adultery with or even murder. Since that is obviously absurd, we rightly regard everyone as our neighbor.

I would add that the most authoritative answer to the question “Who is my neighbor?” is that given by Jesus who responded with a story about a Jew and a Samaritan, members of ethnic groups that hated each other (Luke 10:25-37).

And if that were not crystal clear enough, Jesus also addresses the issue in the Sermon on the Mount, where he seems to be correcting this limited understanding of “neighbor” and whom we should love:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. . . .For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers,what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? (Matthew 5: 43-44; 46-47)

A “neighbor” is a concrete, particular person.  The Bible is not interested in projecting our love onto abstractions.  I have known of people who love “humanity” but who treat the actual human beings in their lives atrociously.

In our vocations, God brings neighbors into our  lives whom we are to love and serve:  In the vocation of marriage, our neighbor is our spouse.  In the vocation of parenthood, our neighbor is our child.  In the workplace, our neighbor is our customer.  In the church, our neighbors are the pastor and our fellow members.  In the state, our neighbor is our fellow citizen.  And sometimes our enemy is our neighbor.  But there is no one whom we may exclude by saying “you are not my neighbor.”

 

Illustration:  “The Good Samaritan” by George Frederic Watts via Picryl.  Public Domain

2023-07-22T18:42:23-04:00

Yesterday we blogged about an article by Catholic theologian Thomas Harmon entitled The Spirit of the Clouds.  Its subtitle is “A Demonology of the Internet.”

We discussed a point that he made, that human beings are not and should not try to be purely “spiritual.”  The devil, though, is described in Scripture as “the prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2).  Christianity and the Christian life, though–with its emphasis on Creation, Incarnation, Sacraments, and Vocation–values “the embodied life.”

What, though, is the connection between the internet and demons?  In addition to what we discussed yesterday, its contribution to our “dis-embodied” condition today, Harmon draws parallels between the ways the devil tempts us and the way the internet works upon us.

Harmon quotes St. Augustine (from De Doctrina, Book 2) on how the devil tempts us and manipulates us by drawing out the sins that he knows we have predilections for.

If that doesn’t sound like what happens to us through our interactions with algorithms online, I don’t know what would. The algorithm takes our desires, and what we are already predisposed to pay attention to, and creates a kind of psychological profile for us. This allows it to present to us things that accord with our predilections and which also then provide the algorithms—or the masters of the algorithms—with the means to manipulate us by subtly modifying what we are led to attend to, just as the demons present us with outward phenomena designed to catch our attention based on their knowledge of our (sinful or vicious) predilections. This repeated process has the effect of creating a new, unnoticed environment in which our perceptions are curated by a new kind of social media spirit of the air, which acts as a medium between us and reality.

Demons also work on us by encouraging idolatry.  Citing Psalm 115:8 and Romans 1:21-25, Harmon shows how we become like our idols.  Our identity becomes our avatar on the internet, and we take “virtual reality” for actual reality.  Just as demons try to make us “spirits of the air” just like they are.  Harmon quotes a non-believer who became interested in the writings of exorcists:

In brief, [demons] operate by preying on our imaginations and desires, which are oftentimes obscure even to us, especially when we try to penetrate the veil between present and future or between human and divine by some sort of magical or technical means. James Lindsay zeroes in on this aspect: “Demons influence people through their emotions and their interpretations of features of their lives.” Since they are airy, and proud of their elevation over our earthiness, they have a weakness: humility and an embrace of our earthbound bodies (as a matter of fact, the word “humility” is derived from a Latin word meaning “dirt” or “earth”, humus). For the Christians following along, this is why the Incarnation and the bodily sacraments are so important.

Harmon goes on to cite St. Athanasius and what he says about Christ and His incarnation:

St. Athanasius’s summary of the solution to the problem is simply that “Where Christ is named, idolatry is destroyed and the fraud of evil spirits is exposed; indeed, no such spirit can endure that Name, but takes to flight on sound of it” (On the Incarnation #30). Athanasius is not referring to something happening in the noumenal sphere, but rather something observable: where Christ is preached and people are baptized, idolatry fades and the influence of demons lessens in ways apparent to all. . . .

Athanasius’s account rests on two legs. First, Christ is the Incarnate Word, who unites God with human nature. . . . If it is the spirits of the air that are a problem, then the earthy character of embodied humanity can be a counteractive. . . .The presence of the Word (the logos) in the flesh points out that God really is lord of all of creation, not just the “spiritual” parts.

The second leg of Athanasius’s account is the Resurrection. . . .The fear of death becomes the main lever the demons use to manipulate human beings. But if Christ has conquered death and opened the way to eternal life, not only for the soul but also for the body, then the demons are disarmed.

Harmon is not saying that today’s information technology is demonic, in the sense of being possessed by the devil or being intrinsic evil so that we should never use it.  He proposes that we use it more modestly as a way to become more engaged with the actual, physical world:  watching do it yourself videos on YouTube, finding the times for church services, learning about local events, getting involved with local politics, and the like.  “Perhaps we can find ways to use digital tools to help us with reentry from our electronic orbit and thereby take a lever away from the manipulators of every sort.”

 

Illustration via pxfuel.

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