Sufficiently Religious

Early in 1991, the telephone in the church parsonage rang. The senior minister answered the call. An agitated voice on the other end of the line asked the question. “Is this the end times?” Other ministers faced the same issue. Often the ministers knew the people that called them. Sometimes they had no idea who the person was. Many other times the minister would have a vague recollection of having met the person leaving the Sunday worship. The call was always the same. A person who can be described as “sufficiently religious” was concerned about the end of time.

American forces were in Saudi Arabia in a mission dubbed “Operation Desert Shield.” Other countries were involved in the coalition that was meant to stop in any further incursion of Saddam Hussein of Iraq into the neighboring countries. Kuwait had fallen. Israel was threatened. Was Jesus returning soon? Is the world ending soon?

The Problem Did Not Go Away

The question consistently reappeared in later years. The Left Behind series promoted radical right wing propaganda. It capitalized on the new foreign policy project named the New American Century. Desert Shield had become Desert Storm. The campaign was over for a time. When the new century finally arrived the series of terrorist attacks now known as 9/11 ended any thought of a peaceful New American Century. The War on Terror began that day. The churches filled with the sufficiently religious people who knew the world was ending. They departed soon afterward. Left Behind had a few more volumes to produce.

I stumbled across the term gottglaubig while reading Hitler’s Willing Executioners by Daniel Goldhagen. It was a term was used by Nazi officials for people who had the proper religious attitude without being affiliated with either the Catholic or Evangelical churches. The proper religious attitude was that which allowed the believer to uphold the policy of the government. The believer needed only to be sufficiently religious to do this.

Some parts of American evangelicalism exhibit the proper religious attitude for the sake of government policy. It is not an exact parallel with the attitude of the German Christian movement that was a part of the Catholic and Evangelical Churches of Germany. Still a goose looks enough like a duck to understand a misidentification. The mere fact that the churched and “unchurched” people continue to ask about world events and the Book of Revelation or Daniel is evidence enough. A second question that is asked is if a particular world leader that opposes U.S. foreign policy is “the Antichrist.”

My ministry has allowed many sufficiently religious people to find me. I am amazed that most sufficiently religious people want to talk about the “big issues” about what they should “believe in” but never what they should do. It is like a person who looking at basic arithmetic for the first time wants to discuss calculus. The person has heard something about the subject and somehow believes they are ready to make assertions regarding it. The person in question is confused.

The Evil Results of the Confusion

The Christian existential philosopher Soren Kierkegaard used an analogy for the sufficiently religious person. He compared that person’s religion to a sick person only taking a small quantity of the needed medication. The sick person cannot reasonably expect to be cured of the disease. I live in a country where young diabetics try rationing their insulin because they cannot afford the proper dosage. They do not get a little bit better. They die. This image is very compelling for understanding that the problem with the sufficiently religious is that their religion is not sufficient.

Insufficient religion causes non-churched believers to demonstrate what they believe to be the correct language regarding abortion, homosexuality, and guns. They have a checklist of “appropriate” beliefs and call themselves “evangelical” whenever polled about their religious identity.

American Christians (white evangelicals) have historically supported or were indifferent to slavery, the murder of native peoples, Jim Crow laws, sexual exploitation of children, and the inhumane treatment of prisoners. Some American Christians that supported these evils and even took part in them were very devout people. Other very devout people opposed them. The majority of supporters for these evils are the sufficiently religious for whom religious values have no bearing on how they conduct themselves. It’s enough to make a preacher cuss.

Overcoming the Confusion

An angry lay volunteer asked me about an interview some anonymous clergy members gave claiming that while they were indeed pastors they were closeted atheists. The person asking me the question was angry about the lies about their beliefs the pastors were telling their congregations. He had my sympathy. I knew enough about lip service devotion already. I had my fill of it. And I was overflowing. I replied, “Maybe the lay people made atheists of them.” The spouse of another pastor considered my statement scandalous.

Brooding almost brought me to despair. Then it occurred to me that the Scriptures of both Testaments do not ever claim the world is ending. The apocalypse is a revelation. It is not destruction. The sufficiently religious do not recognize this because the views they hold have been popularized. Such people read the Bible through the lenses of the popular ideas. The belief that the world will end sometime after “the Rapture” is popular among the evangelicals including evangelicals that don’t do church. In fact, many believe that is what the Bible is really all about. I have seen similar mistakes before then.

The doctrine of last things or eschatology is not about destruction. The doctrine of the early church and therefore the New Testament is that of restoration. The creation awaits redemption St. Paul claims in Romans 8. What ends when the redemption comes, is the end of an age. Redemption is the beginning that has already arrived with the Resurrection (the gospels). The work of redemption continues until the universal restoration is complete (Acts 3). Overcoming the world as it is brings  the millennium into its fullness (Revelation).

The task of progressive Christianity is to reclaim and to proclaim this message of hoped for restoration. The task of the people in the church pews is to live out the Resurrection in the world as it is.