The United States of America is a secular, pluralistic, nation that is home to hundreds of distinct faiths, philosophies, and traditions living, working, and playing side-by-side. Our diversity has often been touted as one of our great strengths, that we don\u2019t succumb to endless internal wars, chaos, and strife, that the American experiment largely \u201cworks.\u201d That said, no matter how \u201cpagan\u201d our democracy, our republic, is<\/a>, we can\u2019t but\u00a0acknowledge\u00a0that Christianity has been a driving force in our collective history, and in the history of Western civilization as a whole. Christian colonizers pushed out indigenous peoples and beliefs, and tried to build a new Jerusalem, a \u201ccity upon a hill.\u201d<\/a> However, partially due to the strife between Christian denominations, our nation on its founding erected \u201ca wall of separation\u201d<\/a> between (Christian) church and state, and our history has experienced waves of disestablishment<\/a> and religious \u201cawakenings\u201d<\/a> ever since. <\/p>\n Today, despite the softening Christian character of our nation<\/a>, our politics and culture are dominated by a Christian narrative (more than 3\/4 of Americans identify as Christian<\/a>), with almost mandatory public shows of Christian piety from the majority of our leaders.<\/p>\n In the cover story of this week\u2019s Newsweek, Andrew Sullivan says that\u00a0Christianity itself is in crisis<\/a>, and that the \u201cability to be faithful in a religious space and reasonable in a political one has atrophied before our eyes.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cAll of which is to say something so obvious it is almost taboo: Christianity itself is in crisis. It seems no accident to me that so many Christians now embrace materialist self-help rather than ascetic self-denial\u2014or that most Catholics, even regular churchgoers, have tuned out the hierarchy in embarrassment or disgust. Given this crisis, it is no surprise that the fastest-growing segment of belief among the young is atheism, which has leapt in popularity in the new millennium. Nor is it a shock that so many have turned away from organized Christianity and toward \u201cspirituality,\u201d co-opting or adapting the practices of meditation or yoga, or wandering as lapsed Catholics in an inquisitive spiritual desert. The thirst for God is still there. How could it not be, when the profoundest human questions\u2014Why does the universe exist rather than nothing? How did humanity come to be on this remote blue speck of a planet? What happens to us after death?\u2014remain as pressing and mysterious as they\u2019ve always been?\u00a0That\u2019s why polls show a huge majority of Americans still believing in a Higher Power. But the need for new questioning\u2014of Christian institutions as well as ideas and priorities\u2014is as real as the crisis is deep.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n In a live-chat discussing the story, Sullivan explicitly links the crisis of our current political\u00a0dysfunction\u00a0with the crisis of Christianity<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI do not think the crisis of our politics can be resolved without addressing the crisis of American Christianity. Because the corruption of Christianity has corrupted American public life and we must be rid of it to move forward.<\/strong> Hence my coinage of the term Christianist. I use it out of respect for real Christianity, as much as concern about its current partisan politicization.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Reading the article, and the live-chat, the question came to me: what about us? What about the 22% or so of Americans who aren\u2019t Christian? The \u201cothers\u201d and \u201cnones\u201d on those surveys. How do we live in a society where the dominant faith is experiencing a crisis? How do we make our voices heard in a landscape that has devolved into \u201cDemocrat Jesus\u201d vs. \u201cRepublican Jesus,\u201d where all moral arguments are couched in the language of\u00a0Christianity?<\/p>\n Where once President\u00a0Franklin D. Roosevelt might utter the now-unthinkable phrase \u00a0\u201cthe\u00a0Catholics and Jews are here under sufferance,\u201d<\/a> <\/em>today the spirit of that epithet may as well be launched at Pagans, Hindus, Buddhists, and other faiths that are seen as odd, suspect, or\u00a0foreign. Meanwhile, Christianity itself grows ever-more polarized and the ranks of those who claim no\u00a0religion\u00a0(\u201cnones\u201d) swell to over %15 of the population<\/a>. The \u201cpagan\u201d answer to this problem might be a better pluralism, embracing that we are entering a new age, and provide more seats at the table for a variety of moral and religious perspectives. To remember a world where embracing many gods wasn\u2019t seen as a weakness, but a strength. <\/p>\n Sadly, most Christians (right and left) see the answer to this crisis as a return to \u201ctrue\u201d Christianity<\/a> (whatever that means to them). Sullivan writes the same prescription that hundreds, if not thousands, of Christ-following \u201cdoctors\u201d have written before<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis doesn\u2019t imply, as some claim, the privatization of faith, or its relegation to a subordinate sphere. There are times when great injustices\u2014slavery, imperialism, totalitarianism, segregation\u2014require spiritual mobilization and public witness. But from Gandhi to King, the greatest examples of these movements renounce power as well. They embrace nonviolence as a moral example, and that paradox changes the world more than politics or violence ever can or will. When politics is necessary, as it is, the kind of Christianity I am describing seeks always to translate religious truths into reasoned, secular arguments that can appeal to those of other faiths and none at all. But it also means, at times, renouncing Caesar in favor of the Christ to whom Jefferson, Francis, my grandmother, and countless generations of believers have selflessly devoted themselves.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I\u2019m truly sympathetic to the version\/vision of Christianity Sullivan describes, but no matter how\u00a0eloquent\u00a0the words, or how in tune with my personal morality it may be, it still comes down to fixing a problem by doing Christianity \u201cbetter\u201d (or \u201cpurer\u201d if you prefer) in some fashion. The problem with this is the triumphalist thread that runs through the roots of all exclusionary monotheisms. Sullivan himself\u00a0inadvertently touches that root when he approvingly quotes Catholic monk\u00a0Thomas Merton (from the\u00a0\u201cNew Seeds of Contemplation\u201d<\/a>), saying his words are \u201cat the kernel of what I believe is the struggle we are all involved with.\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cStrong hate, the hate that takes joy in hating, is strong because it does not believe itself to be unworthy and alone. It feels the support of a justifying God, of an idol of war, an avenging and destroying spirit. From such blood-drinking gods the human race was once liberated<\/strong>, with great toil and terrible sorrow, by the death of a God Who delivered Himself to the Cross and suffered pathological cruelty of His own creatures out of pity for them. In conquering death He opened their eyes to the reality of a love which asks no questions about worthiness, a love which overcomes hatred and destroys death.<\/em><\/p>\n But men have now come to reject this divine revelation of pardons and they are consequently returning to the old war gods, the gods that insatiably drink blood and eat the flesh of men. It is easier to serve the hate-gods because they thrive on the worship of collective fanaticism. To serve the hate-gods, one has only to be blinded by collective passion. To serve the God of Love one must be free, one must face the terrible responsibility of the decision to love in spite of all unworthiness whether in oneself or in one\u2019s neighbor.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Even at its most poetic, its most refined, the ongoing slur within Christianity of gods that are not their God must always continue. I say that with sadness, because I greatly admire Merton, but even he was not immune to the notion that his faith was an evolutionary and moral step forward in religion. The idea that Christianity can be apolitical, except in times of great injustice, is a kind of folly as there will always be those who interpret the times as times of great injustice. For some, there will always be an \u201cinjustice\u201d so long as other moral codes, other gods, dare to hold sway, or even stand their ground.\u00a0When Sullivan endorses\u00a0New York Times<\/em> columnist\u00a0Ross Douthat\u2019s new book<\/a> (\u201cBad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics\u201d<\/a>), I can only remember that Douthat is also preoccupied with\u00a0fighting\u00a0\u201cDan Brown\u2019s America\u201d <\/a> (because, you know, Paganism)\u00a0and is\u00a0very, very concerned about Hollywood\u2019s rampant pantheism<\/a>.<\/p>\n