A Lutheran pastor was criticized recently by his church for participating in an inter-faith memorial service for school shooting victims in Connecticut.  The challenge hinged on whether the service constituted “joint worship,” which the church prohibits as suggesting that all faiths are equally valid. Thus, the controversy touched on the central tension in a multi-faith world:  can one adhere to an authentic faith tradition while living in community with others? Another Lutheran pastor in Brooklyn, David Benke, had a more defensible perspective:

Asked for comment on the Newtown situation on Thursday, Mr. Benke said he did not agree with the denomination’s decision to ask Mr. Morris to apologize. “I am on the side of giving Christian witness in the public square and not vacating it,” he said. “If we don’t show up, who can receive our witness?”

The discomfort with joint-faith worship points to a larger issue and is not confined to Lutherans, and is something I often associate with more conservative evangelical groups.  But it’s a misguided view in any case.  The quoted doctrinal justification given in the Times article above was that interfaith activities violate the first commandment:  “I am the Lord thy God.”  And there is concern over radical relativism, one belief is as good as another.  But that’s a tribalistic perspective and a good example of why mainline churches are losing ground in a global community where diversity is packed into every walk of life, including religion.  More practical, realistic and defensible is Abraham Heschel’s more inclusive approach of “the tragic insufficiency of human faith,” which leads to the conclusion the “no religion is an island.”  That should, in the face of the tragic mysteries of life, in no way undermine Lutheranism.

I occasionally catch Krista Tippett’s interviews on NPR on her program “On Being” (formerly Speaking of Faith).  Her talk (April 26, 2012) with Dr. Ira Byock, a pioneer in hospice care, was paradoxically uplifting given its a gloomy topic, and it underscored some basic principles of spirituality in my own amateur theology.  In considering the developmental perspective of “dying well,” he argues that death must invariably bring us in touch with a heightened sense of the sacred, of enhancing power of perception as a phase of life resolves itself.  If as Richard Rohr has said, all spirituality is about paradox, then death brings a heightened sense of it.  One of the recurring theological puzzles is the contradiction between God being all powerful yet caring about human beings, of being with us yet far beyond us, of Immanence and Transcendence.  In the privilege of being present with those at the end of life, Byock calls it “a rightness in the moment…resolution of all contradiction which we label the sacred.”  We have the personal experience, particularly at the end of life, of being “infinitesimal yet infinite, utterly vulnerable and yet unshakably confident, utterly insignificant yet utterly meaningful.”  Although our culture and medical technology makes thinking of death as a defeat, as the enemy we avoid thinking about at all costs, it has been my privilege to be present at and near the moment of death.  I approach such moments through a Christian lens, but surely they are moments we share in a heightened sense of what it means to be human.  That heightened sense is why words so often fail us at those moments.

Here we go again.  My home state of Tennessee is regrettably in the news with its recent neo-“Scopes Trial” legislation purporting to protect teachers who seek to encourage “critical thinking” concerning “disputatious” issues.  Those issues include evolution of course, but also global warming.  The common thread, of course, is a distrust of the ability of the scientific knowledge system to handle issues of evidence, and the education system’s ability to disseminate them–making it necessary to legislate a “solution” to an otherwise non-existent problem.  The law is a manifestation of fear (not to mention political pandering), a pervasive anxiety among religious believers that modernism threatens faith, creating the need to counterpose a fundamentalist certitude to the “other” side in scientific issues.  Students are, in the law’s language, to “explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about scientific subjects.”  This seems non-controversial, but if that’s true then why the need for the bill?  To privilege “differences of opinion,” regardless of scientific support, over evidentiary reasoning, and thus lend a new political imprimatur to faith-based “science” as an oppositional force in the educational arena.  This politicization of faith is an unfortunate tendency and a theme I seem to keep coming back to in this blog (and, given the recent news, an enduring theme).  A recent New York Times op-ed by fellow East Tennessean and author, Amy Greene, makes the point that we tend to be individualists about our faith, and this political move to Republicanize the issue may backfire–I agree about the former, and we’ll have to see about the latter.

Conservative critics have decried the liberal culture on college campuses for years, but the current campaign has sharpened this attack to include a charge of “indoctrination” by Rick Santorum.  Sociologist Neil Gross shows, however, that the evidence doesn’t support the idea that students become less religious or more liberal during college, any more so than they would have otherwise as a function of their age.  The general attack is motivated by a political strategy, with academia–I would argue one of the strongest remaining reason-based cultural fields–serving as a necessary bogeyman:

The main reason for this development is that attacking liberal professors as elitists serves a vital purpose. It helps position the conservative movement as a populist enterprise by identifying a predatory elite to which conservatism stands opposed — an otherwise difficult task for a movement strongly backed by holders of economic power. 

Among cultural conservatives like Santorum there’s another reason.  College at it’s best encourages people to think for themselves, representing a threat to the parallel subculture of fundamentalist belief that has provided a form of indoctrination in many families until college.  Ironically, an anti-science emphasis within that culture, among other features, may be largely responsible for young people disconnecting from the church.  A 2011 Barna national survey of young adults attributes that disconnect to churches being overprotective, shallow, anti-science, simplistic in their teaching about sexuality, exclusionary, and intolerant of doubt (the opposite of an ideal university experience).  I’ve posted earlier about the notorious Ken Hamm and his “Creation Museum” in Kentucky;  he advocates a rehearsed repudiating response to any teacher of science-based claims of evolution and creation:  “Were you there?”  This all-purpose come-back may be effective for many pre-college youngsters, but the Barna results suggest such thinking apparently loses them later.  The ultimate irony, of course, is that same come-back can be used to undermine the very faith culture that’s teaching it (to a claim based on Biblical literalism:  “Where you there?”). Fundamentalists like Ham are planting an anti-intellectual time-bomb that blows up when young people leave the home.  The larger mystery of faith has never been well served by indoctrination of any kind and is not threatened by academia.

As I broaden my reading to include more serious theological voices, I inevitably have come across Walter Brueggemann, including in a long recent interview with Krista Tippett on NPR’s “On Being.”  His writing on the “prophetic imagination” (his new book, The practice of prophetic imagination) seems right at home with the critical analysis of culture that I’m familiar with in my own field. That’s because, as my colleague Bob Jensen has pointed out these links in his recent review, Brueggemann addresses the importance of the prophetic word in leading us to step outside the totalizing culture of modern society with its emphasis on control, consumerism and power. I’m constantly reminded of his ideas when observing the recent political contests, particularly the re-emphasis on American exceptionalism, without a real understanding of what that really means.  I understand some (who I think it safe to say seem concentrated on the political right) to be saying, not that we should aspire to something better and be held to a higher (prophetic) standard and something worthy of us, but that we already are the best, and worthy of everything that’s coming to us.  The ridiculous charge that the president has been on an international “apology tour” for the U.S. illustrates another aspect of this impulse.  When the Hebrews were confronted by prophetic figures, the appropriate response was to wake up to their cultural drift and reapply themselves to living up to their calling, not to accuse the prophet of leading an apology tour for Israel!

Matthew 7:20-23  Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. 

In election campaigning, we’ve grown accustomed to hearing candidates describe their decisions about running for office in religious terms. Michelle Bachman, Herman Cain and our own Governor Rick Perry, for example, have all said they thought it was God’s will that they run for president.  I would not presume to question anyone’s sincerity as to how the call of God is being heard, but I worry about the way we often hear the language of religion in political life.  Is it being used to communicate something honest and true or to categorize, draw boundaries and invoke tribal passions? Are our would-be leaders, whatever their affiliation, approaching their faith in humility, with policies that show they love mercy and will act justly?

Perry has proven particularly adept at using Christianity as wedge issue, with the most recent television ad arousing significant negative backlash.  Declaring he’s “not ashamed to admit I’m a Christian” suggests his opponents are, particularly President Obama who the ad declares launched a “war on religion.”  I can only hope that these ludicrous claims, both implicit and explicit, fail to get political traction, lest we see it become even more standard election discourse than it is now.

Even within the Christian category, we can get caught up in labeling ourselves–whether as (in my case) Methodists, evangelicals, Bible-believers, seekers, or emergents—but Christians claim to be followers of Jesus. In Matthew’s gospel he says that many will claim to have done things in his “name,” but just claiming the name will not be nearly enough. However we describe our faith experience, the visible evidence of its truth is the fruit.

As mentioned a year ago, a volume of faith reflections from UT-Austin faculty was conceived and now published, with Emeritus Professor Donald Davis as the editor.  He’s called it The truth that makes them free:  A collection of essays, and modeled after the Veritas Forum project, Finding God at Harvard.  Texas colleagues reflect on their spiritual journeys from their Christian perspective. As I write in my chapter touching on and reflecting further on themes in my personal project book, Hope for the thinking Christian, “Shortly after it came out, I was invited to talk about the book at a class at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, just north of campus. Someone in the group asked me if the kind of work I was doing brought a schizophrenic feeling of being split between two styles of thinking and writing. Actually, I replied that it’s been just the opposite; I feel like I’m speaking more with one voice, regardless of the context. The dividing lines are less distinct between my interior worlds.”  I know Don had a difficult time getting faculty to venture this different kind of writing (for all the obvious reasons), and the eventual contributions range widely in approach and experience.  Inquiries can be directed to the Christian Faculty Network at http://www.hillhouseaustin.org.

While much of the American religious discourse has become more polarized lately with Perry, Palin and Bachmann in the political foreground, others have thankfully taken pains to draw a more richly layered description.  Although it’s not his usual subject matter, I was intrigued to see New York Times columnist Nick Kristof’s notice about the death at 90 of evangelical leader, John Stott.  Kristof admits he’s not particularly religious himself but praises the erudite Stott for his commitment to combining faith and intellect.  This is particularly welcome given the dumbing-down of religious issues in the popular press.

Centuries ago, serious religious study was extraordinarily demanding and rigorous; in contrast, anyone could declare himself a scientist and go in the business of, say, alchemy. These days, it’s the reverse. A Ph.D. in chemistry is a rigorous degree, while a preacher can explain the Bible on television without mastering Hebrew or Greek — or even showing interest in the nuances of the original texts.

I haven’t identified with the “evangelical” label in my own faith-life, but Stott’s emphasis on the social justice aspects of Christianity within a serious intellectual context makes it easier for me (especially as an academic) to see points of overlap between my mainline and other important Protestant strands.  I will be thinking more on this as I see less auspicious overlaps.  Governor Perry, for example, continues to be on my mind as I noticed recent mention made of his current reading list, which included the latest book by Atlanta Baptist mega-pastor, Charles Stanley, Turning the Tide.  Stanley has not been particularly partisan in most of his sermonizing, sticking mainly to issues of personal devotional life, but in a recent sermon drawn from the book he has begun attacking the Obama administration more explicitly (etc., for drift toward “socialism”) with red-meat lines that drew frequent applause from the congregation.  Thus, I’m not surprised to find his book on Perry’s list.

In other recent news of our Texas Governor, Rick Perry announced an upcoming trip to Liberty University, the evangelical school founded by Jerry Falwell. The campus has become an obligatory stop for candidates seeking to burnish their fundamentalist street cred.  Beyond, however, serving as a marker for a particular kind of religious category, the visit reminds me of an excellent recent book:  The Unlikely Disciple:  A sinner’s semester at America’s holiest university,  by Kevin Roose.  A liberal and secular Brown University student spent a semester “undercover” at Liberty and writes about his experience, in a project I’m recommending to incoming Texas freshman in an August event called “Reading Roundup,” sponsored by Undergraduate Studies.  They asked the instructors like me teaching Freshman Signature Courses this fall to suggest interesting books for them to read before classes get underway, and we’ll gather in August with our respective groups to informally discuss our picks and the issues they raise.  What I liked about Roose’s undergraduate ethnography was the insight he provided beneath the stereotypical categories schools like Liberty tend to suggest.  The students he lived with may have been part of a fundamentalist subculture in their families and upbringing before attending Liberty, but they struggled with the same issues that all young people that age do and, Roose found, weren’t so easily pigeon-holed beneath the surface conservative political and religious rhetoric.  The author himself grew genuinely fond of the people he met (including Falwell) and felt guilty over what felt like a deception as he tried to blend in.  It also reminds me of how often we fail to get beneath the surface categories–our own and those of others that derail communication–to engage with the lives underneath. I suspect it will resonate with Texas students and make an important point, that life is not as simple as it may seem, as an open-mind and investigation can reveal.

I’ve been using this blog for occasional topical comments that strike my interest.  The latest news about Texas Gov. Rick Perry sponsoring a Christian prayer rally prompts me to resume posting by reminding me of a comment I made in an earlier draft of my book Hope for the thinking Christian.  I was trying to make the point that the fundamentalizing of faith is not going away:

“…if anything it is building.  Public anxieties are stoked by political leaders like Texas governor Rick Perry, who according to the promotional blurb in his book, On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For, ‘underscores the depth to which the culture warriors of the left will go to force their secular humanist, minority view upon American society and revered American institutions.’ I’ve been inclined to ignore such foolishness, but I don’t think we can afford to do that.”

In seeking to avoid undue politicization of my more general message of tolerance and the faith journey, I consented to the  editor’s striking of that passage.  But Perry’s popularity with the Tea Party movement and tendency to link his politics to a rather intolerant version of Christianity continues to make him a good example of my theme.  In somewhat of an oxmoron given his approach, Perry called his latest event an “apolitical Christian prayer service.”  The New York Times notes that

The Web site created for the event, which is called The Response, says the meeting “has adopted the American Family Association statement of faith,” including the infallibility of the Bible, the centrality of Jesus Christ and the eternal damnation that awaits nonbelievers.