(Ludlow United Church, Ludlow VT, August 8, 2010). Part 1 of 2.
Luke 12:8-9, 11-12
Have you heard anyone say that we live in a post-Christian America?
I want to use this Sunday and next to talk in two parts about what it means to be the Church in our contemporary, post-Christian context. Today let me describe the problem. Next week I’ll point toward a solution:
Did you know: The percent of American adults who claim to be Christian has been shrinking for a generation? Self-identified Christians have declined 11% since 1970. Now, just 76% of American adults claim to be Christian; that’s about 176 million people.
At the same time, the percent of Americans who are Jewish, Muslim, Hindi, Buddhist, or members of other Eastern religions has more than doubled to over 6 million. Another 3 million people identify with one of the dozens of new religious movements, such as Wicca and paganism.
Religious plurality has mushroomed over the last few decades. And, in general, that’s a good thing. American Christians report that the diversity in American religious practice strengthens the country and helps them clarify their own convictions. Only 26% percent of Christians believe the country is harmed by religious diversity.
However, religious diversity means religious competition. In general, Americans think that’s healthy, and the evidence indicates that all religious groups benefit; except one. There is one group of Christians who are not benefitting from the competitive religious marketplace. Care to guess which it is? Mainline Protestantism; i.e., Ludlow United Church.
But there’s more to the story. In addition to the competitiveness between religions – and between Christian groups – for adherents, there are a growing number of Nones. Those are Americans who no longer claim any religious affiliation. They tend to think there is no God. During the 1990s, 1.3 million Americans declared their skepticism in God each year. Since 2001, the annual increase has been 660,000. So, today 15% of the adult U.S. population is totally secularized; in New England it’s 20%; and among 18 – 29 year-olds the nationwide statistic is 22%. In all, 34 million American adults doubt or deny the existence of God.
So all-in-all, about 25%, or 43 million, U.S. adults are not Christian, and the Christian population is shrinking while the other options are growing.
Given all of the religious diversity – and the growing number of citizens who say they have no religious faith at all – U.S. public policy and institutions are quickly becoming un-Christianized, which is not how it used to be. Consider:
In most New England towns, and across the Northern states, the Congregational Church often sits on the public green with the Court House and Library. Or else, it is situated at a prominent point on an historic main street.
In other places, its position is shared with an Episcopal or Presbyterian Church – and in days gone by, everyone who was anyone in town would have been found at one of those churches on Sunday, and serving on a board.
Their Mainline Protestant views and sentiments were carried into the workplace – whether a local business or law enforcement center; whether in the local mayor’s office or the State House. The country was, broadly speaking, a Christian country because Christian values were both espoused and practiced by the government officials, business leaders, and local opinion shapers, including newspaper editors – and those Christian views were by-and-large mainline Protestant.
But those days are gone. Business owners and civic leaders are now as likely to be Buddhist, Hindi, Muslim, Jewish, pagan, or atheist as Christian. And among the Christians, Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, Pentecostals and Catholics have become as common as mainline Protestants, both in positions of influence and authority as well as among the workforce.
So, when you look at it in context, it’s not surprising that the influence of Christianity on our culture as a whole is decreasing – and not surprising that, as a country, we are going through an identity crisis. We don’t really know who we are as a people; or if we really are a people at all anymore. I mean: a people in the sense of having a shared world view and a common set of values. Just what does hold us together today? What unites us and gives us common ground? Or are we, in fact, splintering; balkanizing into separate groups living in tension with one another and competing for social resources because we have conflicting values and world views – life commitments that put us at odds with our neighbors?
And what is a church supposed to do and be in the midst of all of this social and cultural turmoil? How might Ludlow United be a positive influence here, and in the world?
That’s a tough question; not just because there are so many options – and many views within this membership – but more basically it is difficult to determine what a “positive influence” would be when our very ideas about positive and negative are tied up in our value systems. And our value systems are tied to our religious convictions.
My big point here is this: we cannot take religion out of the public square because it is our religious convictions that lead to our policy commitments. Let me see if I can provide an example out of today’s headlines.
Muslims, like Christians, are a diverse people. As in Christianity, how Islam is understood and practiced is partly a function of the culture of the people who adopt the faith. So a Muslim in Indonesia is much less likely to adopt the strict codes of behavior seen, for example, in Saudi Arabia. In the same way, African Christians tend to be more Pentecostal, more focused on the Holy Spirit than American Christians, who tend to be Word-oriented; more focused on Jesus Christ. Of course I’m talking in general terms, and we know the reality is in flux. However, at this moment in time we can make a few valid generalizations about the differences in Christian and Muslim practices in different parts of the world – influenced by the cultures of the people who adopt the faith.
We can also make some generally valid statements about the similarities and differences in values and views between Islam and Christianity – so long as we remember that those statements are only generally valid, not universally valid.
For example, both Islamic and Christian theology puts a high value on discipleship – on submission to God, as articulated in our sacred texts.
Both Islam and Christianity recognize that submission to God entails an inner combat – a war between Light and Dark, Good and Evil, God and Satan – for our souls.
Islam, in general and historically (at least in the Middle East) has held that an Islamic government is a crucial and necessary tool in the battle for human souls. To the extent that a society conforms to shari ‘a law, the people are provided a safe framework within which to build moral personal lives and thus find peace in obedience to God.
Christianity, in general and historically (at least in Western Europe and the U.S.) believes that salvation is an individual thing. It is my personal relationship and obedience to Christ that yields my salvation. And although U.S. and European cultures have been Christianized, that has been rather more a by-product of many individual commitments than a group policy and pursuit.
In other words, Islam in the Middle East believes salvation is foremost a social, corporate, community-wide activity. The individual submits to the group and is saved as part of a comprehensive program to save the whole society by structuring it to be obedient to God’s law. Christianity in the U.S. believes salvation is foremost a private, individual activity. The individual is set apart from and given priority over the community; the community is saved as a consequence of many individual decisions to strive for obedience to God’s law.
These views are, at their very foundations, opposed to one another. Either you believe that individuals must be made to conform to God from the top down through submission of the individual, coerced, if necessary, by government power; or you believe that individuals must be free of governmental coercion in order to choose to conform, and by choosing contribute to the sanctification of society from the bottom up.
It is a question of what constitutes individual freedom. To the Middle Eastern Muslim, freedom is found in being enslaved to God. Human free will is a lie and a snare of the devil.
The U.S. Christian can agree that freedom is enslavement to God – after all Paul describes himself in just those terms. But it is a chosen enslavement – a called obedience – not enforced from outside, but selected from inside by each individual.
And it plays out like this. If you read modern Islamist political analysis you will see that the notion of democratic government is strongly rejected. To most Middle Eastern religious scholars today, democracy is an affront to God because it is a human construct; it is human government not divine government. Therefore, it is rebellion against God rather than godly. To those Muslims – the ones who detest the U.S. on religious grounds – the U.S. is satanic because we let human passions form our government, laws and culture, rather than submit to shari ‘a.
For us the opposite is godly. We who think religiously about government believe that individuals have to be liberated from top-down control in order to be free to answer God’s call on our hearts.
We go back to Moses telling Pharaoh, “let my people go so that they may worship God.”
Our Congregational forebears sailed the Mayflower to these shores to get out from under the religious impositions of the English King, in order to be free to directly apprehend and conform to God’s commands.
Our nation’s founders stressed the notion that our freedoms as individuals are granted by God, not by human institutions, thus liberating each person from top-down government, so that we each can follow God according to the Light we each see.
Our form of government – representative democracy – is based on this religious conviction: that government has to be from the people, by the people and for the people so that government can never usurp our individual rights and freedoms to pursue our own, private visions of the good life – because only then are we each free to choose and follow Christ wherever he may lead.
Now – in our contemporary world – we have a conflict between two contrary notions of how to create a good society. That conflict is not just “out there”; it is here, too – in the destruction of the World Trade Center, which was a blow against that satanic, ungodly hegemony of the West – and also in the growing local conflicts generated when Muslims want shari ‘a-compliant alternatives to U.S. practices in finance, public accommodations, schools, and so on.
The contrast and the conflict between these two traditions will grow in coming years. What is the constructive position of Ludlow United Church? How do we be church in this social ferment and conflict? How can we be peacemakers when the basic worldviews of the combatants are so polar opposite; when each side sees the fundamental convictions of the other to be anti-God?
And don’t misunderstand me. This is not just a Muslim-Christian tension. Each religion represented in the U.S. has places of basic disagreement and conflict with every other religion in the U.S. And those basic disagreements on values have social and political implications. What we each think our society should value depends on our religious commitments.
Plus, of course, we have a rapidly-increasing population of non-believers; citizens with no religious convictions – many of whom want all vestiges of religious values removed from the public square and government.
Which sounds nice and neutral, but we have to ask: okay, on what basis, then, are we going to choose what we uphold by our laws? On what basis are we going to say that some behaviors are destructive and must not be allowed? For example:
Is child abuse wrong? By what set of values? Not all cultures value children as we do.
Is group marriage forbidden? By what standards? And how about the custom of taking multiple wives, practiced in some Middle Eastern and African countries? Is that wrong? By what set of values?
Is it wrong to take someone else’s property? Who says so, and by what authority?
Is slavery wrong? Why? By what view of human value?
Is it good to care for the less fortunate? Why? What if my values think it is better to let someone experience their karma; or that it’s better to euthanize – kill – defectives? On what basis does society forbid me doing so?
Can society forbid anything? On what standard of values, if not a religious standard that transcends human self-interest or group prejudices?
These are the practical challenges we face as an increasingly-religiously pluralistic nation. In some ways it is a set of challenges no other country faces, because no other nation offers the range of freedom of self-expression that the U.S. does; and few other nations have no explicit national religion. So, what are we to do to be faithful to the Gospel entrusted to us in a context of unparalleled religious pluralism?
Next week I want to make a modest proposal. It will necessarily be a Christian proposal because I know where I put my candle down. But today I want to leave you with this: You must know to whom you belong.
You must know to whom you belong. Until you know whose you are, you cannot add to the conversation in ways that will yield greater peace, while also holding firmly to what cannot be compromised.
Next week I’ll talk more about that. Meanwhile, reflect on how today’s Scripture applies to you, personally:
Luke 12:8-9, 11-12: “Also I say to you, whoever confesses Me before men and women, the Son of Man also will confess before the angels of God. But whoever denies Me before men and women will be denied before the angels of God. … Now when they bring you to the synagogues and magistrates and authorities, do not worry about how or what you should answer, or what you should say. For the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.”
Amen.
