What
You're Missing in our subscriber-only CounterPunch newsletter
Did Oprah Pick Another Fibber?
Truth and Fiction in Elie Wiesel's Night
In his special
report Alexander Cockburn interviews former Wiesel colleague
and Holocaust survivor Eli Pfefferkorn. What Raul Hilberg, the
Holocaust's greatest historian, really thinks about Wiesel's
"Night". Also
in this special issue: Is Hugo Chavez Hitler or Father Christmas?
Larry Lack tells the full story of Venezuela's hand-outs to Uncle
Sam's Shivering Poor. Plus, Jeffrey St Clair profiles the Endangered
Visigoth and traces the rise and possible fall of Rick Pombo,
destroyer of nature.CounterPunch
Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember,
we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition
of CounterPunch. Please
support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter,
which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or
by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions
are tax-deductible.Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please:Subscribe
Now!
I don't believe Jesus Christ was the son of a God that I don't
believe in, nor do I believe Jesus rose from the dead to ascend
to a heaven that I don't believe exists.
Given these positions, this year I did the only thing that seemed
sensible: I formally joined a Christian church.
Standing before the congregation of St. Andrew's Presbyterian
Church in Austin, TX, I affirmed that I (1) endorsed the core
principles in Christ's teaching; (2) intended to work to deepen
my understanding and practice of the universal love at the heart
of those principles; and (3) pledged to be a responsible member
of the church and the larger community.
So, I'm a Christian, sort of. A secular Christian. A Christian
atheist, perhaps. But, in a deep sense, I would argue, a real
Christian.
A real Christian who doesn't believe in God? This claim requires
some explanation about the reasons I joined, and also opens up
a discussion of what the term "Christian" could, or
should, mean.
First, whatever my beliefs about the nature of the non-material
world or my views on spirituality, I live in a country that is
extremely religious, especially compared to other technologically
advanced industrial nations. Surveys show that about 80 percent
of Americans identify as Christian and 5 percent as some other
faith. And beyond self-identification, a 2002 poll showed that
67 percent of all people in the poll agreed that the United States
is a "Christian nation"; 48 percent said they believed
that the United States has "special protection from God";
58 percent said that America's strength is based on religious
faith; and 47 percent asserted that a belief in God is necessary
to be moral.
While 84 percent in that 2002 poll agreed that one can be a "good
American" without religious faith, clearly there's an advantage
to being able to speak within a religious framework in the contemporary
United States.
So, my decision to join a church was more a political than a
theological act. As a political organizer interested in a variety
of social-justice issues, I look for places to engage people
in discussion. In a depoliticized society such as the United
States -- where ordinary people in everyday spaces do not routinely
talk about politics and underlying values -- churches are one of the few
places where such engagement is possible. Even though many ministers
and churchgoers shy away from making church a place for discussion
of specific political issues, people there expect to engage fundamental
questions about what it means to be human and the obligations
we owe each other -- questions that are always at the core of
politics.
The pastor and most of the congregation at St. Andrew's understand
my reasons for joining, realizing that I didn't convert in a
theological sense but joined a moral and political community.
There's nothing special about me in this regard -- many St. Andrew's
members I've talked to are seeking community and a place for
spiritual, moral and political engagement. The church is expansive
in defining faith; the degree to which members of the congregation
believe in God and Christ in traditional terms varies widely.
Many do, some don't, and a whole lot of folks seem to be searching.
St. Andrew's offers a safe space and an exciting atmosphere for
that search. in collaboration with others.
Such expansiveness raises questions about the definition of Christian.
Many no doubt would reject the idea that such a church is truly
Christian and would argue that a belief in the existence of God
and the divinity of Christ are minimal requirements for claiming
to be a person of Christian faith.
Such a claim implies that an interpretation of the Bible can
be cordoned off as truth-beyond-challenge. But what if the Bible
is more realistically read symbolically and not literally? What
if that's the case even to the point of seeing Christ's claim
to being the son of God as simply a way of conveying fundamental
moral principles? What if the resurrection is metaphor? What
if "God" is just the name we give to the mystery that
is beyond our ability to comprehend through reason?
In such a conception of faith, an atheist can be a Christian.
A Hindu can be a Christian. Anyone can be a Christian, and a
Christian can find a connection to other perspectives and be
part of other faiths. With such a conception of faith, a real
ecumenical spirit and practice is possible. Identification with
a religious tradition can become a way to lower barriers between
people, not raise them ever higher.
We can ground this process in the ethical principles common to
almost all religious and secular philosophical systems, one of
which is the assertion that we should treat others as we would
like to be treated. For example:
--None of you truly believes
until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself (Islam).
--Do unto others as you would
have them do unto you (Christianity).
--Act only on that maxim that
you can will a universal law (Kant).
One of the most playful and
powerful ways this has been conveyed is in the story of the gentile
who challenged two Jewish rabbis to teach him the Torah in the
time that he could stand on one foot. One rabbi dismissed the
question, but Hillel, one of the great Jewish theologians of
the first century BCE, told the man: "That which is hateful
to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah;
the rest is commentary. Go and study it."
There is an important struggle going on for the soul of Christianity,
which should be of concern to everyone, Christian or not. The
debate is not just at the level of arguments over whether, for
example, certain Old Testament passages should be interpreted
to condemn homosexuality. The deeper struggle is over whether
Christianity is to be understood as a closed set of answers that
leads to the intensification of these boundaries, or as an invitation
to explore questions that help people transcend boundaries. Such
a struggle is going on not only within Christianity, but in all
the major world religions.
Where can this lead? Some might argue that promoting such expansive
conceptions of faith would eventually make the term Christian
meaningless. If one can be a Christian without accepting the
resurrection, then calling oneself Christian would have no meaning
beyond an expression of support for some basic moral principles
that are near-universal. That is partly true; if this strategy
were successful, at some point people would stop fussing about
who is and isn't a Christian -- and that would be a good thing.
The same process could go on in other religions as well. Christianity
could do its part to help usher in a period of human history
in which people stopped obsessing about how to mark the boundaries
of a faith group and instead committed to living those values
more fully.
In other words, the task of Christians -- and, I would argue,
all religions -- is to make themselves more relevant in the short
term by being a site of such political and moral engagement,
with the goal of ensuring their ultimate irrelevance. The task
of religion, paradoxically, is to bring into being a world based
on the universal values that underlie most major theological
and philosophical systems -- compassion, empathy, solidarity,
dignity. Such a world would be truly based on love and real solidarity,
a world in which we would take seriously the claim that all people
have exactly the same value.
In his 1927 lecture "Why I Am Not a Christian," the
philosopher Bertrand Russell said: "A good world needs
a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for
the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that
is dead."
I couldn't agree more, and I joined a Christian church to be
part of that hope for the future, to struggle to make religion
a force that can help usher into existence a world in which we
can imagine living in peace with each other and in sustainable
relation to the non-human world.
Such a task requires a fearlessness and intelligence beyond what
we have mustered to date, but it also requires a faith in our
ability to achieve it.
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.