The Problem with Christianity

Andrew Sullivan, blogger at Time Magazine, the gay, Christian, conservative who once wholeheartedly supported George Bush and the war in Iraq, but who has since seen the error of his ways... has a problem with the religious right. He doesn't like the fact that they seem to have a monopoly on the public voice of Christianity:

Are you a Christian who doesn't feel represented by the religious right? I know the feeling. When the discourse about faith is dominated by political fundamentalists and social conservatives, many others begin to feel as if their religion has been taken away from them.

The number of Christians misrepresented by the Christian right is many. There are evangelical Protestants who believe strongly that Christianity should not get too close to the corrupting allure of government power. There are lay Catholics who, while personally devout, are socially liberal on issues like contraception, gay rights, women's equality and a multi-faith society. There are very orthodox believers who nonetheless respect the freedom and conscience of others as part of their core understanding of what being a Christian is. They have no problem living next to an atheist or a gay couple or a single mother or people whose views on the meaning of life are utterly alien to them--and respecting their neighbors' choices. That doesn't threaten their faith. Sometimes the contrast helps them understand their own faith better.

And there are those who simply believe that, by definition, God is unknowable to our limited, fallible human minds and souls. If God is ultimately unknowable, then how can we be so certain of what God's real position is on, say, the fate of Terri Schiavo? Or the morality of contraception? Or the role of women? Or the love of a gay couple? Also, faith for many of us is interwoven with doubt, a doubt that can strengthen faith and give it perspective and shadow. That doubt means having great humility in the face of God and an enormous reluctance to impose one's beliefs, through civil law, on anyone else.

I would say a clear majority of Christians in the U.S. fall into one or many of those camps. Yet the term "people of faith" has been co-opted almost entirely in our discourse by those who see Christianity as compatible with only one political party, the Republicans, and believe that their religious doctrines should determine public policy for everyone. "Sides are being chosen," Tom DeLay recently told his supporters, "and the future of man hangs in the balance! The enemies of virtue may be on the march, but they have not won, and if we put our trust in Christ, they never will." So Christ is a conservative Republican?

Of course not. And I agree with everything Sullivan has said so far. But then he says this:

What to do about it? The worst response, I think, would be to construct something called the religious left. Many of us who are Christians and not supportive of the religious right are not on the left either. In fact, we are opposed to any politicization of the Gospels by any party, Democratic or Republican, by partisan black churches or partisan white ones. "My kingdom is not of this world," Jesus insisted. What part of that do we not understand?

Perhaps the part about whether or not Jesus really said this. I suppose it is asking too much for Sullivan to be up on Jesus scholarship. Regardless, it is impossible to read the gospels and not realize that Jesus was very political. He didn't back any political or religious party of his day. But his words and his deeds were decidedly political in nature, and they were what we would describe today as leftist: a preferential option for the poor, a challenge to the rich to give up their wealth, compassion and care for the sick and hurting over law and order, turn the other cheek, love your enemy, equal regard for women; it's all leftist and politically charged.

Of course, God is not a Republican or a Democrat. We should be very careful to remember that God and Jesus' agenda are not on any side. The words and deeds of Jesus challenge us all to grow in our faith and our practice. But there is already a religious left and I am proud to be a part of it.

I do like the next distinction Sullivan makes:

So let me suggest that we take back the word Christian while giving the religious right a new adjective: Christianist. Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. Not all Islamists are violent. Only a tiny few are terrorists. And I should underline that the term Christianist is in no way designed to label people on the religious right as favoring any violence at all. I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.

Again, Sullivan is naive to believe that religion doesn't dictate politics. If religion doesn't dictate politics then religion is tepid mush. Our faith ought to have consequences in the way we live, the way we think, and the way we vote.

But I like the idea of calling those whose Christian faith impels them to political aims that would force their intolerant Christian belief and practice on everyone Christianists. What they are doing is not Christian, its Christianist.