[amc] The Teachings of Christ are Spiritual and Political
- From: "Ray Gingerich" <RGingerich@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Austin Mennonite Church" <amc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2006 08:38:49 -0500
Jim Rigby is pastor of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Austin, Texas. He can
be reached at jrigby0000@xxxxxxxx
March 27, 2006
The Teachings of Christ are Spiritual and Political
Why We Let an Atheist Join Our Church
By JIM RIGBY
After years of advocacy for progressive causes, I am used to angry mail --
often from fellow Christians -- when I take a political or theological position
that challenges conservative or fundamentalist views.
So, I wasn't surprised when many were unhappy about the decision of St.
Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin, TX, where I am the pastor, to let a
self-professed atheist become a member. But the intensity and tone of the
condemnations were surprising; this wave of mail feels different, more
desperate, like people have been backed against a wall.
Ironically, the new member, a longtime leftist political activist and professor
in Austin, has been getting mail from fellow atheists skeptical of his decision.
"How can you do this?" both sides are asking. To me they ask, "How can you let
someone join the church who cannot affirm the divinity of Christ? Does nothing
matter to you liberals?" To Robert Jensen they ask, "How, as an atheist, can
you surrender your mind to a superstitious institution that birthed the
inquisition and the crusades?"
Neither the church nor Jensen views his membership as surrendering anything,
but instead as an attempt to build connections. Such efforts are crucial in a
world where there seems not to be a lot of wood to build the bridges we need.
And the shame is, while we fight among ourselves, the world is burning.
In my ministry, I have had to live in two worlds. I have spiritual friends who
are trying to celebrate the mystery of life, and activist friends who are
trying to change the world. Somehow these two enterprises have been separated,
but I don't believe either option represents a complete life. Apolitical
spirituality runs the danger of giving charity instead of justice, while
atheistic humanism runs the danger of offering facts instead of meaning. This
divide between spirituality and activism is a betrayal of the deeper roots of
both.
The Book of James argues that merely believing in the existence of God means
nothing; he jokes that even the demons believe that. Some of the meanest people
I have ever met believed in God. The Nazis marched across Europe with belts
reading "God is with us," singing some of the same hymns and reciting some of
the same creeds that the church uses today. With a few notable exceptions, the
German church hid in liturgy and theology while their brothers and sisters
burned. Surely, the holocaust is a permanent rebuttal of that kind of detached
creedal Christianity.
It's been interesting to see that atheists can be just as narrow-minded as
believers. Some of Jensen's critics expressed an infallible belief that
religious people like me are idiots by definition. Inflexible beliefs on
matters where one has no experience is superstition whether one is a believer
or in an atheist.
Atheism can become self-parody when it forms a rigid belief system about
religion. There is a difference between true atheism and anti-theism. Atheism
can be the naked pursuit of truth, but anti-theism is more often the adolescent
joy of upsetting and mocking religious people.
I can understand the urge to make fun of religious people; many of the voices
which speak for religion make me want to crawl under the table. But we also
must remember that Stalinists -- claiming to be atheistic materialists -- were
as savage and superstitious as the inquisitors.
Without religion we would eliminate some of the worst chapters in human history
brought on by the religious inquisitors and religious terrorists. But we would
also eliminate some of history's best chapters. Imagine a world with no Gandhi,
no Martin Luther King, and no Dorothy Day.
Some people argue that evolution disproves religion. I would say that evolution
helps us understand why religion is inevitable in human beings. Our upper brain
functions are built on top of a marshy swamp of animal instincts, and we are
rational only in spurts. Much of our most important processes are irrational,
even more are unconscious altogether. To say we will be purely scientific and
objective is an act of imaginary dissociation from the liquid core of our own
being. In Sartre's words it is "bad faith".
Advertisers know this swampy core and sell to it. Televangelists know this
swampy core and manipulate it. Politicians know this swampy core and appeal to
it. While progressives are trying to be purely logical, propagandists are
playing that irrational core like a drum.
If there's hope of saving the world from the clutches of propaganda it will not
be because we refute it rationally. If we save our world it will be because we
learned how to speak about personal meaning in a way that is adaptive to
natural processes and compatible with universal human rights. Nothing else will
do.
Hegel defined religion as putting philosophy into pictures. Strange and
foreboding topics like hermeneutics and metaphysics can be taught to almost
anyone if they are put in story form. While it is important not to accept these
images literally, it is just as important not to reject them literally.
Because life is an ineffable mystery, religion speaks in pictures and symbols.
To accept or reject the symbols literally is to miss the point from two
different sides. Those who fight over whether God exists are like foolish
pedestrians who praise or curse a red light as they step into oncoming traffic.
The question isn't whether God exists like a brick exists, but rather "what
part of our experience does the symbol ëGod' reveal and what parts does it
obscure?"
The problem with most religious discussions is that we are usually swimming in
a sea of undefined terms. What sense does it make to ask whether God exists if
we don't define what we mean by the term "God." For some it's easier to
reconcile themselves to the universe by picturing a large person overseeing the
process, while others reconcile themselves to the ground by using impersonal
elemental images. These approaches are in conflict only when we forget what we
are trying to do in the first place, which is to harmonize with the ground of
our being.
Locke and Kant struggled to identify the ultimate categories that shape human
perception, which is also the business of religion. We cannot think about being
itself because it is too basic. We are like flowers that immerge out of a soil
too primordial to be understood in plant terms; we can neither speak about the
ground of our being nor ignore it. Religion is a kind of art that reconciles us
to the ground out of which we emerge.
As William James pointed out, religion is not merely hypothetical opinion about
the world. Religion is most essentially a decision to be engaged in a world
that cannot be understood and offers no guarantees. "God" is a symbol of the
truth that stands outside our widest context. "God" is a symbol of the reality
deeper than our ultimate concern. "God" is a symbol of the mystery that lies
between the poles of our clearest rational dichotomy. The point is not to
affirm the reality of the symbol itself, but to affirm the reality to which the
symbol points.
Part of the apoplexy triggered by Dr. Jensen came from his statement that he
was joining our church for "political reasons." If one defines politics as
partisan wrangling then Jensen's comments can be seen as calculating and
manipulative, but if politics is about how we treat each other, then he is
joining the church for the same reason the apostles did -- to help save our
world.
The religion of Jesus is both spiritual and political. Jesus said in his first
sermon that he had come to preach good news to the poor. He taught that love
fulfills the law and the prophets, and spoke of a coming movement of God that
would lift up the poor and oppressed. Jesus let a doubter like Thomas serve
that cause long before the disciple could affirm any creed. Jesus said that
people who blaspheme him or God would be forgiven but those who blaspheme the
Spirit (of love) would not be. Religion is not about groveling before a savior,
it's joining in the work of saving our world.
One last irony is that early Christians were sometimes accused of being
atheists. Like true Muslims and Jews, the early Christians refused to worship
human images of God. While I have nothing against the creeds per se, if they do
not sing of a love for all humankind they are evil and must be renounced as
idolatrous. Surely the essence of Christianity or any religion is not found in
dogma but in the life of love of which the creeds sing. If God had wanted us to
simply recite creeds, Jesus would have come as a parrot.
Is there still room in the church for Thomas? Doubters are an essential part of
the team. The atheism of Ingersoll and Kropotkin is very much like the
mysticism of Schweitzer and Dorothy Day. In fact, I cannot help but imagine
they would all join in common cause to serve our world had they lived at the
same place and time.
"Whoever has love has God." That's what the Bible says. So the question before
my church was not whether Dr. Jensen could recite religious syllables like a
cockatiel, but whether he would follow the core teachings of Jesus and learn
more and grow more into Christ's universal love of which the creeds sing. This
he pledged to do.
I repeat: while we are fighting among ourselves, our world is burning.
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