How loudly can you shout?
Interesting article from the Michael Spencer and the Christian Science Monitor predicting the not-too-distant downfall of mainline Evangelical Christianity, from which the Catholic and Orthodox communities stand to benefit.
For my money, this was the most important quote in the whole piece:
This sums up what I found to be the main point of the piece: The big Evangelical mistake was to focus on political activism without understanding its underlying theological and philosophical principles. When these Christians got in bed with the Republican Party without being able to explain what they were doing, they inextricably tied themselves to the G.O.P.'s electoral fortunes. The rest, as they say, is history: Republican political policy fell out of favor and was seen as hindering social progress, and Evangelical Christianity went with it because, as Mr. Spencer says, it was more strongly associated with a political cause than a coherent faith.
I must confess that I wonder if Catholics aren't intrinsically better off than Evangelicals when it comes to basing politics on theology. It seems to me that trying to do serious theology in an Evangelical church is a recipe for a fractured community. What happens when someone disagrees with one of the leaders? My understanding--which, I admit, could well be wrong--is that their options are either to pipe down or to leave and start their own church. Such divisions are dangerous if you have a political goal, particularly in American society, where influence is often a question of how loudly you can shout. Scripture tells us that a house divided against itself cannot stand (Lk 11:17); I wonder what theological sacrifices were made to prevent the Evangelical house from dividing.
Granted, the Catholic Church has its own problems in this area. Some people profess Catholicism despite clearly disagreeing with teachings to which Catholics must assent. Yet the Church's reaction to these people is different: It is to shepherd, to guide, to lead people back to the truth, above all recognizing that while their denial is sinful, the Church is herself a hospital for sinners. Notice that those upon whom it comes down hardest are those most in a position to cause scandal. The recent events with the 9-year-old in Brazil are an example, as are the bishops' comments about Nancy Pelosi: When all eyes are on you, you must be even more forceful about doing right than when no one is looking.
I think the biggest lesson we, as Catholics, can learn from this article is that we, too, tend to defend our arguments weakly. Too often we choose a rhetorical style that alienates our listeners or causes them not to take us seriously. Similarly, we often forget that it takes two to fail to communicate: Perhaps the other person misunderstands you--but perhaps you also failed to make your point!
There are all kinds of examples of what I mean on Catholic forums all over the Internet. Read any thread about abortion. You will eventually come across all manner of shouting: "Abortion is murder!" we will cry. Someone will take up the strain and continue, "What is moral about shredding babies to pieces before they are born?" A third person will recite the chorus with a first-person narrative from an unborn child who is clearly alive, but who is painfully aborted at the end of the second trimester. Are these depictions of abortion false? Hardly. But are they effective? No, not in the least.
For a long time I was the sort of Catholic who thought that while abortion was wrong, it was equally true that it was not the government's place to determine what people could and could not do in this arena. (I have come around considerably since then, but that's for another post.) When I saw this sort of rhetoric, I immediately tuned out, assuming that the speaker, unable to support his points, was using vividness as a substitute for logical argument. This problem is still present today, but now it is far worse, for two reasons: First, the secular movement that disagrees with this view prides itself on a "logical" approach to these matters; and second, because vividness is all we've had for so long, it, too, has become associated with the sort of politics with which many people already disagree.
Gay marriage is another excellent example of how vividness and hollow activism have won us more ridicule than success. It often seems that the main argument Christians have against gay marriage is purely theological: The Bible says homosexual actions are wrong, and it says that marriage (especially sacramental marriage) is between one man and one woman. This argument suffers from the same two problems that the abortion argument does: The secular community isn't going to listen to an argument that begins with "The Bible says that," and using this argument makes us look like the sort of Bible-toting literalist fundie who long ago exhausted his political currency.
We can do much better. Why don't we? Catholic moral theology is not only 2,000 years old, it is based on natural principles that everyone can observe and that everyone has written on their hearts (see Rom 2:14-16). Which stance is more likely to gain ground: acting like Westboro Baptist Church, or arguing from the observable design of human sexuality through the relationship between civil law and human behavior to restrictions on who can be married? The latter case is at least marginally attractive to the secular world because it has empirically observable premises and deduces a conclusion from those premises, thus giving the whole argument the sweet smell of logic; the former is just another attempt to shout louder than everyone else--and those attempts do us no good when no one is listening.
In no way do I mean to imply that we should take Catholic social and moral teaching less seriously. On the contrary, those who profess Catholicism should take it all the more seriously, for there are many people in our midst who profess our faith without understanding it. Our job is to reprove and correct gently and with reverence (1 Pt 3:15)--that means that we should not run around declaring who is and is not Catholic!--and to do so by understanding why our teaching is what it is, rather than seeing how loudly we can shout. Otherwise, we risk being viewed as mere political stooges and superstitious fools rather than people of well-conceived, sound faith, and it is at exactly that point that we lose whatever limited clout we have.
We can no longer overcome this rapidly secularizing world by the strength of our convictions or the volume of our voices. We must engage this world on its terms, which means we must use our indoor voices and be prepared to present a full defense of our faith and its teachings. We cannot succumb to following causes without reason; we cannot make the Evangelical mistake of ignoring theology in order to make the faith more accessible. But we are not alone: Christ is with us even today in the authority of the Church; we can rely on 2,000 years of Catholic intellectual and mystical development; and we have Christ physically present with us even now in the Blessed Sacrament. Let us move forward focusing on these things and remembering that our works, our convictions, our faith, and our salvation are not our own, but are the gift of God (Eph 2:8-10).
We have been given a ministry to fill and good works to walk in. May God grant us the grace to recognize how our times have changed and to fulfill his last command: "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, until the very end of the age."
For my money, this was the most important quote in the whole piece:
The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can't articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith. ... [T]he billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community.
This sums up what I found to be the main point of the piece: The big Evangelical mistake was to focus on political activism without understanding its underlying theological and philosophical principles. When these Christians got in bed with the Republican Party without being able to explain what they were doing, they inextricably tied themselves to the G.O.P.'s electoral fortunes. The rest, as they say, is history: Republican political policy fell out of favor and was seen as hindering social progress, and Evangelical Christianity went with it because, as Mr. Spencer says, it was more strongly associated with a political cause than a coherent faith.
I must confess that I wonder if Catholics aren't intrinsically better off than Evangelicals when it comes to basing politics on theology. It seems to me that trying to do serious theology in an Evangelical church is a recipe for a fractured community. What happens when someone disagrees with one of the leaders? My understanding--which, I admit, could well be wrong--is that their options are either to pipe down or to leave and start their own church. Such divisions are dangerous if you have a political goal, particularly in American society, where influence is often a question of how loudly you can shout. Scripture tells us that a house divided against itself cannot stand (Lk 11:17); I wonder what theological sacrifices were made to prevent the Evangelical house from dividing.
Granted, the Catholic Church has its own problems in this area. Some people profess Catholicism despite clearly disagreeing with teachings to which Catholics must assent. Yet the Church's reaction to these people is different: It is to shepherd, to guide, to lead people back to the truth, above all recognizing that while their denial is sinful, the Church is herself a hospital for sinners. Notice that those upon whom it comes down hardest are those most in a position to cause scandal. The recent events with the 9-year-old in Brazil are an example, as are the bishops' comments about Nancy Pelosi: When all eyes are on you, you must be even more forceful about doing right than when no one is looking.
I think the biggest lesson we, as Catholics, can learn from this article is that we, too, tend to defend our arguments weakly. Too often we choose a rhetorical style that alienates our listeners or causes them not to take us seriously. Similarly, we often forget that it takes two to fail to communicate: Perhaps the other person misunderstands you--but perhaps you also failed to make your point!
There are all kinds of examples of what I mean on Catholic forums all over the Internet. Read any thread about abortion. You will eventually come across all manner of shouting: "Abortion is murder!" we will cry. Someone will take up the strain and continue, "What is moral about shredding babies to pieces before they are born?" A third person will recite the chorus with a first-person narrative from an unborn child who is clearly alive, but who is painfully aborted at the end of the second trimester. Are these depictions of abortion false? Hardly. But are they effective? No, not in the least.
For a long time I was the sort of Catholic who thought that while abortion was wrong, it was equally true that it was not the government's place to determine what people could and could not do in this arena. (I have come around considerably since then, but that's for another post.) When I saw this sort of rhetoric, I immediately tuned out, assuming that the speaker, unable to support his points, was using vividness as a substitute for logical argument. This problem is still present today, but now it is far worse, for two reasons: First, the secular movement that disagrees with this view prides itself on a "logical" approach to these matters; and second, because vividness is all we've had for so long, it, too, has become associated with the sort of politics with which many people already disagree.
Gay marriage is another excellent example of how vividness and hollow activism have won us more ridicule than success. It often seems that the main argument Christians have against gay marriage is purely theological: The Bible says homosexual actions are wrong, and it says that marriage (especially sacramental marriage) is between one man and one woman. This argument suffers from the same two problems that the abortion argument does: The secular community isn't going to listen to an argument that begins with "The Bible says that," and using this argument makes us look like the sort of Bible-toting literalist fundie who long ago exhausted his political currency.
We can do much better. Why don't we? Catholic moral theology is not only 2,000 years old, it is based on natural principles that everyone can observe and that everyone has written on their hearts (see Rom 2:14-16). Which stance is more likely to gain ground: acting like Westboro Baptist Church, or arguing from the observable design of human sexuality through the relationship between civil law and human behavior to restrictions on who can be married? The latter case is at least marginally attractive to the secular world because it has empirically observable premises and deduces a conclusion from those premises, thus giving the whole argument the sweet smell of logic; the former is just another attempt to shout louder than everyone else--and those attempts do us no good when no one is listening.
In no way do I mean to imply that we should take Catholic social and moral teaching less seriously. On the contrary, those who profess Catholicism should take it all the more seriously, for there are many people in our midst who profess our faith without understanding it. Our job is to reprove and correct gently and with reverence (1 Pt 3:15)--that means that we should not run around declaring who is and is not Catholic!--and to do so by understanding why our teaching is what it is, rather than seeing how loudly we can shout. Otherwise, we risk being viewed as mere political stooges and superstitious fools rather than people of well-conceived, sound faith, and it is at exactly that point that we lose whatever limited clout we have.
We can no longer overcome this rapidly secularizing world by the strength of our convictions or the volume of our voices. We must engage this world on its terms, which means we must use our indoor voices and be prepared to present a full defense of our faith and its teachings. We cannot succumb to following causes without reason; we cannot make the Evangelical mistake of ignoring theology in order to make the faith more accessible. But we are not alone: Christ is with us even today in the authority of the Church; we can rely on 2,000 years of Catholic intellectual and mystical development; and we have Christ physically present with us even now in the Blessed Sacrament. Let us move forward focusing on these things and remembering that our works, our convictions, our faith, and our salvation are not our own, but are the gift of God (Eph 2:8-10).
We have been given a ministry to fill and good works to walk in. May God grant us the grace to recognize how our times have changed and to fulfill his last command: "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, until the very end of the age."
Labels: Catholicism, politics
posted by Greg at
10:36 AM
|
0 comments
