Self-inflicted Wounds

Several years ago, I gave a lecture, followed by a question and answer session on the subject, “Slouching toward Theocracy” at the Nashville Peace and Justice Center to a small audience of about forty people.  The title was somewhat plagiarized after a book about a similar threat of a metaphorical Gomorrah.  In the discussion, I tried to identify and address coexisting fears in the balance of power of the spiritual and the secular dichotomy of our culture.

Much of that fear is articulated in short sound bites—war on religion, Christian nation, theocracy, secularism, Ten Commandments, religious freedom, and other labels of affirmation or rejection.  Elements of the debate have become political wedge issues.  One of the most visible was the public posting and removal of the Ten Commandments.  Judge Roy Moore, in Alabama, became a folk hero to southern fundamentalists, and a whipping-boy for ridicule from the secular community.

For me, any attack on Christianity in very painful.  In most of the rural south, churches of all denominations provide a moral anchor and fellowship of human interaction and acts of benevolence for the disadvantaged.  In urban areas, larger churches are not only the temple of praise and worship on Sunday, but they serve to develop a spiritual community.  This would include Bible study, day-care, parochial schools, youth activity, and many secular activities in the building for the benefit of the Church members and friends.  Churches provide a common bond that we are at risk of losing in transient population shifts and the isolation of the computer screen.  I feel compelled to write and speak in defense of a personal and institutional Christianity.

During the turbulence of the sixties many liberal Christians ran afoul of their religious affiliations.  In a tribute to Southern Baptist renegade Reverend Will Campbell, I wrote the following: “By our own admission, our ecclesiastical wounds had been self-inflicted.  We were not drafted into the war against bigotry, we joined.  We could have watched the slaughter of eighteen-year-old Americans and Vietnamese from the sidelines, but we enlisted in the ranks of the nonviolent.  We entered the war on religious intolerance long before the enemy was an immediate threat to either of us.”

During most periods of our history we have experienced an ebb and flow in church attendance and membership.  In my days of teaching Sunday school in a small, and later a larger, congregation of Churches of Christ, I encountered the logical conflict between literal interpretation of Scripture and what the church called “the foolishness of man”, which I later came to identify as almost any intellectual inquiry.

I spent one year at Lipscomb University (’54-’55) in a student body that was 96.3% members of “the Church.”  The few exceptions included several basketball and baseball players on scholarships.  Many Church of Christ members sent their children to Lipscomb in fear of knowledge one might receive in a secular university.  After graduating from Middle Tennessee, I have returned to Lipscomb for courses in Philosophy and Education, and found a very different school environment.

My life in the Church of Christ has helped me understand the current meteoric rise in religions that we try to inaccurately label as a coalition of “fundamentalist, evangelical, and charismatic.”  I would not include Catholics, though they share some similar attributes within the liturgy and clergy, if not so much within the membership.

I look back on an evening in 1948 during a summer revival or “protracted meeting” during which I came to the front bench to voice my intent to be baptized the following day in a creek near the church.  This was preceded by repentance for whatever unnamed sins a soon-to-be twelve-year- old might have committed, followed by my confession of faith and dedication of my life to Christ.  I like to believe I have served him well.  This would include two phases of my life—many years teaching Sunday school and occasional appearances in the pulpit with the blessing and approval of the eldership, and a continuing period of advocacy from outside the brick and mortar of a single congregation, with lesser recognition within the brotherhood.

On the occasions in which I speak to a Unitarian congregation, I take pleasure in being introduced as a member of the Church of Christ, and the audience takes no offence and I have been received warmly.  I think most congregations of fundamentalist churches do not embrace Unitarians as part of the “Body of Christ” just as Unitarians, as their name indicates, would not argue.

I probably admit that there is a cultural conflict between much of the religious community and the secular community.  The “secular” community, for most people, would include atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists.  Deists, religious Humanists, and Unitarians with childhood roots in fundamentalism would claim some inclusion in a category that we might call spiritual, rather than religious.

I did not intend for this to be biographical.  The content of my aforementioned speech was the narrative of the bilateral fears embodied in the false perception that there is a war on Christianity, in America.  In parts of the world that are largely Muslim or other non-Christian religion, there is a war on Christians.  This in perpetuated by a cycle of religious zealots and misdirected and disproportional retaliation. We are blessed that our predominant religion in America is, in the words of its founder and verses of Scripture, non-violent and makes no war on other religions.  We have our isolated acts of vandalism and epithets of intolerance, but our Constitution guarantees freedom of religion.

The intent of our Founding Fathers was separation of church and state.  I don’t find any conflict with my perception of the “Great Commission” to convert the world to Christianity.  The phenomenon that some perceive to be a “war on Christians” is perceived conversely as a “war on secularism.”  Neither would ever admit to being the oppressor.  Both camps find solace and refuge in being victims.  As in all wars, there are casualties.  Feelings are hurt, faith is challenged, intellect scorned, friendships are strained, and families are divided.

The New Testament is the governing document of Christianity.  Church doctrine is incidental to style of worship.  The Old Testament is a non-binding document once used by Christians as scripture in the early church.  The arbitrary inclusion of the Ten Commandments from among the hundreds in Judaism is not binding unless repeated in Christian documents or codified in secular civil law.  The New Testament commands of “omission and commission” of mandate and prohibition include affirmations of faith and rules of ideal moral conduct.  There is a false perception that any rejection of rules of faith; denial of divinity; or departure from literal interpretation are attributes and earmarks of immorality.  Morality can and does exist outside of organized religion.

There is a concurrent belief, which I think I share, that secular or humanist ethical philosophy may be a more demanding standard of morality.  Immorality is categorically condemned within the religious community, but is forgiven by the membership, and as promised in scripture, by God.  There are biblical examples of the compassion of Jesus and mercy of God in forgiveness for murder, adultery, fornication, theft, and violent acts of persecution.  This could lead to a pattern of repetition, confession, and restoration, or ultimately a death-bed repentance following a life of sinful debauchery.  Religious moralists are governed by ecclesiastical law. Secular moralists and humanists are not governed by sectarian mandate or prohibition.  Secular morality comes from intellectual acceptance of moral principles validated by a complex combination of rational thought, pragmatic experience, historical documentation of human conduct, peer relationships, family tradition, and eventually one’s own conscience. Included in that is something we call “virtue-based ethics” within which persons adopt a life style of moral integrity which functions intuitively without any religious affiliation.

The wounds claimed by agnostics and atheists are frequently self-inflicted.  The right not to believe is equally inviolable in our society as the right to believe.  Nonbelievers or doubters who depict religion as fairy tales, mythology, and ignorance have contributed to a damaging and confrontational chasm. Consequently in a predominantly religious culture, atheists have become victims of exclusion, ridicule, and denial of access to public acceptance.  Atheists may be the most persecuted minority in an atmosphere of uncontested prejudice.

Christianity in practice is not monolithic.  In the first century, Jesus condemned division within his flock and established one church, eventually governed by a singular document for conduct and ritual.  Most of wounds to which Christians lay claim are self-inflicted.  The long tradition of Catholic and Protestant conflict and the internal strife within the Protestant religion between fundamentalist and liberal churches have caused more suffering than from persecution from the secular community.

This has been demonstrated in the conflict between the Catholic Bishops and HHS.  There is a continuing battle within the public sector—in government financial support and regulation of church affiliated institutions; contraception; abortion; women’s rights; the second amendment; public education and home schooling; textbooks; religious images and documents in government venues; the role of church and state in funding and taxation for relief of human suffering.  The list is endless within the shared domains of what the Bible and Constitution recognize as dual kingdoms.  Logic dictates the institutional separation of church and state; a shared obligation to diminish human suffering; and the perfecting of a shared vision of moral idealism—enabled by an end of intolerance within our diverse bodies of faith, and the reasoned conduct and advocacy of secular morality.

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Tags: Christianitya, Separation of Church and State

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