A little while ago I had listened to some of my conservative friends opine that the march on Wall Street was awful and being infiltrated by Communists and Socialists. Many of you would have applauded when I said … nothing. That's right, nothing. I am a person who has a tendency to opine a lot myself, but as I have gotten older I have become aware of the uselessness of this. The crazy people who come into various jobs I have worked and complain about this thing and that thing have taught me something. I should re-evaluate the way I talk to people.
It has not been easy; not by a long shot. And yet, reading through the pooled ignorance of Facebook posts (some of them my own), I realize that there is something to be said for the old adage, "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt." I can tell of numerous statements where I have spoken some opinion only to have someone refute it with the greatest of ease making me feel the intellectual equivalent of a paramecium or Hollywood celebrity.
Yet, I don't want to just roll over and play dead. I should explain what I believe and I should start off by stating what I did believe. I was blessed to have two very intellectually curious parents and to grow up in just the right places at just the right time. My formative years were in a rural Lutheran farming community. At this time in the 1980s, I cannot conceive of a better place to grow up. Lutherans are known for being advocates of simul justus et peccator, a phrase which means "both saint and sinner." Lutherans follow the laws and rules of their faith, but do not let that get in the way of grace. They were masters of common sense (since they were farmers) and of good theological sense (since they were Lutherans).
We then moved to the suburbs of Cincinnati, which was a bit of a wake up call because I thought everyone was Christian and everyone attended church on a regular basis. The desire for mission and sharing God's message of Jesus is Lord and Redeemer of a fallen world grows when one is surrounded by such a world.
However, Christianity was not the only religion that I was practicing. I had bought into American Civil Religion. As one of my great intellectual sparring partners, David Kamphuis (pronounced KAMP•vīs) has put it, "The Constitution and the government it produces are philosophical ideas, which means they are going to be in conflict with other philosophical ideas. That is why it is hard to be a Christian and an American." I would discover this later, but as a youth I flirted with being a Democrat (because I believed the poor should be looked after), a theocratic democrat (because I believed in a Christian state that was ruled by Christian Philosopher Kings), then a communitarian (read Amitai Etzioni), finally I became one of the most hated of all political parties in America. I became a moderate.
Moderates are hated because they take each issue and examine it. They cannot be counted on (read: trusted) to vote down the party line. Take a moderate position on anything and watch your friends disappear. Liberals think you are a conservative and vice-versa. It isn't that moderates aren't passionate about things. They can be unbelievably passionate about taxes, poverty, military spending, etc.; its just that they disagree with the pre-packaged answers. Here, then is the moment of decision and it is here where I lost my moderatism.
Moderates have a choice in the end. They can apathetically shrug life's requirements for belief in something greater then themselves, or they can find a new paradigm. This is when I lost my faith in American Civil Religion and I declare it to be a half-truth and therefore a dangerous lie. Lutherans talk of the two-kingdoms theory. Unlike Calvinists, Catholics, and Anglicans; Lutheranism began to define itself in theological terms and not in tribal terms. While Calvin was setting up Geneva, the Catholics consolidated their domains (and began exporting their religion), and Anglicans developed a theology of pseudo-Catholicism with anti-papism; the Lutherans took the moderate road and thus the more arduous. We declared, in the Spirit of Augustine, that there are two kingdoms: there is a kingdom of the left (the one of laws and civil governments) and the kingdom of the right (the kingdom of grace and the church).
In today's society is tempting to flatten the two kingdoms into one. The "conservative" camp (though by no means all of them) wishes to create a secular theodicy. They wish to have American society mirror 1950s Christianity. Their temptation is understandable due to the relative tranquility of that time period and the economic progress of America. On the other hand, the "liberals" (again a broad brush stroke is being used) wish to make a) to use the words of Milton Friedman, to make Christianity so small a part of people's everyday lives that it can be drown in a bath tub, or b) to mold Christianity into something more palatable to the countercultural movements.
One could argue that this shows there is no American Civil Religion to speak of, but rather two or more ACRs. Yet, a close examination of the two reveals that they are the same in one key aspect. Both believe that the state is the most important aspect of life and Christianity merely an appendage). The "conservatives" believe it is the state which will evangelize. It is the state that true redemption and "heaven" are found. It is the state that we are working towards. The liberals believe virtually the same things. I recall a conversation I had in one of my Church History classes where we got onto the subject of George W. Bush's Faith Based Initiative. I thought being in a class surrounded by staunch Liberal Christians, it would be a fore-gone conclusion that the Faith Based Initiative would be bad since it is an obvious violation of church and state and manifestly weakens both. I was shocked to find myself in the center of maelstrom as I argued every single person in class. What I found is that Liberal Christians are just as eager for government favor as Conservative Christians. Church and state is, like all human constructs, merely a useful tool to be discarded when it becomes an hinderance.
So where am I now? I have moved to the most radical position of all. I have become a Christian.1 It is the worst thing that could have happened to me too. Conservatives and Liberals can at least dialogue with each other (read: yell at one another), because their language is similar and their telos, that is "philosophical goal," is the same. They are both working to "make America better." The Christian doesn't care about America, Europe, Africa, Asia, etc. The Christian is loyal to God and God's Kingdom. This is why Muslims treated Christians with wary unease during the wars with the Byzantines and why Buddhists in the Far East pushed out or executed Christians in their realms. It is also why Christians in Europe would persecute other denominations. It wasn't because they didn't like their beliefs. It was because their loyalty lay to something, Someone, some place other than the nation-state.
A little while ago I went to school at a place where it was bad to have conservative thoughts. It was bad to not just be against but to question the roots of poverty, homosexuality, universalism, or ecclesiology. They may deny it, but faculty and student actions would say otherwise. (I know I can be pigheaded too. I do not have the open-hearted spirit of N. T. Wright though in my defense he has nearly 63 years to cultivate it and he is English and not an Irish-American Lutheran.) When we open ourselves up to the Gospel and to the Spirit we find ourselves forced to listen more and opine less. We realize that there but for the indwelling of the Spirit go we. I am not saying this with pride (at least I hope I am not), because I did not choose to follow Jesus. The Holy Spirit came into me in the life of the church and showed me a bigger world that is full of people living out "simul justus et peccator." I found that I did not have all the answers. I found that our programs and secular reconditioning of people (be it through the "secular theodicy" of the "conservatives" or the "state church" of the "liberals") is completely different from what Christ taught and by proxy from what God wants. So, I have written a great deal about why I am trying to learn to say nothing. I think it is best to let 1 Peter 4:11 say it best:
Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.
1 Notice I did not say I was "born again." I have always been a Christian. Christianity is not something that happens all of a sudden. It is something you are born into and grow into, so that talking about when you were saved becomes ludicrous. When are you never saved?
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