The Danger of Christian Fundamentalism or Looking for a Place to Stand: Whitterings, September 2007

I am highly reluctant to wade into the controversial area of religious freedom. There is no safe way through this particular arena without becoming trapped in paradox and hypocrisy. However I can no longer ignore such a huge issue facing us as a faith community. Simply put I am unsure how a moderate religious voice, such as mainstream Anglicanism, can safely navigate between voicing its intolerance of fanatical, fundamentalist religiosity and not undermining its own claim to religious freedom.

I was taught at New College, Edinburgh, the great bastion of stoic Presbyterian academia, that the religious in the world were now separated in a way that is completely different from even a couple of decades ago. The denominations or schools of Christianity were no longer separated from one another by their theological beliefs but rather by their understanding of what religion is, or more precisely what religion does. The two sides can be simply described as believers in the literal and believers in the figurative. The literal religious person believes completely in the historical, linear, objective truth of revelation. The beliefs they hold are reinforced by an a priori philosophical system in which everything is self referring. The system is always a closed system that does not acknowledge claims to truth that fall outside of it. The figuratively religious person usually takes as a starting point the understanding that there is no linguistic or philosophical way to make objective truth statements using religious language. Their religious claims are more metaphorical, cyclical, and subjective. They concentrate more on what is meant, or what is pointed to or created by belief statements. The New College argument was expanded to include other religions as well. The argument in a nutshell says that it is no longer divisions such as Catholic and Protestant or even Christian and Jewish that separates us but rather the way we are religious. Therefore a figurative Rabbi and figurative Catholic Priest will be closer in their understanding of God than a literal Baptist and a figurative Methodist.

“She kept asking if the stories were true. I kept asking her if it mattered. We finally gave up. She was looking for a place to stand and I wanted a place from which to take flight.” B. Anduas

I want to elucidate on couple of points that are often misunderstood. Those of the figurative school do not say that language is useless or that it can not describe truth at all. However they do assert that language is very limited and by its nature and is created to categorise and dissect. It is completely dualistic and so is not suitable for the discussion of God. As a matter of fact it can not be used to discuss God in any real way. For example, if you are asked if you believe in God the only truthful answer for a faithful person is ‘no’. This is because if you say ‘yes’ you are assenting to the belief in a God that can be reduced to the subject of a sentence. This limits God by having Him be part of the created order and therefore limited so that he can be described. The God believed in is only an idol. So we tend to concentrate more on the teleological (what a thing does as opposed to ontology which is what a thing is) side of language, what does it do to us, how does it change us? So questions such as the literal historical Resurrection of Christ from the dead are simply not useful questions. As a matter of fact the only answers to that particular question go in the opposite direction of the purpose of faith. “Why seek ye the living among the dead. He is not here He is risen.” This does not mean that Jesus of Nazareth did not literally and historically rise from the grave on Easter morning. What it does mean is that a historical, literal, linear belief says nothing of worth about the nature of Resurrection, what it means, or who we become when we hold this belief in faith. As language does not work when we get close to God we must rely on faith, which is a state of openness to God, and it’s language which is prayer.

What most marks the figuratives is their rationality and pragmatism. They believe that religion is true only insofar as it produces results: Soeteriological efficacy, or by their fruits you shall know them. They believe that all things that are true somehow fit into the same system. Another way of saying this was suggested by Simone Weil. If you must choose between Jesus Christ and the truth you must always turn from Jesus and choose the truth. If you choose Jesus you are only picking an idol of Him that reflects the understanding of Him that you already have. By choosing the truth you choose who He really is and in wrestling with the expanded image of Him you grow more into Him.

Both are highly criticised: the figurative because they seem too abstract and mystical, the literalist because they seem to believe in Christ in such a linear way as to be little different from the beliefs of the pagan, mythological world.

However one thing has become increasingly clear, the figuratively religious in this world are not responsible for rise of religious hatred and intolerance or for psychologically destructive or abusive belief systems. There is a difference. This is not to say that the literalists are always destructive or intolerant, what it does say is that the danger from religion comes from this area. By its nature its truth claims are exclusive and eventually lead to, at best, a stalemate with another belief system of the same literal type.

I have already written about linguistics, teleology, and soeteriological efficacy in other columns. What I have not explored is how to witness to healthy religion in a world that is becoming either increasingly religiously fundamentalist or increasingly intolerant of religious fundamentalism. Unfortunately those who are starting to see religious fundamentalism as a kind of social evil seldom distinguish moderate, rational religion from fundamentalism. We all end up tarred with the same brush. We tend to be silent about joining our voice too loudly against religious intolerance in the world because we know that in the end if religious extremism is found to be too destructive by our culture and religion itself is attacked we will lose our own religious freedom.

I believe that is coming to the point where moderate religious voices must join in the debate about religious freedom for our own integrity. It will mean being accused of intolerance for other religious points of view. So be it. If we keep silent we deny our own witness to truth and allow ourselves to be caught in the crossfire between extreme religiosity and extreme secularism. There is no way to do this without being accused of hypocrisy and stepping over and over against into paradox. So be it. I remember The Most Reverend Richard Holloway, former Primate of the Scottish Episcopal Church, coming out of the fog at five in the morning after a terribly intolerant and hatful day at the Lambeth Conference of 1998. He had not slept and had been up all night thinking and walking. He seemed defeated and said to me that it was always the fault of the moderates that the extremists won. The moderates were too nice and thought too highly of people and assumed a degree of decency and middle class, educated, respectability that simply did not exist. We were the ones to blame because we were naïve. Martin Luther King Jr said something similar, “It is not the bad people in this world that are the problem, it is the good people who do nothing.”

I end with an example. There is in North American Christianity (although seldom in Anglicanism) a strong belief in a doctrine of the Atonement that says: there is a God, he is an angry God, he is angry at us because we are sinful and fallen, he demands a sacrifice and blood to be appeased, we are not good enough for the sacrifice, so he tortured and killed his own Son to appease Himself, and now although we are still sinners there is a chance by believing in this truth that we can escape everlasting damnation, which is our true birthright. Those of us who believe that God is loving and that He “Loved the world so much that He gave His only begotten Son”, and that the Atonement is only understood through this love need to take stock. It is time to speak up and say that to teach children and young adults about the reality of a wrathful God is actually a form of psychological abuse that seriously hinders childhood and adolescent development.

I have a tract by the Evangelical Tract Distributors from Edmonton Alberta entitled “What Every Young Man Should Know”. It is short, it simply says “Fools Make a mock at Sin (even their mind and conscience is defiled. Titus 1:15), The Wages of Sin is Death (Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell. Mathew 23:33), God Shall Bring Every Secret Thing into Judgement (Depart from Me, ye cursed into everlasting fire! Math 25:41). It ends with a non scriptural sentence “Will Jesus say this to you, ‘Christ died for your sins that you might spend eternity in Hell?’” This is not a straw dummy, if you doubt it please see the new documentary ‘Jesus Camp’ which depicts the formation of young Americans as militaristic Christ warriors. Which would be worse to live with this fear and belief and grow old or to die young as another type of fundamentalist, such as a teenage suicide bomber? Although the outcome of one kills the body the other surely kills the soul. A suicide bomber takes other lives with them, so it is by far the worst kind of intolerance. The question is how much of a difference is there? A difference in kind or simply a difference in degree? I wonder.

“The greatest danger for a child, where religion is concerned, is not that his father or teacher should be an unbeliever, not even his being a hypocrite. No, the danger lies in their being pious and God-fearing, and in the child being convinced thereof, but that he should nevertheless notice that deep within there lies hidden a terrible unrest. The danger is that the child is provoked to draw a conclusion about God, that God is not infinite love.”

Soren Kierkegaard

Running to Stand Still or Choruses from the ‘Rock’ Part II: Whitterings, November 2006

Choruses from the ‘Rock’ Part II

“Thus your fathers were made
Fellow citizens of the Saints,
Of the household of God,
Built upon the foundation
Of apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself the chief corner- Stone.
But you, have you built well, that you now sit helpless in a
Ruined house?
Where many are born to idleness, to frittered lives and squalid
Deaths, embittered scorn in honeyless hives,
And those who would build and restore turn out the palms of
Their hands, or look in vain towards foreign lands for alms
To be more or the urn to be filled.
Your building not fitly framed together, you sit ashamed and
Wonder whether and how you may be builded together for
A habitation of God in the Spirit, the Spirit which moved
On the face of the waters like a lantern set on the back of a Tortoise.
And some say: “how can we love our neighbour? For love must
Be made real in act, as desire unites with desired; we have
Only our labour to give and our labour is not required.
We wait on corners, with nothing to bring but the songs we can
Sing which nobody wants to hear sung;
Waiting to be flung in the end on a heap less useful than dung”.
T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the Rock Stanza II

In my last article I explored the sense of directionlessness of modern society and often the church. There is a strong reaction against being too negative when discussing the modern church. It is often seen as defeatist and counter productive. However, I do not see how we can truly take stock of ourselves if we do not honestly look at ourselves in the mirror. This was my attempt in the June article on Kierkegaard.

“To see yourself is to die, to die to all illusions and all hypocrisy. It takes great courage to dare look at yourself – something which can take place only in the mirror of the world. You must want only the truth, neither vainly wish to be flattered nor self-tormentingly want to made a pure devil.” Soren Kierkegaard

Many in the church are simply in denial. This is partially a defence mechanism to protect us from a feeling that we are witnessing the work of our hands and that of our forbearers disintegrate before our eyes. We have lost the passion for true rebuilding because we do not know how to begin. Neither do I.

“you sit ashamed and
Wonder whether and how you may be builded together for
A habitation of God in the Spirit”
T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the Rock Stanza II

Neither do I wish to continue to belabour the issue. Those of us who face aging congregations with limited young families and youth are well acquainted with the rising panic that we try and elevate through rationalisation and an emphasis on social action. We get excited over ten youth in a group or twenty children in Sunday school and choose not to focus on how sad is our excitement over such small numbers. We often despair because we see a world without meaning and purpose that has no interest in the only thing we really have to offer, the Gospel of Life and the community of the Baptised called to a life of Holiness.

“we have only our labour to give and our labour is not required.
We wait on corners, with nothing to bring but the songs we can
Sing which nobody wants to hear sung;”
T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the Rock Stanza II

“The Church disowned, the tower overthrown, the bells upturned,
What have we to do
But stand with empty hands and palms turned upwards
In an age which advances progressively backwards?
Waste and void. Waste and void. And darkness on the face
Of the deep.
Has the Church failed mankind, or has mankind failed the Church?
When the Church is no longer regarded, not even opposed, and
Men have forgotten All gods except Usury, Lust and Power.”
T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the Rock Stanza VII

What I discern from the poem “Choruses from the ‘Rock’”, as well as from the letter of Evelyn Underhill to Archbishop Lang printed in the May column, is that we have a desperate need to return to the primary purpose of worshipping God and stopping to listen and discern His will. The Summary of the Law commands that we love God first and then with the grace that flows from this to then love our neighbours as ourselves. It often seems as if we have over emphasised the second part of the commandment without having addressed the first.

“You, have you built well, have you forgotten the cornerstone?
Talking of right relations of men, but not of relations of men
To God. “Our citizenship is in heaven”; yes, but that is the model and
type for your citizenship upon earth.”
T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the Rock Stanza II

The Gospel that we proclaim is the way of life and freedom. We witness to lives lived with beauty, compassion, mercy, sacrifice, community and, most of all, meaning. We believe that we offer a world ‘running to stand still’ as U2 puts it, an oasis of peace and depth where one can connect once again with the purpose of the universe and ones place in it. If anything, the modern Western world needs to Gospel more than ever before to remind the world that the pursuit of money, fame, power and the elevation of the self all lead to darkness.

“A cry from the North, from the West and from the South
Whence thousands travel daily to the time kept city;
Where My Word is unspoken,
In the land of lobelias and tennis flannels
The rabbit shall burrow and the thorn revisit,
The nettle shall flourish on the gravel court,
And the wind shall say; “Here were decent godless people:
There only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls”.
T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the Rock Stanza III

We as a church also have to offer society a real home, a real family. As catholics we witness that meaning is constructed as part of a community not on one’s own. We offer a family that will never die, that will never desert us and that is marked by true respect and love. Or at least that is what our parish communities are called to be. We also know that many communities are not safe, nurturing, meaning making communities but are rather insular and destructive. Most of us will have experienced such a church community at one point or another. So here is another obvious starting point for our church: strive to become caring, witnessing communities of disciples. I do not believe that the Mormons or the Jehovah witnesses are flourishing in our society because of their beliefs but because they offer true community. So many of us lack a true home or a true family, a place and a people to whom we belong and are loved. This we can seek to offer.

“What life have you if you have not life together?
There is no life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of God.
Even the anchorite who meditates alone,
For whom the days and nights repeat the praises of God,
Prays for the Church, the Body of Christ incarnate.
And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads,
And no man knows or cares who is his neighbour
Unless his neighbour makes too much disturbance,
But all dash too and fro in motor cars,
Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.
Nor does the family even move about together,
But ever son would have his motorcycle,
And daughters ride away on casual pillions.”
T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the Rock Stanza II

Kierkegaardian Christianity or The Rules: Whitterings, June 2006

The greatest danger to Christianity is, I contend, not heresies, heterodoxies, not atheists, not profane secularism – no, but the kind of orthodoxy which is cordial drivel, mediocrity with a dash of sugar. In every way it has come to this – that what one now calls Christianity is precisely what Christ came to abolish.
- Soren Kierkegaard -

THE BASIC RULES

Throughout the centuries different groups of Christians have sought to clarify and set out the basics requirements for a standard Christian life. Different denominations and orders have come into existence to exemplify their own particular emphasis on the rules they believe have been discerned from the Bible. The Anglican Church of Canada sets out its base minimum required actions in the Book of Common Prayer.

1) To say daily prayers and grace at meals;
2) To be present at Church on all Sundays and Holy Days;
3) To receive the Sacrament regularly;
4) To give alms and service according to means;
5) To keep the days and seasons of fasting;
6) To read the Bible regularly and meditate and study what is therein read.

It is assumed that all of these Anglican duties will be carried out under the authority and theological understanding of the Baptismal Covenant, the Creeds, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer and the Summery of the Law.

I question the approach to discipleship as rule following as being too pharisetical.

“Our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not in a written code but in the Spirit; for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life.”
II Corinthians 3.6

However there must be some rules if even sociologically. Words to mean anything must have a definition. A Zoroastrian is different from a Taoist and an Anglican is different from a Presbyterian. There must also be an official definition even if there is a lot of colloquial usage around. Definitions of groups of people are most reliably decided on by their actions. There is still a base behavioural definition of an Anglican even if there are a variety of theological interpretations. We must wrestle with this definition because as part of a community we do not have the right to make up the definition for ourselves. We are not Universalists after all.

THE BASIC ESSENCE

I believe that discipleship is the exercise of embodying the Summary of the Law. “The passion of faith lies not in testifying to an eternal happiness but in transforming one’s own existence into a testimony to it.” My understanding of the Christian life, as a base minimum, is the passionate seeking for the will of God to be born in us. The fruits of the spirit are then manifested in us as an outworking of Grace. However to have God’s will live in us, our own personal will must die. If one avoids the death of the self, the Cross, one can not know the Resurrection of Christ.

“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” Galatians 2. 20

THE REALITY

I strongly contend that the majority of those who call themselves Anglicans in this place do not meet the basic requirements for an accurate and honest use of the designation.

I equally strongly contend that the majority of those who call themselves Christians in this place do not meet the basic requirements for an accurate and honest use of that designation either.

Yet we regularly use language is this dishonest way.

“When we see someone holding an axe wrong and chopping in such a way that he hits everything but the block of firewood, we do not say, "What a wrong way for the woodcutter to go about it," but we say, "That man is not a woodcutter." When we see thousands and thousands and millions of Christians whose lives do not resemble in the remotest way what – and this is decisive – the New Testament calls a Christian, is it not tampering with the meaning to talk as one does in no other situation and say: "what a mediocre way, what a thoroughly inexpressive way these Christians have." In any other situation would one not say, "These people are not Christians?" SK

“There was a time when one could almost be afraid to call himself a disciple of Christ, because it meant so much. Now one can do it with complete ease, because it means nothing at all.” SK

“Once upon a time learning to read was a rigorous matter; it took a lot of hard work. But eventually the theory was devised that everything ought to be enjoyable. So the practice of having a little party after each hour of reading was introduced, and the A B C’s were decked out with pictures, etc. Ultimately that hour was also dropped, and the A B C’s became simply a picture book. But still people went on talking about learning to read, even though the children did not learn to read at all. Learning to read was now understood to mean eating cookies and looking at pictures, which became an even more pleasant experience just because it was called "learning to read." SK

“Either these are not the Gospels or we are not Christians.”
Thomas Linacre (1460-1524)
Upon Reading the Gospels for the first time late in life.

THE DISCEPENCY

I do not believe you have to entirely accept Kierkegaard’s particular understanding or my particular understanding of discipleship to realise there is a profound ‘disconnect’ within the Anglican Church. All you need is to accept that Christian discipleship is the fundamental interpretive vehicle for a Christian. I believe all the different ‘Methods’ agree on this! However, many simply lose themselves in ‘Church Land’ and simply gloss over the difference between being a church person and being a Christian. I often say that many parishes are closer to self appointed property appreciation societies than radical core groups of disciples.

What I find sometimes almost unbearable is the lack of honesty about what we are as a church and what we are actually doing. I feel like I am in the fable shouting “The Emperor has no clothes!” and being told to shush! How are we to keep our integrity when we continue to pretend we are something we are not? My experience of the church over the last several years is one of continual ‘disconnect’. Not only does it seem as if almost no one is ‘keeping the rules’, including the clergy, but that people, including the clergy, simply do not believe in them anymore and have made up their own. Sometimes they seem to be playing a totally different ‘game’, like being a member of the United Church, but still playing on an Anglican Board with Anglican pieces. Personal opinion has been placed ahead of that of the Church and the community.

Perhaps God does not care if we shop do work on the Sabbath. However, it is still enshrined in the Ten Commandments and a consistent part of Church teaching. Yet this activity seems to be as prevalent among Anglicans as among else. When did the rules change? When was the debate? When was the decision taken to remove this as a sin? Personally this is not a major issue with me; I only use it as an example (so please no theological Jesuitical diatribes about the ‘real’ meaning of sabbaterianism). The point is that the church seems to have stopped teaching basic tenants of Anglican behaviour, people are ignoring them, and everyone is pretending it is just like it has always been.

Sometimes it even seems as if the church is undermining itself. I both observe and teach the importance of a strict Lent as a way of being honest with yourself about the direction your life is headed in. I teach at length about the will, the true freedom that comes from discipline, the fire and energy and concentration that comes through the struggle to deny the desires, the abandonment of one’s will to God’s, and our enslavement to the desires when they control us. I teach about the Desert Fathers, the Mystics and the impact that fasting has one one’s prayer life and especially on one’s practice of meditation. I then discover that not only do most churches not emphasise fasting as one of the distinctive traits of our spirituality but that some actually teach against it. I even read this past Lent an article in a church magazines by a colleague stating that it is good that fasting has become ‘out of fashion’. When did it become out of fashion? When was it discovered that all of the world religions had got it wrong? When was it shown that Christ had got it wrong? And the most important question, why the hell did someone not tell me?! If the rules have changed and I am not supposed to fast during Lent (as well as pray daily, tithe, and study) would someone please let me in the loop?

What I really want to know is whether this blatant hypocrisy is conscious or unconscious. Why are people acting as though there are no rules or that they have all changed? Why are people acting, especially the ordained, as if they can make up the rules as they go along? Have we become so scared of our financial future that we are willing to be a community of prostitutes instead of priests and give the world what it wants so we do not make them feel uncomfortable?

“Christianity has been made so completely devoid of character that there is really nothing to persecute. The chief trouble with Christians, therefore, is that no one wants to kill them any more!” SK

THE RESPONSE

When Kierkegaard attacked the church of his day the church was scandalized. He was ridiculed and scorned. It was only later that he came to be widely regarded as a prophet. Although some of his attacks against Christendom and the established church do not apply to us today, many of his barbs still stick. The question is how do we respond.

I believe there is only one response to Kierkegaard's passionate reminders of our duty and identity as Christians: to repent.

“We could at least be truthful before God and admit our weakness instead of reducing the requirement.” SK

Yet we seem to reduce the requirements all the time. We hold up saints and prophets in our Calendar and then shrink from emulating them. People will say, “It has always been like this you know” or “the rules are only an ideal really” or even “we are not characterized by the rules”. Well, it has not always been like this even if the success stories are few, they are still there: Nicholas Ferrar and Little Gidding. Even if the rules are hard to achieve and are an ideal, ideals are for striving for and not just something hung high up on the wall that no one even looks at. As for not being characterized by the rules, those who say so ontologically are correct. However we are a community searching for God in a distinctive way and so teleological there is an Anglican soeteriological path.

Repentance requires brutal honesty.

“To see yourself is to die, to die to all illusions and all hypocrisy. It takes great courage to dare look at yourself – something which can take place only in the mirror of the Word. You must want only the truth, neither vainly wish to be flattered nor self-tormentingly want to be made a pure devil.” SK

“There are many people who arrive at conclusions in life much the way schoolboys do; they cheat their teachers by copying the answer book without having worked the problem themselves.” SK

“No one can be the truth; only the God-man is the truth. Then comes the next: the ones whose lives express what they proclaim. These are witnesses to the truth. Then come those who disclose what truth is and what it demands but admit that their lives do not express it, but to that extent still are striving. There it ends. Now comes the sophistry. First of all come those who teach the truth but do not live it. Then come those who even alter the truth, its requirement, cut it down, make omissions – in order that their lives can correspond to the requirement. These are the real deceivers.” SK

Only when we are honest enough to realise that we can not by right call ourselves good Christians, let alone good Anglicans we can begin to see the truth. Only when we see can we then act. Only when one realises that one is trapped in a cage can one begin to seek a way to escape. So paradoxically, the only way to be a good Anglican is to admit that we are not good Anglicans. The only way to be a good Christian is to admit that you are not. Only then can we venture once again upon the road to discipleship.

“To venture the truth is what gives human life and the human situation pith and meaning. To venture is the fountainhead of inspiration. Calculating is the sworn enemy of enthusiasm, the mirage whereby the earthly person drags out time and keeps the eternal away, whereby one cheats God, himself, and his generation.” SK

It is spirit, it is of passion to ask: Is what is being said possible? Am I able to do it? But it is lack of spirit to ask: Did it actually happen? Has my neighbour actually done it?"
- Soren Kierkegaard -