Faith = Public Faith

December 2, 2007

1.2a (see also 1.1, 1.2) I have revised this post since its orginal posting date of 12/02/07.

Barth notes that God did not remain hidden, but chose to be revealed in the person of Jesus of Christ.¹ If God did not remain hidden to the world, Christian faith may not remain hidden away in Sunday school rooms, sanctuaries, or fellowship halls. “For Faith that believes in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit cannot refuse to become public (ibid. , 29).²

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This long post is a response to four questions:

1) Should presidential candidates disclose/be questioned about their particular Christian faith?

2) What are the dangers involved when the church advertises/sells its faith (I found the art to the right at Radical Left. Also see Get Religion)?

3) How should one’s faith influence one’s vote?

4) What are the reasons (that I can think of right now) for NOT legislating Christian faith?

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As noted above, I think faith is always a public matter…never a private one. However, there is a point that lessens my confidence in my thesis. Dan Savage, in his Skipping Towards Gomorrah (Plume, 2003), notes the tendency of people of Christian faith (and I think the same could be said of people of other faiths, as well) to legislate their particular version of faith…or the particular faith important to their particular party.

Savage, in a chapter entitled, “Well Endowed” (I love Savage; he is an agnostic/atheist I could get along with…I have also read The Kid [Plume, 2000] and The Commitment [Plume, 2006]) highlights political / religious conservatives attempt to define, for every citizen, the nature of the pursuit of happiness; we have been endowed by the Creator, one reads in the Declaration of Independence, with “certain unalienable rights”: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So far all is well; however, the conservatives understand their happiness as the only right, true, and permissible kind of happiness (e.g., Pat Robertson). And they understand it that way, in part, on the basis of their particular understanding of faith. ³

I will not chide the religious conservatives for their faith(!!!); I will say, however, that I am vigorously opposed to their faith being established. And that brings us back to the presidential election cycle.

Perhaps you had the opportunity to watch the CNN YouTube debate, Republican style? Remember this question?

I don’t mean to be unkind, but the questioner is a bit scary. He reminds me of some people I knew in college. They went to Faith Bible Church, a fundamentalist church located in Spokane, WA. They always seemed on the edge…of (sexual) aggression or depression. But who knows where the questioner was coming from….

Read More?

When I heard the question, I was disgusted. I thought such a question should not be asked of presidential candidates. I wanted someone to give an Obama answer: I am not running for pastor of the United States of America. But no. There was a lot of “Word of God” language uttered and some stuff about how the Bible should be interpreted.

Sometime after the debate, I decided that the question was not out of place. There is, of course, nothing wrong with one being a Christian presidential candidate (that this is the only presidential candidate that many citizens would vote for is, in my view, problematic). If a candidate claims (Christian) faith, I think it behooves voters to wonder about how her/his faith will touch her/his way of being president…because it’s not possible to separate one’s faith from one’s profession (if it is, it’s not faith).

As for me, I judge a candidate’s fitness for the presidency on the basis of one theological concept: hospitality. When the 2nd article of the Creed comes into view, hospitality will come into view, as well.⁴

There is yet another problem with faith being connected to public…and it’s the problem about which I am most concerned . At one point during the debate, Huckabee said: “Jesus was too smart to run for public office.” This is the one Huckabee response I liked. But why is Huckabee right? I think the answer is simple: public life requires compromise–not a bad thing unless what is being compromised is one’s loyalty to God (Huckabee’s death sentence answer is an expression of unacceptable compromise…I found the answer he gave shocking, and it’s interesting that Huckabee would not follow Jesus’ example re: running for office. Perhaps he holds a two worlds theology: God controls heaven and the devil earth.)

I think the desire to advertise Christian faith to the culture, in general, is not problematic. However, when faith becomes compromised in the process, well, that is a problem.

When I became aware of The NY Times article re: church youth groups playing Halo, I learned that faith is easily compromised when it is packaged for mass distribution. What the Church must wonder about is the way in which its faith becomes compromised when the main goal is self-preservation. The various churches, too, are self-lovers. Most churches can’t imagine a world where they do not exist–that’s why they spend so much time and money trying to gain converts and fill pews. No parishioners, no money = no church (at least, no ‘traditional,’ compromised church).

What does the church become when it won’t accept/claim its faith? It becomes a church that worships consensus (I have added to the “Writings” section above an article I wrote for my seminary’s newspaper, The Herald, regarding consensus and the theological left); the church becomes one that does not defend the oppressed; the church produces seminaries that keep the benefits they extend to students attracted to the same-sex a secret; the faithful allow the playing of tremendously violent games for the purpose of getting students to love the Lord of peace and life. In other words, when the church does not take responsibility for its faith in God, it gets stuck doing what it ought not do and/or not doing what the church ought to do; that is, the church rejects God and ends in contradiction.

I think faith should be a public matter, and I think the public should hold the faithful accountable for their theology. In addition, I think the Church should claim its faith–even if that means closing the doors of elaborate church buildings. In the process of translating its faith for the culture, in general, the church should keep it real.

What I have suggested above is that a strict separation of church and state is not possible–if a candidate of faith becomes president; however, I have also argued that not all brands of faith are created equal. Here I want to suggest a few reasons as to why a certain degree of separation of church and state is crucial for Christian faith:

1) It has been proven again and again: forcing people to believe or to comply with ‘Christian views’ does not generate genuine faith. If grace, not works, saves…what is the point?

2) Whose Christianity should be legislated? Only the most arrogant of people believe their understanding of faith is the only one that is Right. There is no Christianity-there are Christianities; that’s my view. There are many Correct understandings of Christian faith.

3) I reject a two worlds theology (God rules the church one way and the world, in general, another way), but I think Christians should persuade–not force–others to believe. The Evangelicals (and I am a type of Evangelical) do this well.

4) Christianity is better off when it’s not bound to the government. Faith always becomes compromised and becomes foolish (not in the biblical sense) when it hooks-up with the government.

PS: I like the First Amendment prohibiting the establishment of religion, but, of course, it does not ban faith from politics or from public discourse or from public expression…in fact, the First Amendment guarantees its free expression.

Footnotes:

1. Dogmatics in Outline, “Faith as Confession” (1959), pp: 28-34↩
2. One may wish to contest the private/public distinction raised here. In my view, there are more or less public spaces; by ‘public,’ I mean those publics where Christian faith is not the norm or a given (e.g., the culture, in general) ↩
3. In my view, religious conservatives who accuse those of us who are attracted to the same-sex of being narcissistic (because it is presumed that one male is just like any other male, therefore, same-sex attraction is just another form of self-love) are the true self-lovers.↩
4. I would judge a candidate who does not claim a faith on this basis, as well↩

Posted by Tony Posted in Bi/Partisan Politics, Books, Posts by Tony, Queer / Theology, The Church