Life is a bit hectic of late. But I feel compelled to make one more comment regarding Scot McKnight's Christianity Today article on the Emerging Church. Once again, I don't dislike what I know of McKnight and I am mildly sympathetic to the complaint that Emerging devotees should not all be painted as disciples of Brian McLaren.
But I am a little animated about what McKnight describes as the political leanings of those in the emerging trend, because it seems a misrepresentation of conservative evangelicals.
McKnight admits that the EC movement leans left, mostly out of reaction against the so-called religious right. He, in fact says that one of the five marks of the EC is that it is a political movement. I find this curious. My understanding is that one of the things EC folk hate about the direction of my generation's evangelicalism is that the religious right has “politicized” the faith. Why then is it OK for EC, which he says leans left, to be political, but not for the traditional evangelicals who lean right to be political? But to be specific, Scot writes:
Tony Jones is regularly told that the emerging movement is a latte-drinking, backpack-lugging, Birkenstock-wearing group of 21st-century, left-wing, hippie wannabes. Put directly, they are Democrats.
Scot is also clear about his own leanings, and deserves credit for being clear:
I don't think the Democratic Party is worth a hoot, but its historic commitment to the poor and to centralizing government for social justice is what I think government should do. I don't support abortion—in fact, I think it is immoral. I believe in civil rights, but I don't believe homosexuality is God's design. And, like many in the emerging movement, I think the Religious Right doesn't see what it is doing.
Scot did more than others have by stating a position on gay rights and abortion. I appreciate the clarity. Now we have something concrete to discuss. But I am still bothered by a few things.
There is a difference between caring about social justice and endorsing a particular method of achieving social justice. “Centralizing government for social justice” is just something that most conservatives, religious or otherwise, feel has never worked to produce actual justice. Conservatives do care about the poor and social justice, but have a different plan for achieving it, one that mistrusts centralized government and considers local and private options more efficient. Put simply, conservatives don’t tend to subsidize things that don’t work. Does he mean that Republicans have no “commitment to the poor”, something they are often accused of, usually in Democratic campaign speeches?
But the second point is really bothersome, that "the Religious Right doesn't see what it is doing." Whatever damage the religious right is perceived to have done, have the EC folk given enough thought to the damage the religious left has done?
Scot McKnight mentions Randall Balmer’s book Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America: An Evangelical's Lament, a book that makes a case that the religious right is motivated by a quest for power. I'd suggest another perspective, Lloyd Billingsley’s “The Generation That Knew Not Josef” or “Religion"s Rebel Son”, which document the naïve infatuation some American journalists had with Stalin, with the zany and dangerous commitments many evangelicals have made to various left wing causes. Does Scot really think the religious left sees what it is doing? Does the religious left not distort the faith? Are Jim Wallis and Ron Sider less political than Jerry Fallwell or D. James Kennedy?
There is a good article in First Things by Richard John Neuhaus on how the political left and the religious left tend to operate. Neuhaus documents that the NCC receives the bulk of its funding from political groups with no interest at all in Christianity. This organization regularly supports candidates and bills directly, and is controlled not by religious concerns but by political ones.
The NCC has thirty-five member denominations representing various Protestant and Orthodox traditions, and its founding definition is to be “a community of Christian communions” with the purpose of advancing Christian unity in “confessing Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God, as Savior and Lord.” Beginning in the 1960s, like so many establishment institutions of the time, the NCC took a sharp leftward turn, with the predictable result that it alienated many of the members of its member churches. The contributions of those churches to the NCC precipitously declined, and continue to decline. Since 2000, the decline has been from $2.9 million to $1.75 million–a drop of 40 percent in four years.So how is the NCC recovering from its financial crisis and near collapse? The answer is that (general-secretary the Rev. Robert) Edgar turned to non-church sources of income. In 2003, he obtained a $7 million gift from an anonymous woman who did not belong to any member church but admired the NCC’s politics. Income from other non-church sources has, since 2000, grown from $800,000 to $2.9 million–more than a threefold increase. Such income includes major grants from foundations such as Rockefeller, Ford, Tides, and Kellogg, as well as organizations such as the Sierra Club.
Contrast that with the pro-life movement, basically funded by small donations of individual Christians, operating without corporate or government funding, surviving for 35 years on a shoestring budget of compassion, principle and volunteerism. How can one criticize the “religious right” for politicizing the faith and not see the inconsitency of not criticizing the religious left? Who is really more political?
Or consider that the Democratic Party recently invited, tolerated and did not in any way repudiate the prayer of a radical Muslim Imam at their “winter conference”, a prayer which stated in part:
So guide us to the right path. The path of the people you bless, not the path of the people you doom. Help us, God, to liberate and fill this earth with justice and peace and love and equality.Background on this particular imam reveals he is hardly one who seriously is open to the Democratic party “big tent”.
Al-Husainy led “almost-daily protests of thousands of Hezbollah supporters on the streets of Dearborn and Detroit, swarming with swastikas and anti-Semitic, anti-American signs.” He also “delivered hate-filled, anti-American rhetoric” at “an anti-Semitic rally of 3,000 Hezbollah supporters at Dearborn’s Bint Jebail Cultural Center.” In August 2004, “he led anti-Bush, anti-American rallies on the streets of Dearborn,” and at other times “he led a number of pro-HAMAS and pro-Arafat rallies in the area.”
So the double standard of comments about the right doing damage is clear. Imagine the outcry if the Republicans asked Jerry Falwell, not to speak, (which he can do as a private citizen) but to pray at an official RNC event, and he prayed for God to guide folks away from the path of those He would “doom”. Falwell is not a racist, though one may not like his suit, hair or vocabulary. He is not a radical though one may not agree with his political views or lack of tact. Again, how is the right more political than the left?
So I feel more than a little frustration if it is true that EC Christians seem to feel that because conservative Christians have tended to vote for candidates who oppose pre-natal murder and the radical redefinition of the basic human unit called the family, they, as more enlightened and open folk, supposedly need to avoid such “politicization” of the faith. Double standard indeed.
I have to note, at this point, that some common buzzwords in EC conversations include terms seemingly borrowed from liberation theology- which of course will cause some to scream "unfair comparison". Yet one often finds reference to “social justice” implying that evil has a societal as opposed to an individual moral cause, and to “praxis”, implying that change to systems and actions are crucial to achieving the “kingdom of God” and downplaying change of individual minds and hearts. McKnight is not oblivious to the connection:
Sometimes, however, when I look at emerging politics, I see Walter Rauschenbusch, the architect of the social gospel. Without trying to deny the spiritual gospel, he led his followers into the social gospel. The results were devastating for mainline Christianity's ability to summon sinners to personal conversion. (My emphasis)
Brian McLaren has written about Raushenbusch, by the way. Maybe a mild social gospel emphasis is not horribly alarming or a direct link to liberation theology. But it most certainly colors one's politics. The truth is, I feel a certain sense of betrayal by Evangelicals who cozy up to the Democrats, no matter how they try to image themselves as “latte-drinking, backpack-lugging, Birkenstock-wearing, 21st-century, left-wing, hippie wannabes” Granted, politics is not the ultimate answer to human problems. But I didn’t start paying attention to faith and politics with the Clinton Impeachment hearings.
I was around when Justice Blackmon politicized the faith and when Ted Kennedy created a whole new word in the English language by “borking” a strict constructionist judicial nominee.
Committed and orthodox Christians, Catholic and Evangelical, side by side, have worked for 36 years to overturn the slaughter of unborn infants on the altar of convenience. It was recognized from the outset that this holocaust was foisted on us by the Supreme Court and that every legislative attempt to reverse that arrogant act has been rebuffed by the courts against the general will of the people and without any shred of warrant in the text of the constitution. It was clear from the outset that the issue was framed by NARAL as a “Catholic” issue, convincing the masses that favoring abortion is “rational” and opposing it was a “private religious prejudice”, one that should not have a place in the political discussion. It was clear that Christian citizens had a moral responsibility to speak out, and we did. It was also clear that the secular left would demonize Christian citizenship as an unjust and unconstitutional melding of church and state.
It was not a love of politics or a lust for power that drove evangelicals and Catholics to picket abortion clinics, staff pregnancy centers and begin to vote on the basis of this moral, not political, issue. Conservative Christians generally would not question anyone's faith for particular views of economics, taxation, foreign policy or most other strictly political issues. We were quite able to separate the two (although most evangelicals were uncomfortable equating Christianity with pacifism, as many on the left did).
Now, after 36 years the opportunity exists to witness the reshaping of a renegade and unaccountable Supreme Court (if only temporarily) not with “right wing” judges, but with judges who will simply interpret the constitution rather than rewrite it, read it as an objective text rather than a living document to be interpreted, in postmodern fashion, but the cultural trends of the moment. Now, at this late hour, many evangelicals, perhaps most mainliners, including many in the EC, willingly align themselves with a political party that can’t even oppose partial birth infanticide! The result will likely be, not a less politicized and right wing church, but another generation of of 1.5 million aborted human beings a year, further erosion of the value of life, more widespread euthanasia and increased practice of outright infanticide.
Sorry, but this one gets me. How dare the EC complain folks on the “right”, folks are too “political”. What planet are they living on? Are they totally oblivious to the political trends of the World Council of Churches for several decades? Has the left done nothing objectionable in the name of Christianity? Do secular conservatives get a negative view of Christianity from the religious left?
This will be harsh, but I simply do not believe one can seriously talk about “social justice” and vote for those who can’t bring themselves to oppose sucking the brains out of 4/5 delivered babies. I cannot take seriously those who complain about the politicization of the faith and mingling of politics with Christianity and vote for those who blandly welcome radical racist Imams to offer prayers at their gatherings. I cannot take seriously those who seem to think that simply exercising our rights as citizens in advocating for moral issues that are literally life and death matters is somehow politicizing the gospel. There isn’t any other way to say it. I find such viewpoints wrongheaded, hypocritical and ultimately suicidal.
Maybe Scot McKnight's comments on the political leanings of the EC doesn't represent all individuals in the EC, but until I see a significant movement to clarify some theological questions, to distance themselves from the more provocative statements of some of the key leaders, and to not equate leftward leaning views "social justice" with "really following Jesus", I will remain a skeptic. And a somewhat offended one at that.
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