I begin by placing two quotations from H. Richard Niebuhr side by side. Lots of people are familiar with the first quote: it is Niebuhr’s famous mockery of the flaccid liberal Protestant “creed” of the 1950s. Too bad almost no one has heard about the second.
1. “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through a Christ without a cross.”2. “Institutions can never conserve without betraying the movements from which they proceed. The institution is static, whereas its parent movement has been dynamic; it confines men (sic) within its limits, while the movement liberated them from the bondage of institutions.”
This reflection is not about Richard Niebuhr; it is about heterodoxy and about the saving journey of unbelief. And it is about the age-old charge that religious liberalism represents a kind of contradiction in terms—that people who are on the fringe theologically have by definition placed themselves outside of the church.
I won’t rehearse the usual counter to this charge: that what are now called orthodox positions bear the marks of ancient struggles and compromises, with the history (and in this case the orthodoxy) being written by the victors. The record is quite clear on this point, but defenders of the One True Faith will always retort that the Holy Spirit somehow enabled the theological victors to sweep all before them.
What interests me more than the history is the huge anxiety still attaching to deviations from creed and convention. Not all faiths seem to share this intense anxiety, but for many Christians it has always seemed that without fixed doctrinal tenets, we will slip immediately into an anything-goes abyss.
I was raised in the verkrampte (rigid) Dutch Reformed tradition. I still have the “Reformed Standards of Unity” book that I was given as a teenager. I was told (and I believed) that the little blue book contained everything I needed to know about divinity, notably the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of the Synod of Dordt (both peculiar products of unholy 17th-century religious warfare). How odd it seems to me now that these documents were so hugely valorized. But how much odder still that millions of young folks still get some variation of the same thing as their introduction to Christian faith.
What usually happens among the orthodox is that some will be content to cling to the little blue book, whereas others end up wandering. And who is to say that the wanderers are not the ones who are actually keeping up with where God is leading? “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes…”
I was reminded of this migration recently when a dear friend and fierce justice advocate mentioned her exhilaration upon discovering the work of the wonderfully heterodox writers Rosemary Radford Ruether and Thomas Berry 20 and more years ago. This was my friend’s jumping-off point into a whole new world of perception and cognition; eventually, she lost interest in the mechanical liturgies of her home parish, but not in its social witness, which she has helped to deepen in highly significant ways.
Who is willing to say that my friend has “lost her faith” just because she now finds it impossible to give her honest assent to most of the articles of the Nicene Creed?
Is it not more accurate to say that she and millions like her have found their faith by paying more attention to what Jesus did—and by seeking to follow in those footsteps—than to what the church fathers and doctors had to say about the nature of the Trinity, or the nature of the Atonement, or about what exactly is happening when the bread and wine are shared around the common table?
I believe that creedal unbelief of this kind (various degrees thereof) will be the future of any Christian faith that aims to be more than a reactionary cult as the 21st century advances. Which is not to say that intensely creedal versions won’t still gain hundreds of millions more adherents or be able to exercise a baleful social power, especially in societies that still struggle with modernity or that happen to be active frontiers in contemporary religious warfare.
I must say that I will never be comfortable around US Christians who claim to be progressive on various social issues, but who remain doctrinally rigid in respect to faith itself. Experiences teaches me that these folks will almost always refuse to honor evolving human experience or human intelligence, and will sometimes not even honor even basic scientific data, when it comes to sexuality and sexual/gender justice. Behind this, almost always, lurks an “orders of creation” theology that still clings to males ruling the domestic roost with women beneath as mere vessels for procreation. South African writer Breyten Breytenbach, himself a survivor of verkrampte theology, expresses the danger of orthodoxy this way:
When any culture, however rich or ancient, is but a confirmation of prejudices or the conservation and parroting of so-called truths, it is doomed to be exclusive, voracious, totalitarian, ultimately fundamentalist.
The defenders of the True Faith need to relax a little bit. There is really no danger of an “anything goes” ethic emerging among those of us who long ago said goodbye to the creeds, but at the same time said hello to the Jesus of Dangerous Memory (Metz). We haven’t lost our way or lost our bearings. Rather, we are gradually finding our Way by resisting oppressive unjust power and rejecting the idolatry of that power.
In 1950 (i.e., at approximately the same time that Richard Niebuhr, under Karl Barth’s looming shadow, began decrying liberalism from his perch at the Yale Divinity School), Martin Buber in Jerusalem wrote a magnificent short treatise on Two Types of Faith. In it Buber contrasted the Hebraic concept of emunah—collective adherence and justice-doing commitment—to the Hellenic concept of pistis, the kind of individual ideation that follows conversion. Sixty years later these remain the two basic types of faith; and for my money there’s no question as to which is more inviting.
As someone who does take seriously the Matthew 25 vision of the Last Judgment, I have a feeling that when my name is called I am not going to be tested on my creedal soundness. I expect I am going to be asked what I did with and for my neighbor in need.
All very Jewish, in other words. And all very much in keeping with the spirit of the Jesus who said he came to fulfill, not to abolish, the “do justice and love mercy” core of his own ancestral faith.
So let us not give up quite yet on all the much-maligned “cafeteria Christians,” all those resolutely heterodox “graduates” of the orthodox churches, and all those who still love Jesus while despairing of those who reserve for themselves the right to decide who is and who is not a legitimate Christian.
God loves the wanderers, too. God loves them much more than we may ever know.
"for many Christians it has always seemed that without fixed doctrinal tenets, we will slip immediately into an anything-goes abyss."
Other religions are on a search for the best path, but Christianity thinks it already has that best path, the name of Jesus Christ, and those who reject Christianity are doomed. This type of religion can never work without a tight reign. The real downfall of Christianity has nothing to do with Jesus, but with what came after. End times doctrine with ultimate destruction except for those who are raptured. What happens when a major religion teaches the world must be destroyed and everyone else must suffer, hopefully in our lifetime? That is a rhetorical question, we know the answer. Look at America.
I agree, there's no question which kind of faith is more inviting...to me. I'm absolutely a cafeteria Catholic. But I don't know that we gain anything by arguing whether fundamentalists or progressives possess the truer faith. I know what I think, but I don't know what God thinks. My hope is that God contains us all.
I don't think God really cares about religious questions. He leaves that stuff up to us.
No one possesses 'the' true faith. No one can authentically possess faith. Religions and religious belief are responses to the human search for meaning in a universe beyond our comprehension. It is when we think we comprehend and fully grasp truth and meaning that we become narrow "fundamentalists." The essence of the human venture is the search. An authentic spiritual quest cannot close in on itself around finally revealed 'truths.' It remains open. That's why 'revelation' goes on and on, and we among the lucky vehicles or channels of that dynamism -- if we remain as open as the process itself.
The confessionalism of the Reformation isn't exactly ancient orthodoxy, so collapsing all the arguments over the century in diverse cultural contexts about authority and identity into a generalization about totalitarian orthodoxy vers liberating freedom isn't helpful in the end--and I have tried it. Compared to theological treatises,creeds say little--ironically, their compromise was exactly their virtue in allowing multiple readings. Of course we receive them as someone's truth or authority--they are and were, but like so much I inherit, I take some of it and leave some of it. Rather than get caught in the same push-pull game of orthodox/heterodox, however energizing it feels to those of us who are on the margin or exile, I think spiritual wholeness lies in refusing to play the game to justify ourselves. Of course theology matters, but so does humility about the mystery of God. If we keep judging one another's traditions and labeling spiritual baggage, we remain divided, even when faced with critical actions necessary for social justice. If social justice is your vocation, focus on it with passion and love, and let those Christians who have found solace and strength in tradition keep on their path--they will reform themselves eventually. I think that is the lesson of the history of Christianity--you cannot enclose or shut up the Spirit.
Thank you for your intelligent comment. I love (and will keep) your words: "I think spiritual wholeness lies in refusing to play the game to justify ourselves."
peace sister,
Diana Akiyama
I appreciate the concern of this piece that doctrinally oriented forms of Christianity might be outdated in the 21st century, but I wonder if we run the risk of a false dichotomy. Surely Christianity has long recognized the need for both social justice as well as basic parameters of belief (spelled out in different ways in different historical and cultural contexts). I also find it interesting that this seems to be a "crisis" only in the West. Where Christianity is growing and most vibrant in the Global South, they seem to emphasize both social justice and belief, and while they may have a different doctrinal agenda due to different cultural circumstances, they are not ready to jettison their burgeoning Christian belief in the name of relevancy.
Why did they want to become Christian in the first place? Was it better than their ancestral religion? Did they follow our example because we are modern and rich and we sent missionaries and aid?
Christianity was forced on the indigeneous populations. Europeans destroyed their temples and built Christian churches with the stones--visit Puebla."We" would not be "modern and rich" without stealing their lands and killing them. Europeans went to Africa, America, Asia and Australia without visas and trafficking illegal arms. It seems you went to one of those schools that indoctrinate domination and hide facts. Do some reading before opening your mouth.
Your comment disregards and, in fact, diminishes further the agency of the indigenous peoples you aim to defend. Africans, Native Americans, Asians, and inhabitants of the Pacific Rim did encounter European Christianity and lived to transform it. Your generalizations about the reception history of Christianity and the complex relationship between European missionaries and colonialism suggest that all of us--yourself included--could benefit from further reading. Recent scholarship including the writings of Yale historian Lamin Sanneh, himself a native Gambian and Catholic convert from Islam, demonstrate that the "facts" of this larger narrative are much more complex than your comment claims.
I agree with my own comment.
Very nice post. But what is the proper criterion, after all? What do we really know of the deeds of Jesus, or of his own intentions? Very little. And why not adhere to his program of damning unbelievers, instead of the contradictory one of compassion?
Once you let go of clear criteria like theology and scripture, and decide for yourself which path to take and which religious impulses to respond to, you have in essence entered your own personal religion, perhaps with a minor totemic commitment to the Christian tradition. One might just as well be an atheist (as I am) and be honest about your own moral judgements being your guide, in conversation with human traditions far and wide.
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