[Peace-discuss] Church presence…

[Morton K. Brussel]

We should invite this guy to join us. --mkb

==================================

ZNet Commentary
Why I am a Christian (sort of) April 06, 2006
By Robert Jensen

I don't believe in God.

I don't believe Jesus Christ was the son of a God that I don't  
believe in, nor do I believe Jesus rose from the dead to ascend to a  
heaven that I don't believe exists.

Given these positions, this year I did the only thing that seemed  
sensible: I formally joined a Christian church.

Standing before the congregation of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church  
in Austin, TX, I affirmed that I (1) endorsed the core principles in  
Christ's teaching; (2) intended to work to deepen my understanding  
and practice of the universal love at the heart of those principles;  
and (3) pledged to be a responsible member of the church and the  
larger community.

So, I'm a Christian, sort of. A secular Christian. A Christian  
atheist, perhaps. But, in a deep sense, I would argue, a real Christian.

A real Christian who doesn't believe in God? This claim requires some  
explanation about the reasons I joined, and also opens up a  
discussion of what the term "Christian" could, or should, mean.

First, whatever my beliefs about the nature of the non-material world  
or my views on spirituality, I live in a country that is extremely  
religious, especially compared to other technologically advanced  
industrial nations. Surveys show that about 80 percent of Americans  
identify as Christian and 5 percent as some other faith. And beyond  
self-identification, a 2002 poll showed that 67 percent of all people  
in the poll agreed that the United States is a "Christian nation"; 48  
percent said they believed that the United States has "special  
protection from God"; 58 percent said that America's strength is  
based on religious faith; and 47 percent asserted that a belief in  
God is necessary to be moral.

While 84 percent in that 2002 poll agreed that one can be a "good  
American" without religious faith, clearly there's an advantage to  
being able to speak within a religious framework in the contemporary  
United States.

So, my decision to join a church was more a political than a  
theological act. As a political organizer interested in a variety of  
social-justice issues, I look for places to engage people in  
discussion. In a depoliticized society such as the United States --  
where ordinary people in everyday spaces do not routinely talk about  
politics and underlying values -- churches are one of the few places  
where such engagement is possible. Even though many ministers and  
churchgoers shy away from making church a place for discussion of  
specific political issues, people there expect to engage fundamental  
questions about what it means to be human and the obligations we owe  
each other -- questions that are always at the core of politics.

The pastor and most of the congregation at St. Andrew's understand my  
reasons for joining, realizing that I didn't convert in a theological  
sense but joined a moral and political community. There's nothing  
special about me in this regard -- many St. Andrew's members I've  
talked to are seeking community and a place for spiritual, moral and  
political engagement. The church is expansive in defining faith; the  
degree to which members of the congregation believe in God and Christ  
in traditional terms varies widely. Many do, some don't, and a whole  
lot of folks seem to be searching. St. Andrew's offers a safe space  
and an exciting atmosphere for that search. in collaboration with  
others.

Such expansiveness raises questions about the definition of  
Christian. Many no doubt would reject the idea that such a church is  
truly Christian and would argue that a belief in the existence of God  
and the divinity of Christ are minimal requirements for claiming to  
be a person of Christian faith.

Such a claim implies that an interpretation of the Bible can be  
cordoned off as truth-beyond-challenge. But what if the Bible is more  
realistically read symbolically and not literally? What if that's the  
case even to the point of seeing Christ's claim to being the son of  
God as simply a way of conveying fundamental moral principles? What  
if the resurrection is metaphor? What if "God" is just the name we  
give to the mystery that is beyond our ability to comprehend through  
reason?

In such a conception of faith, an atheist can be a Christian. A Hindu  
can be a Christian. Anyone can be a Christian, and a Christian can  
find a connection to other perspectives and be part of other faiths.  
With such a conception of faith, a real ecumenical spirit and  
practice is possible. Identification with a religious tradition can  
become a way to lower barriers between people, not raise them ever  
higher.

We can ground this process in the ethical principles common to almost  
all religious and secular philosophical systems, one of which is the  
assertion that we should treat others as we would like to be treated.  
For example:

--None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he  
wishes for himself (Islam).

--Do unto others as you would have them do unto you (Christianity).

--Act only on that maxim that you can will a universal law (Kant).

One of the most playful and powerful ways this has been conveyed is  
in the story of the gentile who challenged two Jewish rabbis to teach  
him the Torah in the time that he could stand on one foot. One rabbi  
dismissed the question, but Hillel, one of the great Jewish  
theologians of the first century BCE, told the man: "That which is  
hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah;  
the rest is commentary. Go and study it."

There is an important struggle going on for the soul of Christianity,  
which should be of concern to everyone, Christian or not. The debate  
is not just at the level of arguments over whether, for example,  
certain Old Testament passages should be interpreted to condemn  
homosexuality. The deeper struggle is over whether Christianity is to  
be understood as a closed set of answers that leads to the  
intensification of these boundaries, or as an invitation to explore  
questions that help people transcend boundaries. Such a struggle is  
going on not only within Christianity, but in all the major world  
religions.

Where can this lead? Some might argue that promoting such expansive  
conceptions of faith would eventually make the term Christian  
meaningless. If one can be a Christian without accepting the  
resurrection, then calling oneself Christian would have no meaning  
beyond an expression of support for some basic moral principles that  
are near-universal. That is partly true; if this strategy were  
successful, at some point people would stop fussing about who is and  
isn't a Christian -- and that would be a good thing. The same process  
could go on in other religions as well. Christianity could do its  
part to help usher in a period of human history in which people  
stopped obsessing about how to mark the boundaries of a faith group  
and instead committed to living those values more fully.

In other words, the task of Christians -- and, I would argue, all  
religions -- is to make themselves more relevant in the short term by  
being a site of such political and moral engagement, with the goal of  
ensuring their ultimate irrelevance. The task of religion,  
paradoxically, is to bring into being a world based on the universal  
values that underlie most major theological and philosophical systems  
-- compassion, empathy, solidarity, dignity. Such a world would be  
truly based on love and real solidarity, a world in which we would  
take seriously the claim that all people have exactly the same value.

In his 1927 lecture "Why I Am Not a Christian," the philosopher  
Bertrand Russell said: "A good world ... needs a fearless outlook and  
a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back  
all the time toward a past that is dead."

I couldn't agree more, and I joined a Christian church to be part of  
that hope for the future, to struggle to make religion a force that  
can help usher into existence a world in which we can imagine living  
in peace with each other and in sustainable relation to the non-human  
world.

Such a task requires a fearlessness and intelligence beyond what we  
have mustered to date, but it also requires a faith in our ability to  
achieve it.

That is why I am a Christian.

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at  
Austin, board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center  
( http://thirdcoastactivist.org), and the author of The Heart of  
Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege and Citizens  
of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity. He can be reached  
at rjensen at uts.cc.utexas.edu .