‘Losing My Religion’: A Tale of American Christianity
I have become somewhat convinced, although I’m still working out the implications and sources of what I’m about to posit, that the rise of the so-called ‘Christian Right’ in recent decades concurrently caused the loss of authentic religious identity in many of the Christian communities in the United States.
What, you might ask, are you talking about? Hear me out.
In preparation for teaching a seminar this afternoon, I had been doing a lot of reading about the experience of faith and religion as it relates to Christianity in the United States. Among the different texts and narratives I’ve been studying up on, there is included a cast of evangelical Christians of sound academic reputation, including: Mark Noll (Notre Dame), Randall Balmer (Columbia), Alan Wolfe (Boston College), among others.
A common theme that arose in each thinker’s reflection is the phenomenon of so-called “megachurches” that have sprouted up around the U.S. in recent decades. Alan Wolfe, in the book The Life of Meaning (2007), explains:
The whole megachurch phenomenon is premised upon the idea that we can’t do anything with people unless we get them to church first, so the priority is to get them in there. But to get them in there, you downplay the Christian symbolism, you take the crosses off the church, you make the pews as comfortable as you possible can, you put McDonald’s franchises in the lobby. Sometimes you don’t even know you’re in church when you go to church, because the church doesn’t look like a church.
It’s clear that that’s what the people want. If you’re in the business of getting the people there, you’ve got to give them what they want. But it comes at a huge cost. They call themselves evangelical, but they’re not strict, not demanding. Willow Creek, the most famous of our megachurches, doesn’t even have a cross outside the building. It won’t identify itself with any specific tradition. It wants to grow. And the way you grow is by trying to be all things to all people.
To be fair, I would suggest that it’s not just an evangelical issue. Lots of other Christian communities find themselves in a similar cycle. Nobody is going to church –> you want people to go to church –> they’ll go if it was less-like-church –> you make it less-like-church –> the substance and content becomes lost, because the context has changed. If you are audience-driven, you cannot challenge or raise questions the hearer hasn’t asked or wants to hear. Instead of throwing seed down in hope of it finding fertile soil, you ditch the whole seeding effort leaving the land to remain rocky and infertile.
So where’s the Gospel?
Balmer believes that the rise of the ‘Religious Right’ was one small group’s attempt to make a certain type of evangelical Christianity, a narrowly conceived form of Christianity, the “hegemonic expression of faith for the entire culture” of the United States. The problem, as I see it, is that with the dissolution of the churches’ message as one of substance and Gospel-inspired content, those who find it fashionable to maintain the descriptor “Christian” needed another signifying focus — if church and my religion no longer resemble authentic Christianity, then I need to replace it with something I can choose to identify as explicitly “Christian.”
Witness the emergence of a morality-based political rhetoric that both implicitly and expressly identifies certain hot-button “moral” issues as necessary foci for Christians in the public and political squares. How do you know that so-and-so is a Christian? Because he or she is “prolife” or “anti-same-sex-marriage” or something of the sort. Meanwhile, this person goes to “church” on Sunday, is told what he or she wants to hear, gives money to the pastor, sings a few upbeat songs, and goes home righteous as ever.
As the authentic Christian identity of ecclesial communities dissolves in an effort to draw people and amass a veritable stadium of singing “new-christians,” the political agenda of some has filled the vacuum of religious identity left vacant by the eclipse of the Gospel.
The thing about abortion and same-sex-marriage, to pick two of the several contentious issues, is that they rarely impact the person rallying against them directly. On the other hand, the Gospel raises challenges for all people in every age and at all times. You can demonize the unwed and poor pregnant woman outside a Planned Parenthood office because you are not that person.
But we are all the Body of Christ, to whom God demands much for much has been given to us — more is demanded than political lip-service and vacuous religious affectivity. Unlike the targets of these political hot-button issues, the poor, the marginalized (who may also be your political targets), the forgotten and abused, they implicate all of us in a world that remains unjust.
When Christians become convinced that social justice is antithetical to Christian living, they have indeed lost their religion, replacing Christianity for vacuous political ideology. A sad tale of American Christianity indeed.
February 9, 2011 at 1:56 pm
A million times yes, Dan. I totally agree with you and have been saying the same thing myself recently. You really are on to something here. What a great post.
February 9, 2011 at 2:10 pm
I grew up in Chicago when Willow Creek was just getting its start. It creeped me out then for reasons I couldn’t adequately explain. I’ve wondered the same things as you in this post. You don’t have to look very far afield, either, to see its effects in our own denomination. On certain Catholic blogs, news sites, etc, if you change one or two words, they’re indistinguishable from other evangelicals.
February 9, 2011 at 2:29 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Nicole Shoe and Christopher Smith, Daniel P. Horan, OFM. Daniel P. Horan, OFM said: 'Losing My Religion': A Tale of American Christianity: http://t.co/sGBu85u #Christianity #religion #politics [...]
February 9, 2011 at 3:28 pm
Within our own Church we hearing people describe themselves as “Catholic Evangelicals” — the EWTN community, for example, and others — the rhetoric and the social/moral issues are alarmingly the same as those you pointed in your post, Dan. Where is the Gospel in all of this? Where are the radical demands of Jesus expressed in the Sermon on the Mount? Where is the proclamation of the absolutely selfless love of God for us … and were is the call to true ‘agape’, the God-like love, preached and lived by Jesus, that never seeks its own good and well-being but only that of the “other”? I think of Joel Olstein, the smiling evangelist who tells us that if we are prosperous that means that God loves us in a special way. That’s not what Jesus taught.
February 9, 2011 at 3:29 pm
Francis would be proud of those comments.
February 10, 2011 at 10:08 am
“You can demonize the unwed and poor pregnant woman outside a Planned Parenthood office because you are not that person.”
This is the Christianity I came into and grew in during the 80s and 90s. In my repentence of this kind of judgment and ignorance the Spirit has given me more compassion for people and passion for Jesus.
Excellent and powerful thoughts that are true.
grace and peace…
February 10, 2011 at 10:14 am
I am so grateful to see this blog post. These words speak for many of us.
People who appreciate this blog are likely to enjoy my new book, Kissing Fish: christianity for people who don’t like christianity. see: http://www.progressivechristianitybook.com peace.
February 10, 2011 at 12:07 pm
I am uncertain about a couple of things in this post.
1) The idea that megachurches have singularly prioritized getting bodies in the door seems incomplete. Obviously, the crowds are taken to be a marker of pastoral success (“we must be doing something right!”), but I don’t get the sense that worship attendance per se is as high a priority as you (and apparently Wolfe) suggest. This feels like a Catholic-hued analysis, from a perspective where participation in the liturgy is of heightened importance. For evangelicals, I think it’s being part of a Christian community that is critical, and I think the crowds on Sunday follow from this.
2) I am skeptical that megachurches are actually trying to be “all things to all people.” The idea that megachurches only tell people what they want to hear seems wrong. I think the sexual norms and other individualized “purity” norms are quite demanding and result in much anguish among adherents. Of course, this theological outlook is distorted, wrong, and boring (in my view), but it is nevertheless an outlook. (I am reminded of a quote from The Big Lebowski: “Say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, but at least it’s an ethos!”) They have certainly made Christianity less like the Gospel, but I think the idea that megachurches have made church “less-like-church” reflects a rather Catholic bias that “authentic Christianity” has to look like our style of worship.
3) Finally, the connection with religious symbolism (crosses on church buildings) is confusing to me. The megachurch crowds are perhaps more comfortable with Christian imagery than mainline crowds. (I’m thinking of cross jewelry, Jesus-fish t-shirts, bible references on everything,etc.) I don’t get the sense that they are likely to be scared off by a cross on a building, so I doubt that the symbols have been stripped in order to be more inviting. More importantly, if this is a critique of the substance of evangelical and/or megachurch theology, then the matter of “religious” adornment seems quite irrelevant.
So, needless to say, I won’t be re-tweeting this particular offering
February 10, 2011 at 12:55 pm
@ David, thanks for some “interesting” views. I only respond to point out that the three scholars I referenced — and whose reflections serve as the impetus for this post — are not catholics. While I may be inextricably laden with a “catholic-hue” given my confessional outlook, those scholars are most certainly not. Their critique is from within.
February 11, 2011 at 12:33 am
[...] Be Catholic…. Br. Dan Horan, OFM writes over at Dating God a very good point about some of the more divisive issues in church and politics. The thing about [...]