We’ve still awash in eggnog over at my house, with important guests a-plenty for Christmas and New Year’s. But in the midst of Christmas caroling and the opening of presents and whatnot, I came across a pretty interesting essay at Salon.com by Ada Calhoun — a Christian who kept her faith a secret from her intellectual friends right up until this very essay.
Why am I so paranoid? I’m not cheating on my husband, committing crimes or doing drugs. But those are battles my cosmopolitan, progressive friends would understand. Many of them had to come out — as gay, as alcoholics, as artists in places where art was not valued. To them, my situation is far more sinister: I am the bane of their youth, the boogeyman of their politics, the very thing they left their small towns to escape. I am a Christian.
If you check out the post (and I recommend you do), you might notice that her own readers have very little sympathy. Salon.com is one of the Web’s more secular outlets, and many atheistic readers think it’s preposterous to think of Christians — who make up 80 percent or more of the country — as some sort of persecuted minority.
I get their reasoning. But at the same time, I know that I am, sadly, increasingly cautious when I talk about matters of faith with some of my more secular acquaintances. I make no bones about who I am or what I believe, but I do think there is, in some circles, a stigma to coming across as “too religious.” Perhaps this is nothing new … but it is new for me.
Are Christians persecuted? No, I don’t think so. Not really. But I certainly don’t feel particularly ascendent, either. We still are part of the national dialogue. But are we its loudest voice? It doesn’t feel like it.
Sometimes, I think our blessings can be almost too overwhelming.
I’m reminded of that every Christmas, it seems, when my normally dowdy social calendar takes on all the characteristics of a month-long obstacle course: Crawl through the Christmas shopping, climb past the daughter’s social orchestra concert, leap over another Christmas party and finally cross the finish line, Christmas morning, looking not so much for comfort and joy but a nice, quiet nap.
I think I get a little Scroogish this time of year, and maybe I have company. It’s the only way I can explain the amount of anger generated by the whole War on Christmas thing.
I know lots of Christians find the fight over whether corporate America wishes us a “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays” to be a very big deal. I know Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and others have dedicated scads of airtime to the issue. One prominent association has made the War on Christmas a centerpiece of its ministry, and it recently declared victory over the Gap when the company aired an unambiguous “Christmas” ad. (It had previously boycotted Gap for its rather squishy holiday marketing.) But the organization still keeps a “naughty” list loaded with businesses that are “against Christmas,” which include Best Buy, Office Depot and Victoria’s Secret. I guess the lingerie-clad “angels” don’t count.
I sympathize with the Christmas warriors on some level, I guess. I mean, I think it’s a shame when people are scared to wish others a Merry Christmas, for whatever reason. I don’t think most folks get offended. But by the same token, I don’t get offended if someone wants to play it safe and wishes me a happy holiday, either – and considering how commercial the season has become, the fight over Christmas feels a little akin to activists in Jesus’ time saying, “what?! Take the marketplace out of the temple?! What are you trying to do, marginalize religion?”
Again, I’m sure folks who worry about this sort of thing mean well. But this time of year, it’d be great to see Christians concentrating on being the hands and feet of God: Taking turns ringing a bell for the Salvation Army, perhaps. Or serving food in the local food kitchen. Or volunteering at a homeless shelter. I think that’s where hearts and minds are truly won.
Which is why I get kind of excited to see stories like this: Stories about Christians who are serving others and, perhaps, surprising some of Christianity’s shrillest critics. This particular story, from The New York Times, profiles Jenna Liao, a young evangelical who coordinates activities of volunteers for World Relief. Far from abandoning traditional evangelical causes like abortion, Liao has, like many evangelicals, simply broadened her scope.
While still a student at Wheaton [College], Ms. Liao took part in a national conference about AIDS for young evangelicals. She volunteered on a weekly basis at a homeless shelter for gay men in Chicago. She met her future husband, Richard Liao, literally over the ladle at a soup kitchen. Every experience served to confirm what Ms. Liao thought of as her scriptural mission statement, the passage in the Beatitudes that blesses the poor, the meek, the mournful, the oppressed.
We are truly blessed, and our blessings are never so apparent as they are during the Christmas season. I know it’s a time when, perhaps, we as Christians are sadly reminded that religion doesn’t command the attention it once did in this country. But maybe the best way to honor the season is not to mourn what we’ve lost and fight to get it back, but rejoice over what we’ve been given — and consider what more we can give.
I ran across a pretty interesting article in Esquire magazine written by Shane Claiborne, head of The Simple Way ministry.It was sincere, hip and unflinching in its criticism of “religion gone bad.” I agreed, I think, with everything he wrote. Yet, in a roundabout way, it caused me to again ask a pretty critical question of the faith we share: Is an unpopular faith necessarily a bad faith?
But before we get into all that, here’s a very quick recap of the column.
Claiborne begins by apologizing on behalf of all Christians for “the embarrassing things we have done in the name of God.”
At one point Gandhi was asked if he was a Christian, and he said, essentially, “I sure love Jesus, but the Christians seem so unlike their Christ.” A recent study showed that the top three perceptions of Christians in the U. S. among young non-Christians are that Christians are 1) antigay, 2) judgmental, and 3) hypocritical. So what we have here is a bit of an image crisis, and much of that reputation is well deserved. That’s the ugly stuff. And that’s why I begin by saying that I’m sorry.
And then he comes with the equivalent of a written altar call — pretty gutsy, really:
I want to invite you to consider that maybe the televangelists and street preachers are wrong — and that God really is love. Maybe the fruits of the Spirit really are beautiful things like peace, patience, kindness, joy, love, goodness, and not the ugly things that have come to characterize religion, or politics, for that matter.
You can’t do justice to Claiborne’s thoughts in a couple of reprinted paragraphs, and I’d love it if you checked out the column yourself. But what the guy said resonated with me.
“The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination,” Claiborne writes. His sentiments, truth be told, aren’t all that new anymore: Don Miller, author of “Blue Like Jazz” and a number of other wonderfully written Christian books, comes from a similar place. Dan Merchant, creator of the entertaining, Michael Moore-esque doc “Lord, Save Us From Your Followers,” does too. All three believe that Christianity has a public relations problem — and that problem is, essentially, us.
I agree. I know lots of Christians who aren’t particularly good ambassadors of faith. Some are so embarrassing that, in my weaker moments, I kinda wish they’d either wise up or move on to a different religion so I — and we — wouldn’t have to keep apologizing for them.
But truth be told, I’m one of the worst examples of how a Christian should behave. I’m selfish, sinful, hypocritical and, as the previous paragraph clearly illustrates, not always that forgiving. For someone who supposedly gave his life to Christ, I have a hard time even giving up a parking space sometimes. I have a lot to apologize for.
But apologizing for the entire Christian faith? Man. It’s a great line, and I think it sparks some respect from those who have been hurt by the Church or Christians … but it still feels a little presumptive.
But my bigger question is this: Isn’t Christianity, in some ways, supposed to be polarizing? Isn’t Christianity’s biggest barrier to worldwide acceptance really … the faith itself?
“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man!” reads Luke 6:22. The Bible, particularly the New Testament, is filled with references to persecution. The Scriptures tell us that persecution, really, is part of the gig. This doesn’t give Christians license to be jerks: But it is an acknowledgment that Christianity, at its core, is as counter-cultural movement as there is. It’s powerful. It’s dangerous. And some people will find it pretty icky, no matter how much we reflect its beauty.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m completely on board with Miller and Merchant and Claiborne. I think Christians often don’t represent Christ very effectively. We sometimes wield our faith with all the gentleness of a cudgel. But when we read Claiborne, we should keep our eyes on the true faith as represented by Jesus — just as Claiborne says we should. We should not mistake relevance with popularity. We should apologize for what we’ve done wrong — but stand firm for what our faith is, without reservation, without apology.
We should remember Jesus in all things: His kindness and boldness. We should teach, care for the sick, love our enemies, turn the other cheek.
But we should also be willing to turn over a table or two when the circumstances call for it.
According to The New York Times, 145 “evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders have signed a declaration saying they will not cooperate with laws that they say could be used to compel their institutions to participate in abortion, or to bless or in any way recognize same-sex couples.”
The declaration was released last Friday, and the paper said it was an attempt to rejuvenate Christian conservatism — the same force that helped propel and keep George W. Bush in the White House for most of a decade.
Or it could be a group of religious leaders standing up for the issues they believe are important … but perhaps that’s just naive of me.
Christopher Hitchens, author of “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” has been debating religious leaders for a good long while now, traveling from campus to campus, auditorium to auditorium, arguing the (I think ludicrous) point that faith is an unqualified, unrepentant force for evil.
But perhaps, in spending so much time with real flesh-and-blood people, Hitchens may be ever-so-slightly softening. Look at this line from a column he recently wrote for Slate:
I haven’t yet run into an argument that has made me want to change my mind. After all, a believing religious person, however brilliant or however good in debate, is compelled to stick fairly closely to a “script” that is known in advance, and known to me, too. However, I have discovered that the so-called Christian right is much less monolithic, and very much more polite and hospitable, than I would once have thought, or than most liberals believe. I haven’t been asked to Bob Jones University yet, but I have been invited to Jerry Falwell’s old Liberty University campus in Virginia, even though we haven’t yet agreed on the terms.
I doubt Hitchens will ever decide he’s been wrong all these years and convert to Christianity (or another religion). He now has, in fact, all sorts of public and financial incentives for remaining the staunch atheist he is. But I’m encouraged that, while he may not agree with what we believe, he perhaps sees a glimpse of the people who we are: Christians are no longer people of the “they,” but people who he’s met with, talked with, perhaps even eaten with.
I think it’s much harder to hate a group of people once we meet them. Hitchens, to his credit, has met us where we live. And perhaps, in so doing, there resides a faint flicker of hope that Hitchens and his fellow “angry atheists” may not stay quite so angry.
Former President George W. Bush sang the praises of J.K. Rowling, author of the wildly popular (and, in my opinion, very good) Harry Potter series. But according to a former Bush speechwriter, the Bush administration declined to give Rowling the Presidential Medal of Freedom because she repeatedly referenced witchcraft in them.
Matt Latimer makes the allegations in his book, “Speechless: Tales of a White House Survivor,” and while the decision may look foolish now, frankly, I can understand how something like this happens. The Potter books were widely condemned from many conservative Christians when Rowling first started churning them out, and evangelicals were, of course, the cornerstone of Bush’s political support. If I was President, I’d be tempted not to anger my most boisterous supporters, too.
In hindsight, of course, the decision feels kind of silly. Not only were Rowling’s books wildly popular, not only were they extremely well written, but the final book contains, I think, one of the most mature ruminations on faith and doubt and the beauty of Christianity I’ve ever read. Not that I expect Rowling’s too torn up about it. Selling around 300 million books tends to salve a lot of wounds.
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1 cor 12:12
We’ve still awash in eggnog over at my house, with important guests a-plenty for Christmas and New Year’s. But in the midst of Christmas caroling and the opening of presents and whatnot, I came across a pretty interesting essay at Salon.com by Ada Calhoun — a Christian who kept her faith a secret from her intellectual friends right up until this very essay.
