A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on March 18th, 2009 in Progressive Faith

WaPo’s “On Faith” is generally not that interesting to me. This discussion is an exception. But it starts out with a non-interesting question over whether Americans are less religious than we once were.

The question isn’t that interesting for various reasons. Chief among those reasons is that there is no real understanding of what the words “religious” and “spiritual” mean. If someone goes to church, but doesn’t believe anything they are saying and doing – are they religious or spiritual or neither? What if they never darken the door of a church, but pray every day and read their Bible? What if they do none of that, but honestly belief there’s a God out there somewhere? What if they study the Bible, refuse to pray, and only have a vague idea that God might exist in some form or fashion?

See? It’s meaningless.

Next, because there’s no set understanding of these words, there is no meaningful baseline against which we can measure whatever we measure today. If we don’t know what we mean now, we cannot possibly understand what people meant by these words a decade ago. The best data we have is comparing church attendance records – and anyone who has attended church more than once over the last ten years could tell you that this has been happening. Moreover, the population within any given church has likely seen its median age increase as its members, literally, die off.

So what is interesting if this whole thing is such a non-starter?

The comments. The explanations that people give for both the phenomenon of less populous churches and for how they deal with each other’s answers.

Susan Jacoby’s answer currently has the most responses – her teaser reads:

People who describe themselves as “spiritual, but not religious” are like people who say they place great importance on reading but never go to the library, buy a book, or read a book online.

For example:

I wish I thought that I would live to see the day when all religions were seen as the stuff of legend and past belief only, but since many of the evangelical groups carefully shield their children from any contact with reality, through home schooling and/or church-owned schools, I fear that it will be with us for a long time to come.

This is why atheists end up getting such a bad rap – they aren’t satisfied with the freedom to not believe on their own, they dream of stamping out any competing belief, too. This is basically the same thing as the extreme fundamentalists that they hold up as examples of how horrible religion is. They both want to remake the world in their own image – it’s just a different image.

Clearly some education in religious traditions is warranted. I can’t help but wonder if the US should create a system where children learn about different religions witbout any emphasis on preferring one religion over another.

Well, we have that – every religious group is free to proselytize. The problem is that the people who are out there actually doing it are those pushing an intolerant message that just turns people off. And people like me – people who believe in a God that would probably appeal to most people – we aren’t out knocking on doors and building media empires and founding private universities to push our beliefs on others as “the one true way.”

Why not? Well, I suppose it’s a question of motivation. Both evangelical extremists and militant atheists believe that they have only the short period of a person’s life to show them “the one true way.” I’m not convinced of that. I don’t think anyone is going to be committed to Hell – in this life or the next – if I don’t convince them of my arguments.

It’s also a question of explaining my beliefs coherently. Again, those at either extreme have the benefit of simply saying, “Anyone who disagrees in the list is obviously inferior and misses the point of the real message.” I don’t believe that anyone who disagrees with me in the slightest is going to be doomed. I think there’s a lot of room to either side of my point of beliefs that can be true – as well as admitting that either of the extremes could be right. Plus, I suppose, the assurance that one has a lock on truth lends a strength to the argument that someone who is saying, “Well, it’s possible that all of us are wrong,” just lacks.

There are a lot more interesting comments there, too. Check ‘em out.

Sphere: Related Content