Carnal Reason

Dave Shiflett, author of Exodus: Why Americans are Leaving Liberal Churches for Conservative Christianity.

… one finds little of the crusading spirit of religious certitude even among the dread born-again Christians and Evangelicals. Pollsters, including the much-quoted George Barna, have instead divined widespread heterodoxy and a live-and-let-live attitude.

Born-again Christians simply aren’t as generally advertised. Consider their view of Jesus, once regarded as the Sinless One. Twenty-eight percent agree that “while he lived on earth, Jesus committed sins, like other people.” That is far from a crusading belief. Even further afield, 35 percent of these supposedly hard-core believers do not believe Jesus experienced a physical resurrection, a belief shared by 39 percent of the general population (85 percent of Americans say they believe that Jesus is “spiritually alive,” whatever that may mean. One recalls that many Americans believe their deceased pets are now ghosts, which may also qualify as being spiritually alive. )

In this same spirit, 52 percent of born agains believe the Holy Spirit is merely a symbol of God’s presence or power but is not a living entity, not much different than the general adult population (61 percent). Nor does the devil find much support. Nearly 60 percent of American adults say Satan does not exist as a being at all, but is merely a symbol of evil; 45 percent of born again Christians agree.
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All told, these are not the beliefs of a crusading army, and only a small portion of believers should be considered truly devout, Fr. John McCloskey told me. McCloskey, an evangelist and traditionalist Catholic who is credited with helping bring Robert Bork, Robert Novak, Larry Kudlow, and Sen. Sam Brownback into the Roman Catholic Church, says that only about ten percent of Catholics are “with the program,” by which he means they regularly attend Mass, go to Confession, and attempt to conform their lives fully to church teachings. The ten-percent figure turned up elsewhere as well. Dr. Albert Mohler, head of a Southern Baptist Convention seminary in Louisville, told me that only about ten percent of Protestants are serious believers, by which he meant people who take scripture not only seriously but as a guide to behavior and thought.

It has been my experience that many people who claim to be Christians don’t let their religion get in the way of their personal lives. My impression is that their Christianity is a social matter, with little basis in reasoned assent to doctrine. It does not surprise me. We live in a time when neither reason nor doctrine carry much weight.

Consider Peter Hitchens words:

He [Christopher Hitchens]] has the faith I think of Darwinism, which is just like Christianity an unproven and unprovable theory, which you can believe in if you want because you prefer that arrangement of the universe. I happen to think the arrangement of the universe based on the belief in intelligent design is more tolerable both morally and aesthetically, but he prefers another.
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It actually isn’t proven. It is a choice. That’s the important thing that you choose to believe it. Your choice may be unwelcome to you and my choice my be equally unwelcome to me, but it’s one that you take as a matter of preference.
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And I happen think that the combination of scripture, reason and tradition which is at the heart of serious Anglicanism is both appealing, constructive, and actually leads on to a much greater exercise in liberty than that which tends to result from the actions of political idealists who want to load us with identity cards and put us in North Koreas.

Hitchens does not assert that the claims of Christianity are true. To the contrary, Christianity is unproved and unprovable, a matter of taste really. Christianity is claimed to have some pragmatic advantages, say a greater exercise in liberty. But is Christianity true? Was Christ born of a virgin? Did he raise the dead, and himself return from the dead? Is he coming again, to judge us all?

I would say no, no, no, no, and no. I find the claims of Christianity unbelievable, but at least I take them seriously enough to consider whether they are true. If not, it hardly matters whether they are useful. I have little interest in milksop social Christians. The ones who interest me are the true believers, the ones who tell me that God loves us all, even me, and that I must freely accept His love, or He will damn me to eternal torture. That’s an interesting story.

Posted on June 19th, 2005 by pwyll
Filed under: General