Doctrine And Sincerity
John Schwenkler points us to this summary of an appearance by Rick Santorum at the Oxford Center for Religion and Public Life:
After he’d accused Obama and other Democrats of religoius fraudulance for a few minutes, journalist Terry Mattingly of GetReligion.org asked whether it’s possible that rather than being fake, perhaps,Obama was sincerely reflecting a form of liberal Christianity in the tradition of Reinhold Neibuhr. Santorum surprised me by answering that yes, “I could buy that.”
However, he questioned whether liberal christianity [sic] was really, well, Christian. “You’re a liberal something, but your not a Christian.” He continued, “When you take a salvation story and turn it into a liberation story you’ve abandoned Christiandom [sic] and I don’t think you have a right to claim it.”
The troubling thing I find in the summary is not that a Republican imputes bad (or rather non-existent) faith to professing Christians in the other party, since it is also pretty much standard fare for liberals to get on their own soapboxes and assure everyone that real Christians could never support a given GOP policy, or they may insist that it is hypocritical to confess Christ and endorse, say, tax cuts. (Sometimes, when it comes to things as heinous as legal abortion, torture or aggressive war, there is certainly a valid argument that Christians shouldn’t support such things, but that would apply to Christians on both left and right.) It’s not a particularly attractive habit, but it is one that we come to expect from partisans. What I find troubling is that Santorum feels free to see-saw between the correct understanding that he cannot know–and should not judge–whether Obama’s faith is sincere and the partisan talking point that he joined his church only for political advantage. God alone knows all the reasons why Obama joined his church, and if that’s true you cannot conclude categorically that Obama joined his church simply for political gain. (Was there a political dimension to his membership? Of course there was, and it would be a bit surprising if that weren’t somewhat true for politically engaged conservative Christians as well.)
In fact, Santorum’s critique of liberal Christianity as theologically deficient or misguided is where he is on the strongest ground, because doctrine is something that can and should be assessed critically. It is quite reasonable to conclude that Obama, among others, is a sincere liberal Protestant who is therefore going theologically awry because he is a sincere liberal Protestant, but you cannot simultaneously find fault with his doctrine while also saying that he doesn’t really believe it and then expect to be taken seriously. It is one thing to say that a given church or doctrine lacks the fullness of the truth and is therefore necessarily spiritually lacking, but it is something else all together to claim that those who believe in that doctrine are engaged in a massive fraud by merely pretending to believe. The first is a reasonable, defensible position, while the second is pretty much baseless character assassination.
Filed under: politics, Christianity
That is, I think, a fair point on which to critique Obama. I don’t know what was in his heart or his head during his years at TUCC, but I think we can fairly critique an overtly, proudly “ethnocentric” Christian church as barely worthy of the name Christian at all.
Most churches have an ethnic or cultural aspect as well as a theology and a liturgy. When taken to extremes, it’s a fault and even a heresy (”phyletism” is the Orthodox term). Unless we pretend that white Americans have no culture, but minorities do (something a lot of people believe), we have to acknowledge that it isn’t just the Wrights who are ethnocentric.
The guy’s still a blowhard when it comes to politics, though.
Grumpy Old Man,
Point taken, but saying that a church has ethnic characteristics and extrapolating your own ethnicities history until it merges with the image of Christ Himself are pretty different things.
I think there is a difference between actually Afrocentric theology and, say, the Russian nationalism and cultural traditions you might encounter at an Orthodox parish, and even with phyletism this is a matter of privileging national differences over religious identity rather than substituting one’s own people for Israel and the Church. A theology that explicitly changes claims about who Christ is and does not mean these changes metaphorically or simply as a pastoral effort to help people recognize their unity in Christ goes far beyond the errors of phyletism. The greatest danger of an ethnocentric church is that it insists on co-opting Christ for its own people and denying basic scriptural claims about Christ’s descent, which are central to His saving role as the Messiah.
To the extent that a church wants to depict Christ in ways that resemble the people in the congregation, this may not be ideal but could be pastorally valuable. However, once you move beyond depictions or metaphors and start making historical and theological claims you have clearly gone off the rails.
Well put: Santorum cannot know if Obama is sincere or not in his faith, but nonetheless insists that the candidate joined the church for political advantage. That doesn’t follow logically.
Also worth noting — Larison critiques Obama’s faith as being “liberal Protestant.” Potentially flawed, but not necessarily ethnocentric.
The fairness here is appreciated.
Daniel, that’s fair.
The “Shining City on a Hill” meme that gives America a uniquely prophetic rôle is perhaps less angry than “Afrocentric Christianity,” but both tend to substitute one people for the whole church. Each people, like each person, may have a unique vocation.
To elevate one’s own people above all others theologically, is a grave error.
My guess is that for Santorum this is a distinction without a difference. Liberal Protestantism is, almost by definition, in his religious worldview at least, a doctrinal system built on insincerity. Isn’t it possible to sincerely believe in an ideology that is arguably disingenuous or even cynical at its core? Or is this just a problem of throwing around equivocal moralistic terms like “sincerity?”
Though note that Santorum was doing more than that: he wasn’t just saying that Obama is a (theologically or politically) liberal Protestant and is therefore mistaken about what Christianity demands (which may be true), but rather that someone like this simply IS NOT A CHRISTIAN (which is ridiculous - and, frankly, deeply un-Christian).