Balancing Humility with Certainty
This week, I started reading Russell Moore’s new book Losing Our Religion[1].In the first chapter, he reflects on a crisis that he had earlier in life when he recognized the failings of his faith community. He states that this crisis surfaced “a deep dread… that Christianity might just be [a] southern culture of politics, with Jesus affixed as a hood ornament.”
He is pushing his community to think outside of cultural norms.
In the New Testament, Jesus was intentional in uncovering the hypocrisy of the religion of his time. When we see him get angry in the scriptures, it is at religious leaders who prioritized the religion over God.
Jesus was pushing his community to test its cultural norms and to bring people back to the essentials of His good news.
In Evangelization and Ideology [2] Matthew Petrusek is asking a similar, but nuanced request. Instead of pointing the analysis to a faith community, he is uncovering inconsistencies in secular ideologies and further asserts that these inconsistencies provide an opportunity for evangelization. His analysis of the familiar secular ideologies (Liberalism, Libertarianism, Progressivism, Utilitarianism) and how they have influenced each other was at once fascinating and overwhelming. It is boggling to reflect on the connectedness of diametrically opposed ideologies. (Here I must add a “shout out” of thanks to John Fehlen who shared with us a helpful link to Petrusek’s series entitled The Idolatry of Identity, [3]in which Petrusek concisely outlines these arguments.)
He then rightly asserts that “Either our politics is grounded in and oriented to God as our true good and true source of happiness or it is grounded in and oriented to something other than God, which is tantamount to grounding it in an idol.”[4]Similarly to Moore, Petrusek is surfacing contradictions that are so ingrained in the practice of society that we have forgotten to critically assess their worth.
As we have already discussed at length, in this cohort, it is difficult for an insider to be aware of the idolatry of one’s own culture.
Making worldviews explicit and surfacing the underlying concepts behind them is valuable, especially as a participant in the culture being described. At the end of his book, Petrusk has a list of “Practical Advice for Evangelists in the Political Sphere.” I found several of his points salient and inspirational. Let me pull three of them here:
1. “Be disposed to learn something new”[5]
Petrusek is clear on the dysfunctions of prevalent secular ideologies. He then asserts that there is no consistent ideology… except his; Catholic Social teachings (CST). Throughout the book, he asserts that the Catholic Church has social teachings that are superior to all others. These teachings, he believes, provides a cure for the flaws of each of the ideologies he has reviewed.[6] I have had some exposure to CST, and I am fond of the way that its precepts speak to truths that are innate in us, and call everyone, regardless of their faith, to a common expression of love for our fellow man.
I do not know if Petrusek would apply CST with the same kind of legalism that other religious leaders have in other instances, but his declaration of their superiority to other ideologies makes me uncomfortable. Despite the appeal of CST, I do not see them as primary doctrine. In other words, I cannot see how these ideologies make a Christian a Christian. While I am confident that Petrusek and others can extrapolate the values of CST from scripture; so could the Sanhedrin of Jesus’ day. And we saw how that worked out. In other words, aren’t CST also a man-made ideology and therefore still fallible? Didn’t Jesus hold the religious leaders of his day accountable for doing the same? An honest question, here: With how firm a grip should we hold these secondary doctrines? How open should be to having those doctrines challenged?
2. “Don’t compromise the faith to gain a (temporary) ally.”[7]
In our current climate, with political ideologies being tangled up with religious ones, is it too simplistic for me to ask if it is the right approach to criticize secular ideologies, when those of religion seem to be so deeply intertwined with politics that we do not even see it anymore? This is not a new question as we read in Kristin DuMez’ Jesus and John Wayne, which outlines a historically symbiotic relationship between secular politicians and iconic Church leaders.[8] In today’s newsfeed, we see more and more extreme examples of self-professed evangelicals leaving active fellowship and aligning themselves with political ideologies.[9]
3. “Try to avoid attacking ‘bad people’ and focus on attacking bad ideas instead”[10]
I am less skeptical of Petrusek’s well-reasoned arguments as I am about the possibility of them landing with any success on a secular world who sees the fallacies of the “Evangelical” movement with reasonable suspicion. We did, after all, spend a large portion of our time last term discussing the unintended consequences of the Evangelical movement. [10,11] How far can we go in asking the world to get its ideological practices consistent before we have achieved the same? Is it right to risk further alienation of our audience by mocking the speck in their eye before removing the logs in our own?
I am convinced that there is a middle ground, here. As members of the Body of Christ, we are all trying to see through the veil, dimly. I believe that with the empowering of the Holy Spirit, we can move forward in humbly sharing our convictions, while being challenged to grow in our understanding through civil discourse.
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[1] Russell Moore, “Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America” (New York, New York: Sentinel, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2023).
[2] Matthew Petrusek and Cardinal Thomas Collins, Evangelization and Ideology: How to Understand and Respond to the Political Culture (Word on Fire, 2023).
[3] “Idolatry of Identity,” Word on Fire (blog), accessed January 21, 2024, https://www.wordonfire.org/./videos/idolatry-of-identity/.
[4] Petrusek and Collins, Evangelization and Ideology. 464.
[5] Petrusek and Collins, 468.
[6] Petrusek and Collins, 18.
[7] Petrusek and Collins, 472.
[8] Kristin Kobes Du Mez, “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation” (New York, NY: Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2020).
[9] Michelle Goldberg, “Opinion | Trumpism Is Devouring the Evangelical Movement,” The New York Times, January 12, 2024, sec. Opinion, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/12/opinion/maga-evangelicals-iowa.html; Ruth Graham and Charles Homans, “Trump Is Connecting With a Different Type of Evangelical Voter,” The New York Times, January 8, 2024, sec. U.S., https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/08/us/politics/donald-trump-evangelicals-iowa.html.
[10] David Bebbington, “Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s” (London: Routledge, 1993).
[11] Max Weber, “The Protestant Ethic and the ‘Spirit’ of Capitalism and Other Writings,” Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics (New York: Penguin Books, 2002)
About the Author
Jennifer Vernam
5 responses to “Balancing Humility with Certainty”
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Jen,
Once again, you ask so many powerful, thought-provoking questions. “With how firm a grip should we hold these secondary doctrines? How open should we be to having those doctrines challenged?” This has me thinking. A doctrine is a set of beliefs. Denominations are formed because a group deviates from a portion of another denomination’s doctrine. Personally, I think it is always healthy to test what you believe and what the church stakes its claim on. However, I wonder how far one can stretch the continuum of doubt without becoming completely cynical. I’m just thinking out loud as I am processing some of our denomination’s set beliefs. I know your NPO is smack dab in the middle of this topic. So my question to you is how does one challenge beliefs but guard against chronic cynicism?
Yeesh. I don’t know!
I am not sure if this is a good answer, but Beerel inspired me last week to really live into the Vertical learning… more specifically, how do we create places to expose people to new experiences with people different than they are? I think that is a good way to insulate you from cynicism about our fellow man.
So, could it be true that also exposing ourselves to different doctrines could also protect against cynicism? We might be on to something, here! What do you think?
You have gleaned what I think is the heart of the book: “Either our politics is grounded in and oriented to God as our true good and true source of happiness or it is grounded in and oriented to something other than God, which is tantamount to grounding it in an idol.”
In the end of the day, for me, I am submitted to God, and the Scripture (bible) that He has given to us. That book tells us the story of Jesus, whom is the Head of the Church, of which the Spirit of God animates to extend Kingdom life to the ends of the earth. I know that’s a lot I strung together, but it’s important to clearly delineate our position biblically. That’s the starting place.
Others simply have a different starting place. I can love them, but not have the same starting place. That’s OK. No harm, no foul. I don’t need to beat them up, blacklist them, or cancel them. We are called to LOVE.
Sadly, when we attack bad ideas, we all too often attack the people that carry those bad ideas.
Jen, you asked, “With how firm a grip should we hold these secondary doctrines? How open should be to having those doctrines challenged?” You were referencing Petrusek’s elevation of CST, but your question made me think of other “secondary doctrines,” even other traditions’ (including my own tradition’s) posture toward statements of faith (subordinate to the Bible) that attempt to affirm what they believe to be accurate / true summations of scripture while at the same time often ensconced (forged may be a better word) in a particular culture or timeframe. There are aspects of tribalism that creep in when people in a denomination hold their “secondary doctrines” over/against other Christians’ attempts to do the same. This is a great post.
Thanks, your post has challenged my thinking on a couple of points. Most importantly, I’ll admit that when I read Petrusek I somehow missed that Catholic Social Teaching was a specific set of principles and not simply his way of talking about a Christain worldview. So I’ve quickly googled CST just now. Reading through the principles reminds me of a conversation I had with a French Christian ministry leader. We were talking about care of God’s creation as an expression of faith in Jesus and he said something like, “Well, anything, even creation care, can become an idol, can’t it?” So maybe that’s an answer (not THE answer) to your question With how firm a grip should we hold these secondary doctrines? At first glance CST seems to me like a reasonable working-out of Kingdom principles, but we would do well to remember that anything can become an idol.
What do you think? How would you answer your own question?