On USA TODAY Religion

Sometimes I like to read the On Religion column in Monday's USA TODAY.  It's usually a sure-fire way to provide thought-provoking commentary on the ways and means of religion and faith in the United States. It's also a sure-fire way to make me want to write about it because I don't agree with it.

The article from today by Oliver Thomas was such an article.  On that particular column I will visit in the future.  Needless to say, based on this one and the one I am blogging about today, I do not have a high opinion of Mr. Thomas' writings.  I often wonder if the editors have anything to do with this. It wouldn't surprise me. Much of what I write below was originally part of a Facebook comment on the linked article.

In the article from May 16, 2011 (Faith in America: Get ready for change) I was not really surprised by what Mr. Thomas said since I’m familiar with this type of thought. Fifteen years ago I probably would have believed much of it. Now as I read it all I could think with each passing paragraph was, “Ok, but…Ok, but.” To make a bold statement, when it comes to Christianity here and abroad, this is an either/or column living in a “both/and” world.

While it must be qualified, this article does represent common evangelical thought and is not limited to our day and age. People thought this way even 200 years ago. Utilitarianism seems to be the rule, as John Ross is quoted, that people are “interested in what works…” The article also assumes many things that people believe that can be easily challenged by other authors, but that is another story.

Ross, dean of St. John’s Cathedral in Knoxville, further states. "Young people attach themselves directly to whatever they attach themselves to and don't need much in the way of intermediaries. Give them the pitch for a hierarchical clergy, and they roll their eyes like teenagers being driven on a date by their parents. They want to experience God for themselves."

Mr. Thomas’ conclusion to that is what I’d call the “classic” belief in America. He states, “Perhaps not coincidentally, such populist religion appears more in sync with the democratic political winds that are gusting across the planet.”

Mark Noll, in his book The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, writes primarily about the issue of slavery and how the war re-shaped American religious thought. But I believe a short paragraph from his book can be applied in this case.  He demonstrates that nuanced biblical interpretation, which often is the roll call of a hierarchical clergy,

“demanded that sophisticated interpretative practice replace a commonsensically literal approach to the sacred text. In short, this was an argument of elites requiring that the populace defer to its intellectual betters. As such, it contradicted democratic and republican intellectual instincts. In the culture of the United States, as that culture had been constructed by three generations of evangelical Bible believers, the nuanced biblical argument was doomed” (p. 49).

In all of this talk about the “change” to Christianity it is the nuanced biblical interpretation that suffers. One’s careful study of the Bible, history, and sociology is easily flung to the side in favor of what works, appealing to a democratic process. I find this to be the case from both liberals and conservatives (or the evangelical left and evangelical right, take your pick). "Who's this high-tower egg-head think he is telling me..."

Perhaps it is the more confessional, creedal and (qualified because of disagreements as to its nature) even hierarchical Christianity—and not the “loosey-goosey” one described by Mr. Thomas—that is actually counter-cultural.