What's Tony Thinking

When A Load-Bearing Wall Collapses

As a preacher and a pundit I have long been making the case that the decline of the church, in particular the mainline churches, a.k.a. liberal Protestantism, is a big deal. It matters a lot, and not just to those institutions and the people who are part of them. It matters to our whole society.

Lately I have been finding allies in strange place, i.e. among those who once celebrated the decline of the church. One is the Brookings Institution scholar, author and contributor to the Atlantic, Jonathan Rauch. A self-described atheistic, gay, Jew (an ethnic rather than religious identity in his case) Rauch wrote, in 2003, hailing the decline of religion and churches in America. Like many at that time (the “New Atheists”), he felt the church would not be missed, and that America would be better off without it.

“In 2003, I celebrated the rise of secularism,” said Rauch in a recent podcast. “I said, this is a great thing. We’re moving past those dogmatic, divisive, religious ideas and becoming a secular society will be like Scandinavia and we’ll be more enlightened and less divided. And that is not how it worked out.” Now, Rauch says, “I couldn’t have been more wrong.”

You can find the Good Faith podcast interview here. I strongly urge you to listen to it.

Did Rauch convert? Has he swung to the right in politics and religion? Not at all; he remains an atheist, whose world-view is that of a “scientific materialist.” But as a scholar and cultural analyst he has come to realize that Christianity has been “a load-bearing wall in our democracy, and it’s caving in. That’s causing all kinds of ancillary problems.”

Rauch goes on to say, “We are seeing a crisis of governability throughout the Western “developed” world. And it looks like three things are behind that. One is social media, the fragmenting of reality, fake news and all of that. The second is a global migration crisis, which governments have not figured out how to deal with.

“And the third is the collapse of religion. As a kind of bulwark, answering questions for people on why they here. What’s the difference between right and wrong?”

I would add a little additional context. While we have seen the caving in of the load-bearing wall of mainline or liberal Protestantism — for which those institutions and their leaders themselves bear some of the responsibility (more on that later) — the U.S. is hardly now a secular utopia. Into the vacuum have rushed many alternate spiritualities, some relatively benign and some pernicious, but few which have the depth or complexity required to accomplish social and moral formation. Meanwhile, many in Christianity’s more conservative wings has morphed into a fear-driven, identitarian movement, one that has proven ripe for authoritarian take-over.

What Rauch does in his new book, Cross-Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain With Democracy, is track the way that what might be described as the core of a generously orthodox Christianity maps with civic virtues needed for democracy to survive.

“Christians,” says Rauch, “tell me that if you had to summarize your faith standing on one leg, in three phrases, it would be number one, forgive each other. Number two, be like Jesus. And number three, don’t be afraid.”

“Jesus,” said Rauch, “is like no thinker who preceded him and no thinker who came after him. But directionally, these three map very well onto the Republican virtues that our founders said the country needs.

“‘Don’t be afraid,’ maps on to, you’re going to lose elections, don’t panic. It’s not the end of the world. Keep going. You might even learn something and improve as a result.

“’Be like Jesus,’ translates into, all men are created equal, including the smallest and the lowest and a society is judged by how it protects the least of these. That’s core liberal doctrine. Human beings are always ends in themselves. They’re never means to end. That’s core Jesus and that’s core liberal democracy.

“And then ‘forgive each other.’ That translates into forbearance. Sometimes you win elections, but the point of politics and winning is not to crush the other side. The point is to remember that they’re still citizens. You’re going to be sharing the country with them. Treat them the way you will want to be treated by them when the wheel turns and they’re in charge. And so I’m looking at the teachings of Jesus as Christianity, as I understand them, and I’m looking at the teachings of James Madison.

“And I’m saying Christianity, the faith Christianity, not just because it’s a faith or because it’s a religion or because people need God in their lives. I’m not saying that. I’m saying the peculiar doctrines of Christianity are what our country needs to heal right now.”

That final line is pretty amazing. “The peculiar doctrines of Christianity are what our country needs in order to heal right now.” That also happens, i.m.h.o., to be true.

For a long time now the educated elites of America, especially in places like Seattle where I live, have dismissed Christianity and churches. “The cultured despisers of religion,” so-called. Like Rauch in his earlier iteration, many have claimed that if we could just get rid of religion, we’d all be better off. While I would make allowances for those who have hurt by toxic churches and false shepherds (and sadly there have been many), “let religion disappear and we will all live happily ever after,” is a breathtakingly simplistic and shallow argument.

As a writer for many years in public spaces like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Crosscut and Post Alley and various newspaper and magazines, I’ve heard ad nauseam from the self-professedly “modern,” “enlightened,” “open-minded” and reflexively anti-religious.

And high-status people, knowing I was a minister, would say condescending things like, “Oh, if I were ever to belong to a church, it would be one like yours.” (But I have no intention of doing that!) As Bill Gates Jr., who was raised in Seattle’s University Congregational Church, famously said, “I have better things to do on a Sunday morning than go to church.”

Both smug indifference and reflexive hostility made church-going problematic for more liberal, educated people, which has contributed to the problems we’re now facing. Even if recent studies show church decline may have plateaued for now, the chickens have already come home to roost.

As for the part churches and their leaders have themselves played in this, Marilynne Robinson has written of an internal collapse of faith and confidence.

In an essay titled “Awakenings,” the Pulitizer Prize winning novelist, discussed the profound Calvinist theological sensibility and language which Abraham Lincoln employed to give meaning to the tragedy and suffering of the American Civil War.

Of this theological tradition, she remarked, “I no longer see much trace of it in America today.” She continued, “I am not speaking here of changed demographics. When I say Calvinism has faded, I am speaking of the uncoerced abandonment by the so-called mainline churches of their origins, theology, culture and tradition . . . What has taken the place of Calvinism in the mainline churches? With all due respect, not much.”

Perhaps a new generation will be more humble and receptive to what Rauch and others, like Derek Thompson, another onetime celebrant of secularism who has come to question his earlier views. One can only hope. Meanwhile, I give thanks for all those Christians and church people of a generous, i.e. liberal, spirit who have hung in there when it hasn’t been easy to do so. May your tribe increase! May you find a new confidence and joy in your faith and your calling.