The gospel is under siege in American society.
Assertions like this are increasingly common from the pulpit and on the airwaves. The threat that many pounce on is the rising tide of international Islam. For many American Protestants, that is today’s counterpart of twentieth-century Communism and nineteenth-century Roman Catholicism.
People forward me internet diatribes exposing Islam’s inherently violent and oppressive nature (and, surprisingly, some pieces that offer good content rather than the standard cheap shots). They are unaware that the same rhetoric was used, with support from the Book of Revelation, against the religious forces of the Vatican well into the 1900s. Richard Hofstadter named this enduring characteristic of our culture, and traced its history, in his famous 1964 “Harper’s Magazine” article, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.”
I actually used the first sentence above as the opening line of my sermon on a recent Sunday. Progressives in the congregation may have shuddered, Uh-oh . . . Conservatives probably thought, Finally! But I was headed in a different direction.
If it’s our job as church leaders to nurture among our people a Christian understanding of life, we do indeed face resistance. But Islam does not come even close to being the most serious threat to the gospel in our society (although hatred or bias toward Muslims might be near the top). Nor did I identify secularism or consumer capitalism as the chief adversary.
The rival worldview of greatest concern is more subtle -- and therefore more dangerous -- because it seems so good, so nice, so helpful, so healthy, so unobjectionable.
Here is what I think we’re up against: An Americanized mishmash of Asian religion commercially packaged in a myriad of ways for popular consumption. A therapeutic smoothie of watered-down Hinduism, ersatz Buddhism, and vague notions of ancient wisdom. There’s a “Bliss” cartoon with a couple sitting at the breakfast table reading the paper and the man says, “Is it just me, or is the Dalai Lama a great guy?”
It’s ubiquitous: From films like “Avatar” to workshops at a local health food store on “The Power of Inspiration” by someone licensed as both a clinical social worker and “Avatar Master” (“registered trademark of Star’s Edge, Inc.”); from a spa in town called “Buddhi Mat Yoga” (T-shirts available with the logo, “Get your buddhi to the mat”) to shelves of self-help bestsellers on “happiness;” from “Eat Pray Love” star Julia Roberts coming out as Hindu to the practice of hypnotic “past-life regression therapy” by some heretofore legitimate therapists and psychologists.
It sells. A friend of mine with a business career learned massage therapy and now runs a thriving studio. He hasn’t been to church since he was a kid and has never displayed much interest in religion. I asked him about the New Age spirituality that often goes with massage therapy. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I can do that fake Buddhist shit.”
All this has a history going back to the Beastie Boys and before that the Beatles and way before that the metaphysical spiritualities of nineteenth-century America. But what’s odd now – and this is a trait of American pluralism – is that people seem to feel that it’s okay to embrace contradictory worldviews if they derive some personal benefit.
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reported survey results indicating that a quarter of Americans believe in reincarnation. Many of these same people no doubt also expect to see their loved ones in heaven after they die. Someone recently asked me in all honesty why you can’t believe in both, since both provide comfort. I tried to explain that in Hinduism reincarnation is the problem, not the answer – and that in the Christian (and Jewish and Muslim) worldview God creates us as unique individuals for eternity.
Without falling into a reactive posture, Christian leaders must speak clearly, consistently, winsomely, charitably, and uncompromisingly about how our faith understands human life, the good news revealed in Jesus Christ, and God’s purpose for life “on earth as it is in heaven.”
Charles Hambrick-Stowe is pastor of the First Congregational Church, Ridgefield, Conn. He was formerly an academic dean at Northern Seminary in Lombard, Illinois.
