From the Dean’s Desk

In February 1991, the alternative rock band R.E.M. released the song “Losing My Religion.” The song was a major hit in both its recorded form and in its video version—by now the video has more than a billion views on YouTube. The song is about unrequited love with a refrain that still rings in my ears:

That’s me in the corner
That’s me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don’t know if I can do it
Oh no I’ve said too much
I haven’t said enough

The phrase “losing my religion” suggests a feeling of desperation or exasperation—at least according to Michael Stipe, the lead singer of R.E.M.

In recent years, I have repeatedly asked myself whether Christianity has lost its religion. I ask because, on the one hand, there are now churches with American flags but no crosses in the sanctuaries. There are churches where the liturgy is more of a fevered politically rally than a spiritual expression of awe towards God. There are churches brimming with people who are moved more forcefully by a political ideology than by the plaintive cries of the poor whom Jesus served.

I ask, on the other hand, because there are too many churches whose sanctuaries are filled with empty space. There are churches where the sounds of the liturgy echo in beautiful spaces but not in human hearts. There are churches where the spirit that moves in them is the wind that makes its uninvited way through unrepaired windows and doors. There are too many churches whose doors will close not for a Sunday service but for good.

Like the unrequited lover, I feel exasperated, sitting in the corner wondering whether I  have said enough. Unlike the unrequited lover in the song, I am not concerned “that I’ve said too much, I set it up.”

Like the unrequited lover, I realize that we need to build relationships and these can be hard. I recently gave two lectures at a school in a part of the country that is known for a political outlook that is very different from my own. That evening I went to dinner with several of the faculty. I asked them about the condition of churches in the area. They responded that churches were doing well in terms of numbers, but there were challenges. With pained expressions they told me that they could no longer speak with their parents about dimensions of their faith: partisan politics had entered the kingdom of God and had pitted “father against son, son against father; mother against daughter, daughter against mother; mother-in-law against daughter-in-law, daughter-in-law against mother-in-law” (Luke 12:53). But in this case the meaning of the dominical logion has been stood on its head: instead of the acceptance of the kingdom of God creating divisions within the world, the acceptance of the world has created divisions within the kingdom of God.

On the other hand, I recently heard a prominent author and speaker argue that we should not introduce politics into the kingdom of God. While I concur that church services should not be venues for political rallies, I felt compelled to ask whether my values as a Christian should influence the way that I vote. How could I as a Christian sit in a corner and say nothing? I kept thinking of the poem of Martin Niemöller, the 20^th-century German pastor who learned from bitter experience that silence can be deadly.[1] Initially a supporter of Hitler and the Nazis because he believed that they would provide the leadership necessary to bring Germany back to the Christian morals he held sacred, he broke with them when the Nazis began to exercise control over the Protestant Church in Germany. Niemöller was eventually arrested and spent 1937-45 in several concentration camps. After the war, he called on German Christians to acknowledge their complicity in Nazi atrocities. In this spirit, he wrote the poem for which he is best known:

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

We live in dangerous and complex times. Like the unrequited lover, I am upset at the tensions in our relationships. We solicited the following essays to explore how a range of individuals understood the state of Christianity in our world. The responses were honest, moving, and powerful. I read through all of them without pause because I found them compelling reading. I trust that you will as well.

Perhaps I can close with my own answer to the question we asked our authors. At a gathering of alumni from one of my alma maters, we had a robust discussion of the credibility and value of faith for our lives in the twenty-first century. The President called on me to offer a final word spontaneously. My mind rushed to an ancient apology. In the first half of the second century CE, a Christian philosopher from Athens named Aristides wrote an apology which he addressed to the emperor Hadrian. Aristides framed his apology by asking which people best understood God. He first considered three groups of the ancient world’s great civilizations. He dismissed the Chaldeans because they worshipped the created rather than the Creator, the Greeks because the immorality of their mythology led them astray, and finally, the Egyptians because they worshipped animals. He then briefly considered the Jews who worship the one God, but also set them aside because in his mind, they worshipped angels—a questionable charge. He then came to Christians. The first time that I read Aristides’s apology, I expected him to give a Middle Platonic description of the first two principles: an utterly transcendent first principle and the intermediary between the first principle and matter. Instead, he argued that the lifestyle of Christians who cared for the poor and lived good and just lives was proof that they understood God. 

I think that Aristides understood something important. Christianity is about living justly and caring for people. I cannot prove the Christian faith, but I can live it. I believe that following the teaching of Jesus Christ offers hope for a troubled world, more hope than anything else that I know. We do not have to agree on all aspects of what this means nor do we have to be certain about everything, but we can apply the test given in the Fourth Gospel: “I give you a new command that you love one another, just as I loved you, love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another” (John 13:34-35). May those of us who consider ourselves Christians love the world in the same way that Jesus has loved us. This is the proof that there is something to the faith we cherish.