Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site topaz.ARPA Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!columbia!topaz!hedrick From: hedrick@topaz.ARPA (Chuck Hedrick) Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish,net.religion.christian Subject: Re: Secular Judaism / Excursus on the search for the "Supreme Fiction" Message-ID: <3095@topaz.ARPA> Date: Sun, 4-Aug-85 01:31:18 EDT Article-I.D.: topaz.3095 Posted: Sun Aug 4 01:31:18 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 5-Aug-85 00:37:26 EDT References: <929@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> Reply-To: hedrick@topaz.UUCP (Chuck Hedrick) Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 115 Xref: linus net.religion.jewish:1849 net.religion.christian:1003 In article <929@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> gary@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (gary w buchholz) writes: >I have also posted this to net.religion.christian as the Christian may >well ask the same question of identity. S/he, like the Jew, is not >untouched by secularization and the modern world and if the theological >affirmations of the jew are in question then so also are the >theological affirmations of the Christian. Given the fact that there >are over 250 Protestant denominations the Christian may well ask this >question of his Christian brethren - "Who do WE say we are?" I am ill-equipped to comment on the question you pose to Jews, so I will respond only from the point of view of a Christian. Most of us use the term "Christian" to refer to faith in God, and specifically to his self-revelation in Christ. From watching my Jewish friends, I understand the point you are trying to make. I do indeed often wonder what is meant by the term "Jew" as applied to someone who believes in few of ideals that I would have thought would characterize Judaism. But I don't think Christians have an exact analogy to that problem. That isn't to say that there are no issues in how Christianity is to deal with the modern world, of course. But we don't have that particular ambiguity. Generally when someone stops believing in God, he stops calling himself a Christian. We have, of course, "nominal Christians", who sort of believe but don't do a lot about it, and people who grew up as Christians and sort of still think of themselves that way even though they really aren't. But there doesn't seem to be any serious question about what the word actually means, nor of the role of the Church and the Bible. Modern Christians attempt to separate the Christian faith from their culture. Thus using the term Christian to refer to a culture would be for me a very serious error. It is true that at various times Christianity may have become confused with Medieval culture, or Western European culture, etc. However one of the major challenges in theology now is rethinking what Christianity should look like in the Third World. As you probably know, Christianity there is no longer dominated by Western missionaries. This is, of course, a fairly recent development (and not always voluntary on the missionaries' part). So non-Western Christians are just now starting to develop their own patterns. But they are certainly doing so now. Indeed there seems to be a good chance that Africa will become a Christian continent, and with a Christianity that is not dependent upon the West's. The thing that unites me to an African Christian is precisely our faith in Christ, and not any specific culture. Indeed he may well regard my culture as something that is inimical to him. You talk of "secularization". When used in Christian theology, this term tends to refer, not to replacement of Christian faith with a "Christian culture", but to a separation between Christianity and the surrounding society. Western society is no longer dominated by the Church, nor does it (at least overtly) takes its values from Christianity. This is the phenomenon that I believe the word "secularization" refers to. This does not necessarily indicate that Christian faith is retreating, nor losing its importance. Rather, it indicates that Christians are coming to accept (1) the separation of Church and State, and (2) the fact that Christ transcends any particular nation. The older mingling (not to mention confusion) of Church and society is now seen to have caused a number of ills, to both the Church and the society. Among them are large numbers of insincere members, injustice to members of other religions, and a compromising of Christian values by the needs of the nation. Thus the nation and its culture are being encouraged to develop secularly, i.e. without domination by the Church. Some people have suspicions that this is simply a justification after the fact. That is, society became secular because people stopped believing in the Christian faith, and we are coming up with ad hoc justifications for why Christians have wanted it to be that way. I am not a good enough historian to be sure how much truth there is to this. However I can point out that the ideal goes back at least to the Reformation. The Radical Left of the reformation (i.e. the Baptists and related groups) stood against automatic inclusion of every citizen in the Church, and against Christians participating in much of the political life of the State. They, and those in more recent times who follow them, wanted to maintain the Church's ability to stand over against their culture in a prophetic role. In general, I believe that the American churches trace their ideas of the relation between the Church and society more to the Left Wing than to the ideals of Lutheran Germany and Reformed Geneva. Our denominations are all "gathered churches", rather than established churches. In recent years, we have seen a growing number of Christians who value this prophetic role of the Church. I am not sure quite what the significance is of your mention of 250 denominations. This is simply an indication of the fact that we are no longer trying to construct a single organization that unites all of society. Rather, we are each trying to follow God as well as possible. From time to time Christians become embarrassed by this organizational chaos, and construct intricate plans for union. I have never been convinced that this is such a great idea. Indeed I think some of our larger churches are now large enough that they are becoming bureacratic. I would prefer not to seem them get larger. Organizational separation is a threat only if we see ourselves as an organization. When we think of ourselves as the People of God, then we seek our unity in him, and not in our organizational structure. Indeed I am inclined to think that the ideal of a single unified organization is rather like the Tower of Babel. We had it at one time. It did in fact lead people to take pride in their own organizational construction and in their own power. I consider the tragedy of the Reformation and the ensuing religious wars to have been a judgement on that pride, as definite as the destruction of the Tower. (There is, of course, one denomination that has not yet reconciled itself to the current situation, and that does not maintain communion with the rest of the Church. Thus for members of this denomination, the situation is not entirely as positive as I portray it.) Some of your comments suggest that the Christian tradition is somehow separable from Christ and his Church, and that its inheritors are elsewhere. I'm not quite sure what you could mean by that. In my view, anything that finds an ultimate source of value outside of God and his revelation in Christ, is idolatry and has no claim to the term Christian. Christianity has now survived enough changes in culture, both in ancient and modern times, that I think this judgement can be seen as historical as well as ideological. That is, I think we have transported Christianity to enough different cultures that it can be clear that its essense in not cultural.