Honest to God

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“A lot of traditional beliefs are outside people and have grown into rigid things that you can’t touch any more”–these words come from a minister of the Protestant Church of the Netherlands, according to a report yesterday on the BBC. The title of the article, “Dutch rethink Christianity for a doubtful world,” touches on a theme mentioned earlier on this blog about the church in Sweden: clergy often live with their own doubts about God. Showing similar results to the Swedish study, the Protestant Church of the Netherlands hosts one in six clergy who are agnostic or atheist. I would suggest that the specialization of labor–as well as the persuasiveness of science–stand behind this phenomenon. In modern societies far removed from human roots, we really don’t pay much attention to the training others receive to take on their professions. We assume that higher education is doing its task and that professional bodies like the American Bar Association put up tests to deter those who make false claims. Seldom do we reflect that our off-the-farm lifestyle is a very recent human development and that we haven’t really had time to sort out whether all this complicated training ever really works.

Don't rock the boat...

When I was a seminary professor, I saw the dilemma this way: seminaries crave, indeed require academic respectability. Accrediting bodies insist that a substantial portion of faculty hold terminal degrees. Seminaries, however, are run by confessional groups that insist on certain unscientific worldviews and premises. Doctoral students, unless indoctrinated at faux institutions that block scientific evidence, are educated in a worldview that contradicts their religious training on several levels. Seminaries require educated faculty, but education itself undermines traditional beliefs. Some conservative groups have been aware of this dynamic for years and have begun establishing “universities” that intentionally bar subjects that challenge their worldview. In other words, they want clergy with false credentials who are willing to fight for the cause, while still receiving academic accreditation. Few insiders will blow the whistle since the modern church is built on this shaky foundation.

What is being discovered in northern Europe likely pulses beneath the surface of many developed nations (again, with their specialization of labor). After a person spends three years of training beyond college to receive a “Master of Divinity” degree there is high financial motivation to see the process through to the end. The faithful in the pews, far removed from the realities of theological education, expect the same old show. With employment options nearly nil outside the church, smart clergy know the score. It is better to live a life of quiet desperation, mouthing the party line, than to be thrown into that swirling maelstrom of survival called the job market. Organized religions began when people lived on the land, very few people were educated, and priests were left alone to do their job. Education is costly in far more than college tuition bills. As they are learning in the Netherlands, growing up is never easy.

Voted Off the Island

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One of my readers sent me an article about the Church of Sweden. According to this article only about 15 percent of the members of this national church “believe in Jesus.” The question raised by this statistic is a vital one in a world where politics and religion become inextricably intertwined: what is Christianity and who decides? As the recent vote in New York permitting gay marriage (about time!) shows, many who identify themselves as Christians in America equate that religious outlook with conservative political views (even on issues the Bible says little about). It is what the believer says they “believe” that defines the religion. Ancient religions, as I have noted before, show that this outlook on devotional practice is not the only alternative.

Religions began as a matter of praxis—what people did rather than what they believed. What does an almighty deity gain from theological assent in the heads of believers? Is it a warm, fuzzy feeling or something more? Belief, a very strong motivating factor in humanity, is a psychological phenomenon, not a spiritual one. Many religious groups today are reluctant to accept that psychology covers the territory formerly covered by spirituality. Both phenomena (or the phenomenon) occur in the brain. If a brain does not assent to the typical belief structure, is it thereby deported from the gathering of a religious body? Many times in religious history that has been the case, but what do we say to the Church of Sweden? Kick out 85 percent of your members? I can see many unhappy, unemployed clergy in such a future.

What does it mean to be Christian? Is it to deny civil rights to anyone who differs in outlook or lifestyle from you? Is it sleepily to say “yea” when you wake up after a sermon? Or is it following the teachings of Jesus? The same one who once taught his followers to love those who differed from them, to turn the other cheek instead of proactively pulling out their handguns? It seems that in the modern furor to laid hold of claims of absolute righteousness humanity has somewhere fallen between the cracks. I’ve never been assaulted by a Swede, and I don’t recall, in recent years, Sweden invading other countries to further its economic fortunes. Could it be that, to paraphrase a religious thinker of antiquity, a Swede shall lead them?