Progressive Christians Uniting

Starting From Zero

In New York over the weekend I had the unnerving but increasingly frequent experience of missing the unspoken predicate in a casual conversation. I was taking a couple of days off, was enjoying glorious spring weather in a city I love, and had popped into a popular 8th Ave. drinking establishment of a decidedly lavender hue. A comely young gent and I were chattering away about this and that when he interjected, “but of course you’re not a Christian…that’s not possible.” The easiest thing in the world in situations like this is to go along with the predicate, but in this case I decided not to go along with it despite my goatish interest in holding the interest of this person. I merely replied that, in fact, I am a Christian but that I was sure he didn’t have time for the whole story. With that his smiling face hardened just perceptibly, and after exchanging a few more pleasantries he sauntered off.

This is not meant as a cri de coeur of a guy whose Christian profession is hurting his sex life. What I’m seeking to interrogate here is rather more serious. We who are willing to say we are followers of Jesus in 21st-century America need to understand that we really are starting from zero. Within the common culture of the best-educated Americans, within their set of accepted references, there is nothing left–or at least nothing good left–associated with Christianity. Almost no one outside of the smallish circle of self-declared progressive Christians understands the crucial differences between the vigorous but enlightened Christianity of a Martin Luther King or a William Sloane Coffin and the hate-curdled reactionary faith of a Franklin Graham or Pat Robertson or James Dobson or James Kennedy. Almost no one understands the difference between the generous self-giving faith of a Dorothy Day or Helen Prejean and the “God wants you to be rich” gospel of a T.D. Jakes or a Joel Osteen. And almost no one understands that there is a big middle out there made up of frustrated rank-and-file Christians who are clearly done with the haters and with the prosperity gospelers but who aren’t quite ready for full-strength progressivism either. These are the emergent church people we hear so much about. But these emeregent folks won’t get any sympathy from the enlightened despisers of Christianity–from those in the chattering classes who pretty much rule the culture. For the chatterers Christianity is simply over as a credible way of thinking and acting, and anyone who is still attracted to these myths and rituals ought to grow up and get a life.

This harsh cultural reality explains why the book of essays I just published–Getting on Message: Challenging the Christian Right from the Heart of the Gospel–has no chance of being any kind of breakout book that appeals to general readers. Those readers will see the book’s essays as a kind of inside baseball–of absolutely no interest or relevance, except possibly (for liberal political apparatchiks) as a kind of decoder ring could be useful in learning how to “talk Christian” at election time.

This cultural reality also explains why I have been arguing that in order for the new base communities PCU is setting up (under the Common Ground rubric) to fulfill their promise, there can’t be too much expressly Christian wrapping around the small groups, or else some of the peace and justice activists we want to draw into conversation will never cross the threshold. I said that it’s okay to say that people in the Common Groups will be exploring “what a 21st-century Christianity might look like” but that the emphasis needs to be on the questions and not on any ready-made answers. Many disagree with me and say that a truly unapologetic Christian labeling is required in order for the groups to have any punch. I think what will happen (a good thing) is that groups will emerge along both vectors–some with explicit Christian packaging and others in which a core shared commitment to nonviolent social transformation leads into conversation about spiritual supports for the work of transformation.

I should make it clear that I’m not discouraged by the cultural landscape I am describing. I actually think it is quite exhilarating in many ways. It takes us back 2,000 years to when Jesus followers really did stand completely outside the dominant culture and understood their faith and core values to be literally and profoundly countercultural. Our situation today is obviously more complicated than theirs, because we stand outside of and opposed to a dominant culture that many still choose to call “Christian” even though it embraces none of the spirit of Christ and instead exhibits all of the characteristics of a blood-soaked empire. In that respect, we are not quite starting from zero: we are starting from less than zero.

Still, I think we should embrace the opportunity our situation affords us to become the leaven in a very moldy loaf which almost all healthy eaters are now refusing to touch altogether.

Many decades ago, in the midst of 20th-century horrors that the overwhelming majority of European Christians failed to resist, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that Christians must henceforth stop talking about the value of their faith, which had by then been devalued to the point of dross. Instead, he wrote, Christians should seek to be identified by “the deed that interprets itself.” Bonhoeffer was absolutely right to say this in the Germany of 1944, and his insight remains valid in the “Christian” America of 2006 which conducts illegal and pre-emptive wars of choice, which tortures and “renders” presumed enemies without regard to its own constitution or to international law, and which utterly abandons its own poorest while heaping new advantages and new riches upon its very wealthiest.

In such a time American Christians who still love and follow the Jesus of dangerous memory–the Jesus who lived in solidarity with the oppressed and who called their oppressors to account–need to stop yapping about the glory and beauty and wisdom of their faith and start acting in the ways Jesus would recognize. We are truly starting from zero. Let’s get on with it.

                                                                                       - Peter Laarman

Posted under: Director's Cut