The Future of Faith

by Harvey Cox

  Falwell’s visit was a tumultuous event. Gay and lesbian students, some in imaginative drag costumes, picketed, but did so without much rancor. Falwell’s staff members excitedly filmed them. I knew those knobby-kneed men in miniskirts and women in tuxedos would soon be featured on his weekly TV show, The Old Time Gospel Hour, together with an ardent plea to keep those checks rolling in because, “just see what we are up against.”

  The Kennedy School’s largest auditorium was filled to overflowing. I made a cordial introduction with time-honored Ivy League restraint. A few individuals in the audience shouted insulting comments at Falwell as he spoke, but I tried, with considerable success, to maintain civility. Some people in the audience apparently expected him to be blundering and inarticulate, but he was not. He was clearly enjoying the day immensely. He gave sharply honed answers to all the questions. For example, when someone challenged him on the racial composition of Liberty University, Falwell waved a piece of paper that he said demonstrated that Liberty’s per capita proportion of minority enrollment was higher than Harvard’s. One student asked him whether, if he discovered an intruder in his house, he would confront the burglar nonviolently. No, he would not, Falwell responded, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He kept a gun in his bedroom, and he would use it to dispatch the unwelcome visitor to the next world. After the lecture, when we all gathered for wine and cheese and then dinner (Falwell and his people drank mineral water), the conversation was pleasant, if a little tense. Still, after everything was over, no one thought the visit should never have happened.

  A few years after the Falwell visit, we entertained a group of faculty members from Regent University, in Virginia Beach, founded by Pat Robertson. Their visit included a private conversation with members of our faculty—on how to make religious values relevant in the public arena—and a well-attended open forum that filled the largest lecture hall in the Divinity School. Neither of these visits created any dramatic breakthroughs, but they demonstrated one thing clearly: the idea that “you just can’t talk to those people” was not necessarily true. We not only can; we must, and we did.

  Admittedly, this kind of intrafaith dialogue is often more difficult than interfaith dialogue. Both sides understandably tend to avoid it, albeit for different reasons. But the result is that tensions between the wings within each tradition deepen, and instead of communication we fuel confrontation, calumny, and the constant threat of schism. As conditions worsen, we feel ever more uncomfortable talking with coreligionists who—many of us believe—distort and demean what we both share. Sibling rivalry is the nastiest kind. In the first murder Cain killed Abel over the proper way to sacrifice to the God they both worshiped. The rivalry between the brothers was an intrafaith dispute.

  The future possibilities for such intrafaith dialogue are not, however, as foreboding as they once appeared. They have been improved by the fact that both wings have been touched by the current liberation of the message of Jesus from the creedal cage in which it has been encased. Once again, this liberation stems from both the rediscovery of the biblical Jesus and the emergence of a post-Western Christianity. First, conservative Christians have also heard the news of the overturning of centuries-old fictions about early Christianity; they were never comfortable with theories of “apostolic succession” anyway. The rediscovery of the actuality of the Jesus movement has begun to find genuine acceptance. And as evangelicals incorporate more of this Jesus-centered outlook into their thinking, they find it a little easier to talk with the “liberals” they once looked upon as a fifth column. This development also brings both these wings into closer contact with the Christians of the global South, and it is there that some of the most decisive changes in the attitude of Christians toward people of other faiths are occurring.

  The change in the approach to both interfaith and intrafaith dialogue among Christians in Asia and Africa came as a surprise to many observers. During the years when the churches of Asia and Africa third world were principally those founded and still administered by American and European missionaries, dialogue with other religions was viewed with suspicion. Christians in those countries wanted to underline their particularity, to make it clear that they represented something new and different. But as these “new churches” matured and as a second and third generation of leadership emerged, that viewpoint began to change. The grandchildren of the first converts became more interested in finding common ground with their neighbors, especially to confront the poverty that still blights their regions.

  The Christian Conference of Asia brings together people from an area beginning with Pakistan in the northwest, through Thailand, Cambodia, and China, to Korea and Japan in the northeast. When I attended its annual meeting in the stunningly ultramodern city of Hong Kong in 2003, I was surprised to find that the central concern of the two hundred delegates was how best to work together with their non-Christian neighbors on issues of women’s rights, ecology, and peace. It was also clear to me that they thought arguing over doctrines and beliefs was too “Western” and a little boring. Their idea of interfaith dialogue was to work with their fellow Asians of whatever religion to advance the Kingdom that Jesus had inspired them, as Christians, to strive for, regardless of what the others called it. They were neither “fundamentalist” nor “modernist.” They seemed more attuned to the element of mystery at the core of Christianity and to its vision of justice. They were also clearly impatient with many of the disputes that preoccupy the different wings of the American churches.

  The conservative-evangelical-fundamentalist community is neither monolithic nor immobile. It is divided and subdivided along theological, racial, gender, geographical, denominational, and political lines. These divisions collide and conflict, and the internal rhetoric generated is frequently more intense than the rhetoric they direct toward their external opponents. The splits within the conservative religious community gained widespread attention in February 2005 when Robert Wenzl, then vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, blasted his fellow evangelicals for having “lost their perspective.” Reaching back into history, he condemned Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, which had been so active in the 1980s, as “an aberration and a regrettable one at that,” because it was “flawed by a fatal hubris.” He intimated that he hoped the same flaw might be avoided in the growing “megachurches,” some of which are comfortably ensconced in the suburbs rather than in urban areas, where the need for justice ministries is so evident. If a spokesperson for the liberal National Council of Churches had voiced such a criticism, it would have gone unnoticed. But this was a high officer in the NAE, and the story in the Boston Globe reporting his speech carried the headline, “Official Chides Christian Right.”

  There is also a fresh theological openness among American evangelicals. They now candidly debate matters that once appeared taboo, such as the nature of biblical authority and the possibility of God’s redemptive presence in other religions. A heated dispute has also broken out about eschatology, the theological doctrine of the “last things,” and how the world will end. The argument centers on the Left Behind series of novels, which have sold fifty million copies and are based on a fundamentalist Armageddon theology. More spats will surely arise about whether bare midriffs and rock music are appropriate for worship services (they appear to be gaining ground) and whether women can be ordained.2

  Conservative Christianity in America—and in many other parts of the world—is not a phalanx. The Spirit is moving. Faith is becoming more salient than beliefs. Current research indicates that the evangelical and Pentecostal movements in Latin America are not spawning a Latin equivalent of the North American religious Right. In Brazil, for example, evangelicals helped elect Lula (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva), the candidate of the democratic left Workers Party, as president.3 Worldwide, evangelical movements are moving, changing, and dividing. They are vigorous in many ways, but often ambivalent about their mission. Many of their leaders who once condemned the “social gospel” are now
searching for a social theology of their own that includes peacemaking, striving for racial justice, and combating poverty. The opportunity for useful conversation with the “other wing” may be more promising than ever.

  We should seize this opportunity. Unless we do, we face the dour prospect of a future in which open-minded members in each religion devote increasing amounts of time to friendly conversations with like-minded members of others, while the conservative wing in each becomes more inaccessible and hostile. We will end up with more and deeper divisions than we once had, only running along internal rather than external fault lines. Ironically, the interfaith movement would then be defeated by its own success.

  I recognize the serious objection that is immediately raised to such a suggestion: “You just can’t talk to those people.” Fundamentalists, it is said, are against dialogue as a central tenet of faith, while dialoguers affirm it as a central tenet of theirs. Therefore, no communication is possible. But the symmetry of this picture does not fully correspond to reality. One of the reasons ultraconservatives are reluctant to talk with those on the other end of their own tradition’s spectrum is that they often feel, sometimes with reason, that the “liberals” view them with condescension and disrespect. In America they are often treated dismissively as hicks and rednecks, ignorant and out of step. These stereotypes often make it difficult for them to engage in conversation. But because such intrafaith converse can be difficult is no reason to avoid it; it signals a good reason to try to engage in it.

  The paradox of the interfaith enterprise today is that we live in the best of times and in the worst of times. We have more conversation and more conflict than ever. We need to turn our attention to the religious dimensions of political strife and the political dimensions of religious discord. We need to face in three directions: toward other faiths, toward the “other wing” in our own tradition, and toward the complex political context of our fractured world.

  CHAPTER 10

  Get Them into the Lifeboat

  The Pathos of Fundamentalism

  Fundamentalism is the current Protestant variant of the toxin of creed making that entered the bloodstream of Christianity early in its history. Fundamentalists collapse faith into belief. They define themselves by their unyielding insistence that faith consists in believing in certain “fundamentals.” This, together with being “saved” or “born again” and telling others about one’s beliefs, which is called “witnessing,” makes someone a “real Christian.” Of course, many fundamentalists are also people of genuine faith who trust God as they understand him and try to love their neighbors. And many people in a variety of spiritual paths experience a formative awakening that can change the way they live, though they might not call it a rebirth. But the fundamentalist obsession with correct beliefs often makes faith, in its biblical sense, more elusive. It replaces faith as a primary life orientation with a stalwart insistence on holding to certain prescribed doctrinal ideas, and this in turn often promotes a kind of taut defensiveness and spiritual pride that are not in keeping with the love ethic of Jesus.

  I think I understand fundamentalists pretty well because I once was one, if only for a short time. During the first months of my freshman year at Penn, I was not making the adjustment very well. In high school I had been president of the senior class, an honor student, and a key player in “The Top Hatters,” the school’s dance band. But in college I found myself with dozens of class presidents, three of them on the same hallway in my dorm, and I was surrounded by honor students. I did get into the eighty-piece marching band, but when we strutted onto the football field at halftime, there were two rows of saxophone players, most of whom could play better than I could. Further, I did not enjoy the rowdy fraternity drinking parties and I felt left out of the bantering and braggadocio about sexual conquests, much of which—I now realize—was more invented than real. Still, the social life of the campus completely revolved around the fraternities, and I knew that if I didn’t join one, I would miss out on a major element of college life. In addition, I secretly wondered if any of them would want me, and the prospect of “rushing” but not being accepted in one was just too humiliating to consider.

  While I was anxiously pondering what to do, one evening I found a note tacked to the door of my dorm room, inviting me to a weekend outing on a lake in New Jersey sponsored by something called the “Penn Christian Fellowship.” The message indicated that some young women from Bryn Mawr and some nursing students were also being invited. It was signed by two friendly older students I had met briefly in the snack bar a few days before. It sounded like an attractive idea, so I called the phone number on the note and told them to count me in.

  The weather was balmy that weekend, and for the most part I enjoyed what turned out to be more of a conference than a mere outing. We sang some of the lusty hymns I knew from my church upbringing and engaged in lively group studies of the Bible. We ate well-cooked meals, played softball, and paddled canoes on the lake. When I awkwardly swamped the canoe I was trying to dock, everyone laughed good-naturedly, and one of the other students lent me a pair of dry slacks. The only thing that bothered me was that the roommate to whom I had been assigned wanted us to get out of bed, fall on our knees, and pray together. It turned out he suspected, rightly, that I was not really sure I was saved, and he did not want the night to pass before I felt the “blessed assurance.”

  I made some friends during the weekend, and when we got back to Philadelphia, I began attending some of the Bible studies the group sponsored, never led by clergy but always by other students. Although I often disagreed with the interpretations being offered, I was an eager seeker, trying to learn everything I could in all my classes, and since there were no courses on the Bible in the catalog, this seemed like an important addition to my education. I also began dating one of the young women I had met at the weekend, but it was a short-lived romance, especially since, even after three pleasant evenings together, she was still not willing to let me kiss her goodnight.

  The Penn Christian Fellowship was affiliated with an international campus-based organization that had started in Great Britain called the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. One of its goals was to bring a kind of intellectual respectability to what was in fact a fundamentalist version of Christianity, which had been accused—often correctly—of anti-intellectualism. The first InterVarsity group in America was founded at the University of Michigan in 1938. The idea spread quickly, and by the time I arrived at Penn in the late 1940s, there were over five hundred chapters on campuses across America. By then the movement had succeeded, at least in some measure, in convincing thousands of students that being a conservative evangelical or a fundamentalist did not mean being a redneck bumpkin. But I soon came to notice that the intellectual rigor did not include any critical study of scripture. I was also increasingly troubled by its total lack of concern for the social-justice imperatives of Christianity and by the no-dancing, no-beer, no-necking prudery of most of the members. The young woman who wouldn’t kiss goodnight, I discovered to my regret, was no exception.

  Still, the following summer I decided to attend a weeklong InterVarsity conference at a wooded campground in New Jersey called Keswick. There we had more spirited singing, more prayer, more swimming, more Bible study groups, and a bounteous supply of women students from colleges around the area. I also came to know the son of Donald Gray Barnhouse, one of the great fundamentalists of the time. The father was a powerful preacher of tremendous eloquence, and I had begun to attend his Tenth Presbyterian Church on 17th Street in Philadelphia. By that time I had learned how to beach a canoe, and my roommates apparently thought I was on the safe side of Jordan.

  But it was during that week at Keswick that I also began to have severe doubts about whether this was really the group for me. Serious struggling with the historical study of the dating or authorship of biblical texts was not only missing. It was suspect. When I mentioned that I had written a term paper on Reinhold Niebuhr, few knew who
he was, and those who did considered him to be just another “modernist,” the favored fundamentalist epithet for anyone on the other side of the great divide. Further, it was 1948, and I supported Henry Wallace, the third-party (Progressive) candidate for president. Everyone there who saw the Wallace button I sometimes wore voiced immediate disapproval. It was not just that they suspected him of being a Communist, but that they objected to any overt involvement in politics: it merely diverted people from the real task of saving souls.

  For InterVarsity, faith, in the last analysis, seemed to be equated with conforming to a strict doctrinal creed, cultivating a regular devotional life, and “witnessing” to unbelievers. But at the Keswick summer conference I also began to detect certain tensions within the ranks. At dinner one evening I overheard one young man confiding to another that the uncomfortably high temperature in the open assembly hall in which we gathered was undoubtedly caused by the Holy Spirit hovering so closely overhead. When I mentioned this comment that evening to a fellow Penn student who was also attending the conference, he pursed his lips, shook his head, and rolled his eyes upward. Apparently he too had his doubts about the calorific efficacy of the Holy Spirit.

  It was only several years later, while doing research about fundamentalism, that I began to understand some of the divisions within the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship that I had first noticed at the Keswick conference. The term “Keswick” itself derives from a movement that began in England in 1875, with meetings in a town by that name, that sought to promote a “higher life” among Christians. The idea stemmed from the theology of John Wesley (1703–91), the founder of Methodism, who preached that just being saved or converted was not enough. Christians must have a personal inner experience with Christ and then strive for more and more “holiness” and even eventually for sinless perfection. From the outset, however, such notions were condemned by Christians, more influenced by Calvinism, who believed salvation was a once-and-for-all gift of God and looked with suspicion on any kind of gradations or stages in the Christian life.1