Losing My Religion

by Lobdell, William

  “It got to the point where I couldn’t decide which middle-aged woman with health problems to throw back on the street so they could be robbed or raped,” Dwight told me. “These people are so disenfranchised, the only person who will stick up for them is Jesus Christ.”

  Dwight is a large, balding man with a loud voice, keen intellect and a quirkiness that fits in well with his homeless guests. Leia is a quiet force who mixes the stubbornness of a pit bull with the kindness of a saint to somehow make the chaos swirling around Catholic Worker work. The Smiths live on the second floor with a handful of other Catholic Workers. No one receives a salary—just room and board and a few dollars a week for spending money.

  Social activist Dorothy Day started the Catholic Worker movement in 1933, during the Depression. One of its founding principles was to provide the poor with dignity, along with food and shelter. I’ve spent many hours at the Santa Ana Catholic Worker, surrounded by the sick, the mentally ill, the downtrodden, the addicted and the flat-out unlucky. These troubled souls share a very small space and have no privacy. Arguments are frequent; problems and demands arise quickly among these high-maintenance guests. Dwight and Leia set about their work like emergency room doctors, working on the critical cases first, but in the end, ministering to all.

  It is a frenzied, heartbreaking but occasionally uplifting scene, as when some of the homeless children received free music lessons, practiced their instruments (mostly violins) regularly amid the bedlam that engulfed them and ended up playing in an all-star middle-school orchestra at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Most other miracles at the Catholic Worker are more modest: a father stops taking drugs for a night; a transient mother enrolls her children in school; a family sleeps with a roof over its head.

  During the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, the single phone line at the Catholic Worker rings endlessly with people who feel the urge to volunteer. Though the Smiths don’t need the large influx of help, they accept each volunteer with a warm embrace. They understand that at this moment the volunteers need the experience of helping others, even if the homeless shelter is overflowing with helpers. With any luck, the volunteers will return during the year, when the help is really needed.

  I’ve sometimes thought that Dwight and Leila are hopelessly idealistic, downright masochistic or just plain nuts. I’ve come to realize that they simply believe in Christianity as much as they believe in breathing. They can behave in no other way.

  Mega-church pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren is a Christian about whom I was quite skeptical at first. He had built Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, from scratch into one of the largest congregations in the world. More than 20,000 people attended weekend services. The ten-acre campus has the feel of Disneyland (no coincidence, since Disney engineers helped with the design), with modern, cheerful buildings and gorgeous landscaped grounds that include a stream that parts like the Red Sea and a boulder that rolls back to reveal a model of Jesus’s tomb. My distant impression of Warren was that his ministry was driven more by slick marketing than by God’s word.

  But then I spent some time with Warren, his staff and other pastors he had mentored shortly after his Purpose Driven Life book hit the stores, and I realized I was wrong about the mega-church pastor. First, there’s nothing slick about him. His language is simple and straightforward. He wears khaki pants and untucked Hawaiian shirts, even for Sunday services. He prefers bear hugs to handshakes. He reflects the laid-back nature of his rural upbringing in Northern California, seemingly having time to chat with anyone who crosses his path. He comes across more like a guy on your bowling team than a superstar pastor.

  “Rick is just a normal guy,” a pastor of a small church told me. “There’s a feeling that if he can do it, so can we.”

  Thousands of pastors around the world credit Warren’s purpose-driven formula for creating thriving churches. The plan focuses on attracting seekers to church and then getting them, step by step, involved in ministry. I talked with scores of purpose-driven pastors, and many talked about a second Reformation that Warren was leading within Christianity. Warren, despite a self-deprecating style, speaks in similar terms of his movement: “The first Reformation clarified what the church believes—our message and doctrine. The current Reformation will clarify what the church does—our purpose and activities on Earth.”

  At the same time, Warren seems genuinely bewildered by his success. He frequently mentions how many millions of books he’s sold as if he still can’t believe it. He talks the same way about getting a fan letter from President George W. Bush or how NASCAR drivers are using the Purpose Driven Life for Bible study.

  With so much at stake, and with a profile so high, Warren is careful to keep clear of controversy. He has declined numerous opportunities to have a regular television program—not wanting to be associated with televangelists—and has been generally media-shy, preferring to work through pastors and churches. He drives a three-year-old Ford truck and announced to his congregation that he had paid back 23 years of salary to Saddleback Church with the royalties from his book. He now “reverse tithes,” giving away 90 percent of his book’s royalties to ministry.

  “Now that our church knows I’ve done this, I’m eager for the nonbelieving public to know it too, because it counteracts the popular perception by skeptics that all ministers are all in it just for the money, especially large-church pastors,” Warren told me.

  To eliminate gossip and temptation, Warren has vowed never to be in a room alone with a woman except his wife, Kay. Even if an elevator door opens and there’s only one woman inside, Warren said that he lets that one go and waits for another—or takes the stairs.

  Following Warren around for a few days is exhausting. Part of his genius is that he has attention deficit syndrome, which allows him to generate idea after idea (though he not surprisingly has disdain for meetings). It’s not hard to imagine him back in his high school days, when as a skinny, long-haired guitar player with John Lennon glasses he started a Christian club on campus, sponsored rock concerts after school, gave out New Testaments, produced a Christian musical and published an underground Christian newspaper. Today, Warren is in an even bigger rush to win converts.

  “[God] wants His lost children found,” Warren told me. “I decided a long time ago I’m not going to waste my life. Life is too short and eternity is too long.”

  After my story ran, Warren gave me his private e-mail and cell phone number in case I ever needed someone to talk to. It was a gesture I suspect he made to almost everyone he came in contact with for more than a few minutes.

  It is refreshing to see a man of God, at the height of his powers, remain grounded. Later on the religion beat, I would watch a Catholic cardinal step out of a limousine and extend his hand to a parishioner who asked “His Eminence” if she could kiss his bishop’s ring. I would investigate high-profile pastors and find they owned several mansions, late-model luxury cars, custom-made suits, jets and yachts. And I’ve watched as Christian leaders, from congregations large and small, tumbled into sexual affairs because they didn’t see the danger in being alone in a room with a woman. Rick Warren was different from most.

  You didn’t have to have a powerful position to be holy. Jen Hubbard believed in her faith enough to risk her job and take on one of the best-known names in the evangelical community. At the time I met her, Jen was a gung-ho 27-year-old evangelical fresh out of college. She landed what she thought was a dream job, working for Hank Hanegraaff, the best-selling Christian author and theological watchdog known for his syndicated radio show, The Bible Answer Man. Jen worked for Hanegraaff’s umbrella nonprofit organization, the Christian Research Institute, then based in Orange County, California.

  Jen oversaw communications to and from potential donors, working to get people to give money to the ministry and feel like their money was making a difference. In the office, she sat near the women who paid the ministry’s bills and processed donations. Jen soon grew alarmed
that donor money seemed to be paying for the personal expenses of Hanegraaff and his family. His ministry paid for, among other things, a luxury sports car, a large salary for his wife who rarely worked in the office, and country club dues. Jen and other employees took their concerns to their managers, who told them to keep quiet because “dealing with the issue was not within our sphere of influence….”

  After her co-workers went home, Jen started to copy any questionable invoice that she saw, including ones for a board-approved 2003 Lexus sports car and smaller items, such as repairs to Hanegraaff’s children’s computers, meals at the country club and birthday flowers for his mother.

  “Donor money shouldn’t have been used for these things,” Jen told me. “I worked with donors, and they expect their money to be handled wisely, not spent lavishly.”

  When management learned she had been making copies of the invoices, she was fired. Her actions, though, spurred an audit by the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability that resulted in what it called a “significant reimbursement” to the ministry.

  “I felt angry and broken that the Christian community did not apologize to me,” Jen told me. “I felt like I did this thing that felt in line with my faith, and here I was shunned by the most ‘powerful’ people within that faith group.”

  She acted on her responsibility to God to safeguard the donors’ money, and her actions left her unemployed and her boss still in ministry. How could that be? I often thought of Jen when I saw Christians lacking the courage needed to make a sacrifice required by their faith (a category in which I often found myself). If this young woman could take on a national evangelical leader, what was stopping the rest of us from practicing a more radical form of Christianity?

  True believers were by no means limited to Christianity. On the religion beat, I had gotten to know a rabbi named David Eliezrie, who founded a Chabad-Lubavitch synagogue in Yorba Linda, California. The Chabad-Lubavitch movement is known for its rabbis who wear long beards, black suits and fedoras. The Lubavitchers, a small but rapidly growing part of Judaism, interested me because they are so different from other Jews. Their passion in their beliefs and quest for innovation allow them to break many of the cultural traditions surrounding their faith and reach out to disenfranchised Jews. The Lubavitchers don’t isolate themselves from the world as do other Orthodox Jews, but embrace it. For example, they were one of the first religious groups to harness the power of the Internet to connect their members around the world, to attract new recruits and to serve as a research tool for any Jew.

  The Lubavitchers have become an island of growth, innovation and success at a time of aging synagogue memberships and stagnant population elsewhere among American Jews. The beliefs of the Lubavitchers seemed far-fetched to me—for instance, that God wants men and women segregated inside the synagogue, or that menstruating women cannot have sexual relations with their husbands and must take a purifying bath after their period before resuming sex. But I was intrigued by the confidence they have in carrying out their faith, especially in bringing nonreligious Jews back to the fold.

  “When a Jew alienates himself from his people, God forbid, it is only because he is thirsty,” said their late leader, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson. “His soul thirsts for meaning in life, but the waters of Torah have eluded him. So he wanders about in foreign domains, seeking to quench his thirst.

  “Only a shepherd who hastens not to judge the runaway kid, who is sensitive to the causes of its desertion, can mercifully lift it into his arms and bring it back home.”

  I wrote two lengthy features about the Lubavitchers, describing how the followers, inspired largely by the teachings of Schneerson—who died in 1994 and wasn’t replaced—have taken the Jewish world by storm (and generated plenty of controversy by doing so). In keeping with Schneerson’s ideas, Jews exploring their faith in Chabad centers don’t have to accept all—or even any—of the group’s Orthodox practices. They need not join a synagogue or pay dues. The idea is to patiently lead Jews back to Orthodoxy one small step at a time—by getting them to attend a Sabbath service, light candles Friday night, listen to a lecture from a Jewish scholar.

  The success of the Lubavitchers can be measured two ways. First, there are the hard numbers. The number of Chabad rabbis and their families who now serve lifetime assignments has doubled in the past decade to more than 4,000 in 61 countries, according to Chabad statistics. In an era where some denominations, including Roman Catholicism, have left pulpits empty because of clergy shortages, the offspring of Chabad rabbis are following in their parents’ footsteps in such numbers that a surplus of about 200 new rabbis and their wives is now staged in Brooklyn, awaiting assignments around the world. Schneerson said there was no higher calling.

  “A Jew may say to you, ‘Why can’t you leave me alone?’” Schneerson told his followers. “‘Why can’t you just go and do your thing and let me do mine? What does it bother you if I drill this little hole in my little boat?’

  “You must answer him, ‘There is only one boat, and we are all in it together.’”

  Lubavitch officials say a new Chabad center opens every ten days somewhere in the world. Chabad’s fundraisers, including its widely publicized West Coast telethons, bring in more than $800 million annually. The movement’s outreach is so good that it attracts money from other Jews who see it as simply a good investment for Judaism. A New York investment manager has given millions of dollars to support newly ordained Chabad rabbis and their wives each year. Among other things, he has sponsored 35 couples to open Chabad Houses at colleges across the country and 33 others to expand adult Jewish learning in the United States. The banker, who attends a Modern Orthodox synagogue, said Chabad’s emissaries provide the most cost-effective way of strengthening the Jewish community, whether it’s at an American college or in Africa.

  The second measure of Chabad’s growing influence is the controversy it generates, much of it from Jews frustrated at the movement’s success and worried that the Lubavitchers’ brand of Judaism will become too influential.

  Schneerson’s charisma was such that in the final years of his four decades of leadership, increasing numbers of Lubavitchers believed the rebbe was the moshiach, the Messiah. A dozen years after his death, the belief that Schneerson is the Messiah has waned dramatically, at least in public.

  “The Jewish community is becoming deeply dependent on them for religious services and ceremonies, education and social services,” said David Berger, an Orthodox rabbi and a history professor at Brooklyn College who has written a book on Chabad. “It’s a clear and present danger to Judaism.”

  Danger? Here’s what I saw: a group of people who, on the whole, lived out their Jewish faith in a way that outshined most of Judaism. Their leaders, rabbi-and-wife emissary teams called schluchim, didn’t mind doing the dirty work—living in remote outposts in lifetime assignments, earning modest salaries and ministering to nonreligious Jews. From my reporting and talking to others who had covered the movement, I found most Lubavitchers to be happy and content with their lives. The evidence for that is in their children; the majority of them—more than 70 percent in California, where the best statistics are kept—also become schluchim. Imagine what would happen to any faith group if 70 percent of its pastors’ offspring became pastors themselves. It always struck me as ironic that one of the best evangelical denominations was found in Judaism among the Lubavitchers. For me, their actions produced an attractive portrait of faith in action.

  I found radical believers easy to spot, because they shined so brightly among the gray of the spiritual pack. I didn’t even know if I wanted to be holy. I feared where God would take me. I liked my life. It was comfortable. I had money and a nice home. I didn’t live among the poor and sick; visiting once in a while was enough. When these thoughts crept into my mind, the words of C. S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory haunted me:

  Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards pr
omised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

  I thought Lewis might be right, but I lacked the courage to test the premise. I’d stick to making mud pies in a slum. He was writing about nonbelievers, but the words applied to Christians, too. Was I doing enough? Was I truly dedicated to God? Or was I making convenient compromises? It seemed to me that all Christians had to come to grips with another challenge from Lewis, who wrote in God in the Dock: “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”

  I started to view the moderates of my faith (myself included) as people who didn’t fully believe the radical, uncompromising message of the Gospels. We didn’t turn our lives entirely over to Christ. We stored up treasures on Earth and not in heaven. We didn’t go too far out of our way to help the poor or make real sacrifices in the name of Jesus. We lived a version of Christianity Lite, a feel-good brand of faith that didn’t extend much past Sunday morning.

  SIX

  My Ten Commandments

  Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.

  —2 TIMOTHY 2:15

  IT WASN’T EASY writing about the faith of a true believer. Journalists like to trade in facts. In many ways, sports teams and courthouses are among the easiest beats for reporters because the action happens in real time, right in front of them. There is a clear winner and loser, and statistics to detail what happened. At the game, you can even watch instant replay in case you missed the action the first time. In a courtroom, you can get a transcript and other legal documents to refer back to if you’re hazy on a point. On the religion beat, you’re dealing in facts mixed liberally with matters of faith. It’s drilled into journalists that “if your mother tells you she loves you, better check it out.” But such journalistic standards can’t be applied to much of faith reporting. It’s impossible to check whether God is real, or whether someone’s conversion is authentic. Large portions of religion stories are ultimately unknowable.