By Susan Fawcett
In a recent article, Sam Candler wrote about the issue he sees as the most pressing in our time: interfaith relations. “The best ‘interfaith dialogues,’” he wrote, “are those where Christians—and others—do not try simply to bend down to the lowest common denominator, or try to soften everything we believe. The best interfaith dialogues are those where people are strong and fully convinced of their own religious identities. The world needs passionate and sure Christians.” His point about being both passionately Christian and compassionately interfaith is a breath of fresh air on a topic that probably needs a lot more discussion.
I’d like to put another card on the table, though: the issue of how Christians talk about and talk to those who identify as agnostic, atheist, or ‘unchurched.’ As our anxiety about the shrinking of mainline Christianity in America rises, statistics on growing numbers of unchurched folk abound. We spend some serious energy talking about how to evangelize the unchurched. And, as in Sam Candler’s point, well we should. If we have some good news, let’s share it, by all means.
I suppose my issue lies with the condescension involved in how we talk about the unchurched, and all those who do not profess any faith at all. Let me explain: when I was in grade school, and a very devout evangelical Christian, I remember being told by a camp counselor that it just wasn’t possible to be friends with a Jewish person or a ‘non-Christian.’ “You can be acquaintances,” she said, probably underlining John 14:6 in my study bible. “You can really care about them. But you just can’t really share life with someone who doesn’t know God the way you do, and you should probably be trying to save them. Then you can really be friends.”
It did not take me long to realize that the camp counselor was full of hooey. My grandmother is Jewish, I thought. She shares life with me pretty well. My friend Natalie is Jewish and I think she’s wise. God speaks to them. Why should I think less of them?
It took me a little longer to abandon the idea that my faith in God put me on a higher level of life experience than all my unreligious friends—the ones who didn’t know what they believed about God, or hadn’t been to church, or had been to church and hated it. As I began to question my evangelical community’s assumptions, I grew closer and closer to those who professed no faith at all—perhaps because they were willing to ask harder questions.
What I found in those particular people was not apathy or ignorance or even a sense of being victimized by the church. Rather, I found in them a set of very apt criticisms: Why do Christians say they follow Jesus, but spend all their energy on looking holy instead of helping the poor? Why do churches argue all the time instead of being kind to each other? Why does the church tend to exclude the very people Jesus welcomed? Why does the church seem so UN-like Jesus Christ? Moreover, I often found people whose lives looked significantly more Christlike than mine did.
Since then, it has been important to me to cultivate close relationships with friends whose spirituality manifests itself in arenas other than the church, and who are ready to offer critique and criticism of my own ministry goals and Christianese at the drop of a hat. Whether they call themselves atheist or agnostic or unchurched or post-church, I have found that I need these people not only as companions and true friends, but that they do me a great service: they help to keep me from being a hypocrite. They hold me accountable to the standards that the Church sometimes forgets it has. Thanks be to God.
So I am offering a word of humility for the Church: as we talk with those of other religions, and as we talk about those whom we think lack religious faith, let us remember that we might learn just as much from them as we can impart. And, that our characterization of the unchurched/agnostic/atheist as apathetic, ignorant, or pitiable can often just as well be turned upon our own kind.
For a much more academic discussion of this issue, see Archbishop Rowan Williams’s article: “Analysing Atheism; Unbelief and the world of Faiths.”
The Rev. Susan Fawcett keeps the blog This Passage. She serves a parish the Diocese of Virginia, and supports the work of the General Convention publication The Center Aisle.