Progress, Postmodernity, Pentecostalism, and the Pope

I visited Guatemala a year ago this May; so my attention was grabbed when the Pope visisted South America this past week. Similarities are ripe within the religious environments of South America, Central America and Mexico. One thing in particular that they each have in common is how the once dominant Catholic influence is being surpassed in popularity and piety by imported forms of evangelical charismatic and/or pentecostal Christianity.

It was interesting when I was in Guatemala; the level of seperation between the Catholic church and the "evangelicals" as they were generically called in Guatemala. It was interesting that there was not really anything in between either. You had traditional Catholics and some indeginous Catholics whose form of Catholicism was mixed with the indegenious religious traditions, myths, and practices of Guatemala and then you had mega churches or small store front churches that looked very similar to any evangelical, charismatic, or pentecostal church in America.

Why is this? What is taking place in this region? What is taking place in the religious institutions themselves?

Some have asked does it have something to do with postmodernism? Perhaps, however it seems to me that there is much about Catholicism that appeals to the postmodern believer. Perhaps, not so much docrinally or institutionally but the form of Catholic spirituality and Catholic practics is much broader, wider, full of myth, symbol, experience, and mystery. All things that postmodern forms of spirituality seem to celebrate. However, some Charismatic/Pentecostal forms of worship have some of the same experiental, participatory, and creative forms of worship.

Niether Catholicism nor the so called "Evangelical" expresssions seem to affirm the intellectual worldview or philosophy that defines postmodernity. Both forms put a high view on "objective" and "absolute" forms of truth. Postmodernity is very difficult to define because it is not so much it's own worldview but a critique of the modern world view and its ideas about progress, absolute, objective, and observable truth, the centrality of human beings and our ability to "overcome" and "solve" the worlds problems, etc...What does seem to be fairly consistent in the bulk of postmodern deconstruction is that truth is not always absolute, objective, and observable but that it is always subjective and effected by the lenses that we see the world through. In short we have all had experiences that have shaped us and have created bias' that effect how we see the world. Therefore, truth is much more mysterious and complex for most postmodern thinkers. Often there is a difference between "fact" and "truth"; you can't really know the truth unless you know the story. In other words truth is always contextual and truth finding has a narrative, mysterious, and subjective quality. It does not discount that some things are "true" or even "right" but that the way we get there or understand it to be "true" is different.

All that to say; I think that the transition from Catholicism to the more evangelical churches has to do with the influence of an American vision of democracy and progress that has been taught through many business people and missionaries working, living, and influencing the religion. The evangelicals are seen as being more modern, progressive, less institutional, and less connected to the violent history and old money and corrupt systems that the Catholic church is still at times identified with. It is a sign of American Imperialism surpassing the European Imperialism that brought Catholicism. This is true all over the world that this peculiar form of American Christianity is exporting much more than religion just as European missionaries did years before them. It is the prevailing inlfluence of America and our peculiar form of Christianity that is one reason for this transition.

What do others think?

Jim Wallis & the Pitfalls of "Biblical" Politics

In the recent press conference announcing Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (see video sidebar), Rev. Jim Wallis, for whom I have a great deal of respect, gave a six minute statement that I found quite troubling. He cited the following text from Leviticus, the Hebrew Bible's articulation of preistly guidelines traditionally attributed to Moses (but believed by many modern scholars to have been written in the centuries immediately following the fall of Israel to Assyrian forces in 722 BCE):


"The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God." (Leviticus 19:34; NRSV)


Wallis went on to allude to the words that the author of Matthew attributes to Jesus:


Then the king will say to those at his right hand, "Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was...a stranger and you welcomed me... Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me." Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was...a stranger and you did not welcome me... Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me." And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. (Matthew 25:34-35, 40-43, 45-46; NRSV)


Here is my problem with this rhetoric. Wallis is a harsh critic of fellow evangelicals who trumpet biblical morality as justification to advance socially conservative policies (most notably, efforts to criminalize abortion and deny many legal protections to homosexuals). He also seems to have been fairly consistent in articulating a political philosophy that, while inspired by his specific religious tradition, is translated to universally accessible language and values when he engages public discussion of divisive issues. Here is a fairly typical Wallis soliloquy on the need for inclusiveness in political discourse:


It's important for religious people to say that religion does not have a monopoly on morality. There are people in this nation who aren't affiliated religiously but who care deeply about moral values and about the moral crisis of the country, and they need to be part of this conversation too. Martin Luther King Jr. had a way of [including everyone]-it wasn't just the Baptists who were marching in the streets; it was Catholics and Jews and people of no faith. I think we can speak a moral vocabulary that isn't exclusively religious and is inclusive of people who aren't sure about religion or just are not in fact affiliated. (Rescuing Religion From the Right, interview by Rebecca Phillips, http://www.beliefnet.com/story/159/story_15988_1.html)


For someone who has repeatedly criticized conservatives for misrepresenting the Bible's message and exhorted people of faith to collaborate with their secular peers, I think Wallis has shot himself in the foot here. If he is willing to hold up a single verse in Leviticus to allude to a divinely sanctioned immigration policy, he loses any credibility to reject the claims of conservative Christians who would cite Leviticus to advocate for criminalizing homosexuality. By the very act of selectively quoting scripture to promote his political ideology, Wallis falls headfirst into the centuries-old trap of using the Bible to justify whatever you would like.

I have no problem with any Christian attempting to persuade his or her fellow believers of a particular interpretation of the Bible's position on any issue, nor do I believe it is problematic for one's political beliefs to spring from his or her interpretation of the Bible. However, for a prominent minister to proof-text his political position with an isolated Bible citation divorced from context in a press conference designed to pressure lawmakers seems not only unwise, but also intellectually dishonest. In other words, it is all well and good for Rev. Wallis to encourage his fellow evangelicals to consider how a biblical theme of compassion might shape their value system as they advocate for immigration reform, but to demand that United States lawmakers act based on an obscure exhortation to Levite priests 2500 years ago is a preposterous stretch. Is it too much to ask religious leaders of all political and theological perspectives to honestly speak about the overarching themes they see in their sacred texts and traditions, rather than reducing important policy arguments to biblical sound bytes nearly as inane as the talking points we are subjected to in presidential debates? After all, to pretend that one verse can illuminate the lessons of a nuanced and often contradictory 66-volume text insults the public's intelligence whether it is coming out of the mouth of a liberal or a conservative.