From Martin Luther King to Pat Robertson: What Happened to Christianity?
Catherine MacLennan interviews Rev. Bruce Sanguin on religion, politics, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, and the search for meaning.
CATHERINE MACLENNAN: Paul Simon's 1971 song "Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard" has the lines "when the radical priest/Come to get me released/ We was all on the cover of Newsweek" - With pop songs, words are often used for an easy rhyme or as vague references to something. Here one can't help be reminded of people like the Berrigan brothers - Philip and Daniel Berrigan. Reading about the 1960s and early 70s, priests, ministers and religious leaders played a strong, visible, active and leading role in the cause for peace and social justice (for example, people like the Berrigans, Martin Luther King, William Sloane Coffin, Dave Dellinger)... but now, in 2004, and since the last couple of decades, the only images we get of religious leaders in the media are of deeply conservative ones - who do not believe in social justice but want to forge a state-religion with the ruling powers (such as Pat Roberson and Jerry Fallwell or in Canada, the people associated with the Reform party). Why is this the current face of Christianity? Have the more thoughtful and caring elements of religious society given up on the idea of social justice, and have perhaps retreated to a few noncontroversial charitable acts... or is the media only showing the right-wing fundamentalist preachers?
REV. BRUCE SANGUIN: Great question. Actually, the United Church is as active as they have ever been in issues of social justice. I would say that's the defining characteristic of our spiritual culture. It's kind of what distinguishes us. I'm not saying that there aren't elements of social justice concerns in other churches, but that's kind of the identifying mark of the United Church. I think partly, we haven't been very media-savvy. I think that's part of the problem. We have these wonderful moderators, for example, like Bill Phipps. Now, Bill Phipps, who was a moderator about two moderators ago, did get a lot of press, and was out there with issues around social housing, poverty, justice, issues in Central America, but he was pretty media-savvy. So, I think part of the issue is we've got to find ways to let the public know where we stand. And we've got to somehow hook into the media more. So I think that's part of the issue. So certainly we haven't given up at all but neither do we do a very good job at helping people to make the distinction between say the Moral Majority in the States and what we represent. So in our congregation, for example, we started a project called the Township Project, which is a micro-banking project. There's a township in South Africa, which is receiving small loans for circles of women in groups of five to help them out of poverty. And it's incredibly successful and we provide the seed money and the team that's keeping that going, as well, we've worked out of First United. So, yeah, we're out there. I think probably we don't have the same kind of hammer that the Evangelical right do, in other words, 'if you don't believe the right things you end up in hell.' So what is it that's going to be compelling about the message of social justice to folks out there? I think we need to do a better job of getting the message out.
CM: In his book Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity, Bruce Bawer says that contrary to what the Religious Right says they are treated with kid gloves by the mainstream media. Yes, some of their more outrageous remarks sometimes get a day or two of coverage, but there is no follow-up, no analysis of what they believe and their claim to religious leadership is pretty much undisputed. Bawer says "the powers that be at publications like the NY Times tend to be secular people, who, fearful that they might be branded as anti-Christian, hesitate to criticize anything that goes by the name of religion in anything but muted terms" So the Jerry Fallwells and Pat Robertsons announce that they represent the spiritual life, the media does not question them, and any form of Christianity that is not the Religious Right is basically ignored. How can the more thoughtful and more socially, spiritually and political diverse elements of Christianity stand this state of affairs? How come I never see representatives of the non-religious-right Christians in the media saying "This is not what Christianity is"?
BS: It's part of our mission actively do what you're describing. The first line of our mission statement is to teach a progressive Christian faith. We're active beginning with our own congregation to help people understand the differences between perhaps the theology they grew up with in Sunday school and what a progressive Christian faith looks like now. So we need to start with our own people for one thing because there's a lot of hangover beliefs about who Jesus was and what he was doing, what he was about that people uncritically just assume. But if you talk to them in any kind of depth you realize that they really don't believe in a lot of that stuff. So the question you're asking I've asked myself over and over again. How do we get the message out there that there is an alternative? One of our strategies is we have this - besides the fact that I preach and most Sundays I'll help people understand the difference between the theology that they are seeing on their TVs and what we're about - we have a sign out on Burrard St. with little pithy sayings, the intent of which is to convey a different ethos. So we're not going to put up, for example, "For God so loved he world he gave his only begotten Son and who soever believeth should not perish but have eternal life." We put up stuff that is witty, socially relevant, that conveys that there is something new happening here. And one of the most frequent comments we get from people who haven't been to church in a long time, come back, or come to service here is like, "Oh, I didn't know this was happening." And - your question why, how are we failing the public in serving a more left-of -centre, liberal theological position and not getting the word out there. I think there's no excuse for it. For example, I came here eight years ago and it one of my intentional goals was to reclaim some of the symbols of the Christian faith, some of the core metaphors, which we've given away to the Evangelical church - for example, discipleship. Well, the United Church stopped talking about ourselves as Disciples of Christ. Which I think is crazy. But I think we did that because we didn't want to be associated with them. We were bashful about talking about ourselves as followers of Christ. Because the way in which we distinguish ourselves is to water down our own conviction. I think that has been a fundamental error. And so, there is a growing movement among churches that have a more liberal theology to be out there. When September 11 [2001] happened, I was quite visible talking at rallies. We have a band that is called The Peace in the City Band that is sort of a go-to band for those rallies. So along with the Evangelical voice, I was up there, and they were saying "the problem is with those heathens, the pagans, they don't believe in Christ, those Muslims," and it was like, I couldn't believe my ears. So I got up there, and presented an alternative, hopefully, a corrective kind of theology and afterwards, all these born-agains would come up to me and say "Are you a real Christian?" "How can you call yourself a Christian and not believe that the bible is the literal word of God and not think that Christ is the only way, the only truth, the only life out there?" The challenge is to present our own theology, our own way with integrity rather than trash their theology. Because I've been there - part of my story is that I started out as a born-again Christian, I understand them inside out. And so it takes a lot of energy on my part not to just come out and say these people are just full of it, they're off-centre, the Christ they follow is not a Christ that I see in the Gospels. Because certainly the Jesus of Nazareth in the Gospel proclaimed the kingdom of God to the poor and the marginalized and even his core metaphor of the kingdom of God was a very subversive metaphor because he was contrasting that with the kingdom of Caesar. It was a very political message to proclaim the kingdom of God, that's the kingdom where we need to enter, and by inference he was saying not the kingdom of Caesar. And eventually he was crucified for that. So I talk a lot about the theological differences, but I don't know why people haven't discovered us and I think the ones that find their way to an Evangelical church, it's enough for them that their individual private soul is saved for eternal life. There's a whole bunch of other people out there who are just disenfranchised and just can't stand that kind of privatization of Christianity and don't know that there is an alternative. So that's our continual challenge - how do we let people know... how do we signal that there is a progressive face to Christianity? Partly my response would be we need to become more media-savvy.
CM: Along with questions of anti-Semitism, Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" exhibited rather obviously paranoid ideas about 'masculinity' but most of all a deep love of brutality and violence (both of which are in keeping with some of his previous films). I heard this week that some churches were ordering copies of this movie in bulk. What are your impressions of this film?
BS: I found it deeply offensive and troubling. I stayed through the whole thing. My wife walked out, I would have but my daughter wanted to see it with me so that she could talk to me about it afterwards, so I stayed through the whole thing. I thought it was a kind of a veiled marketing thing - the basic message of it was 'Christ died for your sins' - it's that theology - 'Look how much he was put through, and this is the only way that your sins can be atoned for and he did this for you.' And so, naturally, it becomes a marketing tool for the Evangelical church in the States and in Canada. But what I found grotesque about it was it was as if Jesus didn't teach anything - there was nothing except the brutality of the way he was executed. Also, because it lacks any kind of political dimension, the film, it's as if he wasn't crucified for the crime of sedition against the state of Rome - which he was, that is why he was crucified - for speaking out against the kingdom of Caesar. So there's no political dimension in the film at all, the implication is that Christ died for our sins and that whole atonement theology that I have a lot of difficulty with so I found it quite revolting.
CM: Could you explain a bit more about the atonement theology?
BS: Yeah, well on the Right, the atonement theology goes something like: God's a just God. Loves us, but is just. And so He has to deal with sin somehow, since you and I are terrible reprobate sinners. God has to take care of sin. There's no way to do that except send his "only begotten son" into the world to suffer and die for us to release us from our sin. And then we have Christ dwelling in our hearts. So it focuses around, first of all, the atonement theology presents a rather grotesque notion of a god who is basically someone who abuses his only son. I just can't reconcile that with the loving, compassionate God that Jesus represents. And secondly, it really focuses on the private state of our souls, so I'm an individual sinner. Christ died for my sins and so now I'm ok after I accept Jesus into my life. So in contrast, say, for example, there are other theories of atonement, this one just happened to win out in the last couple of hundred years. Before then, there were lots of other atonement theories, for example, the social atonement theory, which basically said that Christ came to redeem the social systems, that he spoke truth to power. That system which perpetuates the gap between rich and poor is the cause of so much individual sin that's what Jesus was about, a redemption of social systems which are contrary to his message about the kingdom of God. And Rene Girard is a scholar who I have a lot of time for, who developed a pretty sophisticated theory about scapegoating theology, the essence of which is that from the beginning of time, one of the primary ways that communities found that you could deal with escalating violence was to take a victim, and sacrifice that victim, and there would be a kind of holy hush, an awe, gathered around the corpse and it had a cathartic effect in that people were frightened by the violence and so the community would settle down around this, and so when they saw that that had the power, originally it was just a primal act of murder, but the community witnessed it had the power to bring the violence to an end. So they ritually reenacted this throughout time. Found a scapegoat, executed him, and had power. And in the story of Abraham and his son Isaac, it may represent a turning point for the ancient Hebrews. It's a story in which they said the surrounding culture are scapegoating victims, they are actually practicing human sacrifice, so here's a story about Abraham, being called by God supposedly, to sacrifice his son. But at the end of the story, God intervenes and says Don't do that. So you get a movement away from that scapegoating theology. Jesus comes along, he's anti-temple, anti-sacrificing of animals, because they're carrying on the altar where blood sacrifice happens, he comes along and says that's not what God requires, God requires us to walk humbly upon the earth, act with mercy and with justice. And so gets in trouble with that whole temple theology which says the way to get right with God is to bring some animals here, cut their throats, we'll burn them, and the scapegoated victim will reconcile you with God. So the irony is, Jesus was against that, but after his death, some, there was an element, interpreted it as another sacrificial atonement. That his death is what pays the price for sin and gets us right with God. Makes us at one, atonement, with God. I think that's the wrong theology. I think the message of the cross is that is precisely what Caesar and the Roman authorities wanted to do. It's better that one man should die than the whole nation should suffer. So he was being scapegoated. The effect of it, though, with the resurrection was that it didn't work. It exposed and undermined that system of sacrificial scapegoating. But ironically, that has come to predominate our understanding of what Jesus' death was about. And I don't think Jesus supported that at all himself.
CM: I was reading a collection of essays by Philip Lopate, which deals mostly personal subject matter, such as his mother having an affair, his beating up on another child when he was a kid, friendships... and in one essay he refers to something Simone Weil said:
The soul knows for certain only that it is hungry. The important thing is that it announces its hunger by crying. A child does not stop crying if we suggest to it that perhaps there is no bread. It goes on crying just the same. The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry."
Do you think in our largely secular, materialist, capitalist and superficial society that people are persuading themselves that they are not hungry?
BS: Yeah, I do. And I think that there are so many ways to distract yourself from that hunger now. There's booze, there's drugs, there's TV - we can entertain ourselves to death - there's consumerism, there's the pursuit of material wealth. And I think all of these things can be, they don't have to be, but they can be ways of numbing ourselves we're not really hungry, spiritually hungry, for a politics and spirituality of meaning. But at some point, everyone, if they're human, there will be moments where the hunger will begin to get through. It will gnaw away and you realize just by putting more of this other stuff into you is not addressing the core hunger, the core yearning and I think that's where the church and other faith systems need to be presenting alternatives that have some substance and some integrity. I really like how that is put, convincing ourselves that we are not hungry, that this is enough. I remember when I was twenty-one, I was basically a jock, and the second year of university I was playing for the varsity volleyball team, that hunger came through me, as out of nowhere, this quest for meaning, all of a sudden I needed to know what the meaning of life was and of course my buddies thought I was crazy. So I went off and did transcendental meditation, I studied all kinds of psychology and spirituality and nothing meant anything except this search for meaning. I didn't care about money, I didn't care about the clothes I wore. I needed to sort out what I was doing here. At some point, those big questions are going to break through: What are we doing here? What's our purpose? How are we meant to be together? How come we can't get along in this world with people? How come I'm so alienated?
Rev. Bruce Sanguin is the Minister at the Canadian Memorial United Church and Centre for Peace in Vancouver, B.C. He spoke to The Lamp on a hot Saturday afternoon in between officiating at two weddings.