How Real Should Religion Get?

November 16, 2008

Every Saturday, our statewide newspaper has a “Religion” page. Wednesdays there’s a Food section and Thursday is for the Automobile. Most every day, there’s an Entertainment section although “Entertainment” seems to be creeping into the news pages. Page A-2 is now a gallery of celebrity photos a la People magazine. Religion doesn’t have the same sort of creep unless the Pope is in town.

Normally on the Religion page you see a feature article, a row of church-type announcements, and a sampling of religious news items gleaned from the wire services. Two caught my eye.

One reported that a group of Amish men from the very strict Swartzentruber sect in upstate New York was going to be tried on misdemeanor charges for not getting building permits to build their homes. Following the admonition of Paul’s Letter to the Romans, chapter 12 verse 2, “Be not conformed to this world …,” the Amish are opposed to “modernization” on religious grounds. So, for example, they do not use electricity they do not produce themselves because connecting to the power lines might breach the distinct identity of their culture; too much exposure to the cultures beyond the Amish would dilute their beliefs and way of life. Naturally, they would not want to follow building codes requiring smoke alarms and other features that most of us would consider normal and advisable. Religious and civil liberties groups are coming to their defense in what will be an interesting legal take on the interface of religious belief and civil authority.

The second item was about a theology professor, Peter Enns, who was suspended by the Trustees of the Presbyterian Westminster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania for writing a book, “Inspiration and Incarnation,” that said that the Bible is both human and divine. The Presbyterian Confession of Faith from 1646 holds that Scripture is solely the word of God and proclaims the "infallible truth" and "entire perfection" of the Bible. Since that news report, Prof. Enns has resigned his post.

I want to leave aside the civil liberties questions in the Amish case and reflect a little on how people think about the blending of the human and divine - incarnation. The Amish would have God and the World so entangled that installing smoke alarms is a religious matter. The Presbyterians want God and humanity so separated that they get nervous about any human element in the composition of Sacred Scripture.

In the world of theology, the mystery of “incarnation” runs through several topics. The question of how Jesus could be both human and divine is pretty much the same question as how the Church could be both a human and divine organization or how the Bible could be both a human and divine document. How exactly do the human and divine fit together?

If the human and divine are completely different from or totally foreign to each other, none of these “incarnations” is possible. The extent to which they converge, match, or belong together dictates the reality you end up with, that is, how much the world can be “divinized” (or, conversely, how much God can be “humanized”). Can the human and divine “merge” and if the human and divine are blended, how much “influence” does the divine have on the World, anyway? Is divine presence a valid factor in assessing how we live on this earth? Do religious considerations belong in a discussion of building permits or immigration policy or human life issues or racial equality or war and peace decisions? It seems to matter how we conceive of and act on this human/divine alignment.

Think of the ink and pixels spent during the just-ended presidential campaign on Mitt Romney’s Mormonism, Mike Huckabee’s Baptist vocation, or Barack Obama’s controversial pastor. Lurking in the background are the more fundamental questions of whether and how the divine touches the human.

Although there are Scriptures that could be quoted to support an opposite viewpoint (I Corinthians 1:18ff), I think that there is a confluence between the divine and the human. I believe that the divine is both the home and the destiny of the human. So, for me, there is no secular sphere completely separate from the sacred. Everything is within reach of grace.

When someone says to me, “keep your religious beliefs out of politics,” it makes no sense to me. I cannot think about politics or economic policy or foreign policy without reference to religious belief. Given my understanding of “incarnation”, all of these realms belong together. I would certainly allow qualifiers and distinctions and rigor when thinking about how religious belief informs the world, but I will not allow that they are separate or that religion has no place in the profane world. The secular needs the challenge of the religious dimension in order to change and to progress. The religious needs to remember that the divine must touch the human or be completely irrelevant.