Ray Waddle’s Journal

by Ray Waddle

America’s biggest religion story of the year (so far) has been the emotional flame-out over Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ, the bloody retelling of Jesus’ death. The strangest thing about it was how nearly everyone had an opinion even before anyone had seen it. Christians were deeply divided, whether they saw it or not.

This isn’t so surprising. This movie, whatever its merits, was quickly hijacked as the latest perfect vehicle for the culture wars, with squadrons of eager talk-show and op-ed promoters turning every headline into a rallying cry for their own lucrative purposes, stoking resentments and spiking up ratings.

With The Passion, everyone had something to say. Conservative Protestants supported it because it looked like a blow against secular Hollywood. They said the uproar over the movie proved again the anti- Christian bias in American culture.

Liberal Christians disdained The Passion as manipulative, violent and dishonest. They said the movie proved again that a streak of anti-semitism and an obsession with violence are never far from the surface of American religion.

The Passion raised provocative questions about the circumstances and meaning of Christ’s death. Mostly, though, it managed to underscore the political-theological suspicions that believers, left and right, have about each other. This habit of hostility, nurtured for decades, is doing long-term damage to a forceful Christian witness in a world looking for economic reform, political revival and transcendent hope.

Both sides, famously, use the Bible to support their political views and shy away from verses that prove inconvenient. Conservatives cite the Ten Commandments but seldom quote the Sermon on the Mount or Jesus’ peacemaking ethic. Liberals love the compassionate Jesus of history but skip over passages that preach evangelism or denounce homosexuality. The observation seems obvious, especially in a fierce presidential election year: Our politics apparently shape our faith far more than the other way around. Must it?

There’s no cosmic reason why a born-again Christian has to be a Republican. Yet, these days, most vote that way. There’s no reason why a peace-and-justice Christian has to be a political liberal, but most are. Do Bible and church going mold values — or reinforce the ones we already carry? People bring their political passions and aggressions to Bible and creed; the temptation is to look to religion to validate comfortable political positions.

A recent book goes further. Linguist George Lakoff, in his book Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know that Liberals Don’t, argues there are two basic forms of Christianity, two styles of thinking, and these account for the divisions among American churches.

Conservatives, Lakoff says, embrace the Strict Father form of the faith; liberals prefer the Nurturant (nurturing) Father form. These are two different styles of parenting, he says. They help determine our faith choices.

The Strict Father mode puts value on strict commandments, obedience to hierarchy, self-discipline, self-denial, the enforcement of rewards and punishments. These religious values are used to endorse free-market capitalism. Why? Capitalism promotes competitive and survival skills so the right sort of people are rewarded — people who are strong, self-disciplined, respectful of rewards and punishments, Lakoff says.

The nurturing Father mode of Christianity says strict rules are not as important as learning empathy and compassion and following the example of the ultimate nurturer, Christ. More than discipline or self-denial, nurturing builds character, according to this model. A good person is one who can function well in the interdependent world, where social ties, cooperation, kindness and trust are essential, Lakoff says.

The author surely oversimplifies, using reductionistic sociology to make his point. But he aims to tell liberals why conservatives have been putting liberals on the defensive for more than two decades. He wants to explain how conservatives have succeeded in winning the culture wars and equating GOP politics with biblical values — with compliance from the media and little resistance from liberals.

But dissent is mounting that could challenge this old Christian division. At church gatherings and in letters to the editor, more people, left and right, are questioning the fruits of deregulated free-market values and politics-as-usual — the workplace stresses, the corporate scandals, the monopolizing, the tax cheating, the huge profits at the expense of wage-earners, the vulgar language on TV for higher ratings and greater profits. It all adds up to the erosion of traditional values.

Can religious divisions be bridged? Is faith destined to be a mouthpiece of partisanship, or can political beliefs be transformed by faith? It will take some humility on all sides. One way to start is with intentional Bible-reading of an old-fashioned sort, the way of Lectio Divina, Latin for holy reading. It’s a means of slowing down and taking time with Scripture, a verse or chapter at a time, submitting to its power, waiting for inspiration and breakthrough, taking a fresh look at its meaning, committing to a new kind of seeing.

Churchgoers, who profess weekly belief in the Easter story of redemption, surely will concede transformation is possible. Bigger miracles have occurred.