The Church Shouldn't Be "Useful"

When Politics Masquerades as Theology.

Sometimes when I’m looking for topics or people to interview for the podcast, I look at the web pages of magazines and book publishers. At two different websites for theological publications, one Lutheran and the other part of the Restoration Movement, most articles were about race issues. Five or six years earlier, if I went to those websites I might find articles about what communion means or the role of the Holy Spirit. Today, however, it appears that the only articles worth writing talk about the many aspects of race in America.

Being African American, I do think this is an issue the church must talk about. I am not one of those people who think that we no longer need to talk about race and racism. But it’s one thing to say we need to talk about the issue, it’s another to talk about it to the exclusion of everything else.

I’ve noticed the same thing when I go to religious book publishers. There are tons of books on Christian Nationalism, and others on race, whiteness and sexuality. None of these are bad books and I think there is some space for books on these topics. But sometimes it seems these are the only religious books out there.

And yes, I know it seems hypocritical of me who has a podcast that talks about politics and culture to complain about this, but it feels like something has been lost. Whatever happened to grace or forgiveness or sin?

Todd Brewer notices this as well. In a recent article for Mockingbird, he shares his observations on the changes happening in the American Academy for Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature (AAR and SBL). He visited the event this year in San Diego and remembered his first time visiting the conference in Boston, comparing and contrasting the two events. Brewer notes the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis wrecked the humanities and made the AAR/SBL even smaller than it was 16 years ago. The slashing of the humanities, including religion, has effects and one of them is how politics has invaded academic theology:

But the one trend that was impossible to miss was the way theology and biblical studies was repeatedly employed as a resource for commenting upon debated contemporary issues, whether it be forced migration studies, gender, colonialism, sexuality, immigration, racism, empire, or ecology. In one review panel I attended, the book’s failure to overtly engage in social issues was cited as a critical flaw that was said to reflect the author’s unconscious biases. This push toward explicit public advocacy was especially apparent in the aisles of the book hall, where the most prominently displayed titles could easily have been mistaken for expanded op-ed articles.

So why has this happened? Why did I see on one publisher’s page four or five titles on Christian Nationalism alone? Brewer thinks this is an attempt for people to write something useful:

At a time when faculties are shrinking, salaries have plateaued, tenure feels tenuous, and student enrollment is waning, the threat of extinction understandably creates an inescapable pressure toward self-justification. It’s not simply enough to do good work; one has to do work that matters. And so one seeks to avoid judgment by demonstrating the value of their research before administrations, funding bodies, students, publishers, and peers. There are, of course, several pathways one could take to justify the worth of theological studies. Theology could be presented as beautiful and compelling, an ulterior world that illuminates the secrets of life itself. Or one could envision scholarship as an aid to the church’s proclamation. But in our secular, post-Christian society, the only place where truth claims might feasibly gain any public hearing is within the arena of politics.

This essay has me thinking about a few writers I’ve read recently that aren’t focused on politics. I’m just finishing up Hunting Magic Eels by Richard Beck and I think about many books by Andrew Root. Both authors talk about how we live in an “immanent frame,” a world where we don’t expect God to act. If you live in a world where you live as if God didn’t exist, a world where you don’t expect to hear about grace or forgiveness, then you will focus on other things, like maybe politics. God becomes just a cheerleader for your viewpoint in an immanent faith.

Brewer notes that theologians are caught in a space between the temporal and the timeless. Over the last few years, the temptation has been to focus only on the temporal, but as Brewer notes, the challenge for any theologian or any Christian is to discern what God means for us in this place and time.

As Brewer observations is limited to theologians, but I think the message is the same for pastors and congregations as well. In this immanent age where people find it hard to believe in God, let alone an active God, we want to find ways to be useful. Preaching not simply Christ, but Christ crucified seems like a waste of time in a world where what sells is politics and entertainment. It also seems like a waste of time for people who might be worried about all of the issues Brewer talks about in his article. Preaching about a Jesus who died on the cross for all of us doesn’t seem useful to a world that is worried about democracy or health care or war.

But the problem with trying to be “useful” to the world is that the world can get its usefulness elsewhere. That leaves mainline Protestantism with nothing unique to say. As the late Presbyterian pastor Tim Keller said, “Instead the church was becoming a social service agency and political lobbying bloc, performing functions that secular organizations could do far better. No wonder it was in decline. The mainline church increasingly offered people nothing that the secular culture and its institutions could not offer.”

And the fact of the matter is, it isn’t useful. It isn’t useful at all. And it isn’t supposed to be useful in the eyes of the world.

Brewer asked earlier about who God is and what is this God to us in this place and time. The place and time that we live in is one described by David Brooks just after the election. In reflecting on why people would vote for Donald Trump, he explained the situation for many Americans who don’t have a college degree:

Society worked as a vast segregation system, elevating the academically gifted above everybody else. Before long, the diploma divide became the most important chasm in American life. High school graduates die nine years sooner than college-educated people. They die of opioid overdoses at six times the rate. They marry less and divorce more and are more likely to have a child out of wedlock. They are more likely to be obese. A recent American Enterprise Institute study found that 24 percent of people who graduated from high school at most have no close friends. They are less likely than college grads to visit public spaces or join community groups and sports leagues. They don’t speak in the right social justice jargon or hold the sort of luxury beliefs that are markers of public virtue.

It doesn’t seem very useful to talk about salvation and the fact that God loves someone more likely to be obese and die a full decade earlier than someone who has a college degree. I’m not arguing that we don’t focus on the material problems facing the working class in this country, I come from a working-class background so I understand. What’s going on in some of the left-behind places in America is not just material, but there is also a spiritual hunger that requires being filled.

When you read Paul’s letters to the different churches throughout the Roman Empire, he talked about spiritual issues because people’s souls mattered to Paul as much as their bodies. There is a lot that we need to do help people physically, but as Christians, we are also called to people spiritually as well if not more. We don’t need to be useful in our culture, but we do need to be faithful.