Better Than Believing

Living the Questions

Living the Questions is a new small-group program designed for Christian invitation, initiation, and spiritual formation. The program provides fourteen lesson plans and a series of video clips to stimulate discussion. In reviewing the course for Christian Century (April 5), Debra Bendis and Jason Byassee seem to assume that people who sign up for such a discussion group have been living in a cultural and spiritual vacuum. They also appear to think that in a church-sponsored course of study conformity to a particular party line would be a sign of wisdom. Anyone who agrees with these two positions should obviously avoid getting involved with Living the Questions. Neither of these assumptions, however, check out with my experience of reality.

The reviewers find fault with LtQ for pitching the course to "an audience of people involved enough in church to have been wounded by its fundamentalist versions." I don’t know on what planet Bendis and Byasee have been living. In my forty years of parish ministry, most of the people who showed up were either refugees from conservative congregations, or they were tentative seekers who had been avoiding religion because of what they had thought was the Christian point of view. The latter come from the fastest growing religiously identifiable group in the country, now about nineteen percent. I have yet to meet one who hadn’t thought that all Christians believed that Jesus got up out of the tomb and that baptism washed away all sin. As a test, I quizzed an eleven-year-old boy on these subjects. He has never been to a church, except for weddings, but he knows all about these beliefs, and he holds them in contempt.

The reviewers also complain that the speakers who appear on the video clips are a "discordant mix of voices". From such teachers, "people who are investigating Christianity will have a hard time deriving . . . a coherent introduction to Christianity." To me, the wide variety of views presented by LtQ make the course inviting and energizing. This is one of the most brilliant aspects of the series. In telling the Christian story, the course replicates the Bible, which — as everyone who has ever tried to read it knows — is as incoherent a mix of voices as you can find between two covers. Without having to be told in so many words, those who participate in the course discover the power that emerges when people are living the questions rather than accepting agreed-upon answers.

What is Better than Believing?

Some people who cannot accept church doctrines and dogmas have found other things in Christian congregations that may be better than believing:

• Being part of an extended family with "brothers and sisters" who care about you.
• Participating in the life of a community where your concerns make a difference.
• Locating companions with whom you can work to help bring to the world a greater measure of social, economic, and environmental justice.
• Finding your roots in the rituals and traditions of a people with a history.
• Growing in awareness of your personal values and your potential as a human being.
• Increasing your capacity for open and honest relationships with other people.
• Approaching God directly through disciplined meditation and prayer.
• Having a place to celebrate the joys of birth, marriage, and success as well as to find support in the tragedies of death, divorce, and failure.

The first version of this list appeared in a 1974 flier circulated by St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on Washington, DC’s Capitol Hill, the congregation I served as rector 1966 - 1996.

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Jim Adams

Christianity or Christianism

Christianity or Christianism

William Saffire, in his New York Times Magazine On Language column, introduced me to a pair of useful terms: Christianism and Christianist.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first of the two can be traced back to the seventeenth century. In 1674, R. Godfrey wrote of a "Heathenish Christianism". In 1855, I. Taylor identified an "easy, overweening, and egotistic Christianism". These examples in the OED demonstrate that the term as a long history of derogatory use. Christianist appears to be of more recent coinage.

I think that both of these terms will be helpful. For a long time I have resented the necessity of adding the modifier "progressive" or "liberal" to the word "Christian" in order to differentiate an approach to Christianity that differs from that propounded by extreme conservatives. Many people have told me that we stand for basic Christianity and shouldn’t have to use an adjective in describing our network. Now we have the opportunity for making a distinction between our understanding of Christianity and that proclaimed by the extremists.

Christians are people who practice Christianity. They do their best to follow the way taught and lived by Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus stands at the center of the constellation of symbols by which they make sense out of their existence.

Christianists are devotees of Christianism. They use Christian symbols in propounding an ideology that they want to impose on society. They make sense out of their existence by convincing themselves that they are right and that any who disagree are outside of God’s favor.

Christianism can appear at either end of the political spectrum. For example, Pat Robertson is a Christianist on the right, while Jim Wallis is a Christianist of the left. Both sides claim to be representing the mind of God, and both want to translate their positions into public policy.

Although using derogatory terms is often a less than admirable strategy in dealing with differences of opinion, such terms can sometimes bring clarity to an argument. In this case, I think it is important to insist on the distinction between Christianity – a religion, and Christianism – a political ideology.

For more on the subject, see the comments of Ruth Walker for the Christian Science Monitor and Rob Kall on Op-Ed News.