Ideolatry

A couple of years back, the blog Findings posted a brief article on the word "ideolatry" (here).  Now, neither dictionary.com nor wiktionary recognize"ideolatry" as a word (nor does this blog's spell check), so Finding's posting may be fanciful, but if so it still makes an important point.  In its analysis of "ideolatry" in relationship to idolatry and ideology, the posting concludes that ideolatry means that, "We give service to ideas, and they become our reasonable worship."  Ideolatry occurs when we turn an idea, doctrine, or ideology into something so sacrosanct that we virtually treat it as an object of veneration and worship.  If it isn't a "real" word, it should be.  Bibliolatry, one of the chief forms of Christian false worship, for example, is a close kin to and perhaps even a child of ideolatry.  We are seeing the full  power of ideolatry in the wake of the 2012 elections as so many of the losers twist in the winds of denial, unable to see their ideological idols for what they are.  (The political winners, of course, always stand in danger of transforming their own ideologies into idols and maybe some of them already are).

Theology & American Politics Today - a postscript

In the previous two postings, I've argued that a powerful wing of the Republican Party today is mired in ideological idolatry, which necessarily blinds them to the realities of early 21st century American politics.  Idolatry in all of its forms is self-defeating.  Theologically, it stands under divine judgment, which is here understood to mean that its failure is planted in the very nature of who we are as human beings.  Gravity causes things to drop.  Idolatry causes people and movements to fail.  To the extent that the Republican Party remains trapped in an ultra-right ideology, to just that extent it will inevitably dwindle into irrelevance.  False gods always bite the hands that worship them.

Writing for CNN, commentator Will Marshall has just written an article entitled, "The GOP's real problem is ideology."  Marshall points out the unmistakable consequences of putting ideology before reality, which ended with the Republicans' failure to capitalize on an economic environment in which they "could not lose" and lost.  Rendered majestically tone deaf by their ideology, they went out of their way to alienate African Americans, Latinos, and many women.  Marshall concludes, "A conservative governing philosophy centered on exploiting white voters' sense of cultural dispossession is a formula for political marginalization, if not demographic suicide. Any honest post-mortem of the 2012 election should lead Republican strategists to this inescapable conclusion: It's the ideology, stupid."

If, however, we visit the right wing websites, we hear very little of this kind of reflection.  There, the commentary is more largely (but by no means entirely) marked by finger pointing, denial, animosity directed at President Obama, and a protective insistence that "conservative principles" were not at fault in Republican losses (see here for one example).  A lot of the blame is falling on Governor Romney.  The word "scapegoat" comes to mind.

In sum, the theological doctrines of judgment and idolatry are important analytical tools that provide important insights into the real world of American politics.  One wishes it was otherwise.  But it isn't.

The Power of Idolatry in Our Times

When I was a grad student at the University of Maryland in the 1980s, I presented a paper in one of my classes on the missionary role in the modernization of 19th century northern Thailand.  Another student quizzed me on the motivations of the missionaries and rejected out of hand my claim that the missionaries were primarily motivated by their religious beliefs.  He argued that they went to the mission field in search of economic gain, and that fact explained their behavior.  Their beliefs were just a ruse.  Now, any fair reading of the missionary record does not substantiate that argument nor does the fact of the risks missionaries faced living in one of the most isolated places (from North America) in the world—especially health risks but also the risks attending living in a kind of social exile from their homeland.  I still remember, however, the scorn of my fellow student as I tried to make the case that faith was the primary motivation for most of the missionaries most of the time.  I knew from my own experience that faith is a powerful source of motivation.  And I knew for having spent years working with missionary documents and publications that their faith was the primary reason for their being missionaries, but my classmate rejected the whole idea out of hand.  He denied reality.

Previous to that experience in the classroom, I worked as a church-based archivist in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and the archives I managed contained a fair amount of missionary records going well back into the 19th century.  I remember a conversation with an American doctoral student working on his dissertation in the field of anthropology during which I observed that there was a wealth of material on his subject in the missionary records at the archives.  This grad student said with clear disdain in his voice, "I would never use missionary materials."  When I asked why, he replied, "Because they are biased."  Talk about the kettle complaining about the soot on the pot!  Yes, of course, missionaries wrote with a bias, which a reputable scholar will learn to read through and make allowances for.  On the other hand, they were the first Westerners to live for extended periods of time in northern Thailand, and their records contain a wealth of historical anthropological data obtainable from no other source.  This grad student rejected learning from that source because it was tainted by the religious nature of the record.

My point is that religious conservatives do not have a monopoly on self-righteous arrogance based on ignorant prejudice.  Those of us who are various degrees of liberal decry the denial of evolution and the findings of science by folks on the right while we engage in our own forms of prejudice and denial based on our own ideologies.  Ideological idolatry is no respecter of persons or philosophies or theologies.  It is a danger to us all.  For those of us who seek to live the Christian life, this is why doubt is so important.  Doubt can help us refrain from turning faith (which is a humble trust in God) into certainty (which can become an arrogant ownership of God).

Most Pastors Reject Evolution

In a report entitled, "Protestant Pastors’ Views on Creation," LifeWay Research reports its findings on the attitudes of Protestant pastors concerning evolution. LifeWay researchers interviewed over 1,000 pastors across several denominations and found that 64% strongly disagreed with the statement that, "God used evolution to create people." Conversely, some 74% strongly agreed that, "Adam and Eve were literal people."  These figures varied by region of the nation with pastors in the Northeast more likely to agree that the human race is a product of evolution and disagree with the idea that there was a literal Adam and Eve.  Mainline pastors also were more likely to hold a positive view of evolution as were pastors who had a postgraduate education, but in all cases the majority of pastors across all regions, levels of education, and whether evangelical or mainline affirmed anti-evolution beliefs.  For a good summary of the report, see Ed Stetzer's LifeWay blog (here).

Now, evolution is what they call "settled science," which means that denying its reality is precisely the same as "not believing" in gravity or the "theory" of a heliocentric solar system.  The root cause of the rejection of evolution is, of course, the desire to preserve the "truth" of Genesis 1-2.  In any event, it is discouraging to see such larger numbers of Protestant pastors rejecting evolution—assuming of course that LifeWay's findings accurately represent the views of Protestant pastors.  Without accusing the report of being inaccurate, we might still wonder just a tad since LifeWay Research is an arm of the Southern Baptist Church, a strongly anti-evolutionary denomination.

Regular readers of Rom Phra Khun will have heard much of this from me before, but these statistics are worrisome for a number of reasons.  First, in their rejection of evolution the participants in the study reject the reality of Creation.  God creates the universe and life on Earth by means of evolution.  Evolution is God's plan for Creation.  Second, in rejecting the findings of settled science, the participants only serve to drive a wedge between the faith of the church and contemporary worldviews, the worldviews we must be able to speak to if we want to bring Christ to those who hold them.  In our age, the scientific view of the world is already dominate and will grow only more so.  The same pastors who reject evolution regularly avail themselves of the benefits of medical science, which is built on evolutionary principles.  They ignore the mountains upon mountains upon mountains beyond counting of scientific data confirming evolution, which could not possibly provide the coherent picture of the reality of evolution it does if it were built on a false foundation.  Third, in their zeal to affirm the Bible as the Word of God, these pastors stand always in danger of bibliolatry, the worship of the Bible in place of God.  The great modern form of idolatry is ideology, and bibliolatry is what we might call a "stealth-idolatry," a form of idolatry posing as theology.  The Bible is God's word written, which has been preserved for us from ancient times.  It's inspiration is in the manner in which it cogently tells the Story of God's gracious, holy history with humanity.  It is a story told through the medium of ancient worldviews and values many of which simply do not make sense in 2012, but the Story itself remains powerful.  Indeed, by clinging ideologically to some of those ancient worldviews we only manage to obscure the meaning of the Story for the 21st century and make it harder to tell it to the world today.

I'm shouting down a deep dark well.  I know.  But, from time to time it is important to shout down the well, if only to remember that there are many different paths to faith in Christ.  One need not reject settled science in order to be his follower.  In fact, we can affirm settled science as a repository of clues into the nature of God's plan for humanity and Creation, if only we have the wit and wisdom to read what our forbearers in the faith called, "The Book of Nature."  Amen.

"Abandoning Self" to Ideology & Power

There is a simple rule of thumb when it comes to spiritual matters.  When an individual publicly proclaims her own spiritual righteousness, we can be sure she is not righteous.  When an individual publicly proclaims her spiritual right-ness in the context of a national political campaign for the presidency in order to cement her political base with one wing of the American Christian movement, we can be sure that she is using her religion for personal gain.  In a recent address to students at Liberty University, Lynchburg, Virginia, presidential contender Michelle Bachmann said, ""Even though I hadn't been a drinker, even though I never did drugs ... even though I hadn't been chasing around, it didn't matter. I was a sinner." She went on to say, "I radically abandoned myself to Jesus Christ."  She went on to place a series of hard core right-wing ideological positions in the context of her radical abandonment of herself to Christ including opposition to abortion, opposition to "Obamacare," and unquestioning support of Israel.  The evidently unstated assumption and assertion was that in abandoning herself to Christ she has become God's warrior or champion in the American political arena.  Her religion, that is, validates her candidacy and, by extension, God does as well.

In the realm of the Spirit, if ya got it, ya don't flaunt it.  That is basic, fundamental to spirituality across the major religions including most especially Christianity.  We are painfully aware of Jesus' struggle against self-proclaimed righteousness in his own day.  Religious establishment types in his day would stand in the temple in Jerusalem and loudly proclaim their righteousness in self-serving prayers (Matthew 6:5).  Jesus criticized them for it.  One cannot judge Bachmann's personal faith when she's not on the stump, but when she uses that faith as a political tool then the public use of it becomes fair game for analysis, and in that context it is clear that publicly she has not abandoned herself to Christ but to a religious ideology and the quest for power.  In her public expression of her ideology, we hear little spirituality.  She is, instead, bombastic, aggressive, and impressively self-righteous.  The fact that she is trailing badly in the polls only seems to bring out these traits in her all the more clearly.  Michelle Bachmann's public behavior is that of a person who is hungry for power and using religion as an avenue to gain power.

In the long history of the Christian faith, those who have radically given themselves to Christ display marks of a deep humility that is aware of how impossible it is for any person to radically abandon themselves to God.  On their knees in  prayer and meditation, they seek to give self over to God.  Let me be clear.  Any politician on the national public stage in our super-heated ideological age who claims to have given herself (or himself) to Christ is simply not to be trusted.  The words do not reflect the reality especially when they are used to "gin up the base."

Ideology, Idolatry, & the Politics of 2012

As a pastor, I generally avoid politics.  People of serious faith have different politics, and it is not a pastor's place to "advise" parishioners on which party or candidate they should support.  There are, however, limits to non-involvement and, sadly, I have to draw that line at the presidential candidacy of Rep. Michelle Bachman (R - Minn) because of the way she herself overtly and frequently combines her highly ideological religious beliefs with her politics.  Most politicians who have a serious faith, whether it be President Obama or candidate Mitt Romney, witness to their faith by the way they "play" politics.  Bachman does more and in doing so distorts the Christian faith in ways that could have serious negative impacts for our nation and for the faith if she were ever to become president.

But, rather than beat this drum myself, I recommend that RPK readers take a look at Alisa Harris' thoughtful editorial entitled, "My Take: I could have become Michele Bachmann."  Harris grew up in Bachman's ideological milieu, exposes its weaknesses, and describes at least one way to move beyond Bachman's ideological idolatry to a place that is more faithful to the actual biblical message.

Idolatry & Ideology Follow Up

Idolatry seems like such an old-fashioned, time-worn concept, but it is coming back into vogue as a useful tool for theological analysis.  And it is beginning to be a thread in posts on this blog.  Recently, one of my other threads—the one that was following Rep. Todd Akin from Missouri—ended with the observation that faith tends to devolve into ideology, which is our modern form of biblical idolatry.  Recently, I came across an article by Chuck Colson, as conservative an evangelical as you could want, entitled, "Ideology and the Budget Deal," which makes much the same point although he doesn't use the word idolatry.  In that article, Colson briefly analyzes the recent debt ceiling brouhaha, and concludes,

What this debate has demonstrated is that America is deadlocked in a titanic ideological struggle. The danger is that without responsible leadership, deadlocked societies can descend quickly into chaos. And chaos can easily lead to tyranny.

As you have heard me say many times, and it bears repeating again and again, ideology is a man-made formulation: It is the enemy of true conservatism, which is governed by revealed truth and the wisdom of those who have gone before us. And it is certainly an enemy of the Gospel which rests on revealed propositional truth.

Colson's description of ideology as a dangerous product of the human mind is spot on.  The political gamesmanship during the debt ceiling debate showcased the dangers of ideology in a way that few Americans missed.  Maybe, we'll be a little more careful about the kind of people we elect to Congress next time around.  If we elect rigid ideologues, such as Rep. Akin, to public office, what we reap are the consequences, which are starkly those of  a contemporary form of idolatry that transforms faith into ideology.  By the way, I would add to Colson's comments that ideologies are also the enemies of true liberalism.

Belief & Faith Revisited

In what amounted almost to an aside, a few days ago I described how I found a book on the history of doubt shelved in the atheism section of a  major bookstore in New Haven, Connecticut (here).  Not long after, I came across a posting entitled, "How abandoning belief rocked my world," by John Ptacek, which is about the value of doubt for discovering the limits of belief. He begins the posting by writing,

What I believe isn’t important. The fact that I can put order to my thoughts, sort them into opinions and fan them into beliefs is hardly impressive. In fact, such thinking is unavoidable. It’s what our highly evolved human brains do. They compare and contrast and judge in an endless attempt to make sense of the world around us. Believing is as automatic as walking or talking or sneezing, and about as noteworthy.

Pracek goes on to describe how he attempted to use a variety of beliefs to rise above his "animal nature," and claims that the rest of humanity is engaged in the same desperate attempt to save themselves with beliefs.  Eventually, he realized that clinging to his belief systems actually kept him from asking truly difficult questions such as, "If a clash of beliefs can be found at the root of all the violence in the world, then shouldn’t we question their validity – not the validity of any particular belief, but belief itself?"  Having then discarded all of his beliefs, he felt a sense of liberation, and he concludes,

However sacred or profound, a belief is nothing more than a thought, and thought is never the thing it describes. It can only hint at the wonders it attempts to touch. Sermons about love garble love’s ineffable beauty. Speeches about unity clank after the first syllable. Courting belief is a prescription for a virtual, not a virtuous life.

Ptacek, working from another angle, is getting at something similar to what I was working on in my recent posting,  "When Faith Becomes Ideology."  Beliefs are something we must always keep an eye on because we have a nasty inclination to transform them into idols, that is human-made "things" that we give our reverence to in place of God.  Buddhist thinkers, such as Thich Nhat Han, regularly warn about the dangers of beliefs.  They insist that Buddhism is not a way of believing but a way of practicing that leads to liberation from suffering and self.  Beliefs are a hinderance to that practice.  The Judeo-Christian tradition is also painfully aware of the dangers of ideological idolatry.  As best we can, we subordinate our beliefs to our faith, putting our trust in God in Christ rather than trusting what we believe about God in Christ.  It's an admittedly difficult distinction but one we must wrestle with continually, and doubt plays an important role in helping us find a balance between what we believe and who we trust.

Those well-meaning preachers and churches that condemn doubt do our faith a disservice.  Doubt is important and when exercised reasonably is an important aid to faith.  Amen.

When Faith Becomes Ideology

Earlier, we followed the brief controversy Rep. Todd Akin, Republican of Missouri, sparked when he claimed that liberals hate God and want to replace God with big government. While there was a momentary furor esp. among the liberal bloggers and some progressive clergy in Missouri, the budding controversy has quietly gone away. I had thought there wouldn't be much more to write about the Senate candidate, but in the midst of the battle going on in Washington over the raising the debt ceiling, Akin has unfortunately provided further fodder for comment.

He opposes the compromise bill on the raising of the debt ceiling Speaker John Boehner tried to get through the House of Representatives, evidently because it is just that—a compromise. Speaking before a local Republican group back home, Akin accused President Obama of being "a flaming socialist" while the Republican caucus is "pretty conservative." And he is convinced that the debt ceiling is not that big of a deal. The government might slow down somewhat, but it won't collapse. He also referred to the economic stimulus package originally passed while President Bush was in office as "trash."  He may be right about raising the debt ceiling, but leading national and international economists disagree with him.  They think it is a big deal.

Akin is an ideological true believer, and as we saw in those previous posts his ideological base is an ultra conservative brand of Christian faith.  He, in fact, is a seminary graduate so that he cannot be accused of being ignorant of his faith.  And that is the point.  In his heart of hearts, Akin believes that liberals like the President and his Democratic "colleagues" in Congress are against God.  Being theologically trained, he knows that rebellion against God is the very essence of sin, so they are sinful.  They are necessarily evil or, at the very least, evil-ish.  For him to compromise with Democrats and liberals is not a matter just of politics but also of faith.  He can't do it.  It would be a betrayal of everything he holds sacred.

This is what happens when faith becomes ideological.  Instead of opening the heart, it closes one's ears.  Instead of promoting a compassion that is other-oriented, it gives birth to a self-involved, stubborn refusal to see the good in the other especially if that other is "a flaming socialist."  When faith becomes ideology, it is no longer faith.  It is idolatry, which is putting something crafted by the human mind in place of God.

For a similar (if less theological) & more detailed analysis, see Richard L. Fricker, "The Christian Right's Rigid Politics."