So did all of you survive the latest War on Christmas (which I suppose ended with Epiphany a few days ago)? I hope so.
Do the alarmists who go on an aggressive “Merry Christmas” offensive each year have a point about the onward march of secularism in our society? Of course they do. It’s been spreading wildly since what practitioners are pleased to call the “Enlightenment.”
But sometimes the warriors are a bit off with some of their assumptions. For instance, many Defenders of Our Faith As They Understand It would probably tell you that The New York Times is practically the Seal Team Six of the secularist aggression, second only to Starbucks in its zeal to wipe out all mentions of God.
And sure, the best newspaper (not necessarily my favorite, but probably the one that does the best overall job with its considerable resources) in such a growingly secular society as ours will include all sorts of views, including those of mockers of the Almighty. Good papers do that.
But since (I suppose) relatively few faithful Defenders actually subscribe to the paper, most of them probably missed something I saw, and was impressed by over the Holidays (oops, there I go being, if not secular, inclusive…).
Several opinion columnists — including some of my favorites — undertook to celebrate the season by reflecting seriously, thoughtfully and respectfully on holy matters.
I didn’t make a study of it at the time, and I can’t tell you how many writers did this, or whether it was a group project or something each was inspired on his own to write. But I enjoyed them all.
Two were written by folks who make enough of a habit of writing on faith that there was no surprise at all about it. They were Ross Douthat and David Brooks. I enjoyed their pieces, as I usually do, but there was less in them that I hadn’t read before. They’re still worth reading, though, especially if you don’t read them all the time. Douthat’s piece was headlined “Religion Has Been in Decline. This Christmas Seems Different.” Brooks’ was “The Shock of Faith: It’s Nothing Like I Thought It Would Be.”
But the ones that really impressed me were by Nicholas Kristof, one of my favorite liberal columnists, and David French, an evangelical conservative with whom I am less familiar.
Let’s look first at the French column, “What if Our Democracy Can’t Survive Without Christianity?”
Some of our more reflexive “liberals” are already bristling at that headline, saying Just like an evangelical to come up with something like that! But the thing is, he’s right, and he’s not the only one saying it here. In fact, this is less a “column” and more a transcript of a dialogue French had with his friend Jonathan Rauch, described here as “a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an atheist.”
In fact, the conversation was inspired more by Rauch, who has an upcoming book that I now hope to read, titled “Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain With Democracy.”
That’s something French has been thinking about, too. As a real Christian conservative, unlike the many we see gathering around Donald Trump, he has been appalled at what he has seen the last few years and wondering why he himself had been unable to see it coming. As he puts it:
Now we’ve finished a third consecutive presidential election when evangelicals voted overwhelmingly for one of the most immoral and cruel men ever to run for president.
This experience taught me something: Sometimes critics outside a community can see the community more clearly in some ways than those who live inside. They can see its virtues, how it interacts with the rest of the public in ways that we would admire and want to emulate, and we can also see the flaws that can demonstrate moral failings….
So he turned to Rauch. And Rauch’s point, though he is an unbeliever, is that what our country really needs is for Christians to act like… Christians:
What really needs to happen to get our country on a better track is for Christianity not to become more secular or more liberal, but to become more like itself, to become more truly Christian.
I came to that for a few reasons, but one of them is knowing people like you and other Christians who showed me that the three fundamentals of Christianity map very well onto the three fundamentals of Madisonian liberalism. And one of those is don’t be afraid. No. 2 is be like Jesus. Imitate Jesus. And No. 3 is forgive each other. And those things are very much like how you run a constitutional republic.
I agree with both, as this is something I’ve been thinking about for years, and contemplating writing a book of my own about. In fact, I hope to rough that book out this year, if I possibly can. It’s something I want to write whether anyone is interested in publishing it or not.
I’ll tell you more when I actually get something written. Now, let’s move on to Kristof.
His piece is called “A Conversation About the Virgin Birth That Maybe Wasn’t,” and as you might guess from that, it is also less of a column and more of a transcript of a conversation. Kristof calls it “the latest in my occasional series of conversations about Christianity, aimed at bridging America’s God gulf.”
This conversation is with Elaine Pagels, whom Kristof describes as “a prominent professor of religion at Princeton University and an expert on the early church.” She also has a book coming out, which I’ve already put on my Amazon gift list. It’s called Miracles and Wonder.
This is one that will quite provocative to many Christians, including many of my fellow Catholics. Ms. Pagels points out that some of the Evangelists — Mark, for instance — don’t ever mention a Virgin Birth. And here’s the most provocative bit:
The most startling element of your book to me was that you cite evidence going back to the first and second centuries that some referred to Jesus as the son of a Roman soldier named Panthera…
It’s not that much of a shock to me because I’ve read about that before — and even, as Kristof and Ms. Pagels mention here, that the Roman soldier raped the woman we see as the Mother of God. That’s horrifically painful to contemplate, but when we have more time, I’ll explain to you why I would revere Mary just as much if such a shocking thing turned out to be true.
In other words, I believe in the Virgin Birth, in a way that might remind you of the way the young Jewish protagonist of the Philip Roth story “The Conversion of the Jews” does. But it’s not as central to my belief in God and Jesus and Mary as it is to a lot of my co-religionists.
What I try to focus on is what Jesus came to tell us all about what another atheist writer, Douglas Adams, facetiously referred to as “Life, the Universe and Everything.”
Which is what Kristof and the lady he’s talking with do as well. As she says,
A professor friend said to me: “I’m an atheist. How can you believe all that stuff?” First of all, as I see it, “believing all that stuff” is not the point. The Christian message, as I experienced it, was transformational. It encouraged me to treat other people well and opened up a world of imagination and wonder…
That’s putting it more mildly than I would. In other words, as Jesus explained, the two greatest commandments are as follows:
36“Teacher,* which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37j He said to him,* “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38This is the greatest and the first commandment. 39k The second is like it:* You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Or as French’s atheist friend put it, it’s about Christians acting like Christians — real ones.
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