God in America, Part 4

This week PBS showed its three part series "God in America."  Although as a whole it was a worthwhile project, I found the third and last part of it profoundly unsatisfactory.  That part dealt with religion in the United States from the end of World War II to the present.  From that presentation one would have the impression that Evangelicalism was the only thing happening in American Christianity since the 1940s (other than the very significant involvement of the Black churches in the civil rights movement.).  The major emphasis was on the political activism of conservative Evangelicalism beginning with Billy Graham and running through Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Ralph Reed, with a brief mention of Rick Warren.  Jim Wallis, with his more socially moderate Evangelicalism, got a brief mention.  The segment ended with Barack Obama, although Jeremiah Wright wasn't mentioned at all.  PBS thus gave a one-sided and incomplete picture of Christianity in America in the last sixty years.  There is a profound movement under way in American Christianity of which PBS gave not a hint.  I want here to say something briefly about that movement.

A new Reformation is under way in Christianity, and American theologians are leading the way in the popular awareness of that Reformation.  The most widely read figure in this new Reformation is Marcus Borg.  John Shelby Spong also writes prolifically and has a significant following.  These popular faces of the new Reformation are not particularly profound theologians, but they are popularizing a renewed and re-visioned Christianity that is grounded in the work of more serious theologians stretching back at least to the advent of the higher Biblical criticism of the nineteenth century.  (The PBS series mentions the higher Biblical criticism in the second episode, and it looked like they were setting up a theme of the struggle between Christians who accept that criticism and those who do not for the rest of the series; but they dropped that theme as soon as they suggested it.)  The central figure in the new Reformation is Paul Tillich, whom PBS did not mention.  My book Liberating Christianity:  Overcoming Obstacles to Faith in the New Millennium is, I trust, a contribution to this new Reformation that, while having nothing like the audience Borg and Spong have, is more theologically substantial than their work is.

The thrust of the new Reformation is that literalism must be overcome if Christianity is to survive.  PBS's series did not even hint that such an issue exists, much less that it is the central issue in Christianity today.  Literalism renders Christianity, and any other faith, unbelievable and unacceptable to people in the emerging postmodern world.  Seeing the Bible and the classic doctrines of Christianity as symbol and myth rather than as literal fact breaks them open to reveal a depth and breadth of meaning that literalism cannot remotely approach.  Borg and Spong understand that truth, although in his appeal to a mass audience Borg insists on using the term metaphor rather than the more theologically correct terms symbol and myth.  My book attempts to give that understanding  an ontological, epistemological, and theological grounding that is lacking in the work of those popular authors.

I am convinced that the main reason the formerly mainline denominations, now more properly called old line denominations, are in decline is that they have been too timid and fearful in embracing the emerging non-literal Christianity.  Seminary students in those denominations have been taught the symbolic and mythic understanding of faith for decades at least, but when they have gone into the churches they have not taught that understanding to their congregations, probably out of fear of losing members who are not receptive to the challenge of a new way of thinking.  The result has been to leave people with a faith that is neither fish nor fowl, one that rejects the extreme literalism of the religious right and the social conservatism that it supports but puts nothing with theological depth and integrity in its place.

The PBS series "God in America" was of course only a three part series totaling about six hours of content.  It could not possibly cover every important aspect of religion in America, nor could it cover any aspect of it in real depth.  Nonetheless, the final episode of that series was inexcusably one sided and overlooked the central dynamic in contemporary American Christianity.  I was quite disappointed.