New York Times: How to Replace Christian Nationalism, by David Brooks:
Every once in a while I come across a passage in a book that hits me with the force of revelation. Here’s one: “A person’s way of being human is the most authentic expression of their belief or unbelief. A person’s life speaks more about their faith than what they think or say about God.”
That passage is from Tomas Halik’s book “The Afternoon of Christianity.” Halik is a Czech sociologist, priest and philosopher. When the Czech Republic was Communist, he served in the underground church; after 1989, he was a close friend and adviser to Vaclav Havel and an admirer of Pope Francis. I like the passage because Halik is cutting through the categories we commonly use to define people. … Once you put people into categorical boxes, you are inviting them to see history as a zero-sum conflict between this group and that one. And sure enough, today we live in a political, cultural and religious war between two impoverished armies.
On the one side are the Christian nationalists, who practice a debauched form of their faith. Christian nationalism is particular rather than universal. It is about protecting “us” against “them” — the native versus the immigrant. It is about power more than love. It is about threat more than hope. It is rigid and pharisaical rather than personal and merciful.
On the other side are the exhausted remains of secular humanism. That humanism started out trying to liberate people from dogma, but it has produced societies in which people feel alienated, naked and alone. It has failed to formulate a shared moral order that might help people find meaning and solidarity in their lives. It is so enfeebled that it is being replaced by the religion of the phone — by shallow, technological modes of living.
When I read Halik’s passage I immediately glimpsed a way out of this stale and life-deforming culture war. That passage reminds us, first, that the categories in our heads are inadequate for the great diversity of human questing we see around us. …
Halik’s passage reminds us, second, of what matters most. To get a little preachy, it’s not the propositions that come out of our mouths but the care that flows from our hearts. It’s how we each try to fulfill the task of being human.
If there is one thing I have learned in my adult life it is that the passions of the heart precede and are greater than the machinery of reason. The theologian says that deep down each person possesses a yearning soul. The cognitive scientist says that deep down each person possesses unconscious layers from which desires flow, where 99.9 percent of our thinking gets done. Whether your language is spiritual or scientific, the bottom line is that the energy that animates the world emerges from the human depths, from the mysterious regions where passions form. …
“Humans were created by God in God’s image and the desire for God was implanted in the structure of our humanity,” Halik writes. In his own book “Passions of the Soul,” the former archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, writes, “If we are growing in spiritual maturity and discernment, what we desire is always to go on growing and to go on desiring.” …
Seen in this light, we’re not warriors clashing, we’re sojourners exploring. …
Which brings me to the third point inspired by that Halik passage. Today, we’ve been trained to think in battleground metaphors — believer versus nonbeliever, MAGA versus the wokesters. But if we’re going to get out of this nasty age of ours, we’re going to have to see the world through pilgrimage metaphors instead.
In the Book of Exodus, Moses asks to see God’s face, but God shows him only his back. Perhaps that’s because you don’t see the face of one you are following. The early church father Gregory of Nyssa argued that Christians are meant to attend Christ in exactly this way — to follow, to move in the direction of Jesus’ movement. Christian faith, Halik argues, is a journey toward and with Jesus, who said, “I am the way.”
You can choose to live your life in the trenches, going nowhere, and good luck with that. Culture warriors are static, and their certainties are terrifying. The Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert once observed that human beings are works in progress who think they are finished. But people who see themselves as pilgrims know they are unfinished; they know they are still on a journey that will change them. They embrace the dynamic, forward flowing nature of life. If they are clawing at anything, it’s not one another but the brambles that block their common path. …
Led by these wise people like Halik and Williams, I now see glimmers of a better way to be faithful in the world.
Editor’s Note: If you would like to receive a weekly email each Sunday with links to faith posts on TaxProf Blog, email me here.
