Spiritual But Not Religious? BY REID LOCKLIN
The Professor: s a college sophomore in East Tennessee, I certainly would not have called myself a Christian. Yet it was at this very time in my life that I wrestled seriously with faith in a God who had assumed human flesh for our salvation. The reason was simple enough: I had enrolled in a course on Indian culture and religion. The course texts were the twin Hindu epics, Ramayana and BhagavadGita. In the figure of Rama—hero of the Ramayana—I encountered humanity writ large, a dramatic hero journeying, fighting demons, and crossing a great ocean to recover his beloved wife in relentless accord with holy duty, or dharma. In the Gita, on the other hand, I met the revealer of dharma itself, divinity writ small, the charioteer Krishna. These were the images of an incarnate God with which members of my class were beginning to grapple. Gathered in a circle around the Professor, whose expertise ex-tended from Indian religions through William Faulkner to farming in the Mississippi heartland, we probed these ideals, familiar to some but coming now from an unexpected source. How did these Hindu ideas of incarnation compare with those taught in the Christian Churches? One of my colleagues, perhaps the most outspoken critic of institutional religion in the class, voiced a strong opinion. “There’s nothing special about Christianity. All of these religions are just basically cults of personalty.” Although I found more value in general notions of God and spiritual life than did my friend, I concurred with his basic point. All religions are the same, for better or for worse. There’s nothing that gives a religion like Christianity, or Hinduism for that matter, some kind of privileged status. The Professor considered the objection for a few moments and smoothed his thin white mustache. “There is something unique,” he finally drawled. “Christ.” In retrospect, I know that there are several ways that the Professor might have developed this idea. He might, like the nineteenth-century scholar Adolf von Harnack, have given a long lecture on the unique moral excellence or religious intuition of the historical
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Jesus of Nazareth, trying to illustrate how this figure stands totally apart, not only from Rama or Krishna, but also from his Jewish and Hellenistic contemporaries. Or the Professor might, like the third- and fourth-century historian Eusebius of Caesarea, have given an account of the remarkable success of the church that followed in this historical figure’s wake. Finally, the Professor might, like so many shrill voices in our contemporary world, have insisted upon the uniqueness of Christ and the Church and inviolable principles to which any person of faith must hold absolutely and unrelentingly fast—simply cutting short any voice that ventures to question this assertion. The Professor, wisely, chose none of these options. Perhaps he saw that they are all, ultimately, dead ends. Instead, he uttered the single word: “Christ.” Then he paused, offered a gentle, enigmatic smile...and moved on to other topics. In my imagination, the word reverberated throughout the classroom. What makes Christianity unique? Just Christ, that’s all: an answer—or, perhaps, non-answer—as obvious as it was elusive. My mind couldn’t struggle free of its elegant simplicity. I was still not yet Christian. But I was intrigued. The Priest: ust a few months separated the moment the Professor intrigued me with that single word from the moment I stumbled across the path of the Priest. It wasn’t as though I had never heard the word “Christ” before. In fact, my early years were largely defined by a vague commitment to various Christian communities insofar as they involved me in choir, youth retreats, and comic book treatments of the Apocalypse. Along the way, however, a combination of academic study, a deepening sensitivity to cultural and religious diversity, and a healthy dose of shallow nonconformism had worn down my would-be faith, leaving a more or less secular humanism in its wake. Pressed to give a reason for spurning the Church, I might have used the example of an independent Baptist congregation across the way from the house of a close friend. Internal divisions had driven the congregation to reject one pastor after another;
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eventually, such divisions led to what I believed was a deliberate torching of the church steeple by an irate parishioner. Much later, I would discover that the steeple had in fact been struck by lightening. But this inconvenient fact did not alter my basic conclusion: as far as I could tell, the only part of the Church that appeared to be fulfilling its authentic purpose was the graveyard. To me, the conclusion from this and other examples of religious dysfunction seemed obvious. The great religions of the world, especially Christianity, resembled the kudzu-draped trees I often saw along highways in my north Georgia home: whatever life-giving idea had once sprouted and reached for the heavens there had long since suffocated under a dark canopy of corrupt institutions and empty religiosity. As we have already seen, it was the Professor who piqued my curiosity and set me on a new course. Nevertheless, as I began to look at Christianity anew and to test the waters in various faith communities, I renounced none of my criticisms and acted them out in a definite and predictable way. After attending a few services, I would make a private appointment or somehow corner the pastor with a few pointed questions. One of these questions went to the heart of my concerns: “What about corruption in the institutional Church?” The answers I received inevitably struck me as, at best, historically naïve, or at worst, deeply selfdeceptive. So I moved from one community to another, searching for a religious leader who could answer my questions with honesty and intelligence, all the while quietly confident that none would. This is when I encountered the Priest. We met in his office at the local Catholic student center, where I had attended Mass with friends several times already. The Priest surprised me a bit by coming out from behind his desk and sitting in a chair directly across from me. I was a bit unnerved by his clerical garb and collar, having moved in predominantly Protestant circles thus far, but I suppose I also felt that such obvious institutional accoutrement virtually guaranteed his defeat by the sharp edge of my critique. Besides, by this point I had the pattern down cold. I warmed him up with pleasant banter around my background
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and studies, asked a few purely informational leading questions about Catholic practice and belief, and then let him have it. “So, what about corruption in the institution? What about all the wrongs that have been committed in the name of the Church?” “What”, I asserted forcefully in various ways, “about the mess that you and yours have made of your adherence to this tradition? What about all the failures and injustice? What, in short, about the real Church of history and day-to-day life? What about that?” I don’t remember for sure, but I think the Priest shrugged. “What about it?” I was stunned into silence. Was this sarcasm or indifference? Neither, as it turned out. The Priest continued with something like the following. “It’s not really the right question, is it? I mean, you’re old enough to have seen something of the world. What do you know about organized groups like school administrations, the United States government, or even your clique of closest friends? Whenever people get together to organize much of anything they screw it up. You inevitably find domination, manipulation, and vindictive assaults—rhetorical or actual—on those who are regarded as outsiders. Now apply that insight to what might be the largest single organization in the world. What do you think is going to happen? “So there is massive corruption in the Church. What about it? If you know anything about history or sociology, this is not an interesting question.” He leaned forward. “I’ll give you a question that is interesting. The institutions of the Church are corrupt. Okay. What are you going to do about it? What, exactly is your stake in the question going to be?” A year and a half later I received baptism, confirmation, and First Communion in the Roman Catholic Church. Reid Locklin, Ph.D., teaches in the Christianity and Culture Program at Saint Michael’s College and the University of Toronto. Reprinted with permission from Spiritual But Not Religious? An Oar Stroke Closer to the Farther Shore (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2005).
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C21 RESOURCES
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2006
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