Inoculated for Protection from Faith

Date Published: 06/29/2009

I remember the consternation among the adults in the Baptist church in which I grew up when John Kennedy was running for president in 1960. I was in junior high and just old enough to be aware that they thought a Roman Catholic President would be unwelcome if not dangerous. As the campaign unfolded, John Kennedy assured the electorate that his religion would not affect how he governed the country. His American values would supersede his Catholic values. I’m sure some Catholic leaders at the time wondered if Catholic values influenced his private life either.

One sign of the cultural shift in the United States in the past 50 years is how many Baptists and Catholics now see each other as allies rather than rivals in the public arena. If anyone in 1960 would have predicted that five Roman Catholics would be seated on the Supreme Court and a sixth nominated in 2009, they would not have been taken seriously.

The Christian Century (June 30, 2009, p. 17) reported that some of Sonia Sotomayor’s friends have said “she does not belong to a parish and is not a frequent churchgoer.” The New York Times (May 31) wrote she “may be what religious scholars call a ‘cultural Catholic,’ … as are many U.S. Catholics who are raised in the faith and influenced by its values but not active in church.” Perhaps that description whole have somewhat assured the people in my Baptist home church in 1960, but today it would probably be a source of doubt and anxiety. They’d feel a lot closer kinship with a practicing Catholic.

I have no intention in commenting on Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Rather, I am struck by the phrase: “raised in the faith and influenced by its values but not active in church.” This strikes me as another description of the secular people that I wrote about in my previous post. Especially in an area like Dallas, with its plethora of churches, a lot of people were inoculated as children by the church in a way that protected them from authentic, adult faith. They might even enjoy dipping into church for some special occasions as a kind of cultural artifact, evoking nostalgia or comfort, but life does not flow from faith.

In my 34 years of ordained ministry, I have been increasingly concerned about people who are fairly active church members but treat their faith and the church as one of several avocations rather than the center around which all of life revolves. Church activities are cultural artifacts that reinforce rather than challenge complacency.

There are not only cultural Catholics, there are also cultural Baptist, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and yes, even cultural Disciples of Christ. But few people younger than 50 regard these identifies as particularly significant. If they are active in a congregation, they do so because it fits them more than that they were born into it. Secular people may still describe themselves as Baptists (or whatever denominational tradition in which they were inoculated as children) even though they have little if any involvement with a community of faith or even with God.

To think of evangelism and church growth as equivalent or interchangeable may only reinforce diluted cultural religion. What is needed is an invitation to center life around an intimate faith relationship with Jesus and a community of people who share that identity.