|
 ith
which outsiders may a religious believer pray without betraying
his own religious tradition? That's the question roiling the conservative
Lutheran Church-Missouri
Synod, whose 2.6 million members make it the smaller of the
two major Lutheran churches in America. And it's more important
to religion and morality in America than you might think.
On September
23 of last year, the Rev. David Benke, the church's Atlantic district
president, offered a prayer at the Yankee Stadium ecumenical memorial
service for the World Trade Center victims. Though Benke shared
the stage with Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Christian clergy, he prayed
explicitly in the name of Jesus Christ.
That wasn't
good enough for some of the more conservative church members, who
have lodged formal charges against Benke with the Missouri Synod's
governing body. The accusers — 17 pastors and one congregation
— allege that Benke's presence and prayer crossed the line
into "syncretism," which the LCMS defines as espousing
the belief that all religions are equally true. Benke's defenders
say that official church policy allows a pastor to pray at a civic
event with non-Christians, as long as he is able to pray explicitly
in Jesus' name — which Benke did.
Church officials
are no longer commenting on the dispute, which is expected to be
resolved this spring. A top source within the LCMS said, however,
that much depends first on whether you view the Yankee Stadium service
as a civic event or a religious service, and second on whether you
believe Benke was praying with the other religious leaders,
or in the midst of them.
To be sure,
a case could be made that this kind of sectarian pettiness gives
religion a bad name. Yet even if some go too far, the Lutherans
are asking the right questions, particularly at a time when syncretism
— what others call "universalism" — is a grave
threat to religious identity and moral reasoning.
The Lutherans
implicitly understand that if all religions, with their competing
truth claims, are considered equally valid, then there is no such
thing as absolute truth. This soft nihilism is increasingly dominant
in American society. Consider the following poll results from the
California-based
Barna Research Group, which tracks trends in American religious
life:
 Morality
is increasingly seen as malleable. In two recent, post-9/11 national
surveys, Americans said by a 3-to-1 margin that moral truth is relative.
A whopping 83 percent of teens embraced relativism, with 75 percent
of those 18 to 35 approving of it.
Only
two years ago (January 2000), 44 percent of Americans said moral
truth was absolute; that number had declined to 22 percent by November
2001 — implying that the September 11 attacks did nothing to
return the nation to traditional moral views.
Even
more disturbing for conservative religious leaders, only 32 percent
of Christians professing a personal commitment to Jesus Christ said
they believe in moral absolutes. The number for Christian teenagers
— a mere nine percent of whom believe in absolute moral truth
— is roughly equivalent to that of non-religious teens.
Pollster George
Barna said that compared to a similar poll ten years ago, people
today are much more likely to allow their feelings guide their moral
decision-making than the Bible or external moral codes. The result,
he said, is that substantial numbers of professing Christians believe
that abortion, gay sex, living together outside of marriage, and
viewing pornography are morally acceptable.
"Without
some firm and compelling basis for suggesting that such acts are
inappropriate, people are left with philosophies such as 'if it
feels good, do it,'" writes Barna. "The result is a mentality
that esteems pluralism, relativism, tolerance, and diversity without
critical reflection of the implications of particular views and
actions."
In light of
this, it's easier to understand why some Lutherans and others are
wary of ecumenical events that appear to discard or overlook serious
doctrinal differences among the various Christian churches, and
between Christianity and other faiths. This has been especially
true regarding post-9/11 interfaith services, which have gone heavy
on religious unity.
"It's
the lowest-common-denominator approach to interfaith dialogue, which
is reduced to what I call Rodney King theology: 'Can't we all get
along?'" says the Rev. Kendall Harmon, an Episcopal priest
in South Carolina. "It eradicates genuine differences, and
I think that's a problem. There are genuine differences between
the Muslim faith and the Christian faith, but if you listen to many,
many mainline [Christian] spokesmen in recent months, you'd never
know it was true."
Nationally
syndicated religion columnist Terry
Mattingly says that nearly all religious bodies in what he calls
"Oprah America" are grappling with some version of what
has preoccupied the Missouri Synod Lutherans.
"Part
of it is the difficulty we have in condemning anything. That's the
spirit of the age we're in," Mattingly says. "The problem
isn't saying that God exists; the problem is saying who God is."
Because ecumenism
so often goes too far — John Paul II inviting African witch
doctors to a Vatican-sponsored prayer conference for peace, for
example, or the Episcopal priest who offered a Ground Zero prayer
recognizing Muhammad and Buddha as "saints" who "led
god's people to God's Light" — it is easy to overreact.
The Greek Orthodox
monks who demonstrated against the pontiff's visit to Greece last
year may have had perfectly valid points to make about Roman heresies,
but they did themselves and the cause of honest interfaith dialogue
no good by pronouncing curses upon his head, and denouncing him
as a "two-headed grotesque monster" straight from the
book of Revelation.
"The two
perspectives that tend to get into the media are the loud, vociferous
unfair critics of ecumenism on the one hand, and the very superficial,
lowest common denominator ecumenists on the other," says Fr.
Harmon, a veteran of interfaith dialogue and cooperation. "There
are a lot of more moderate voices out there who never get heard
from."
There is a
lot to be said for tough, but respectful, honesty about religious
differences. Mattingly says his fellow Orthodox Christians were
actually pleased by the Vatican's 2000 document "Dominus Iesus,"
which inflamed many non-Catholics by restating traditional Roman
claims that salvation comes exclusively through Jesus Christ, and
that the Church of Rome is a necessary part of the salvific equation.
"The Orthodox
said they would rather deal with an honest Catholicism than with
a limp Catholicism that didn't make its truth claims," says
Mattingly. "If you're ever going to see any kind of unification
between the churches, it will have to be done on the basis of the
truth. You can't do it by making truth go away, and sitting around
singing 'Kumbaya.' And you don't have to agree with the Lutherans
here to agree that they are upset about something worth being upset
about."
|
