Stephen W. Rankin
You may have read or heard that the 113th Congress just installed its first Hindu member of the House, first Buddhist Senator (who admits that she doesn’t currently “practice”) and its first “none” (no religious affiliation of any sort) who is also the first openly bi-sexual member of Congress. For good reason, a Washington Post article describes this Congress as the most diverse in history.
The increasing religious (and sexual) diversity of our country is now showing up in the highest levels of political leadership. Which category is shrinking? Protestant. Am I alarmed? No. But it does make me think about how a United Methodist Christian like me bears witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Some thoughts in light of the trend:
1. We’ve been here before. I like Rodney Stark’s slightly pugilistic style in his book The Triumph of Christianity. In the chapter, entitled “Assessing Christian Growth,” he estimates that the church grew from a best guess of 1,000 adherents ca. 40 CE/AD to almost 32 million by the year 350. That 32 million figure constitutes roughly 53% of the population of the Roman Empire. He argues, furthermore, that this growth did not happen through a bunch of miraculous events, but, rather, through the normal day-to-day witness of Christians willing to love their neighbors. For example, when the plague hit Rome and people with means mostly left the city, the Christians stayed behind and nursed the sick, risking their own health in the process.
This observation reminds me that Christians do not need to maintain social control in order to demonstrate effective witness. In fact, having social control tempts us to think that we need social control in order to be faithful Christians. We do not.
2. The more religiously diverse our country and culture become, the more knowledgeable we Christians need to be about our faith, at least about the basic doctrines and, more specifically, about questions that people have about religious faith that those basic teachings address. We have something good and deeply relevant to share.
As with point #1, we’ve got some work to do. Christians in the United States as a lot are far less theologically/doctrinally knowledgeable than our ancestors, even though we have more easy access to the teachings. There is an irony here, to be sure.
3. The more religiously diverse we become, the less plausible the “religions are all pretty much the same” conceit becomes. It is a common refrain among college students especially. A certain category of religious pluralists help to perpetuate this sentiment, even if they don’t mean to do so (and some of them do mean it).
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