Conversion, Part One
“Within the Christian community there has been a great divide between those who understand salvation in essentially private or essentially public terms. In the privatized version, salvation is essentially a matter of my getting my soul into heaven, while the rest of reality we call history can, quite literally, go to hell. This is the stereotype (my emphasis added) of a certain kind of fundamentalist and revivalistic Protestantism. In this version of the Christian message the world is condemned, and the most urgent question, indeed the only question is, “Are you saved?” Christians outside the fundamentalist camp have been generally critical of this understanding of salvation. They have insisted that the gospel is of public significance, that it provides a context of meaning that illuminates human experience within actual history. Thus it has been thought that fundamentalism, with its focus upon privatized salvation, is indifferent to history, while liberal Christianity takes history seriously but shortchanges the quest for private, or personal, salvation. This way of understanding our differences is, I believe, no longer adequate.”
Richard John Neuhaus – The Naked Public Square (page 15)
No one I’ve read in the last ten years has expressed better than John Neuhaus the tension between these two Christian camps and the political world we live in today.
On one hand you have a group (liberal Christianity) that until the 1980’s had dominated the American social landscape. On the other you have a group (Neuhaus calls them fundamental or revivalistic) who, after a long absence, have re-entered the public debate. That has meant, in turn, that one Christian camp, which was almost unchallenged in the public arena for decades since the 1925 Scopes trial, had to compete with a rival to get its message out to the public, particularly those with political power.
The debate began in earnest in the 1980’s with the ascent of the Moral Majority and other conservative Christian organizations.
Now it must be explained that the rise of the “religious right” was not only a response to the politics of the time, but also to the theology.
For me the debate began back in the late seventies and early eighties when I was attending seminary. I was working toward a masters degree in theology, having decided to avoid the master of divinity program the seminary offered. I did it because, as I used to tell other students, I wanted to avoid becoming “smarter than God.” I’d read enough theology, particularly Thomas Altizer, to know that there are times and circumstances when one can profess to be wise and actually be a fool. We used to have raging debates about the theology of the times, particularly the “God is dead” theology that was in vogue. A sample of Altizer’s wisdom follows to give you a flavor of what I mean:
“Only when God is dead can Being begin in every Now. Eternal Recurrence is neither a cosmology nor a metaphysical idea: it is Nietzsche’s symbol of the deepest affirmation of existence, of Yes-saying. Accordingly, Eternal Recurrence is a symbolic portrait of the truly contemporary man, the man who dares to live in our time, in our history, in our existence.”
Seminarians used to love to run around quoting Altizer in those days. My question to them was always, “How would explain that to a cab driver or a stevedore or a baker or a butcher or a candlestick maker?” They couldn’t (or wouldn’t) of course, but it didn’t seem to matter to them. Did the “God is dead” theology, and other theologies of the time, build their faith. Read these words from Altizer, put yourself in seminary classroom, and imagine what they would do for you:
“Another and intimately related form of Christianity’s new estrangement was posed by the historical discovery of the eschatological "scandal" of New Testament faith. Modern scholarship unveiled a Jesus who is a "stranger and enigma to our time" (Schweitzer’s words) because his whole message and ministry were grounded in an expectation of the immediate coming of the end of the world. The Jesus whom we "know" is a deluded Jewish fanatic, his message is wholly eschatological, and hence Jesus and his message are totally irrelevant to our time and situation.”
If there are any cab drivers who happen to be Christians reading this post I’ll translate briefly for you. Your faith is useless and you’re on your own in this world. Comforting words, wouldn’t you say?
The divide between the Christian camps I mentioned earlier came into focus in these classes. The long and short of what I learned was that if I wanted to be engaged in the world I’d better act like God didn’t exist at all. So, if I’d come to seminary to learn and then go out into the world and contribute meaningfully to society I had to abandon the very faith that had brought me there. I could go and call it Christianity. I just couldn’t act like it really meant anything.
But I was, as Altizer had said, a man who would “dare to live in our time.” I was a fundamentalist who, I believe, had his feet on the ground.
I hadn’t always been that way. I won’t bore you with the details right now, especially after you’ve had to muddle your way through a couple of snippets of Altizer. Perhaps in some later post I’ll fill you in. I’ll give you just enough to let you know what experiences guided my decisions in life.
It’s safe, I believe, to say that my background truly did inform my pilgrimage. My father had died when I, my brother, and sister, were very young. He died of tuberculosis which had been helped along by alcoholism and the stereotypical Irish gift of melancholy. My mother went into a deep depression and was subsequently “hospitalized” for years. This left us as “wards of the state.” We were sent to a preventorium in Mattapan (a suburb close to Boston) to ensure we were taken care of and to also ensure that we didn’t contract the tuberculosis that had killed my father.
While I can’t say we were treated badly there, I can say that I came to see that kindness does not always translate into caring. The kind of caring I experienced in Mattapan was one that taught me to always be grateful to my benefactors. The kindness seemed to me to have no inner life at all. It had all the outward trappings of kindness, the food, the medicine, etc. But it didn’t have any of the inward signs of caring. I never remember once having anyone ask me how I felt about wanting to go home with my mother. I never heard anyone ask me what I wanted to do.
This, for me, was lesson number one. I was state property.
Lesson number two came later. My mother was released from the “hospital” after about eight years of therapy, shock treatment, and God knows what else. At that time my brother was sent to a trade school, my sister to some relatives in Maynard (another suburb of Boston), and I got to go home to live with my mother in Cambridge, just across the Charles River from Boston. One of my mother’s first tasks was to get me some “religion.” She started sending me to Christ Church, which still holds the distinction of being the oldest church in the city (it was established in 1759). I have very little in the way of significant memories of my first few years there. As I grew and became more thoughtful, though, things changed. In the two or three years after my mother and I moved to Cambridge my brother and sister also came back home. We were a family once again after years of separation. They were among the happiest years of my life. While my sister and I didn’t get along especially well, I still loved having her at home. But my greatest joy was being around my brother. We spent our non school time playing stickball. He was four years older than me and used the age advantage he had to the fullest. I don’t remember how many sixteen hit shutouts he pitched against me in those days, but there were a lot. He took great delight in allowing me to load the bases and then turn to his patented “pimple ball curve” and strike me out to end every threat. As the ball would pass my stick (bat) he’d howl with delight, “Yerrrrr ouuuuuttttt.”
I’d have a momentary fit of anger, but I really didn’t mind. Just being around him was enough for me.
It was around this time that I began to develop my own religious thinking. We became acolytes at Christ Church, read from the Book of Common Prayer, took instruction, and observed the mysterious liturgy of the Episcopal Church. I developed a real interest in matters of faith during those days. I attended classes “religiously.” I even started having dreams about mysterious things. One recurring dream was of me sitting at our apartment window and seeing “a man” being crucified on the privacy fence that surrounded our complex. After five or six episodes I asked the rector of the church what the dream meant. “I don’t know,” he responded.
“Could it have been God talking to me?”
“Maybe.”
“What would He be saying?”
“Well, I’m not sure He was talking to you so I can’t really answer the question.”
There was really a more burning question for me, a question that had haunted me since I was a little boy. “Does God know when you’re going to die?”
“Why do you want to know that?”
“I just do.”
“You really want to know.”
“Yes.”
“I’m afraid that’s something He doesn’t know. It’s not like He’s got a clock and says, ‘well it’s 6:00 PM, I guess I’d better go and get Phil Dillon.” It just doesn’t work that way. You wouldn’t want it that way.”
“I would.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to know He’s not just out there. I want to know that He’s here too.”
“I wish I could help you but I can’t.”
“Was that Jesus in my dreams?”
“Well Jesus went to sit at the right hand of God.”
“Do you mean He’s not here?”
“Well, He’s here because you’re here.”
“Why can’t He be here and there at the same time?”
I got no answer, only the silence that told me I had asked one too many questions.
The second lesson I learned in my youth was that I was, as many theologians say, on my own.
As I look back at it now I realize that I was having a dialogue with the rector about transcendence and immanence. I wanted both, but I got no answer then. It was to take years until I did.
In my next post I’ll explain how J Paul Getty gave me the final nudge in my abandoning of faith, how William Shakespeare brought me back to a place where I could believe, and how the Jesus who hung on the privacy fence in my young dreams answered the questions no one else could.
Conversion, Part Two, tomorrow.
Richard John Neuhaus – The Naked Public Square (page 15)
No one I’ve read in the last ten years has expressed better than John Neuhaus the tension between these two Christian camps and the political world we live in today.
On one hand you have a group (liberal Christianity) that until the 1980’s had dominated the American social landscape. On the other you have a group (Neuhaus calls them fundamental or revivalistic) who, after a long absence, have re-entered the public debate. That has meant, in turn, that one Christian camp, which was almost unchallenged in the public arena for decades since the 1925 Scopes trial, had to compete with a rival to get its message out to the public, particularly those with political power.
The debate began in earnest in the 1980’s with the ascent of the Moral Majority and other conservative Christian organizations.
Now it must be explained that the rise of the “religious right” was not only a response to the politics of the time, but also to the theology.
For me the debate began back in the late seventies and early eighties when I was attending seminary. I was working toward a masters degree in theology, having decided to avoid the master of divinity program the seminary offered. I did it because, as I used to tell other students, I wanted to avoid becoming “smarter than God.” I’d read enough theology, particularly Thomas Altizer, to know that there are times and circumstances when one can profess to be wise and actually be a fool. We used to have raging debates about the theology of the times, particularly the “God is dead” theology that was in vogue. A sample of Altizer’s wisdom follows to give you a flavor of what I mean:
“Only when God is dead can Being begin in every Now. Eternal Recurrence is neither a cosmology nor a metaphysical idea: it is Nietzsche’s symbol of the deepest affirmation of existence, of Yes-saying. Accordingly, Eternal Recurrence is a symbolic portrait of the truly contemporary man, the man who dares to live in our time, in our history, in our existence.”
Seminarians used to love to run around quoting Altizer in those days. My question to them was always, “How would explain that to a cab driver or a stevedore or a baker or a butcher or a candlestick maker?” They couldn’t (or wouldn’t) of course, but it didn’t seem to matter to them. Did the “God is dead” theology, and other theologies of the time, build their faith. Read these words from Altizer, put yourself in seminary classroom, and imagine what they would do for you:
“Another and intimately related form of Christianity’s new estrangement was posed by the historical discovery of the eschatological "scandal" of New Testament faith. Modern scholarship unveiled a Jesus who is a "stranger and enigma to our time" (Schweitzer’s words) because his whole message and ministry were grounded in an expectation of the immediate coming of the end of the world. The Jesus whom we "know" is a deluded Jewish fanatic, his message is wholly eschatological, and hence Jesus and his message are totally irrelevant to our time and situation.”
If there are any cab drivers who happen to be Christians reading this post I’ll translate briefly for you. Your faith is useless and you’re on your own in this world. Comforting words, wouldn’t you say?
The divide between the Christian camps I mentioned earlier came into focus in these classes. The long and short of what I learned was that if I wanted to be engaged in the world I’d better act like God didn’t exist at all. So, if I’d come to seminary to learn and then go out into the world and contribute meaningfully to society I had to abandon the very faith that had brought me there. I could go and call it Christianity. I just couldn’t act like it really meant anything.
But I was, as Altizer had said, a man who would “dare to live in our time.” I was a fundamentalist who, I believe, had his feet on the ground.
I hadn’t always been that way. I won’t bore you with the details right now, especially after you’ve had to muddle your way through a couple of snippets of Altizer. Perhaps in some later post I’ll fill you in. I’ll give you just enough to let you know what experiences guided my decisions in life.
It’s safe, I believe, to say that my background truly did inform my pilgrimage. My father had died when I, my brother, and sister, were very young. He died of tuberculosis which had been helped along by alcoholism and the stereotypical Irish gift of melancholy. My mother went into a deep depression and was subsequently “hospitalized” for years. This left us as “wards of the state.” We were sent to a preventorium in Mattapan (a suburb close to Boston) to ensure we were taken care of and to also ensure that we didn’t contract the tuberculosis that had killed my father.
While I can’t say we were treated badly there, I can say that I came to see that kindness does not always translate into caring. The kind of caring I experienced in Mattapan was one that taught me to always be grateful to my benefactors. The kindness seemed to me to have no inner life at all. It had all the outward trappings of kindness, the food, the medicine, etc. But it didn’t have any of the inward signs of caring. I never remember once having anyone ask me how I felt about wanting to go home with my mother. I never heard anyone ask me what I wanted to do.
This, for me, was lesson number one. I was state property.
Lesson number two came later. My mother was released from the “hospital” after about eight years of therapy, shock treatment, and God knows what else. At that time my brother was sent to a trade school, my sister to some relatives in Maynard (another suburb of Boston), and I got to go home to live with my mother in Cambridge, just across the Charles River from Boston. One of my mother’s first tasks was to get me some “religion.” She started sending me to Christ Church, which still holds the distinction of being the oldest church in the city (it was established in 1759). I have very little in the way of significant memories of my first few years there. As I grew and became more thoughtful, though, things changed. In the two or three years after my mother and I moved to Cambridge my brother and sister also came back home. We were a family once again after years of separation. They were among the happiest years of my life. While my sister and I didn’t get along especially well, I still loved having her at home. But my greatest joy was being around my brother. We spent our non school time playing stickball. He was four years older than me and used the age advantage he had to the fullest. I don’t remember how many sixteen hit shutouts he pitched against me in those days, but there were a lot. He took great delight in allowing me to load the bases and then turn to his patented “pimple ball curve” and strike me out to end every threat. As the ball would pass my stick (bat) he’d howl with delight, “Yerrrrr ouuuuuttttt.”
I’d have a momentary fit of anger, but I really didn’t mind. Just being around him was enough for me.
It was around this time that I began to develop my own religious thinking. We became acolytes at Christ Church, read from the Book of Common Prayer, took instruction, and observed the mysterious liturgy of the Episcopal Church. I developed a real interest in matters of faith during those days. I attended classes “religiously.” I even started having dreams about mysterious things. One recurring dream was of me sitting at our apartment window and seeing “a man” being crucified on the privacy fence that surrounded our complex. After five or six episodes I asked the rector of the church what the dream meant. “I don’t know,” he responded.
“Could it have been God talking to me?”
“Maybe.”
“What would He be saying?”
“Well, I’m not sure He was talking to you so I can’t really answer the question.”
There was really a more burning question for me, a question that had haunted me since I was a little boy. “Does God know when you’re going to die?”
“Why do you want to know that?”
“I just do.”
“You really want to know.”
“Yes.”
“I’m afraid that’s something He doesn’t know. It’s not like He’s got a clock and says, ‘well it’s 6:00 PM, I guess I’d better go and get Phil Dillon.” It just doesn’t work that way. You wouldn’t want it that way.”
“I would.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to know He’s not just out there. I want to know that He’s here too.”
“I wish I could help you but I can’t.”
“Was that Jesus in my dreams?”
“Well Jesus went to sit at the right hand of God.”
“Do you mean He’s not here?”
“Well, He’s here because you’re here.”
“Why can’t He be here and there at the same time?”
I got no answer, only the silence that told me I had asked one too many questions.
The second lesson I learned in my youth was that I was, as many theologians say, on my own.
As I look back at it now I realize that I was having a dialogue with the rector about transcendence and immanence. I wanted both, but I got no answer then. It was to take years until I did.
In my next post I’ll explain how J Paul Getty gave me the final nudge in my abandoning of faith, how William Shakespeare brought me back to a place where I could believe, and how the Jesus who hung on the privacy fence in my young dreams answered the questions no one else could.
Conversion, Part Two, tomorrow.
posted by Phil Dillon, Prairie Apologist at 3:39 PM
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