Rich Cizik has been a pioneer in the “new evangelical” movement and a real hero, especially to the next generation of young believers. Rich has helped lead the way to putting “creation care” and climate change on the mainstream agenda of the evangelical movement. His pilgrimage to a deep passion for the planet that God made for us has been, in his own language, a “conversion” and an “epiphany.” Because of that, he has become a powerful spokesperson for many in the Christian world who are having that same conversion. The agenda of the evangelical world is deeper and wider because of Rich Cizik. In addition to the environment and climate change, Cizik has also led on the fundamental moral and biblical issues of global poverty and commitments like the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), human trafficking, religious liberty, genocide in Darfur, and foreign policy issues like torture and even nuclear weapons. The NAE’s critically important statement, “For the Health of the Nation”, bears powerful witness to the wider agenda that is the shape of the new evangelical movement in America, and certainly around the world—especially for the next generation. But Rich Cizik resigned this week, at the request of the NAE, because of things he said in an NPR interview with Terry Gross. The controversy of some of Rich’s statements, in particular his “shifting” feelings about gay civil unions, admitting that he voted for Barack Obama in the primaries, and implying that he did so in the general election, caused so much controversy in some quarters of the NAE’s constituency that the Executive Committee felt they had no choice but to suggest resignation, which Rich quickly but sadly accepted. Rich Cizik still supports the Christian tradition of marriage between a man and a woman, which he reiterated after the interview, and that his strong pro-life commitments certainly included abortion, even though in the interview he said that pro-life commitments should include more than just abortion. He pointed out in the interview that younger evangelicals don’t have all the same views on gay and lesbian rights as their parents do, that more of them have friendships with gay people, and that more are sympathetic to their equal protection under the law and issues like civil unions. Cizik admitting that he identified with those shifts created the firestorm. All of this is very sad for many reasons. Rich has served the NAE, the evangelical movement, the wider church, and the wider world in such a dynamic, creative, and courageous way for 28 years, and for that service to end over the words of an interview is sad indeed. Already, leaders from many faith traditions, including many national evangelical leaders, have expressed great dismay at the loss of Rich Cizik in such a key role. And the Religious Right is already using Cizik’s resignation to attempt to roll back the wider social justice and environmental agenda of the NAE. In a particularly bizarre statement, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council said: This is the risk of walking through the green door of environmentalism and global warming — you risk being blinded by the green light and losing your sense of direction.
But NAE President Leith Anderson made clear that the NAE had no intention of retreating from the commitments of “For the Health of the Nation” and, while he defended the need for the resignation of Rich Cizik, said that it “saddened him” and was “personally painful.” I personally trust Leith Anderson’s and the NAE Executive Committee’s commitment to the wider evangelical agenda beyond just abortion and gay marriage, but also feel deeply saddened by these events. And I encourage the NAE’s leadership to stay on the path they have chosen and resist the efforts of those who would again seek to narrow the evangelical agenda in unbiblical ways and make it again subservient to a conservative political agenda.As for Rich Cizik, he will continue to be a leader in the new faith coalition that is emerging now, and that will replace the Religious Right, without becoming a Religious Left. Pioneers sometimes get into trouble and even pay a price for their explorations into new territories. But in the new moral center that is now visible, Rich’s prophetic voice and leadership will continue to be heard and felt.
If you're following the interesting debate over whether Barack Obama is a Christian, one thing to keep in mind is the extent to which heresy of various sorts pervades American Christianity at this point - and, moreover, the extent to which it cuts across confessional, cultural, and political lines. The Obama interview that provided the grist for this conversation does indeed suggest, as Larison puts it, that our President subscribes to some sort of semi-Arian conception of the nature of Christ, which isn't surprising at all given that he entered Christianity through the liberal-Protestant gate. But heresy of this and other stripes is hardly confined to liberal Protestants. Americans of all denominations are pretty murky about even the most important theological questions, and thus as likely to offer semi-Arian (or semi-Pelagian, or semi-Nestorian, or what-have-you) formulations out of ignorance as out of considered belief. And of course a distinctively American strand of heresy is integral to a large swathe of what we think of as "conservative" Christianity: You could call it Americanism or Moralistic Therapeutic Deism or something else entirely, but whatever label you choose it owes as much to Emerson, Hegel and Norman Vincent Peale as to Nicaea and Chalcedon, and its emanations and penumbras influence everything from the prosperity gospel to the foreign policy of George W. Bush.
Now it's true that if he had been asked about Christ's nature, Bush - or Ronald Reagan, to take another conservative President with an idiosyncratic religious sensibility - might have given a more Nicaean answer than Obama did in the interview in question. But then again maybe not! (And God only knows what John McCain, the most pagan Presidential contender we've had in some time, might have said.) Given the muddled way in which most Americans approach religion, and the pervasiveness of heterodoxy, I suppose I'm basically with Alan Jacobs: I think that figuring out exactly what sort of things Obama believes about God and Christ and everything else, and how those beliefs may affect his Presidency, is ultimately a more profitable pursuit than arguing about whether he should be allowed to call himself a Christian. Or put another way: I expect my Presidents to be heretics, but I think it matters a great deal what kind of heretics they are.
Is Barack Obama a Christian? Rod has all the links to the various participants in the controversy. My view is this: the President-elect claims to be a Christian, and I take him — I think I have to take him — at his word. Could he be lying? Could he be self-deceived? Could he have a limited or erroneous understanding of what Christianity is? Yes to all three. But then, the same doubts could be directed at anyone who claims to be a Christian, including me.
We’re not mind-readers, and the attempt to discover just how much fit there is between someone’s profession of faith and the state of his heart and mind is a mug’s game. In the eighteenth century Jonathan Edwards nearly drove himself and his congregation nuts by his determination to withhold Communion from people unless he could be absolutely sure that they were truly and deeply believers. The problem with this approach was neatly summed by a century earlier by the great Richard Baxter — coiner of the phrase “mere Christianity” — who took the opposite view from Edwards. If congregants do “by word of mouth say, that they believe with a saving Faith, these words are but signs of their minds; and whether counterfeit or not, the Church cannot tell.” Even if they manifest good works and pious utterances, they could be doing so for reasons unconnected to faith — the desire for social approval in a Christian community, for instance.
So when people say “I am a Christian” I accept them at their word, just as I hope that they accept me at my word when I make the same claim.
But the conversation doesn't have to end there, does it? It seems to me that, having taken President-elect Obama at his word when he claims the Christian faith, we can then go on to discuss what he thinks Christianity is, who he thinks who Jesus is, what obligations he believes a Christian takes on by virtue of being a Christian, and so on. And as that conversation proceeds we might say to him that we think his understanding of Christianity sadly limited, or the place of Christ in his theology to be insufficient and wrong-headed, or whatever. (Those are the kinds of things I would probably say to the President-elect if we were having such a conversation.) And he might point out to us flaws in our own theologies — we’d have to be prepared for that, wouldn't we? The debate might go on a while. But I think the conversation will be healthier and more productive if no one starts it by denying the other the status of Christian.
The more you think about how every Christian is pretty uneducated when it comes to multitude of arguments that have been held about the person of Jesus or some theological issue in the history of the church...the more you should fear applying religious tests to political figures or hoping for a theocracy. Who's God would we end up putting over the top of us all. Then you come back to realizing how amazing it was that the Founding Fathers designed a solution for precisely this problem: Govern to the best of humanity's understanding and live your personal lives piously. It works out the best way.
Conservatism in the United States faces a series of extremely knotty problems at the moment. How do you restrain the welfare state at a time when the entitlements we have are broadly popular, and yet their design puts them on a glide path to insolvency? How do you respond to the socioeconomic trends - wage stagnation, social immobility, rising health care costs, family breakdown, and so forth - that are slowly undermining support for the Reaganite model of low-tax capitalism? How do you sell socially-conservative ideas to a moderate middle that often perceives social conservatism as intolerant? How do you transform an increasingly white party with a history of benefiting from racially-charged issues into a party that can win majorities in an increasingly multiracial America? etc. Watching the McCain campaign, you'd barely even know that these problems exist, let alone that conservatives have any idea what to do about them. But there were people in the Bush Administration who did understand the situation facing the Right, and set out to wrestle with these challenges - and as a result, George W. Bush had a real chance (especially given the political capital he enjoyed after 9/11) to establish a model for center-right governance in the post-Reagan era. That he failed is by no means the greatest tragedy of the last eight years, but it is a tragedy nonetheless - for conservatives, and for the country.I'm not counseling despair here: There were people in 1976 who thought Richard Nixon had irrevocably squandered the chance to build a new right-of-center majority, and looked how that turned out. But for now, as America goes to the polls, I find myself stuck thinking about the lost opportunities of the last eight years, and the possibility that they may not come round again.
