I've had a blogger's block for about a week now because I knew I needed to write about Andrew Sullivan's editorial in last week's Time Magazine. The magazine has been sitting, marked up with my comments, on my desk for over a week. It's not how to respond to it, but the sheer volume of problems in three pages to respond to. It's such a mess of bad facts and bad thinking I find it discouraging. But it's quite typical of a lot of criticisms of Christians that amount to warnings about how dangerous we are. Part of the genesis of these kinds of claims is the terrorism motivated by Islamic fundamentalism. They equate those fundamentalists to Christian fundamentalists. J.P. Moreland has pointed out quite memorably that it's not that someone is zealous or fundamentalist, it's what they are zealous about that is the problem. Zealous Christianity leads to living out Biblical principles, a very good thing. Zealous radical Islam leads to killing innocent people, a very evil thing.
Sullivan was a guest on a radio show earlier this week talking about his book, The Conservative Soul, that has the same thesis as this magazine piece. He began by defining the Christian fundamentalists he's talking about: Fundamentalists are those people who think they know the truth about everything. Now, who's that? There may be a few of these people around, but they're hardly worth writing an article, much less a magazine article about. I don't know anyone who would fit this description. Do you? Who is he talking about? Yet that's the kind of ridiculous overstatement and characterization typical of Sullivan's piece and others who are writing about the same thing lately.
Sullivan uses the now familiar distinction of claiming to know lower "t" truth and capital "T" truth. The former kind of knowledge is supposedly more modest and less offensive, while the former is arrogant and absolute leading to all kinds of problems in the world. Not surprisingly, Sullivan goes on several paragraphs later in the article to tell us what the truth of things are and what "true faith" is. He sure talks like he's telling us about the way things really are, not just his perspective, because he's appealing to others to abandon their arrogance and embrace the doubt that will end all our conflict. Sullivan sounds pretty sure of his view when I read his article, but you see, that's okay with me. I'm interested in hearing his ideas and having a lively disagreement with the goal of persuading each other when we disagree. He sounds just as sure as the Christians he's critiquing, but that's juts fine. We can hardly escape the conviction that our own beliefs are correct. There is no such thing as the false distinction between "t" and "T" truth. That claims purports to be the way things are - "T" truth. We're all in that same boat, it's just that some of the passengers want to take pot shots at the others, which is really how I perceive Sullivan's criticisms.
He's afraid what will become of freedom in our country because of the threat from the Christian fundamentalists who believe in "T" truth. He believes these kinds of Christians are a new and growing phenomenon. Actually, Christians who believe they are correct and would love others to become part of the family, too, have been the norm in our country for over 300 years - the same 300 years that have been characterized by the most freedom of any society in history. Christians of this kind have been the majority in our country from the beginning, yet never have launched the kinds of witch hunts and pogroms Sullivan warns us of. If anything, this kind of Christianity is on the wane in our pluralistic society.
On the increase is the kind of Christianity Sullivan promotes that embraces doubt. He claims this is the kind of religion Jesus and Paul taught, but his exegesis is questionable. What it is is the kind of religion that allows someone the appearance of religiosity, the veneer of moral justification, without the accountability to the Bible and God to actually live out what is expected of us to be truly good people.
Sullivan offers us a false choice between omniscience or skepticism. His argument allows nothing in between so he opts for embracing skepticism. However, omniscience isn't the alternative and I don't know anyone who expects that it is. Rather, the alternative is a careful, responsible search for the only kind of truth there is (lower or capital, the way the world really is). If you believe something, it means you think it's true. Confidence is another kind of feature of our beliefs that can grow or decline with the justification we have for our beliefs. And we can spend our lives trying to increase our stock of true beliefs. That's what a virtuous believer looks like, not someone who had given up.
Sullivan begins the conclusion to his piece by writing about his virtuous grandmother who was a devout Catholic. To make his point, though, he imputes to her the kind of doubt and skepticism of his own religious beliefs based on no reason that he gives us. It's rather touching; but it's also deceitful and disrespectful of his grandmother. The Catholicism of his grandmother's time and the people of her generation were more characteristic of the Christians he's taking to task in his article. It's highly unlikely that his grandmother would have agreed with her grandson, absent any reason Sullivan has neglected to include.
He finishes with a typically self-contradictory statement after quoting German playwright Gotthold Lessing. Sullivan says, "That sentiment is true now as it was more than two centuries ago...." It sure sounds to me like he's telling us the "T" truth and has abandoned his doubt.
Greg Koukl talked about his on Stand to Reason's radio show) last Sunday.
