On Utilitarian Christianity and Radical Faith in Our Current Political Season

Douglas F. Ottati

From "Theological musings," a regular column in Network News by Dr. Douglas F. Ottati, Professor of Theology, Union Seminary/PSCE.

We'd like to hear what you think of this analysis.  Do you find "utilitarian Christianity" to be strong in our society today?  Where do you see it?  Is it a serious problem in your view?  Just send a note to be shared here!
 

H. Richard Niebuhr once wrote a short article entitled "Utilitarian Christianity." ⁽¹⁾ In it, he said that we often are tempted to reduce God and faith in God to a means to other things that we value. Niebuhr's immediate context was the war-torn 1940s, and so he discussed the then widespread idea that the spiritual power of Christianity will enable people to obtain peace, abundance, freedom, and a sense of dignity. But the utilitarian impulse takes many forms. It tempts Christians in every age and every place, and it also dogs human religion generally.

Do we seek individual happiness? Then a utilitarian spirit presents faith in God as a means of securing a sense of personal worth and contentment. Do we desire wealth and success? A utilitarian impulse emphasizes faith as a means for obtaining attitudes and virtues that make for economic achievement. Do we cherish our families in a age when familiar roles seem threatened? Then it may not be long before you read on a billboard near you that the family that prays together stays together. Do we value national unity and resolve at a time of crisis? Religion may be commended because it is understood to engender the sense of common purpose and mission that we seek.

Despite its diverse expressions, however, the utilitarian spirit in religion often displays an underlying pattern or dynamic. (1) We take certain of our own purposes, aims, and objectives to be centrally important. We claim (2) that the purposes of God coincide with one or more of these. We then find (3) that faith in God increases our sense for the excellence and importance of these purposes, aims, and objectives, since they now are seen to be not merely our own but also God's. We conclude (4) that faith in God enables, equips, and empowers us to pursue these purposes, aims, and objectives with an increased sense of meaning as well as greater energy and resolve. We therefore (5) commend faith in God because it furthers these worthy purposes, aims, and objectives. The difficulty here, of course, is that the purported sense of religious confirmation is altogether untroubled and too convenient. No hint of mystery, judgment, and our need for repentance. Nary an inkling that faith in God might call even our cherished aims and values into question.

Certain types of utilitarian Christianity have been particularly prominent in modern America. Type A is a commercial spirituality that baptizes a recurrent American dream, and where the essential claim is that the purposes of God enhance and further our drive to financial achievement and success. During the 1920s, for example, Bruce Barton's classic book, The Man Nobody Knows, presented Jesus as the prototypical leader for business executives in an industrial age. ⁽²⁾ Jesus as Henry Ford. Laurie Beth Jones' strikingly titled Jesus CEO: Using Ancient Wisdom for Visionary Leadership offered a series of short observations about Jesus' management style that met the challenges of post-industrial entrepreneurship in the 1990s ⁽³⁾. Jesus as, well . . . Laurie Beth Jones. More recently, Larry Julian's God is My CEO: Following God's Principles in a Bottom-Line World assured readers that they can be successful in business and also honor God if only they will trust in God's principles. The true bottom line? "God loves you, has a purpose for your life, and wants you to succeed." ⁽⁴⁾

Type B is a therapeutic spirituality. It addresses the feeling side of life in the midst of the chronic stresses, strains, and brokenness associated with the contemporary workplace and bureaucratized social systems, as well as with personally destructive communities, practices, and attitudes. The emphasis here falls on the church as a nurturing community of loving and trustful relationships that sponsors small groups, workshops, and retreats designed to support individuals and families. The essential theological authorization as stated by M. Scott Peck in his remarkably popular The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth is as follows. "God's will is devoted to the spiritual growth of the individual." ⁽⁵⁾

The lure of commercial and therapeutic spiritualities in America shows no sign of abating. Indeed, in recent years, these two types of utilitarian religion have tended to mix and merge - something that anyone can tell who scans the titles stocked by Borders, Barnes and Noble, and even Cokesbury bookstores in their business, self-help, and leadership sections. (A few weeks ago, I read a column in a northeastern city newspaper that counseled readers to keep focused on both their business and their personal goals, and to keep having faith that they can succeed. One choice line: "Victory in life is achieved by believing first." Another: "Putting God first in our lives will always give us contentment. Everyone grows in the atmosphere of his presence." ⁽⁶⁾) Nevertheless, during our current political season, we do well to keep on the lookout for a third type of utilitarian religion whose consequences can be devastatingly destructive. Beware of political spiritualities that equate God's purposes with the cherished aims and objectives of one's own nation or people.

Does anyone seriously doubt that there are at least some Muslims from Najaf to Pakistan, from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia who have succumbed to a utilitarian religion that holds that God endorses their most cherished political ends? But the criticism cuts both ways. Because I live less than 100 miles from both Lynchburg, Virginia and Virginia Beach, I am only too aware of the claim that the spiritual power of (true) Christianity may enable the United States of America to triumph in its wars with (Muslim) terrorists and regimes. (Not to mention the claim that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were God's judgment against secular America for tolerating deviant sexual practices as well as a decline of religious practice.) One notes, too, that Franklin Graham has been unable to keep from sharing with us his own (less than nuanced) estimate of Islam. Others have depicted America as a Christian nation and the war on terror as a battle against Satan. All this comes perilously close to the language of crusade and holy war - the Western equivalent of jihad - and (among other things) it just goes to show that American evangelicals have a lot to answer for. Of course, so does President George W. Bush who said, on the Sunday following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, "God is not neutral."

What are those of us who remain uncomfortable with religious utility to do? (Here, I can only write as a Christian theologian, although I am confident that roughly equivalent resources also are available to devout Muslims.) We might start by recalling some underlying dynamics of a more radical faith that presses us to revise and reconstruct our thinking about ourselves and our cherished purposes and objectives. Radical faith demands (1) a sense of repentance. It commends an impulse to self-criticism borne of the recognition that all are sinners who fall short of divine righteousness. Such a faith therefore insinuates the idea that it is unlikely to be only our opponents whose interests and actions are ambiguous, corrupted, and skewed. In the present circumstance, given our gluttonous, automotively inspired dependence on Middle Eastern oil, as well as our willingness to support highly questionable regimes when they are congenial to our energy interests, this idea shouldn't be too difficult to grasp. And, it ought to keep us from being too easily assured that God endorses our cherished aims. Radical faith also commends (2) an acknowledgment of the high mystery, independence, and even incomprehensibility of the only living God. God's ways are not ours. And so, when it comes to divine purposes, we often "utter what [we] do not understand, things too wonderful for [us], which [we] do not know." (Job 42:3) This, too, should make us hesitate to say that God clearly endorses one or another of our cherished aims and objectives. Indeed, it should make us hesitate to claim that we even know what God's purposes are. ⁽⁷⁾ Finally, and not before these critical moments have been confronted, radical faith encourages us (3) to ponder what we are called to be and to do. Alleviate suffering. Pursue greater approximations of justice. Exercise care. Be compassionate. Refuse to relinquish hope. Remember the integrity, dignity, and responsibility of all people in their political, economic, cultural, and environmental relations - children of God who have their particular places and times in God's world.

But you may say that, in an age of fragmentation and conflict, our efforts to be and to do these things cannot always succeed. Quite often, in fact, they will fail. This is certainly true. Moreover, we are also likely to find ourselves drawn into ambiguities, compromises, and rough balances of power. We therefore are unlikely to remain faithful without dirty hands and without additional sins to confess. Nevertheless, by the grace of a radical faith that centers on God rather than ourselves, we may at least recognize that we are called to be and to do these things, whether or not we gain riches, find contentment, or guarantee the nation's security.

Notes

1.  "Utilitarian Christianity," Christianity and Crisis, Vol. 6, No. 12 (July 8, 1946): 3-5.

2.  The Man Nobody Knows: A Discovery of the Real Jesus (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1924, 1925).

3.  Jesus CEO: Using Ancient Wisdom for Visionary Leadership (New York: Hyperion, 1995).

4.  God I My CEO: Following God's Principles in a Bottom-Line World (Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2001), p. xxiv.

5.  The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth (New York: A Touchstone Book, Simon and Schuster, 1978), p. 311.

6.  Catherine Galasso-Vigorito, "Positive Thinking Can Create Success," New Haven Register (August 9, 2004): B1.

7.  For a fuller discussion of this point, see James M. Gustafson, An Examined Faith: The Grace of Self-Doubt (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), pp. 96-109.