The eCrozier

America has had a civil religion for all of her history. It’s the religion that’s invoked at government functions such as city council meetings and at other public or sporting events. This civil religion is now so ingrained in our culture that many people can’t differentiate it from the particular claims of Christianity. While this civil religion lacks overt doctrinal convictions (it needs such lacking to be so widely accepted), it does, in a kind of passive-aggressive way, make claims about God and humanity. Our civil religion claims:

• God created and continues to order the world.
• God is absent from the particulars of daily life unless God is needed to solve problems, provide solace to the grieving, or to win a sporting event.
• God wants all people to be good, kind, and happy and that’s our goal in life.
• Good, kind, and happy people go to heaven when they die.

As this civil religion continues to grow in its approbation, it shouldn’t surprise any of us in the Church why people say that they don’t need to be part of a Church or other religious community to have a relationship with God. In such a belief system, who needs the Church or a religious community as an external authority of the Divine? Each person can have a relationship with God unmoored from any particular tradition or practice. This is the logical distortion of the understanding of the “Priesthood of All Believers.” Or, as John Prine sang so eloquently, they “can all find Jesus on their own.”

In his book, Habits of the Heart, Robert Bellah described a woman named Sheila who practiced a religion she called “Sheilaism,” which she described as being good as she could possibly be to herself. If she treated herself well, she’d do the same to others. In some ways “Sheilaism” is the quintessential civil religion. It’s a worldview of total liberation for the individual from any authority other than his/her own judgment. Since there’s no authority that’s outside people’s judgment to guide them on their search for meaning, purpose, and destiny in their lives, then the individual is left to his/her own devices. Searching for God’s desires for one’s life then becomes a de facto search for oneself and the “baptizing” of one’s own worldview.

For those outside of the Church this appears to be exactly how they understand their freedom, particularly their religious freedom. And they see this as a positive thing. But in truth, it’s just another form of bondage. They simply become slaves to their own desires and worldviews. Or, as George Bernard Shaw said: “Hell is where you have to do what you want to do.” Or maybe as John Prine sang: “Your flag decal won’t get you into Heaven anymore.”

This is our evangelistic challenge for this generation: to persuade others that the particular claims of the Gospel of Christ are the truth; that they aren’t synonymous with our civil religion; and, that a distorted understanding of religious freedom only brings greater bondage. This won’t be easy as we are facing a civil religion that has built up a head of steam for some time now. Nevertheless, go and make disciples.

+Scott