Sarx

t Even the Devils Believe, Fr Chris posts his response to the following quote from Stanley Hauerwas:

I assume most of you are here because you think you are Christians, but it is not all clear to me that the Christianity that has made you Christians is Christianity. For example: How many of you worship in a church with an American flag? I am sorry to tell you that your salvation is in doubt. How many of you worship in a church in which the fourth of July is celebrated? I am sorry to tell you that your salvation is in doubt.

I began offering my comment over there and realised I was blogging-on-his-blog, so I post it here, instead.

It’s interesting that Hauerwas is at once both right and wrong. The conflation in the US of the State Religion with Christianity is nearly so complete that no American Christian can tell the difference between the unitarian, deistic “god” in whom we trust and the Trinitarian God in whom we live and move and have our being. In that respect, many American Christians are powerless to effect or even to participate in the Prophecy offerd by Micah in the BCP lectionary for today.

Is it better or worse to have Jesus become just another god in the American Pantheon as compared to having Jesus become just another god in the Roman Pantheon?

But Hauerwas weaves that state religion with a sort of evangelical Donatism that uses phrases like “salvation is in doubt” which imply that salvation can come by thoughts or doctrines we hold rather than by Trust – the meaning of the Greek word, “pistis”, most often rendered as “faith”. Here he errs: for once we admit Hauerwas’ salvation-by-doctrine claims we wander into an eternal labyrinth of seeking the True Doctrine™.

Jim West’s response, cited by Fr Chris, is 100% right: we are more in danger from our money than from our flags. To the former we offer far more mental incense than just a pinch. But from both – flag and money – the problem is the idea of them. The idolatry is in our hearts, rather than in our liturgy.

In a class at Church a few weeks ago, the speaker (on a DVD) pointed out that the prophets of Israel all spoke to the Kings and royal courts of the time. Jesus, the Prophet, did no such thing: he spoke to the common people. The speaker took this as a sign that Royalty (which was still in the world, at Rome, and Jerusalem) was somehow irrelevant, and its authority somehow passed, in Jesus’ mind, to the people whom he seemed to be calling to justice in spite of what Royalty was doing; without the help of royalty and even contrary to royalty’s self interest. Read that: It is the people whom Jesus was calling to justice in spite of what the state was doing; without the help of the state and even contrary to the state’s self interest. It can not be in the State’s self interest to have a Christian – willing, even dying to forgive and love his enemies – in a position of power.

We need to live that vision, still, for it is a possible vision, available by God’s grace to all Christians, in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Living in the Kingdom is the only power we all have from God – without regard to any power we have from the local state. We have no other power here and to pretend otherwise is to put the local state in the same position as God.