Folk Religion
If there is anything Americans are becoming good at, it is chasing after peace, happiness and, for many, in one form or another, salvation. What spawns this pursuit is a self-evident principle of the human condition which dictates that one’s journey will always include negatives, whether great or small, either from one’s own hands or from those of others.
Over the last four decades, eastern religions, liberal Christianity, and secularism have offered varied directives in the peace and happiness search, but have actually contributed to post-modern spiritual chaos. Whether they intended it or not, these three forces have worked in concert to create a popular “folk” religion. As has been amply demonstrated over recent months, West Michigan is no exception.
One of the most popular tenets of American folk religion is what some call the fatherhood of God and what eastern philosophies refer to as the spiritual unity of mankind, “We are all God’s children” is the watch phrase. If one assumes that is true, then private spirituality, seeking one’s own path, is the logical outcome. The assumption is that either all people are already siblings or that God will eventually accept all people anyway. For instance, many Buddhists believe in an evolution toward a condition of Absolute Truth that is beyond words; an absorption into “conscious unity”, Nirvana, when individuals are extinguished by a disassociation of their parts. What each person does is a private experience of his journey toward the eventual Void. Liberal Christianity and secularists may have different beginnings and end goals, but end up on the same “do your own thing” or “let it be” path.
At least three situations grow out of the “fatherhood” or “oneness” root. The first, the fall-out in public morality, is the call for tolerance of almost anything at almost any cost. It is claimed that as long as sojourners are sincerely trying to live their personal convictions, God (or the natural laws of the Void) will understand. Under such a murky ocean of shifting goods and evils, Americans are expected to accept, even promote, a perfect storm of conflicting standards as the only right public ethical system. The aftermath is intriguing – verbiage proclaiming reverence for all people but sanctioning the killing of unborn children, heterophobic promotion of destructive homosexual perversions and a secularist sanitizing of young publicly-educated minds. When religious conservatives call for accountability to basic moral standards, they are chided as not loving unconditionally and as being intolerant. When true evangelicals harken to the Biblical text as it stands within its historical, cultural and literary context, they are assailed with accusations of ridiculously exaggerated literalism by individuals who do not seem to understand God’s holiness, the place of Israel’s Old Testament scriptures in salvation’s history, or the rich depth of classical Bible interpretation when applied to fundamental moral questions.
Secondly, a strange hypocrisy grows from the “circle of life” philosophy/theology. The cry for social and religious inclusion somehow degenerates into targeted cultural and political exclusion. In the midst of stumping for social brotherhood, the secularist-eastern mystic-liberal Christian cadre merges its fatherhood/oneness faiths with politics, economics and education to aggressively evangelize for their “truths” while spewing contempt for anyone outside the camp. Somehow they are able to sincerely use bigoted images (e.g. religious monopoly, Nazis fanaticism) to engender fear, mistrust and resentment, all the while accusing others of the offenses they themselves are committing.
The final outcome is character abuse of which Jesus Christ is not even immune. He is reduced to a mere part of the whole. Instead of Absolute Truth in the flesh which He clearly claimed to be, Christ is reshaped into a cultural revolutionary grandstanding for the marginalized against the powerful and privileged; an appealing image until one realizes that as God, He came to save anyone. He has raised up whole governments, not to mention some of the richest and most powerful people in the ancient and modern worlds. Jesus’ spoken Absolute Truth is relegated to gospel writers’ hearsay – except for passages of Scripture which are convenient as proof texts when ripped from their contexts. His call to a status quo thousands of years old is totally missed.
For almost one hundred eighty years our nation wisely honored that status quo. The new folk gospel has turned us toward our demise.