The last few weeks have seen a lot of media attention directed toward religious organizations, their representatives, and the positions they are taking on various public issues, from climate change to marriage equality for homosexuals, from health care reform to hate crime laws, from rising poverty rates and income disparity to the decline of religion in the U.S., based on the number of U.S. citizens who claim “no religion” in answer to survey questions.
With the possible exception of this last item, all these are issues of some moment. Indeed, they are issues of public policy that are highly contested not just among citizens and lawmakers but also Christians themselves. For a good many people – religious or not – these are also issues of social justice, matters that affect the well-being, the common good of all.
We’ve spent a little time in previous blogs finding our way into the questions: What type of congregation takes up organizing and mobilizing itself on behalf of social justice? What are the characteristic features and theological commitments that coalesce to move a faith community to stand up or give in to the prevailing order of things social and economic?
By way of quick review, we’ve noted the distinction between high-tension and low-tension churches, the former being those religious groups that are at odds with the prevailing social and economic conditions and are in conflict with the social beliefs, attitudes, and values that are dominant in society, and the latter being those communities that are comfortable with and accepting of existing conditions and whose peculiar constellation of religious and social beliefs, attitudes, and values serve to bring legitimacy and stability to social and economic structures.
We have also seen that churches can take one of two general orientations toward the world or context in which they are located. There are those whose concern for and interest in the world is limited to seeing it as the place to go to preach the gospel so others might come to faith. And there are churches whose concern and interest moves them to work actively for social change and a more just and equitable socioeconomic order. The former we are calling “preaching churches” that take their cue from passages like Mark 16:15–16 (“go into all the world and preach the gospel”). The latter we are calling “enacting churches” that are motivated by passages like Matthew 25:31–45 (feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned).
Others who have probed these questions include David Roozen, William McKinney and Jackson Carroll. Their work in Varieties of Religious Presence: Mission in Public Life (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1984) is particularly helpful and adapted here. Significant research on these questions is also done regularly by The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, including many of their surveys that focus on religion, politics, and particular policy issues. These studies, along with the research done by Public Religion Research, are also suggestive for our attempts to articulate the various types of churches in relation to social justice.
Crisscrossing these two continua reveals four general types of churches, each characterized by a particular orientation to its surrounding context and a sense of its fundamental purpose in relation to it. We will now look more closely at these types, beginning in this blog with a high-tension preaching type that we will call a religious enclave.
As a type of church, religious enclaves are at odds with the world; they don’t know what to make of it, so they don’t – attempt to make something of it, that is. On the contrary, what they behold and experience of the world strikes them as an antithesis, a distortion, or even a perversion of what is true and good and right. Whether it is cultural values exhibited in cinema or legal principles guaranteeing personal freedom or sexual mores cut loose from the bonds of heterosexual matrimony or insufferable poverty endured by slothful ne’r-do-wells, these conditions of the world are judged as both a regrettable parody of God’s intent and a morose demonstration of humanity’s sinfulness.
Religious enclaves are an escape from this world, a retreat and retrenchment to a place where the beliefs, values, and practices of the true and good and right prevail, a venue where one can escape the travails of the world and find solace and encouragement to stay the correct course. Interestingly enough, by seeking to keep the things of this world at bay, the religious enclave is acquiescent to the world’s status quo. Turning from the world is tantamount to acceding to the world; in a strange sort of way it is an acknowledgment that the world is as it is, a tacit capitulation to “let it be.” The ways of the world are criticized, to be sure, but they are not actively challenged. This view of the world can be held because the world as such is believed to be essentially lost in sin and immorality and subject to the divine judgment. There is little that is redeemable in this world, and typically the world as such is not on the list.
In a religious enclave, morality is personal, but it is also communally enforceable. There is a moral code that shapes behavior as well as beliefs and attitudes, and it is remarkably stable over time. It is not so much a list of moral rules, but rather an unspoken acknowledgment of a generally understood moral code, a version of a religious common sense of what is appropriate and what is not. This morality is thought to be rooted in the Bible and the traditional ways of life that have characterized the community. As a consequence, there is a hedge against alternative values and styles of personal and social living that are present in the larger society.
Not surprisingly, a religious enclave is rather homogeneous. In addition to the commonly shared moral values that touch on matters such as social roles, family life, child-rearing practices, sexuality, personal responsibility and a disciplined work ethic, there is a fairly uniform understanding of religious teachings and practices. Religious enclaves tend to be interested in teaching and maintaining correct doctrine and religious observance. Indeed, the unity of the body results in part precisely because of doctrinal uniformity and their shared sense of what is right and true. Differences of opinion, especially on matters of religious truth and biblical interpretation, are not typically encouraged or even tolerated; there is generally an authority figure whose presence and leadership is highly valued.
This concern to be in line with the recognized authority figure explains in some ways the tendency of religious enclaves to respect civil authority in practically all its forms. Paul’s exhortation in Romans 13 about submitting to governmental authorities because these are established by God is viewed as the basis for responsible and obedient citizenship in our civil democracy. There is great respect for law and order, exercising as they do a degree of restraint on humans and our misdeeds. There is also genuine appreciation for personal liberty; patriotism, strong support for the U.S. military, and respect for free enterprise are both symbolic and real measures of love for country.
It is this freedom and deference to authority that creates an environment of attraction and repulsion in religious enclaves. On the one hand, living and working and playing in the larger social and economic world are necessary; individuals must grow into responsible adulthood and make something of themselves. At the same time, however, they must guard against giving in to the social and economic forces that put their relationship to God at risk. A religious enclave_’s social and religious views of the world do not make it feasible to advance the shared morality into the larger society with an expectation of affecting social change. Thus there is an atmosphere of disinterest or even discouragement when it comes to the prospect of altering the fallen world. Rather than going into the world to effect change, members will recruit others from the world to enter the _religious enclave as co-inhabitants.
Religious enclaves are fairly good at self-care; there is much that is good in their service to one another, especially in the relief of suffering and sorrow, poverty and want. Individuals can remove themselves temporarily from the larger society to enjoy the love and nurture and support of like-minded people. Where programs of religious education take place, members are usually edified and strengthened in their understanding of their faith and their situation in the world; they are established more firmly in their belief that they are distinctively different from other religionists and have an obligation to care for their own in ways the world knows not. When there is a measure of service to others outside the religious enclave, it is undertaken as an act of love and compassion for others who are lost in a fallen world, suffering in circumstances over which they have no control. These are charitable acts intending to alleviate hardship for those less fortunate.
These are preaching churches, rather than enacting churches, because of the conviction that true religion is separation from the world’s values and mores and distance from the forces that contest the truth of religious belief and practice. Understanding and embracing this truth, and a willingness to attest to it when called upon, are cultivated by the attention given to the spoken word and shared faith; true religion is a matter of correct belief and living according to the group’s acknowledged moral code. Thus personal morality and conduct figure heavily and are normatively tracked on the radar screen by others in the religious enclave. A sense of profound dissonance with the world exists, but this dissonance lacks the accompanying conviction that something must be done to rectify it. As stated earlier, in an odd sense this is giving in to the world. Social justice, by any measure, is not on the agenda.
Up next: low-tension preaching churches, or spiritual bridges.
Peace,
Douglas R. Sharp
