Deep Faith Deep Respect

When I completed my Ph. D. in 1994, I was free to read just about anything I wanted to. I had enjoyed doing the reading and research and writing for my doctorate. At the same time, it kept me focused in a particular direction – democratic political theory and Christian ethics. Now I could turn my intellectual sights in any direction I wanted to. I chose to read Martha Nussbaum’s book Love’s Knowledge: essays in philosophy and literature. Nussbaum’s book was about ethics, my field of study, and it beautifully wove a concern for ethical reflection and the moral life with a love of literature and an appreciation for human feeling. I have never lost my appreciation for Nussbaum’s work.
I have just finished her most recent work, The New Religious Intolerance, which reflects on the overwrought fear of Islam in Europe and the United States. She argues that “without fear we’d all be dead” (20). Yet, “fear is primitive” (55). It is “an intense focus on the self that casts others into darkness. However valuable and indeed essential it is in a genuinely dangerous world, it is itself one of life’s great dangers” (58). Her book makes the case that we need to manage our fears by combining principles of respect for human equality, offering arguments that are not narrowly self-serving, and by nurturing curiosity, friendship and sympathetic imagination (21).
In the course of her book, Nussbaum offers this statement: Religion is central to people’s sense of themselves (102). I certainly think religion is intended to be central to one’s sense of self, that is, if one is part of a religious community or proclaims a religious faith, it is intended to be an important part of one’s self-understanding.
I think many struggle with this, however. In American society, we are encouraged, in many ways, to keep our faith private, to consider our religious identity one hat among many we wear. I think a number of church people see being part of the church as one thing among many others that defines them – along with parent, spouse, coach, job, friend. Rather than being central to all these, religion can be just one “role” among others.
One source for this psychic marginalizing of one’s religious identity is found in experiences of intolerance. Many of us have seen a certain kind of religious self-certainty become an overbearing self-righteousness – “we are right and you are wrong and there is a terrible price to be paid for your wrongheadedness.” One reaction to this can be to make our religious identity a little less central. It is one way to avoid becoming overbearing.
It is not, however, the best way, I think. As a pastor, I deeply appreciate these words penned many years ago by Daniel Day Williams. It can be truly said that the pastoral task is so to minister to people who have lost the power of a right use of Christian language that this language can be restored to them with reality and with power (The Minister and the Care of Souls, 49). A right use of Christian language is to understand that who we are in relationship to God is central to who we are as human persons. To see ourselves as persons created in the image of God, and who continue to struggle with living into that, is central to who we are as human persons.
Our task in a religiously pluralistic society is not to marginalize religion, but instead to combine deep faith with deep respect. It is to embrace the centrality of our religious identity while at the same time fostering a genuine respect for others, curiosity about others, and friendship toward others.
As a Christian, trying to live the Jesus way is central to who I am. I can offer testimony that the Jesus way is a good way. One evidence for that assertion just might be my ability to befriend others on other ways.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David