A Bishop's Partisanship Overshadows Her Christianity

On the first full day of U.S. President Trump’s second term, the president and vice president attended a multi-faith prayer service at the National Cathedral. Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde delivered the sermon on what is necessary for imperfect political unity in a country such as the United States. I contend that in trying to influence the president on immigration policy in a partisan way, she undercut the credibility of her message that there is strength in loving rather than retaliating against one’s detractors and even political enemies. The sacrifice of which she spoke concerning being kind in reaching out in humanity to people we dislike could be applied to herself in resisting the temptation to be partisan. That she lapsed at the expense of Jesus’ most important message is particularly striking.

Rev. Budde claimed that recognizing the dignity of even one’s enemies as being worthy of respect is one of three elements in achieving an admittedly imperfect (for we are imperfect beings) political unity, which in turn can be understood as “a way of being with one another.” To hold different perspectives or opinions as “valid and worthy of respect” does not require agreeing with them, and it is indeed permissible to proffer corrections on faulty reasoning. Such differences can exist within a deeper political unity if there is also compassion with another person’s humanity, as in the context of natural disasters.

Helping another person even though dislike exists in either or both directions involves sacrificial love as we give of ourselves for the sake of others, regardless of whom they voted for in the last election. In his Sermon on the Mount, the priest said, Jesus advocates loving not just our neighbors, but to love our enemies. Such love can seem vague, and the term “enemies” can easily be dismissed as too extreme to apply as the term does not include people who simply don’t like us or whom we don’t like. Being willing to be compassionate and kind in not just sympathizing, but also helping even people whom we regard as assholes is none other than the content of the kingdom of God, according to Samuel Hopkins, an American theologian who followed his relative, Jonathan Edwards, in the First Great Awakening. God is incarnate in our world in the interpersonal dynamic that only exists when a person disregards dislike in choosing to respond in kindness to another person’s needs when doing so is inconvenient interpersonally.   Valuing this divine presence in the world and enabling it to manifest by helping out in humaneness is something that anyone can value without necessarily believing in a god-man. Indeed, the litmus test in Christianity could be changed in line with this focus on the kingdom of God, whose mysteries Jesus says in the Gospels he came to discuss. Put another way, were actual acts of kindness to people who have been rude or even mean the focus for Christian intention, interpersonal peace might just break out as from a mustard seed. The world would change dramatically, and a president could lead the way by example.

Had the priest left her message at that, the impact would have been greater than it was, but she went on to bring up Jesus’ position on societal outcastes in order to beg President Trump to have mercy on people in the United States who have entered illegally. Reminding the president of Jesus welcoming outcastes in the Gospels, she pleaded for mercy on the hard-working people in the U.S. who don’t “have the proper documentation” to be in the country but “are not criminals.” I submit that not having the proper documents is a function of having broken U.S. law, and thus being criminals by entering the U.S. illegally. The problem lies not with documents, but with the willful decision to enter another country without permission, which, I submit is rather presumptuous. To label this as not criminal is not only incorrect factually, but glosses over the sheer presumption in sneaking into another country. I submit that the attitude of “laws don’t apply to me” is indeed presumptuous, and in fact is inconsistent with being in a society at all. For it is only in a Hobbesian state of nature that laws do not apply.

So, I submit that by “getting political” in a misleading or artful way, the priest undercut the immense credibility that lies in the strength of forgiveness by helping out people who have been most unkind—a kind of strength that is often dismissed in the political world, as it is by the Romans in the Gospels. In his writings, Nietzsche argues that this sort of strength is actually weakness. He even points out how it is preached as a means of gaining power over the politically strong. This is exactly what the priest was doing in trying to make the president feel guilty for objecting to people whose first act in the U.S. was to break its laws by entering illegally. That they have no right to be in the U.S. does not undercut their dignity, for they have done that themselves in audaciously sneaking into a country (or staying beyond a court date). The priest herself said that honesty is a major element of political unity.  

Unfortunately, the focus was not on whether serving the humanity of even political adversaries in acts of kindness rather than seeking retribution constitutes strength or weakness. Christianity stands for the former, whereas Nietzsche provides a counter-argument wherein the religion is useful for the weak who are not strong enough to be politically powerful. It could be that valuing not only turning the other cheek, but responding to the humanity of detractors in acts of kindness is the or ought to be the definitive litmus test by which a person can decide in the privacy of one’s own heart whether one is a Christian. Were this the focus of the religion, then the earthly city might really change. Being opportunistic in seeking political influence, on the other hand, is unfortunately already well-ensconced, and is thus easily recognizable.  

Has American Catholicism Become Unavoidably Republican?

Putting a religious faith through a particular political ideology can be regarded as artificial because the transcendent is not limited to the confines of particular ideologies. Were it otherwise, the transcendent would not go beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility. Leaders of religious organizations should thus be particularly careful lest they inadvertently cut transcendence short. Practically speaking, that some members could feel marginalized or leave the organization altogether is a capricious cost that can be avoided. In other words, according to religious criteria, no reason would exist for such marginalization or departures. Unfortunately, religious leaders can easily dismiss this drawback out of a desire to channel the religious through their particular ideologies. I suppose this is a form of idolatry.

In the Roman Catholic Church, for instance, a liberal political ideology became associated with Cardinal Blasé Cupich of Chicago after the “started a program against gun violence and opposed Republican health care proposals on the ground that they would strip coverage for the weak and poor.”[1] Alternatively, the Cardinal could have preached against the violence that had plagued parts of the city and for helping the weak and poor. He could have gone to some of the problematic neighborhoods as well as to places where the poor received medical services—even bringing along other clergy to volunteer. Starting a program specifically oriented to guns, and voicing opposition to a political party’s proposal is to step out of the shoes of the fisherman and into the shoes of a legislator. Faithful Catholics in Chicago could legitimately have had a different stance on guns as well as on health policy at the federal level. The Cardinal’s political shoes could easily have made such Catholics uncomfortable going to church and even, particularly sadly, with their Catholic faith. A desire of a religious leader to advance particular political platforms becomes self-centered if it causes members of the religious organization to feel even just uncomfortable.

Visiting a large Catholic church in my hometown outside “Chicagoland” in northern Illinois in 2013, I was amazed at how blatantly Republican the members were; they made no effort to hide their political identification, and it didn’t hurt that the bishop at the time made no secret of his political conservatism. The parish was socially conservative on political issues “down the line.” Even members who were political moderates must have felt uncomfortable there. Indeed, the parish lost considerable members. To be sure, the pastor, who would go on to become bishop of North Dakota, was extremely conservative (and reportedly not very kind). Sadly, “belligerence can acquire a theological justification,” according to Antonio Spadaro and Marcelo Figueroa writing in La Civilta Cattolica.[2]

The authors look at American evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics as having been “brought together by the same desire for religious influence in the political sphere.”[3] Looked at in the other direction, the desire includes bringing the political sphere into church. The authors warn that the “religious element should never be confused with the political one. Confusing spiritual power with temporal power means subjecting one to the other.”[4] As people of religious faith are subjected to temporal, ideological constraints—even scripts—the faith is artificially circumscribed, as is the body of Christ gathered in fellowship. In fact, the fellowship itself becomes artificially delimited.

In short, the “article warns that conservative American Catholics have strayed dangerously into the deepening political polarization in the United States.”[5] Meanshile, American Unitarian Universalist societies have also contributed to the polarization by becoming virtual liberal camps geared to political activism. I could imagine Unitarian protesters facing off against pro-life Catholic protests with only a street between them as they shout at each other in the name of religion but actually in the sphere of politics—a domain that had become polarized societally by the time Donald Trump was elected U.S. President. The willowing down to ideology brings with it a perspectival narrowness in which even shouting under ostensibly religious auspices does not register as oxymoronic—not to mention as eviscerating any religiousity.  Clearly, it makes no difference whether the ideology is liberal or conservative; the effect is the same. I would even say a presumption to moral and political infallibility also comes with the partiality that is inherent in willowing truth down to a particular ideology. No self-corrective, let alone humbling, feedback loop can operate, so the partisans armed with what they presume is religious truth are unwittingly vulnerable to going too far without realizing it. Even Christian partisans could end up killing rather than loving their enemies without any recognition that they have violated Jesus’s commandment and teachings. That even something as obvious as this could easily be missed ought to be sufficient reason to ward off the temptation to get political and judge fellow religionists accordingly. Yet with an impaired self-corrective feedback loop, resisting the temptation “after the fact” may require nothing short of a miracle.

This book may be helpful for tips on how to sidestep the political: Spiritual Leadership in Business.  See also Christianized Ethical Leadership.

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[1] Jason Horowitz, “A Vatican Shot Across the Bow for Hard-Line U.S. Catholics,” The New York Times, August 2, 2017.

[2] Antonio Spadaro and Marcelo Figueroa, “Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism: A Surprising Ecumenism,” La Civilta Cattolica.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Jason Horowitz, “A Vatican Shot Across the Bow for Hard-Line U.S. Catholics,” The New York Times, August 2, 2017.

A Ukrainian Priest’s Divisive Politics: At What Religious Cost?

In Lviv, Ukraine, Rev. Addriy, a priest of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church rather than the Ukrainian affiliate of the Russian Orthodox Church, said after a Mass in June 2014 that the European Union is an “empire of evil” defying the Word of God and spreading sins including homosexuality and pedophilia. The priest went on to characterize the Ukrainians who toppled President Viktor Yanukovych as “Godless deviants” and “fools . . . in the pay of hostile foreign powers.”[1] Being in the western part of the state, the eastern-looking priest was not exactly “preaching to the choir”—meaning he must have known that his message would not be well-received by his congregation. This disjunction illustrates a distinctly religious problem that can arise when clerics fly too far afield from the religious domain onto those of politics, economics, or even social problems.

The problem is multi-level. On the surface, attention to non-religious matters carries with it the opportunity cost of foregone attention to religion. To be sure, the priest spoke outside of Mass, and thus he did not detract from it directly. However, at a deeper level, he did diminish the religious value of his Masses. His own diminished stature or credibility in the political matter at hand put his religious role at risk as well.

Anger at an opposing political view inexorably puts distance in a religious relationship. The latter is not limited to new-found suspicion regarding sermons or homilies. The transcendent religious experience—communion with God in Christian terms—involves shifting attention from the external environment (i.e., what is going on around you) to an “inward” orientation to a reference point that inherently transcends the limits of cognition and perception. Feeling “safe” enough to risk shifting attention off what is going on in the worship context (e.g., the church) is essential to being wholly invested in the experience itself of yearning for that which is yearned for beyond the particular mask of eternity. Feeling that the person in the room who is in charge is in any sense a threat, or even just disliking him or her, thus detracts from the religious experience, and thus from the religion itself as an instrument thereof.

So, beyond the point that political ideology is of another domain than religion, the over-reaching can inadvertently sabotage or at least diminish the intensity of the religious experience possible in a given worship context. In other words, a dedicated context, sui generis to religious experience, is compromised as soon as stuff from other domains is brought in. The inherent sensitivity of religious experience, owing both to the intimacy in yearning for “the wholly other” that lies inherently beyond our reach and the giving up of attention to one’s immediate surroundings (i.e., what is going on in the church), is violated by the breaking in of stuff from our realm (e.g., politics, and even church business!).

In the case of Roman Catholicism, for example, the “presence” of the sacrificed or consecrated Christ in the Tabernacle on the altar sets a sanctuary apart as sacred space from the rest of the world. Whether or not such a presence is actually in the bread in the enclosure is not the point; rather, that Catholics treat the sanctuary as perpetually dedicated to religious activity facilitates their entering into religious experience as in communing with God after ingesting Christ in the Eucharist. A priest or lectern making announcements from the weekly bulletin, for example, as the congregants are intensely focused in transcendent yearning disturbs the sensitivity of the experience itself.

Interestingly, the “pure” or rarified sensitivity that is in religious experience intentionally devoid of stimuli that can dilute the sensitivity itself can carry over onto ensuing experience back in a person’s daily world of quotidian stimuli. That is the religious experience is in one sense a “sharpener” of a person’s sensitivity, which on return to the world can “carry over.” Although the heightened sensitivity to the ordinary doubtlessly fades as a person’s ordinary sensitivity level kicks back in amid its customary context, regular “religious exercise” may give its more finely-tuned sensitivity greater staying power, such that the “sensitivity weight-lifting” sessions may eventually not be necessary for this purpose.

Applied interpersonally in a person’s daily life, the greater, “microscopic” sensitivity gained through religious experience is commonly known as compassion. In fact, this byproduct is typically misclassified as religious rather than ethical in nature, and this error in turn can invite or provide an opening for interlarding content from the world such as social issues (e.g. abortion, poverty, social justice) into the worship context. In the case of Unitarian Universalism, especially when its humanist movement reached its zenith in the 1970s in the United States, social structures based on the ideology of egalitarianism are regarded as sacred. Such self-ideology as sacred can be interpreted in religious terms as a manifestation of self-idolatry, which snuffs out or blocks outright transcendent spiritual or religious experience.

Therefore, sensitivity not only pertains to transcendent religious experience devoid of interfering external stimuli, but is a byproduct known as compassion that is of value in the world. Though not religious itself, the ethical principle of what Adam Smith calls “fellow-feeling” in his Theory of Moral Sentiments can itself thwart the sort of invective inflicted by the Ukrainian priest on his disheartened flock. “Do not cause your brother to stumble,” Paul advises in one of his letters to a congregation just a few decades after his Lord’s crucifixion.  If a cleric is not sufficiently careful in this regard, we can assume that he or she has little regard for the value of others’ religious experience, and even such experience itself, relative to more “worldly” agendas.

It is ironic, to say the least, to find religious functionaries and even institutions oblivious to what is conducive to a religious experience that is transcendent in nature. Both in being of value in itself and for one of its byproducts, intense dedicated yearning for that which inherently lies beyond the limits of human perception and cognition may actually receive scant attention in most religious services. Even where the rites are conducive to such experience, clerics may tend to treat the ritual as an end in itself rather than as preparatory. In how many Masses, for example, is the experience of communing with God after the Eucharistic ritual treated as the high point, or core, of the Mass? 

In this photo, furnished by the U.S. Defense Department, a bishop consecrates the bread into the body of Christ. Is this moment of the sacrifice of Christ in the Mass its high point even if so in terms of the Eucharistic rite? Behind the priest is the tabernacle, in which previously consecrated pieces are stored. They make the room into "sacred space" continuously rather than merely during a Mass. 

Instead, the priest-centric consecration of the bread and wine is said to by the pinnacle, and the Mass itself is typically quickly ended as soon as the priest finishes washing the dishes. Unlike any experience oriented to the external stimuli of a priest holding up the consecrated species, which admittedly can be quite meaningful to a Catholic, the communing experience following the ritual transcends even the worshipper’s immediate environment and thus is more conducive to isolating the eternal (by transcending the external) and then sensing that of the eternal back in the person’s daily life, including in other people. This sensitivity is more finely tuned to them, and thus to the subtle indications of their suffering; and I suppose the experience of yearning transfers over in a way in the motivation to relieve the suffering. However, the heightened sensitivity itself may also furnish the motivation. 

In terms of liturgy generally, religious ritual can be thought of as preparation, rather than as the whole of a religious service—distinctly religious experience being the immediate objective; as the referent is both by definition and experientially inherently “beyond,” the intensity can be put on the yearning itself, especially if the religionist is willing in true humility to transcend even the given mask of eternity to the raw numinous experience itself. Put another way, the yearning itself, or communing, can extend beyond the human reception of divine revelation into our familiar categories of thoughts and images. To the detriment of such "pure" religious experience wherein the immanence of transcendence demands a heightened sensitivity, the divisive Ukrainian priest had other treasures in mind, and therein in all probability his heart and god could also be found.

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[1] Andrew Higgins, “Ukrainian Church Faces Obscure Pro-Russia Revolt in its Own Ranks,” The New York Times, June 21, 2014.