10 Questions

I don't generally read the pieces in the Times by Tish Harrison Warren, a member of the breakaway Anglican Communion in America who somehow scored a column as a voice for Christianity. But today's gospel was about the divisions that might happen on the way to salvation, and our priest used it as a frame to tell us how the Lambeth Convention managed to dodge the division over sexuality the Archbishop of Canterbury had invited. (A week before the convenion he'd circulated a series of statements he named "Lambeth Calls," and asked all attending to vote either to approve each one or to say they needed further work, one a pronouncement tucked within a larger disquisition on "Human Dignity" that same-sex marriage was unacceptable. The assembled bishops, most from provinces which don't recognize same-sex marriage, nevertheless decided that voting was divisive and refused to.) Recounting from the daily reports our diocesan priests have been receiving from one of our bishops, the Most Reverend Mary Glasspool, we heard about the transformative power of being in conversation and prayer with those with whom we disagree - the importance, one might add, of having a place at the table. (Bishop Glasspool isn't only one of the relatively few women bishops, but gay and in a blessed union with another woman.)

Anyway, I decided to read Warren's piece today. Entitled "The God I Know Is Not A Culture Warrior," it's a sensible enough piece, grounded, like most of her pieces I've read, in the experiences of the congregation she leads, and rightly deplores the politicization of faith by the American right. She doesn't think "God" has no place in public life since Faith touches all areas of life, and issues such as abortion, religious liberty and the relationship between church and state - all conservative Christian talking points, I might add - are important. But she worries that believers’ actual experience of God, worship and faith — not to mention spiritual virtues like humility, gratitude and kindness — often gets lost. That much is, I think, true, and recognizing that most religious people's faith is neither strident nor political, whatever their leaders claim for them, is surely important.

What interested me was Warren's way of - sort of - extending this recognition beyond her own community.

But how do we repair the damage done? What would truthful, humble and robust public religious discourse look like? For starters, we must speak proactively and vulnerably about our faith, instead of only in reaction to the latest hot-button issue. There are questions that haunt every human life: [1] How does one know what is true and false, right or wrong? [2] Is there a God? [3] If there is, can we interact with him, her or it? [4] If so, how? [5] Can God speak to us? [6] Can God say no to us? [7] What are our obligations to God and to other human beings? [8] How can we have joy? [9] How can we live well? [10] How can we be wise?

I found this list of questions - I've numbered them - fascinating. These are all questions I ask, too, but never all at once, and in the same voice. These are those I ask in a universal way:

[1] How does one know what is true and false, right or wrong? [2] Is there a God? [8] How can we have joy? [9] How can we live well? [10] How can we be wise?

And these are those I ask as a Christian:

[3] If there is, can we interact with him, her or it? [4] If so, how? [5] Can God speak to us? [6] Can God say no to us? [7] What are our obligations to God and to other human beings? 

No, that's not quite right: the Christian in me is also asking the other questions. For the Christian, all ten questions fit together. But what about someone who dismisses question [2] Is there a God? with a negative or, more likely, incomprehension? Are they left with only [1] How does one know what is true and false, right or wrong? [8] How can we have joy? [9] How can we live well? [10] How can we be wise?

The easy point is that Warren's set of questions leaves no space for non-theistic religion, even as she claims the same questions ... haunt every human life. But in this she's not really very different from all those religion surveys which default to God language. And would the damage done be repaired by replacing "God" with, say, Tillich's "ultimate concern"? That wouldn't force ultimate reality into a theistic either/or - and, perhaps more importantly, would seek out and honor the non-theistic ways in which people (most? all?) are religiously serious (including some "secular" ones). Tillich's template remains theistic, of course, but Warren's bundle of questions doesn't allow even this. Questions 3-7 treat question 2 not as a question which haunts as but as one obviously answered in the affirmative.

But I didn't want to dump on Warren, for all the disengenuousness of her claim. However misplaced it is in the Times, I felt a kind of envy at her comfort with her Christian voice. Happily rooted in her faith, she experiences no shift between questions 2 and 3, and back from 7 to 8. After all, God (not the "a God" of question 2) is the answer to all the questions 1-10 - which is why she assserts that "Faith" can't be excluded from people's participation the public sphere. Yes - but: what about people for whom the asnwer to all ten questions is the Dao, or a different understanding of divinity, or the community of beings - or the absurd serendipity of the emergence of consciousness in this vast universe?

In my practice as a religious studies professor I sometimes feel that I default to the superficially secular framing questions 1, 2, 8, 9, 10 - and, in so doing, instrumentalize "God" (or the Dao, or differing undersandings of divinity, or the community of beings, or the absurd serendipity of the emergence of consciousness in this vast universe?) as an answer to non-religious questions. Because of the justified suspicions of "crypto-theology" in Tillichian and other accounts I am reluctant to call all 10 questions "religious." As a committed pluralist (for all pluralism's problems!) I think it important to define questions that do in fact "haunt" all people. Indeed, my kind of Christian thinks being able to parse one's most important questions in non-Christian terms is spiritually vital.

If Warren and I were seated at a table, like the assembled bishops of the Anglican Communion, I imagine we'd agree in more and different places than I can alone imagine. But I'd hope that the witness of my questions - as a Christian - would mean something to her, too.