wfn.org | A Millennial Balance Sheet on Christianity

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

16-December-1999 
99427 
 
    A Millennial Balance Sheet on Christianity 
 
    Commentary by Martin E. Marty 
    Distributed by Religion News Service 
    Copyright 1999, MSNBC.com 
 
CHICAGO - From the handful of followers who first heard the teachings of 
Jesus to the 2.2 billion members of various denominations alive today, 
Christians were to be a force to heal and transform the world.  And after 
2,000 years of believing, Christians comprise 33.1 percent of the world's 
population. 
 
    But beyond the numbers, exactly how successful has this faith been? 
What are its prospects for the future?  If Jesus were to return to Earth 
today, would he recognize his teachings as preached and practiced by his 
followers through the ages?  To answer such questions, friends or foes of 
Christianity would say, "Let's look at the record."  What would a balance 
sheet turn up? 
 
    Any individual who has been lifted from despair to hope, moved from 
hate to love, or vaulted from doubt to faith is likely to judge the 20 
centuries of Christianity as worthwhile.  So would any company of believers 
who have been sustained in slavery, oppressed because of race 
or gender or class, and then have experienced liberation. 
 
    Anyone who has experienced healing, received solace when the candle 
burns low or the life of a dear one ebbs, or who has been inspired or 
intellectually moved when the faith elicits art or makes sense, will use 
that experience to do the measuring.  So much for the private side. So very 
much. 
 
                           The public face of faith 
 
    Christianity, however, has its public side, its powerful presence. 
^From the fourth century onward, its institutions dominated in East and 
West.  As dominators, Christians have probably been no better and no worse 
than Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus or people of faiths once called 
"primitive."  The record of holy wars, jihads and human sacrifice is 
ecumenical, interfaith and horrifying in all cases.  But each faith must do 
its own accounting, and in our part of the world, Christianity is subjected 
to much scrutiny. 
 
    First, the negatives: Crusaders in the name of Christ rejoiced when 
"infidel" blood filled the streets above their horses' ankles as they 
marched into Jerusalem.  In Spain and elsewhere in Europe, Inquisitors in 
the name of Jesus ferreted out the suspicious, the troublemakers and the 
innocents who seemed different - all for the sake of God's truth and 
purity, as they defined it. Then they turned the innocents who were guilty 
over to the crown for unusual and cruel punishment, with death being the 
lesser evil than torture. 
 
    Through the centuries, Christian emperors, nobles, knights, invaders, 
ruffians and drunken feudal lords fought with one another just as 
ethno-nationalist leaders do today.  And in cases so common that one has 
difficulty thinking of exceptions, right down through the Vietnam War, 
Christian leaders blessed the cannon.  They called down a God of vengeance, 
yet spoke of God as the God of love.  Rivers of blood and oceans of ink 
were spilled in support of Christian wars.  Whoever does not think that the 
adjective "Christian" is accurately applied to the noun "wars" need only 
listen to the prayers and preachments of the contenders through the ages to 
find reason to hang heads in shame. 
 
                            The good it has done 
 
    The public presence of Christianity, however, shows another side and 
offers a positive balance.  What good has it done?  Charity and accuracy 
bid me to point out that often this good has been done in conjunction with 
forces not directly native to the Christian church.  But it has been done, 
no doubt, with light and leaven from people of faith often mingled with 
those of other faiths or no faith at all. 
 
    Take, first, modern liberties. Catholic ideas of human dignity and 
Protestant impulses for freedom of conscience fused with ideas we associate 
with others from the 18th-century Enlightenment.  Here is a perfect 
illustration of how Christian influences come in tandem with 
others.  Some scholars who hear Christians claim a patent on liberty ask, 
"What took you so long?" 
 
    The faithful at least ought to send a thank-you card to the secular 
forces of modernity. These helped develop what had only been latent in 
Christian teachings for centuries, but had never found political expression 
on its own.  Out of this fusion of the sacred and secular came 
previously unheard-of personal liberties, the advocacies of human rights 
and concern for the spread of freedom.  The search for liberty is 
unfinished, and is sometimes inhibited by some versions of Christian 
teaching.  One thinks of the only partial liberation of women from 
spheres and years of abuse, degradation, indignity and half-fulfillment. 
Yet the seeds of liberty have been sown. 
 
                         An artistic heritage 
 
    A second accomplishment of Christianity has to do with beauty.  No 
monopoly here: Buddhist- and Hindu-inspired art evokes awe, too.  But 
around the world, by no means only in the West, Christianity through the 
centuries provided what E.M. Forster called "breathing holes for the human 
spirit."  Its poetry is for the ages.  This is evidenced in the wonders of 
stained glass in the cathedrals, through the great classical music of the 
West, in songs and poetry.  You will hear soughings of the spirit as well 
in African Christian chants, or see the sightings of the 
Spirit's effects in Latin American or Korean folk art. 
 
    Johann Sebastian Bach said that music was God's greatest gift to God's 
sorrowing creatures, to give them a joy worthy of their destiny.  Christian 
art helped dispel some of the sorrows that come with the human condition 
and experience.  When one looks at or hears some of the barrenness and 
vapidity that go with much Christian artistic expression today there is a 
temptation to ask the churches, "What have you done for me lately?"  But 
the record has been positive overall. 
 
                            A healing influence 
 
    It is easy to recall how early Christians resisted many scientific 
advances that promote healing.  Non-Christians did too.  But behind the 
veil of pre-scientific ignorance, much good was done.  Again, Christianity 
holds no monopoly here.  Medieval Muslims and the ancient 
Chinese knew a thing or two about the care of the body through medicine and 
its alternatives. Yet the concepts of health care we have today have roots 
in the Christian West. 
 
    No one knew whence came the plague in medieval Europe.  But everyone 
knew that the priest, the consoler, was not to leave town when it struck. 
Sisters and nuns, deaconesses and nurses pioneered in health care and 
invented voluntary associations to promote healing.  Today, in a scientific 
age, many are coming again to recognize that they do well to supplement or 
support technology with religious, in this case Christian, arts of healing 
and agencies of care. 
 
                          The life of the mind 
 
    Intellectual productivity is fourth on the list of Christian 
achievements. 
 
    The temptation arises to question this because so often Christians have 
been inquisitors, suspicious of heresy and experiment.  They have 
suppressed the thought of the "other," be it the Jew in the ghetto, the 
Muslim at a distance, the sectarians driven to the mountain refuges far 
from Rome, the innovators in the world of science, and often the pious 
themselves. 
 
    In East and West, however, Christians have tried to bring together the 
Athens of learning or the Rome of law with the Jerusalem of faith.  The 
creeds most Christians recite combine Hebraic biblical narrative with Greek 
thought patterns.  In the Middle Ages, the Christians founded Bologna and 
Oxford, Paris and Wittenberg as universities where scholars 
pursued more than theology.  They have been teaching forces and spreaders 
of liberty. 
 
    In the same period, Christian thinkers revisited Aristotle and the 
other philosophers, relearned the ancient languages, and produced both 
scholasticism - formidably systematic thought about faith and the world - 
and new philosophies, and they still do. 
 
                          Martyrs and mystics 
 
    Lives well lived are further examples of the good Christianity has done 
from its beginnings two millenniums ago to the present day.  In the past 
year alone, it is estimated that 165,000 Christians died for their faith. 
They have a long ancestry among people who paid the final price for their 
commitments. 
 
    From St. Francis of Assisi to Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Teresa, 
the faith has inspired prophets who risk their lives to change the world. 
No one could know how to measure the selfless acts that mark the quiet 
lives of many Christians today and their ancestors in faith.  But one would 
be pretty callow to write them off and forget about them or despise them. 
 
                         Would Jesus know them? 
 
    Those four examples lead to an observation and a question. 
 
    The observation: No part of the Christian record is unblemished.  No 
part of Christian teaching suggests that Christians will leap out of their 
skins, escape the limits of the human condition, and not need to ask their 
God for help in their turning.  All parts of Christian teaching say that in 
the moral quest, one first and finally depends on grace.  It makes up the 
weightiest contribution to the balance scale of positives. 
 
    And what does all this have to do with Jesus?  The name that goes with 
the church and its culture is "Christ-ian," not "Jesus-ian."  Christ is not 
a last name but a title, a designation.  He is the anointed one, the 
hoped-for rescuer, the king of his people.  Believers would say that the 
best good they have achieved is telling about him, preaching the Gospel and 
pointing, despite their fallibility, to the Way, the Truth and the Life. 
 
    Some Christians cherish the myth that in the church of 20 centuries 
ago, everyone shared a culture and formulated the faith in the same way. 
Never.  One scholar surveyed how the early Christians worshiped, governed 
themselves and made moral judgments.  These differed vastly from place to 
place, as they still do.  The cultural gaps between African indigenous 
church movements and St. Peter's in Rome or a university student group are 
wide. 
 
    But despite their differences, all churches would agree that the human 
Jesus is also their redeemer. 
 
    So Jesus remains the universal and uniting presence.  After two 
millenniums, would Jesus recognize what is done in his name today? 
 
    Would Jesus give the modern metropolis a free ride?  He didn't do so 
for the Jerusalem over which he wept or the Galilean cities whose 
destruction he foresaw, at least as the four Gospels represent him. Would 
he denounce and then dismiss the cities?  Not according to the 
Gospels.  His tears were tears of love and yearning.  He took part in town 
life with zest and banqueted whether invited or not.  Would he despair over 
the half-heartedness he would see in the church?  Nearly.  But he did not 
give up on the ancestors of the lukewarm. 
 
    Would he rejoice in the size of the cathedrals, the bigness of budgets, 
the mega-ness of megachurches that have sprung up on the modern landscape? 
On whose side would he be when "liberation theologians" come up against 
proponents of a market economy?  Remember that Jesus hung out with the rich 
as well as other sinners.  And he clearly explained how hard it is for the 
wealthy and the smug to enter the Kingdom of God. 
 
    Would Jesus denounce armed conflict, so much of it done in his name? 
At last there is a simple answer.  Simply, yes. 
 
                             Justice and mercy 
 
    Wherever Christians put their energy into the works of justice and 
mercy and the tasks of peacemaking - whether in company with others or on 
their own - they contribute to the tipping of the Christian balance to the 
positive side.  And they will do this against formidable odds.  They know 
that because they have looked at the portrait of Jesus and what he 
represents, and then into the mirror to see their own brokenness. 
 
    As they look at the portrait and the mirror, the ideal and the reality, 
one suspects that the honest realists among them will say that for all the 
enormous flaws in the record, the Christian venture has produced great 
human good and innumerable positive contributions to 
culture.  Their faith at its best prohibits them from boasting and they 
have reason to be penitent as they say, in effect, "bring on the new 
millennium."  If they have blights and faults that bring them sorrow, they 
are also likely to come up with virtues and graces that they can use to 
meet more of their own and the wider world's enduring needs. 
 
(Martin E. Marty is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor at 
the University of Chicago and author of numerous books on religion and 
American culture.) 

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