A Small Word of Dissent

Often those who write about Christianity in the popular or academic media uncritically embrace certain popular assumptions about Christianity which they then use to support whatever argument they are building without due consideration given to whether the assumptions are actually true.

I don’t blame the authors, really. Christianity itself has allowed so many contradictory points of view to fly under its banner that it can be very difficult for anyone to define actually what it is.

There are times when those of us whose roots are planted in what we might call a more ‘historic’ expression of Christianity, that is, one which finds its voice in expressions such as the Nicene or Apostles’ creed, or in the writings of Augustine and Anselm (and, we dare say, Moses and Paul) need to speak up, if only to make a peep, in critique of these popular assumptions.

In the April, 2009 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, there is an article by Robert Wright in which he makes the case that the mainstream teachings of major religions are predisposed to support globalization. Now, I am really not all that fired up about his thesis. Frankly, I made it about ten paragraphs in on my first read and abandoned the project. In the first place, globalization is not a particular interest of mine. Secondly, I really did not find his thesis all that compelling or interesting. But mainly, I jumped ship because he was building his case on a platform of these faulty, though popular, assumptions about Christianity. With such a weak foundation, I had no heart to visit the house he was building on top.

But are these assumptions faulty? It has occurred to me that it would be a worthwhile challenge to issue a word or two of dissent regarding some of the positions which Mr. Wright confidently assumes.

In so doing, I’m not really attacking Mr. Wright in this. Again, I don’t fault him for repeating positions which are being espoused by people who identify themselves as Christians. However, when the author attributes a point of view to ‘many Christians’, it is easy for a reader to accept that as being the view of ‘most’ or ‘all’ Christians, or even to assume that this is what is embraced by the ‘really smart’ Christians, as opposed to the ‘rabble’ who, perhaps, still believe the Bible.

I hope to dig into the meat of this next week. If you’d like to get a head start on this you can access the article here.