If God Is Love ...

... as I believe, then why do we argue about him (or her) so much?

It seems like Jesus's admonition to love thy neighbor has, in many Christians' view, a loophole exempting neighbors with whom those Christians happen to quarrel theologically.

I've just come across two Peter J. Boyer articles in The New Yorker: "A Hard Faith" in the May 16, 2005, issue, and "The Big Tent" (not available online?) in the August 22, 2005, issue. The first is subtitled, "How the new pope and his predecessor redefined Vatican II"; the second, "Billy Graham, Franklin Graham, and the transformation of American evangelicalism." Both are about divisions within, respectively, the American Catholic Church and Protestantism in America.


American Catholics, at least some of them, are flirting with a new devotion to orthodoxy, says Boyer in "A Hard Faith." Not that Catholic liberals have disappeared from the scene. Leading liberals of the faith, however, have been brought somewhat to heel during the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, and can expect no more latitude under Benedict XVI. (Full disclosure: I myself am a practicing American Catholic. I think of myself as a liberal.)

Meanwhile, there is a whole new generation of seminarians and priests who, led by higher-ups such as Denver's Archbishop Charles Chaput (pronounced "sha PEW"), want to continue John Paul's hard line against the likes of "masturbation, premarital sex, birth control (including condoms used to prevent the spread of AIDS), abortion, divorce, homosexual relations, married priests, female priests, and [if it matters any more] any hint of Marxism."

Out of this orthodox approach to the faith came, in 2004, the suggestion by Archbishop Chaput and other bishops that Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry, a Catholic who supports legal abortion, ought not be allowed to take Holy Eucharist at the Mass.

Of course, the other name for the sacrament is Holy Communion, implying the importance of the community of the faithful. Chaput and others would have barred Kerry and other pro-choice Catholic politicians from participating in the most sacred rite performed by faithful Catholics as a community ... without actually "excommunicating" those politicians!

Fortunately, though, a direct confrontation was averted, as other prelates in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops — Washington's Cardinal Theodore McCarrick prominent among them — decried the politicization of the sacrament.

Still, battle lines were drawn at home and abroad. Conservatives were increasingly prepared to insist that all Catholic politicians — and all Catholic voters — place their souls in mortal peril if they don't take a firm, consistent, single-minded anti-abortion stance in exercising their public duties. Liberals, for their part, continued to insist on a "seamless garment" approach to public policy: "Those who defend the right to life of the weakest among us must be equally visible in support of the quality of life of the powerless among us: the old and the young, the hungry and the homeless, the undocumented immigrant and the unemployed worker."

Catholics, or so "seamless garment" liberals say, should "concern themselves with the entire 'spectrum of life from womb to tomb'." Translation: no single-issue politics, pro-life or no, will satisfy God ... or the church, thank you very much.


The conservatives of the American Catholic Church think of themselves as "evangelicals" who respond to the late pope's call to evangelize the world. "The eternal mission of the Church, [John Paul] wrote [in his 1990 encyclical, Redemptoris Missio], was Christian evangelism to the world," Boyer points out.

Of course, there are millions of Protestants in America who have long thought of themselves as evangelicals, and they form the topic of Boyer's other article, "The Big Tent." The article discusses the passing of the torch from the star evangelical preacher of the 20th century, Billy Graham, to his son Franklin, whose theological line is considerably harder and more orthodox than Billy's ever was.

In describing what Billy Graham's ministry has meant to Americans for a half century or more, Boyer first recounts its backdrop. In the early 20th century, the leadership of American Protestantism, the mainline variety especially, went modern and liberal. The leaders took a leaf from Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution and tried to show that God works his will through worldly progress. They interpreted the Bible metaphorically in ways to bolster that view.

In reaction, dissenting theologians urged upon their fellow Protestants what they called "The Fundamentals," the title of "an influential series of books ... published between 1910 and 1915 [laying] out the case for Christian orthodoxy." The whole idea was based on a strictly literal reading of scripture, which was posited to be the divinely inspired word of God.

These "fundamentalists" found a lot of sympathy among rank-and-file churchgoers in the Sunday-morning pews and built a movement which continues to this day. It quickly became a schismatic, separatist movement, pulling itself away from those other American evangelicals who continued to wish to engage with those having more progressive points of view.

Fundametalists' ongoing antagonism to the general culture of modernism was expressed in the present day in Boyer's article by Bob Jones III, "the president of the university founded by his grandfather, [who] suggested in 2002 that fundamentalism drop the name" to avoid confusion with Islamic fundamentalism.

But Jones, who calls himself a "preservationist," conspicuously refers to his brethren as "separated unto Christ." I find that choice of words significant. In other words, fundamentalists, by whatever name, have long gloried in being separate from more liberal Christians, not to mention all non-Christians.

But the Reverend Billy Graham, when he came along in the late 1940s and hit it big in the early 1950s, would have none of such fastidious separatism. He would not draw lines between one Christian and another. He said that Christianity is more a matter of faith than it is of theology. He accordingly, says Boyer, "liked the New Evangelical program of engaging the culture, and, especially, of ecumenical fellowship with Christians with whose doctrines he disagreed — even including Catholics."

Now Billy Graham is old, and his son is stepping into his shoes. Franklin Graham, whose "stongest trait is certitude, which extends to the divisive issues that Billy chose to avoid," has shown himself to be a hardliner for orthodox doctrine. Abortion and homosexuality are sins against God, pure and simple. The global war on terrorism is a war on Islam, make no bones about it. It's a black-and-white world.


What's my take on this? I would have to be a first-class dodo to think anything other than that there is a strong resurgence of "hardlinerism" among both Catholics and Protestants in America. And, clearly, there is a strong resistance to that movement among liberals of the faith.

My own inclination is, first of all, to think that the various "litmus tests" hardliners want to impose are bogus. I agree with Billy Graham more than I do with Franklin Graham: anything which promotes schism and separation is bad.

To wit, consider how hardliners might respond to "Keeping Our Loved Ones Connected to the Body of Christ," an August 7, 2005, column by Fr. Ron Rolheiser, whose weekly essays can be found in leading Catholic newspapers and also at his web site. Fr. Rolheiser writes of the concerns expressed by a friend of his who has grave doubts about religion: "I guess if there's a heaven, I won't be part of it."

But, no, Fr. Rolheiser says to his agnostic friend: "Don't worry about heaven. You'll be there. Too many of us love you. A lot of us church people, including me, won't accept a heaven that doesn't have you in it."

As the Body of Christ on Earth, says this priest, we "are meant to do all the things [Jesus] did, including the forgiveness of sins and the binding of each other, through love, to the family of God. ... We can say to God, 'My heaven includes those I love'."

"Anyone who is sincere" — anyone who is "a wonderful gift ... to so many people" — can be bound to the family of God in this way, says Rolheiser.

Is this too good to be true? Rolheiser counters that sentiment with: "That's simply a description of the Incarnation."

So, if Rolheiser is right ... whither litmus tests?


There's yet another partto my take on this. People like Bob Jones III and Franklin Graham are equally "sincere," there can be no doubt — and the same is true of John Kerry and all whose souls' salvation is supposedly gravely endangered by their pro-choice politics. Who is to say these folks are not "wonderful gifts" to a great many people. They, too, are members of "The Club," by which I mean not just the family of God but the family of all those who were born of mothers who loved them ... which pretty much means everybody in the human race, doesn't it?

Some people are just born "litmus testers." That's all there is to it. They're in The Club, too. Who am I to suggest that earthly schismatics and separatists, assuming they are sincere, don't qualify for the kingdom of heaven?

They probably serve a vital social function, even, these latter-day Jeremiahs. True, I personally don't get it ... but never mind. My point is that, even if such tendencies are (in Rolheiser's term) "shortcomings," as I tend to believe they are, Jesus is bigger than the theological conservatives and I are — along with all my fellow liberals — combined.

Christ weaves even people whom you'd never suspect of being worthy of it into the family of God. That's because God is love ... and if we really believed that, maybe we could stop arguing so vociferously amongst ourselves about our different takes on religion.