A few words regarding the public role of faith

Lincoln Chafee, Governor of RI

It all started when the good governor of my home state of Rhode Island, Gov Lincoln Chafee, put up a holiday tree in the state Capitol building, causing something of a furore from the American religious right. I did not join in this conversation because – and I believe that my fellow Rhode Islander Fr Bill Locke put this quite nicely – I do not believe that Our Lord or his disciples or the Church Fathers would have cared overly much about what we call a tree, so much as they would have cared about the weightier matters of social and economic injustice which haunt our society these days. If there is one thing I have learned about the culture wars, it is that being a conscientious objector pays off… most of the time. On other, weightier issues than these, however, the battle must certainly be joined.

That said, it rather baffles me how thin-skinned American Christians, particularly on the religious right, can be. As secular and (in religion as in everything else) as privatised as the society may have become, we are not a society which actively persecutes Christians. And for this we should be thankful, for there certainly are such societies in the world which do persecute Christians: Ægypt (particularly after the Arab Spring) and the (northern) Sudan being the most high-profile examples. In the Middle East, safe havens for Christians, particularly of the venerable indigenous communities, have historically existed – such as Syria and Iran – but they are undermined by the foreign policy of the US-led West with disheartening regularity; these Christians deserve, at the very least, our efforts at creating a more dovish and more humane foreign policy. In the Balkans up until very recently it was very dangerous to be a Christian (particularly Orthodox) in certain parts of what once was Yugoslavia – as in, one’s very life (let alone one’s livelihood) being at stake. As such, it strikes me as somewhat petty that certain segments of far-right Protestantism in this country will gripe about a Christmas tree being called a ‘holiday tree’. What awaits them is hardly the fate of St Stephen.

Indeed, the political climate is such in the United States that far-right Christianity is so far removed from oppression that it is, has been, and probably will be for the foreseeable future, used as a political tool by the opportunistic. Rev’d Eugene Cho has posted an incredibly thoughtful response to the political advertisement by Rick Perry by two young women who sought to create a more constructive public voice for religion. They – and he – get my thanks for seeking to articulate a radical stance that seeks to avoid both the extremes of the ever more pervasive privatisation of religion on the one hand, and ressentiment-filled religious identity politics on the other.

Good cheer to my gentle readers, and my thanks for your forbearance upon reading my latest rant!