Theology and Politics

Ordinarily one does not turn to the Op-Ed page of The New York Times for religious commentary, but last month brought a rare exception. Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof treated readers to a theological essay that deserves attention for reasons having to do with politics as much as religion.



Kristof chose the feast of the Assumption to announce that this dogma and the dogma of the virgin birth reflect an irrational “mystical” approach to religion that is becoming a problem in the United States and throughout the world. “While this may bring spiritual comfort to many,” he wrote, “it will also mean a growing polarization within our society.”

Let’s start with the theology of that. In discussing the Assumption and the virgin birth, Kristof makes a mistake typical of theological semi-literates: he takes it for granted that any doctrine not explicitly stated in the Bible is not true. Sola scriptura it’s called.

The idea that Sacred Scripture is the one and only repository of divine revelation, existing in tandem with the faith of the living Church, has not entered such people’s heads. A reading of John Henry Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine or the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, “Dei Verbum,” would do them a world of good.

Even so, the dogma of the virgin birth really is in the Bible — the gospels of Matthew and Luke, to be precise. In face of this difficulty, Kristof makes another familiar move. When Scripture says what you don’t like, reject Scripture. The contradiction between basing belief solely on the Bible and ignoring what the Bible says when it doesn’t suit you seems to escape him.

But this, it turns out, is what one might expect. Kristof’s model of Christian faith is his grandfather, who he describes as “a devout and active Presbyterian elder [who] regarded the virgin birth as a pious legend.” In other words: grandfather was a Liberal Protestant.

Liberal Protestantism came into vogue in the 18th and 19th centuries as an attempt to salvage a rationalistic faith — devoid of miracles, mysteries, all that claptrap — from the battering of the Enlightenment and the scientism that succeeded it. But, strange to say, Liberal Protestantism’s rationalism in due course collapsed into woolly-headed religious subjectivism and psychologism.

Thinking of that sort invaded the Catholic world around the turn of the last century in the form of Modernism, the heresy was condemned and driven underground, but not destroyed, by Pope St. Pius X. Although they now are in decline, Liberal Protestantism and Modernism remain with us to this very day.

It is important to bear in mind that Kristof's theologizing is employed in the service of political ends. Here his target is those conservative Protestants and Catholics who — let’s be frank about this — are an obstacle to the political agenda espoused on issues like abortion and gay rights by Kristof and The New York Time. Kristof reported seeing liberals wearing T-shirts with the slogan “So Many Right-Wing Christians … So Few Lions.” If he doesn’t wear one himself, he should.

In Kristof’s eyes, the great offense of conservative Protestants and Catholics is that they persist in believing what Christians have always believed, including strongly held beliefs about moral issues at the heart of the national political debate.

Kristof piously declares himself “troubled” by a supposed “withering” of Christian intellectualism that he claims to see at work in the rise of Christian conservatism. These are crocodile tears. What really gets his goat is the withering of his faction’s electoral strength.

Russell Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington, D.C. You can email him at RShaw10290@aol.com.

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Russell Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington, DC. He is the author of more than twenty books and previously served as secretary for public affairs of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops/United States Catholic Conference.

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