That Old-Time Religion

No story this time. No miraculous healings recently. I just want to ponder an old cliché:

Christianity is a relationship, not a religion.

Another version that found its way onto T-shirts and bumper stickers is "Please don't confuse Christianity with religion." Or the billboard ostensibly quoting Bono: "Religion often gets in the way of God."

On its face, I suppose this is correct. Our efforts to live up to some standard or another can blind us to the numinous wherever it might find us. A musician who gets too caught up in the details of a performance might miss out on the magic of the music itself. Clinging too tightly to our self-concepts can choke the shit out of wonder.

The flip side of this however, comes down to special pleading. It's a way of claiming exceptionalism: what we have is a relationship with God (or Jesus, or whatever), something good and pure and wholesome -- all those other people are trapped in something ugly called religion. This includes all those other Christians who don't get it. I recently ran across this in a blog discussion. "You're comparing two concepts of God," one commenter wrote, complaining that the blogger was being too theological, "and I'm talking about the need to trust God himself." Which, you know, isn't theological at all.

The irony of this kind of posturing is that in the early days of comparative religion, Christianity itself was the template of what religion looked like, the gold standard against which other religions were measured. This has changed and is changing, which is good, but we might never fully escape the influence of Christianity on our sense of what religion is supposed to be. Christianity holds a unique place in the West by virtue of having enjoyed cultural dominance for so long.

In a sense, Christianity didn't even become a religion until at least the Renaissance, and perhaps not really until the Enlightenment, when we began construing religion as a discrete sphere of human activity and meaning-making. Prior to this, Christianity, in the form of Christendom, was an entire culture, distinct from other cultures and lifeways on an holistic basis, existing in dialectical tension with the construction of non-Christian cultures as Other, on multiple levels. The Enlightenment shift didn't take political shape until the American Revolution, when the successful dissenters set about to construct as secular a nation as anyone could conceive of at the time, a point that gets overlooked by "Christian nation" apologists.

In the letters of Paul, the primary distinction is between church and world, the kingdom of God versus the Roman Empire. Rome and/or the Jewish establishment were the Other against which the church defined itself. This was accomplished partially by rallying those marginalized and "othered" by the reigning domination systems -- slaves and Jews in the case of the Roman Empire, Gentiles and "sinners" in the case of the religious establishment.

This dichotomy collapsed when Christianity became a tolerated (and ultimately fashionable) religion in 313 under Constantine and then the official religion in 380 under Theodosius. Once a dissident movement, Christianity became the establishment. The Goths were so excited by this that Alaric sacked Rome 30 years later, something that hadn't happened in eight centuries. The empire more or less officially came to an end when Romulus Augustus was deposed by a pagan general in 476 -- not quite a century after Theodosius' decree. At the risk of falling into the fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc (it happened after, therefore it happened because), the timing is conspicuous enough to wonder if Christianity wasn't, ironically, the downfall of Rome.

In a different kind of irony, perhaps, it is also possible to narrate Christianity's coming to power as fulfillment of their eschatological expectation: the last became first, the weak strong, in perhaps a too-literal sense. They asked, and God gave them the nations. Or at least an empire, complete with enemies they could no longer afford to love.

I've given up on the kind of ideological purity that would allow me to see this as a wholly bad thing, a regrettable cul-de-sac of history. Just as Christianity itself has shaped our sense of what religion is, our sense of what Christianity is has been shaped by its negotiation with empire. It is during this time period that the Christian liturgy begins to take shape, as well as the biblical canon. Even the most radically Protestant movements cannot escape the influence because it is this, and not something else, against which they are protesting.

Negotiating the tangled relationship between religion and politics, facing the challenge of these competing claims on the human subject, is characteristic of Christianity and thus of Western culture in general. In fact, I would venture to say that one could write a history of religion in America by looking at how various groups parsed that relationship. It isn't answering this question in a certain way that is the hallmark of the tradition, at least from an historical standpoint -- it's that the question comes up at all.

The "relationship not religion" trope is ultimately disingenuous. It's a little like me saying that I don't have a job, I have a relationship with a university. And of course I do, it's just that the relationship in question is something most of us call a job: I do certain things for which they pay me. Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc. Of course Christianity is a relationship. In fact it is a complex web of relationships on a number of levels, one that most of recognize as religion.

Insisting that Christianity is a relationship and not a religion sets up a false dilemma. Without sounding too trendy, it's a both/and. Furthermore, if Christianity is not, or is no longer, your cup of spiritual tea, you most likely have something to which you relate in way that an anthropologist or religious studies major would describe as religious. And chances are, if you live in America, that relationship is colored in some way by Christianity. I'm not saying that's good or bad or that it proves anything in particular. It just is.

But the claim does make sense. Given the tiny bit of history I've offered here, it is no surprise that evangelicals (who seem most likely to make the "not a religion" claim) don't want their belief system characterized in such a way that it must take a backseat to the claims of democracy in framing public discourse. I must check the claims of my religion in the interest of the common good, but my deep, personal relationship with God surely trumps all that, no? Haven't we noticed a difference in, say, a public leader willing to admit that his or her faith informs decision-making but cannot override democratic ideals, and one who takes marching orders directly from God?

So when someone says that Christianity -- or whatever their religion of choice happens to be -- is a relationship and not a religion, we should nod and smile. We should be polite. We should recognize that they are simply telling us how important their religion is to them. It's like the rabid fan who tells you that their favorite performer does not make music, he or she performs magic. Or something like that.

But we know the truth, and there's really no sense in denying it: of course Christianity is a religion. It functions in the lives of its adherents the way that all kinds of other religions function. Sometimes it is liberating. Sometimes it is oppressive. Sometimes it is life-giving; sometimes it is soul-crushing. Sometimes it just depends on the day. Calling it something else doesn't change that. Claiming exceptionalism doesn't change that. Rejecting it precisely because it is a religion doesn't change that.

But I don't want to be too much of a wet blanket; of course it's special.

Just like all the others.