Courtney McGrailIn more than nine out of 10 American churches, 80% of worshippers are racially homogenous, Peter Leithart observes at firstthings.com. Just 5.5% of the more than 270,000 Christian congregations in the US are racially mixed, and much of this mixing is only temporary, he points out.
Racial segregation, then, seems to be integral to American Christianity, or so the authors of 2004’s United by Faith: the multiracial congregation as an answer to the problem of race would have us think, he says. The American obsession with individualism seems to be part of the problem: the fundamental creed of the US, Leithart quotes, is that individuals are endowed with rights and freedoms, and there should be liberty and justice for all, such that, he adds, people should be free to do as they wish, within reason.
The problem with this, he summarises the authors as saying, is that “when religious people make choices based on their individual rights, they largely end up in homogeneous congregations”.
While challenging the authors’ concept of race – he says that there are some who would say that a congregation of mixed German, Polish, Irish and English origin is inter-racial by some definitions, and certainly would have been regarded as so in the 19th Century – Leithart acknowledges that the authors have a point and have highlighted a real problem in American Christianity.
This problem has continued since the book was written in 2004, he says, arguing that it does so because “American individualism and voluntarism trump the Gospel’s call to reconciliation among peoples and nations”.
Idolatry on the stump
For Mark Shea at ‘Catholic and Enjoying it’ on patheos.com, there’s a consistent and dangerous tendency to put political creeds about religious ones, so that political idolatry replaces the love of Christ and the authority of the Church.
Responding to the many who ask whether Catholics can legitimately dissent from Laudato Si’, he cites the typical lines “The Pope isn’t speaking infallibly here” and “this is just his opinion”.
“The Pope,” he says, “is the only person on planet Earth Catholics regularly and pre-emptively declare can be completely ignored – even when he is surrounded by a battalion of experts – just so long as he is not speaking with absolute infallibility. Nobody treats their garage mechanic, investment banker, or doctor this way.”
Lamenting how American conservatism has mutated in recent times, he can only stare in horror as Donald Trump continues to lead the Republican field in the presidential primaries: “The 57% approval rating lead the ‘pro-life/support the troops’ Right has given this pro-abort who takes dumps on POWs and routinely calls women ‘pigs’, ‘dogs’ and ‘disgusting animals’ makes clear what the priorities are for the base.”
Long convinced that American Catholics cannot support the Democrats given the sacrosanct place of abortion in their creed, Shea stands as a depressingly clear example as a politically orphaned American Catholic.