God and other famous liberals: reclaiming the politics of America Read online

  When interpreting any creative work, whether a novel or the cosmos itself the difficulty of the task rises with the intellectual and emotional complexity of the text. When the text is the creation—especially given that we are a part of what we are trying to interpret—an almost unfathomable level of difficulty is further compounded by the anxiety implicit in such questions as "How can I be saved?"

  People with differing interpretations of Moby Dick may disagree with one another in print, but their arguments are nothing when compared to how those with differing interpretations of the creation act when facing off in the religious arena. A handful of literary critics may believe that their interpretation of a masterpiece alone is correct, but, when it comes to God, many, if not most, believers insist on the absolute truth of their opinion.

  Their logic is as follows: If A (my belief) is correct, not-A (everyone else's) has to be wrong. In circles where right thinking takes precedence over right acting, when advocates of one particular dogma are confronted by others who disagree, they must either convert, ignore, or destroy them. Hence the long history of religious war and persecution.

  How much better it would be if we thought of the world as a cathedral, with thousands of different windows through which the light of God or truth shines. Some are abstract, some representational. Each tells a story about what it means to be alive and then to die, a story of love and death, hope and faith, truth and meaning.

  Some people think that the light shines only through their own window. Fundamentalists of the right, sure that their window is the only one through which the light shines, may go so far as to incite their fellow worshipers to throw stones through other people's windows. Atheists, fundamentalists of the left, observe the bewildering variety of windows and lapse into skepticism, concluding that there is no light. But the windows are not the light, only where the light shines through. There is one light (one truth, one God), but it is refracted through a myriad of windows, each distinct, each different.

  Those who have worshiped at one window throughout their lifetime almost always see the refracted light more clearly and understand its meaning more deeply than do those who flit from window to window, believing that differences don't really matter. In religion, the discipline that comes from devotion cannot be replaced by sophistication. But in a pluralistic world, the best we can still hope for is the development of deep commitments to our own faith, while somehow remaining able to acknowledge that those who believe differently may, in their own distinctive ways, be just as close to God or truth as we are. Then we may live as neighbors in the cathedral of the world.

  That is the liberal hope, as inspired by two great commandments: to love God and our neighbor as ourself.

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  2

  God's Son Jesus

  Truly I say to you, as you did it unto one of the least of these, you did it unto me.

  —Matthew 25:40

  If God is the most famous liberal of all time, his son Jesus surely comes in a close second. It is not a question of sweetness and light. Jesus was often angry. He turned over the tables of the money changers. He scorned the religious establishment of his own day, branding them as liars and hypocrites.

  Jesus's liberalism was founded on two principles that always distinguish religious liberals from their more traditional contemporaries: He was not a biblical literalist, and he disdained every superficial form of religious show, whether moralism, pietism, or doctrinal presumption. Jesus placed the burden of religious proof not in saving words but in saving works.

  Both principles are important, and each is ignored by the more vocal and insistent of Jesus's so-called followers. In many Christian circles, biblical literalism is the key to salvation, and private, rather than public, morality is a litmus test of one's Christian sincerity. Nothing could less honor the memory of a man who so eloquently challenged the religious presumptions of his time. In contrast with the Pharisees, those good people who were the biblical literalists and moralists of their day, Jesus sought a far deeper proof of faith, one ratified by deeds not words. He was unimpressed by propriety and fearless in his advocacy of society's lost sheep: outcasts, untouchables, all the forgotten ones.

  As for his disdain of biblical literalism, consider the sabbath law, duly codified in scripture. Proclaiming that "The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath," Jesus aligned himself with the spirit, not the letter, of the Bible. Those who wish to enact Christian laws in our own country must beware. The person in whose name they are acting would have cringed at the very thought.

  Preachers on the far religious right have long lamented that we have abandoned the faith of our founders. Their argument goes as follows: The architects of the Revolution, Declaration of Independence, and Constitution were Christians, whose intention—to establish the United States as a Christian nation founded on Christian laws—was so obvious that they didn't bother making it explicit.

  They could not be more wrong.

  Consider this long-forgotten anecdote, a brush between the protectors of Christian law and the father of our country. On a Sunday morning in December, 1789, eleven months after his election to the presidency, George Washington was arrested on his way to church. According to a report in the December 16 Massachusetts Centinel, Washington had lost his way riding through Connecticut and was unable to reach New York State on Saturday night as planned. Having agreed to attend worship in New York the next morning, he awakened early, mounted his horse, and took off at a fast clip toward the New York-Connecticut border.

  What Washington neglected to consider—or chose to overlook—was that riding at full speed in Connecticut on a Sunday was against the law. Before he had crossed the border, an alert tithingman halted the president, and cited him for violating the local sabbath statutes. This obscure incident marks the first (if least momentous) time that anyone rightfully accused our president of breaking the law.

  Among the earliest laws to be established in colonial America, Christian sabbath statutes concerned everything from a requirement to attend church twice every Sunday (Virginia, 1610) to bans on Sunday labor (Massachusetts Bay, 1629), unnecessary travel (Plymouth, 1682), and drinking on Sunday (New Jersey, 1701). Penalties ranged from ten shillings or a whipping to a fine of fifty pounds of tobacco.

  The secondary player in this minor drama was a tithingman, whose task it was to ensure that all Sabbath legislation be properly observed and rigorously enforced. In addition to people traveling unnecessarily or too fast on a Sunday, the tithingman also kept tabs on all those "who lye at home," and apprehended anyone who "prophanely behaved, lingered without dores at meeting time on the Lordes daie," which included those "sons of Belial strutting about, setting on fences, and otherwise desecrating the day." In addition to fines and whippings, in most states the favored penalties also ensured public embarrassment. As "good" (law-abiding) Christians walked to and from church, their guilty neighbors— whether Sunday travelers, speedsters, revelers, blasphemers, or sleepers—found themselves on display in a cage right in front of the church on the meeting-house green.

  As a clergyman in Manhattan, the secular mecca of America, I am tantalized by the vision of all my neighbors who prop themselves up in bed and devote Sunday morning to consuming coffee and the New York Times being mustered out by the local constabulary and caged in Central Park. Of course, being modern white-collar (or silk-pajama) criminals, the punishment would be far less stiff than in the good old days, when America was a truly Christian country. Just imagine. The Tavern on the Green could cater. Wouldn't it be grand.

  The real irony in this story is that when President Washington was arrested for breaking the Sabbath he was on his way to church. He did manage to talk himself out of trouble, and made it to services on time, but only when he promised to travel no further that day than the town where he planned to worship. Nonetheless, Washington was nearly thwarted by a Christian law from performing his Christian duty. This is because, almost by definition, any piece of Christian legislation—not Christian in spirit, such as a law to aid the hungry or homeless, but one drafted to enforce specific religious behavior or practice—runs counter to the teachings of Jesus.

  Following the precedent of the great Rabbi Hillel (who taught that the sabbath commandment was secondary to the commandment to be hospitable to one's neighbor), when confronted by a man in need of healing on the Sabbath, Jesus didn't give the law a second thought. Choosing to serve God, rather than God's blindered bureaucrats, he broke the Sabbath ordinance, and healed the man. For this, the strict-to-the-letter religious authorities called him before their tribunal and accused him of sacrilege.

  In seventeenth- or eighteenth-century New England, should anyone have wished to attempt a like bit of timely healing on the Sabbath day, he or she too might have been thwarted by the local (now dogmatic Christian) authorities. The tithingman did hand out tickets, giving special permission to those who could be excused from the Sunday statutes by virtue of some emergency. But imagine if one of your children were to fall deathly ill on a Sunday. To follow the letter of the law, before you could travel to the doctor's home to enlist professional aid, first you would have to find the tithingman and secure his permission. However well-intentioned, this statute, written to defend Christianity from bad Christians and other reprobates, potentially makes it impossible to be a good Christian, a healer, a follower of Jesus.

  For years, Jesus has been held captive by people who claim to believe in him. But his own words persist, defying their deed of ownership. Jesus was no conservative. He challenged the establishment, both religious and political. Would anyone who turned over the money-changers' tables in the temple have had anything nice to say about today's televangelists? Of course not. And what about those who pride themselves for saving
the taxpayers' money by slashing social programs. Not Jesus. He had no use for pride, and always came down on the side of the dispossessed and downtrodden: prostitutes, prodigal children, tavern keepers, even tax collectors.

  The Bible can be quoted by anyone for his or her own purposes. In its pages, there are passing references to the evils of everything from women to shellfish. But far from being a biblical literalist, Jesus himself drew a sharp distinction between the transient and permanent teachings contained in the scriptures. When brought before the religious authorities and charged with breaking sacred laws, Jesus summed up the Hebrew scriptures in two great commandments, which override all lesser particulars: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself On these two commandments," he said, "depend all the law and the prophets" (Matthew 22). Again, Jesus follows in the spirit of Hillel, who wrote, "What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbor. That is the Torah. All the rest is commentary."

  If the word liberal means generous (washing his disciples' feet), indulgent (allowing his own to be bathed in costly oils), compassionate (taking pity on the forgotten members of society), flexible and nondoctrinaire (breaking the sabbath laws to serve a person in need), and free-spirited (dancing and drinking, honoring the spirit of the law above its letter), Jesus was a quintessential liberal.

  Of course, the word liberal alone is insufficient to encompass either Jesus's person or teachings. Jesus himself asked, "Who do people say that I am?" His disciples, who themselves were far from sure, replied, "John the Baptist," "Elijah," "one of the prophets," perhaps "the messiah." The gospels are filled with clues, though many were written long after Jesus died by followers convinced that he was the long-awaited scion of David, God's only son come to proclaim salvation and pronounce judgment. One sign of Jesus's greatness and importance is that we continue to struggle in our attempts to understand who he was and what, precisely, his message portends.

  Throughout the centuries, Christian theologians and religious scholars have struggled with the question Jesus asked his disciples. The search for the historical Jesus has led sincere seekers down many different paths. Was Jesus a revolutionary zealot or a pacifist? Was he a man, a God, or both? Was he an apocalypticist, who believed that the end of the world would come during his disciples' lifetime as he says to them in Matthew 10:23, ora social prophet whose ethical teachings were offered for the reform of society? Depending on one's answer to these and other like questions, Jesus appears in many different lights, each to a degree illuminating but none sufficient to highlight his entire character or message.

  When I speak of Jesus as a liberal, I limit myself to his teachings, not teachings about him. Even here, his proclamations of unconditional love and forgiveness contrast with others that are judgmental. Yet, I can say this. When we extract those fragments of his gospel that Jesus himself underlines as having precedence and ultimacy, we encounter a man for whom deeds are superior to creeds, and service to the poor and downtrodden is the key to salvation.

  In some respects, Jesus is more than liberal, in fact nothing less than radical. Those who enlist Jesus as chairman of the cosmic board, a hard-working, no-nonsense free-market capitalist, ought to go back and ponder the story of the rich man who wishes to know how he can ensure himself a place in heaven. The answer is not drawn from the book of supply-side or trickle-down economics. It is not "Make as much money as possible, so that your tithe to the church will grow yearly, and you will collect dividends in heaven." What Jesus actually said is "Take all you have and give it to the poor."

  Three years ago, one of my parishioners confronted me with this passage. A world-beating Wall Street whiz-kid, Bart Harvey had begun to question what the fast track meant. Looking for deeper meaning out of life, he came into my study and said, "I've been reading the Bible. I'm thinking of giving everything I have to the poor. I know it sounds crazy, but according to Jesus, it's the only way I can be saved."

  He happened to be one of my leading parishioners: a major giver; treasurer of the board; young, handsome; a vital and important member of our church. I remember how pleased I was when he joined All Souls. He was appealing, generous and, unlike the majority of our members, very well off.

  "You are doing so much already," I said. "By tithing here, through your support of our social ministries and other social programs, you are giving as much to the poor as almost anyone I know." He didn't buy it. Instead, he quit his job, went mountain climbing in Nepal, and spent several weeks walking through India. When he returned to New York, his brokerage firm offered him his old job back, with a major raise. Bart turned down the offer, choosing instead to assist James Rouse (the developer of Columbia, Maryland, Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston, and the South Street Seaport in New York), who now devotes his creative efforts to facilitate housing for the poor. Had it not been for Bart's lobbying efforts, Congress would likely have canceled the tax credit program that makes much private-sector low-cost housing possible. Fortunately, when I told him that he didn't need to take Jesus seriously, Bart didn't listen to me.

  He came back to see me recently. Two things struck me about him. First, he was doing more good than almost anyone I know. Second, he had lost his need to be virtuous, better than his neighbors. As he grew in service, Bart also grew in humility. Jesus would have understood that also.

  In contrast, many Christians today reject the notion that Jesus espoused a radical economic gospel. They overlook his parable concerning the laborers in the field. At the outset of the day a group of laborers are offered a set fee for twelve hours of work. At midday others come to work in the field, and sign on for the same fee. A few stragglers arrive just before closing time. Are they paid proportionately? Not at all. In fact, they pocket exactly the same wage given to those who had been slaving in the field from dawn until dusk.

  As with many of Jesus's parables, this one is designed to shock, breaking his listeners' expectations so that we will awaken to a new appreciation for the bounteousness of God. He reminds us that those who find faith late in the day are as worthy as those who have long worked in the proverbial vineyards. Jesus is not really talking economics here. Yet he is demonstrating by means of a parable that God is far more generous, accommodating, and bounteous with those who turn to him than is any local businessman with his employees or payroll.

  A similar message lies at the heart of Jesus's parable of the Prodigal Son. This story is really about two sons and their liberal father. Throughout his entire life, one son has been the model of propriety and rectitude: saving his inheritance, obeying his parents, eschewing immorality, working hard, following the letter of the law. The other son takes his inheritance and squanders it: whoring and gaming, lying and stealing, living a life of riot and self-indulgence, until he manages to dissipate not only himself but all the money his father has given him. At the end of his pleasure trip, broke and broken, the prodigal returns home, expecting to be punished, perhaps even banished by his father. Instead, the old man runs out to meet him at the gate, embraces him, and cries tears of joy at this unexpected reunion. Rushing back to the house he instructs his servants to go out and slaughter a calf, an enormous luxury.

  Put yourself in the dutiful son's shoes. He has been the perfect son, yet his father never cried tears of joy over him. Besides, the calf could have been sold at market for a good price, not to mention that they were sacrificing this promised income for his wastrel of a brother who went out and broke every moral law: Honor thy father and mother; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not covet another's property; thou shalt not commit adultery. By nightfall this scoundrel is seated in the place of honor, on their father's right hand, at their hallowed family table, which shortly before he had desecrated by his absence, disobedience, and folly.

  No parable could be more liberal in spirit. Not only is generosity golden but those who think by virtue of their piety, education, or wealth that they are more deserving than other people are in for a surprise. According to Jesus, the Commonwealth of God is an egalitarian realm. Entrance is secured not by hard work, proper behavior, public religious observance, or even by strict morality. The only key to the Kingdom is a contrite and loving heart.