1/13/19 “Why American Christianity Is Failing Us” by Nancy Petty
Text: Isaiah 43:1-7
There is a saying that has become commonplace in our home that Karla brought back from one of her living school retreats. When faced with a harsh truth we look at each other and say, “You can’t build on a lie brothers and sisters.” It is a profoundly understated truth. We all know that one lie leads to another and eventually, as the lies build upon one another, the first lie breaks and everything built on it collapses. So this morning it is important that I preface this sermon with a confession because, after all: “You can’t build on a lie brothers and sisters.” I cannot build on a lie this morning. And the truth is, I don’t share well. I mean, some things I don’t mind sharing but generally speaking, I have a hard time sharing my things. When someone asks to borrow something of mine I want to say yes. I really do. I want to be a good sharer. It the first lesson we learn as young children. But for some reason, I find it hard to share my possessions. Once a very close friend asked to borrow a special tool of mine and I wanted to lend it to her but I was reluctant. So, as embarrassing as it is to admit this, my solution was to go and buy my friend the tool.
I am afraid that this attitude of mine – of finding it hard to share what’s mine – is a product of my American heritage. Ownership and self-reliance is all a part of the American dream rooted in a philosophy of what is known as “rugged individualism.” It was Herbert Hoover in his 1928 successful presidential campaign speech entitled, “Principles and Ideals of the United States Government,” that the self-made millionaire expressed his belief that the American system was based on “rugged individualism” and “self-reliance.” “During the early days of the Great Depression, Hoover launched the largest public works projects up until his time. But he continued to believe that problems of poverty and unemployment were best left to ‘voluntary organization and community service.’ He feared that federal relief programs would undermine individual character by making recipients dependent on the government. He continued to prioritize the concept of ‘rugged individualism’ even in the face of monumental economic catastrophe.”
This rugged individualism that Hoover espoused took root in the American frontier. And it was on the American that this individualism was nurtured in several powerful ways. Frontier locations attracted individualists able to thrive in harsh conditions. The fittest survived acquiring the best and the most of what the frontier had to offer. If you are strong enough, fast enough, and claimed it first, it’s yours. Furthermore, the frontier experience, characterized by isolation and low population density, further promoted the development of self-reliance. I am reminded that many of the stories my great grandmother would tell (and she was a great storyteller) often would begin something like this, “If we couldn’t make it on the farm or get it off the land we didn’t have it.” Meaning, there was no help, no relying on outside resources.
This, like many of you, is the culture I grew up in. And still, to some degree, live in. It is, for many of us, the narrative we were taught of the American way – the American dream – the American ideal.
Seeded in this soil of rugged individualism grows another dangerous attribute – American exceptionalism. This idea that America and thus her citizens are somehow better, more deserving, more right than anyone else in the world is deep within the collective conscience in our country. This idea took root at the very beginning of our narrative with the concept of manifest destiny – the idea that European settlers, based on their special virtues, were destined to expand westward to “redeem and remake” the western part of the continent. Thus our treatment of Native Americans. You can read our inheritance of manifest destiny into our involvement in global geopolitics. A few years ago, Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz published a book called Exceptional, “in which they boast of America’s unmatched ‘goodness’ and ‘greatness’ – conceding nothing, admitting no error. In their telling, the Vietnam and Iraq Wars were sound strategic decisions. George W. Bush’s administration’s use of torture was right; its critics were wrong. And on and on.” Exceptionalism writes Jake Sullivan in the January/February 2019 issue of The Atlantic “…can be a dangerous idea. It can justify too much. It can admit too little. It can offend and alienate…[Exceptionalism] Without a sense of greater purpose about the nation’s work in the world, the U.S. will lose direction and ambition at a time when it badly needs both.”
It is my thesis this morning that these attributes – rugged individualism and unchecked exceptionalism – are the reasons why American Christianity is failing us. And why Christianity is quickly becoming irrelevant to a younger generation. Here in America, rugged individualism and exceptionalism have become the religion of choice of many Christians and many churches. It is not uncommon at all, in pulpits all across America, for the Christian story (the Bible) to be used to teach these attributes and attitudes as the gospel message. Jesus loves ME, this I know. Jesus is my “personal” savior. Jesus died for ME. “I have called you by name. You are mine. I will give nations in exchange for you. You are honored.” We have shamefully given into a religion of ME and MINE.
Isaiah 43 is one of the most beautiful and comforting passages in all of the Bible. I can still remember the first the time I heard Mahan Siler read it at a funeral. I’m sure I had heard it before in church. But I guess I just hadn’t paid that much attention to it. Maybe I had not needed its comfort and reassurance before that day. For whatever the reason, for that day forward, Isaiah 43 has become both a source of great comfort to me. AND, lately, it has become a source of discomfort for me.
The comfort. Who doesn’t want to believe and feel that God calls them by name? Who among us would deny the feeling that comes with thinking that “I” am special to God? That God has called me by my name and that I am, in sense, exceptional to the God who created me – me, Nancy Petty, being honored and loved and redeemed by God. While profoundly confounding, it is one of the most comforting feelings and thoughts imaginable. Especially when going through the deep waters of life’s struggles and disappointments; when in the midst of the fire – those painful moments that have a way of refining and reshaping us. Yes, I want to hear God’s voice telling me that I am loved and that God is with me? These words bring an almost indescribable comfort when experiencing great grief and pain and struggle. Just this past month, as I grieved the deaths of members of this church who have been so dear to me, I turned to this very passage, Isaiah 43, for comfort. I was not disappointed for the prophets words did offer me comfort.
But there is also growing discomfort in the words of the prophet. A discomfort that I feel in our country right now that promotes Christianity as a kind of rugged individualism and exceptionalism. We, Christians, have taken words from our sacred text, words like, “I have called you by name, you are mine” and shaped a personal theology that endorses a kind of religious and spiritual individualism and exceptionalism that has become popular in evangelical Christianity. This overly personal religion that individualizes one’s specialness to God makes me uncomfortable and is a source of discomfort for me as a Christian.
We read those words, “The One who created you, O Jacob, the One who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” and we personalized them. We make this passage about us and our individual deep waters. But in reality, and in their context, God spoke those words not to individuals but to a community of people. God is always concerned about how we as ONE people are being the kingdom/the beloved community of God here on this earth. American Christianity is failing us because we have forgotten, if we ever believed it to be true, that the Christian faith is about building community, fostering relationships, and a communal salvation and redemption which can only be found in us caring for one another. It never was about solely about a personal, self-reliant salvation that is lived in individual isolation. And, no, I won’t accept the argument that we do build community, “here in America,” that the communal welfare that matters is America’s welfare and prosperity. The beloved community of God does not recognize nations! The early story of our faith is recorded through the covenants God made with Israel, but our definitional story as Christians is that God then comes into the world as the Christ to make clear those covenants are with all of humanity. To believe in, to hope for, to pray for a special divine destiny for the United States of America is to betray those covenants and the kingdom they proclaim. Our Rugged individualism, self-reliance, and American exceptionalism will NEVER redeem us, NEVER save us, and NEVER build God’s kingdom/God’s beloved community here on this earth.
The only way we can find our own redemption, the only way we can come to know that we are called by name, that we are God’s, that we are honored, that we are loved by God is in being a part of the larger community of faith, and in 2019, the larger community of faith means a planetary community, not a downtown Raleigh community, or a Tarheel community, or a Southern community, or even an American community. The people of God, in the Hebrew scriptures and in the New Testament, never understood their faith as a personalized, individualized faith. Their faith was always lived out in the context of community. And we must recast our hopes from those of our own tribe onto those of the beloved ALL of God’s creation. For surely we are in community and communion with all that live, no matter what language they speak, no matter how many legs they have, no matter if they have lungs or roots or gills, no matter the name by which they call God. The great I AM does not recognize nations, or races, or species. Any time we identify with an exceptionalism that suggests that we are above the rest of creation, we fall out of the great community of God’s kingdom.
And so my friends, it is time for America, and past time for the Christian church to confess that rugged individualism, self-reliance, and American exceptionalism was never the true destiny of America or the Christian faith. It is time for America, and past time for the Christian church to declare that only when care for one another and share our resources and rely on the goodness of each other can we reach our God-given potential as one humanity caring for one creation. It is time for us, as Christians, to lay down our national identity, because with national identity comes national interests, and they are never the same as the interests of God’s kingdom. America is not a Christian nation. America is not God’s chosen people. Unless and until we can see ourselves as less American and more Christian, we will continue to fail in our efforts to follow the Christ who paid so dearly to teach us that no one is outside the great love of the one we call God.
