All day Wednesday, MSNBC advertised a discussion about the "new role" of religion and politics to be aired on the Chris Matthews Show. When the show began, guest host Mike Barnicle announced that the debate would feature atheist Christopher Hitchens and Religious Right activist Ken Blackwell.
Why does the media insist on believing that American religion exists dualistically--consisting of religion bashers and fundamentalists? What about the rest of us? Mainline Protestants, social justice Roman Catholics, progressive evangelicals, and practicing Jews (who probably weren't watching because tonight is Passover) are missing from public discussion about faith and politics. The media appears to believe that Hitchens and Blackwell fairly represent the "extremes" and that if you add them together then divide by two, you get the opinion of the rest of us. It amounts to spiritual voyeurism, intended to drive ratings and not much else.
Although American religion certainly has entertaining extremists, they do not represent regular people and how faith and politics work. American religion is more subtle and complex, full of questions and surprises that shape our communal life in ways that deserve thoughtful commentary--and thoughtful commentary doesn't mean boring.
Take tonight, for instance. Hitchens should not have been matched with Ken Blackwell. Blackwell does not possess Hitchens' intellectual firepower and was bested in every possible way. With Blackwell representing the whole of Christianity, the faith looked feeble, shallow, and, frankly, silly. Hitchens took the conversation quite seriously and asked good questions of the Christian tradition--none of which Blackwell could answer.
The most poignant moment of the interview came when Hitchens spoke of the decline of Christianity saying that he speaks in many churches and that "American churches are full of doubters." Doubt, to Hitchens, is a sign of intellectual weakness and theological untruthfulness--doubt disproves the existence of God. Blackwell shut down. He kept babbling on about "theological truth" and something vaguely called "Judeo-Christianity," but avoided Hitchens' central point.
This was extremely frustrating to me. Hitchens deserved an intellectual equal to argue the point. As a progressive mainline Protestant--I know that doubt serves an important role in faith. Indeed, this is Holy Week, the one week in the year in which Christians actually embrace doubt as the way to God with the words of Jesus from the cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Liberal Protestants and Roman Catholics know that Jesus' last week serves as a powerful vision for all of life--that those of us who stand for God's justice will encounter suffering--that all we hold dear may vanish under the wilting evil of this world's powers--to the point of feeling the absence of God in our own souls.
Throughout history, from early Christian martyrs to medieval mystics, to the words of modern poets like Emily Dickinson, theologians like Soren Kierkegaard, and activists like Mother Teresa, the Jesus way is marked by doubt. Hitchens is correct--churches are full of doubt--and rightly so. Without doubt, there is no faith. Without the way of negation, there can be no way of affirmation. Doubt is Christian. To think that doubt is somehow antithetical to faith is to miss the point.
The media, of course, isn't in the business of defending the Christian faith. But the media is in the business of reporting American life and politics. By framing the religion story in such a shallow way, MSNBC missed an opportunity to interpret President Obama's faith and politics.
As a liberal Protestant, President Obama is shaped by a theology of doubt. This was evident in his recent European speech in which he spoke of American "arrogance." With doubt as the starting point, the President recognized the limits of national certainty and embraced political humility instead thus "apologizing" for arrogance. President Obama wasn't being anti-American, he was articulating a profound aspect of his theological worldview--a theology with deep roots in both Catholic and Protestant social ethics--a theology shared by millions of his fellow citizens. Doubt, not hubris, is the appropriate starting place for political life.
Thus, media blindness to the complexity of Christian theology--as represented by the Hitchens-Blackwell pairing--actually leads to glaring mistakes in understanding the religious and spiritual dimensions of contemporary politics.
And frankly, it isn't even good TV.
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