That Old-Time Religion

National Review, Sept 15, 2003 by Michael Potemra

Wolfe confesses that he brings a "missionary zeal" to his work as a college professor. Maybe that's why he's so upset by what he calls "salvation inflation," a religious counterpart to grade inflation: "As less becomes expected in order to achieve salvation, the blessings of salvation are offered with fewer strings attached." But he should be reassured by a central insight of Christianity -- not just the "tacky" (his word) forms of it that can be seen today, but the hard-core version of the 16th-century Reformers: We all get better grades than we deserve, for the simple reason that grace is unmerited. Early in the book, Wolfe criticizes the recent feel-good religious bestseller The Prayer of Jabez, because, he says, "in [this] form of Christianity, you get far more than you give." To which Martin Luther -- not to mention Paul -- would have responded: Precisely.

Furthermore, for all of Wolfe's strictures about evangelicalism entering a "Faustian pact" with the culture, the new mainstream of American Christianity is still recognizably the faith of the New Testament -- perhaps, indeed, more so than in the past. One minister Wolfe talked to, Bryant Quinn of Hebron Baptist in Dacula, Ga., explains that he organized Saturday-night services for his busy congregation: "In doing this, we are showing that Hebron is willing to break with tradition . . . We have to understand that the message of Christ is the same, but the methods of delivering that message are not sacred."

This distinction between the message and its form is absolutely crucial. Wolfe declares, for example, that he is "not pleased with [the] retreat from sin, for the ease with which American religious believers adopt nonjudgmental language and a psychological understanding of wrongdoing is detrimental to anyone, religious or not, who believes that individuals should judge their actions against the highest possible ideals of human conduct." But in fact, the content of the message about sin has not changed. I was recently told, in a sermon at an evangelical megachurch -- in midtown Manhattan, no less! -- about the need to resist "the homosexual agenda." In a Baptist church -- also in midtown -- I heard a preacher speak about courtship, in terms that suggested his congregation were already well aware of the prohibition against premarital sex. What was missing, though, was fire and brimstone, and any self-righteous reveling in the perdition of sinners. Far from a dilution of the moral message of religion, this represents a strengthening of the message -- by eliminating from it any motives other than love of those who, like oneself, are sinners.

So why, exactly, is Wolfe so troubled? Is it merely a matter of his academic background, or his aesthetic distaste for tackiness? I couldn't begin to guess. But over the long run, we have every reason to hope that American religion will prove that his observations were correct -- and that his qualms about them were not. I can't help recalling, in this context, a conversation I had recently with a friend of mine, a dyed-in-the-wool agnostic. We were talking about some interfaith conference or other, and he surprised me by volubly denouncing the whole idea of ecumenism. I asked him: Why on earth, if you don't believe in God, should you care one way or another if religions happen to find common ground? "Religions make claims about truth," he replied, "and if they compromise on truth, it shows they don't really believe it." Leave aside the question of whether this is an accurate description of ecumenism; it still left the problem of why the agnostic shouldn't welcome such an admission from religious believers. I started to have some dark suspicions, and in our next conversation some weeks later, I asked him: "Is it possible that you reject ecumenism because it makes religions appear less angry, more reasonable -- and thus harder to reject?" He grew pensive, and finally smiled: "You may be on to something."