Knippers Wants More Old-Time Religion

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 13, 1999 | by Stephen Goode

The president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a proponent of traditional religious practice, says democracy is the form of government most open to Christianity today.

Diane L. Knippers describes herself as a Christian -- an active Protestant laywoman and a member of the Episcopal Church. One of her heroes, she tells Insight, is Pope John Paul II. Knippers is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, or IRD, a Washington-based think tank.

The IRD favors traditional and orthodox religious practice. It also supports democracy as "the form of government most consistent with the Christian values of human dignity and human freedom." Its religious-liberty program reports persecution of Christians in places such as China and Sudan. And it monitors

the actions and statements of denominational leaders, reporting to church members who seek to reclaim their churches from radical ideologies. IRD actively works for renewal and reform within the Episcopal, Presbyterian (U.S.A.) and United Methodist churches.

The IRD publications include a newsletter/magazine, Faith & Freedom, and periodic briefings from its denominational committees: United Methodist Action, Episcopal Action and Presbyterian Action. So committed is Knippers to reform that she tells Insight: "I've often said to people that if the Episcopal Church ever split, God would call me to the more liberal branch to start a renewal."

Insight: In "Christianity and Democracy: A Statement of the Institute on Religion and Democracy," there is this sentence: "The first political task of the Church is to be the Church." What do you mean by that?

Diane L. Knippers: The argument we're trying to make is that the church's essential purpose is to be the Body of Christ in society. It means that it's the church's essential purpose to be a vehicle by which we worship God and that shares the Gospel with others.

When the church is fulfilling all of those responsibilities, it is playing a key role as an institution in civil society. In fulfilling its primary function, the church is making an enormous contribution to society even when it's not speaking directly to social and political issues.

That statement was written in the context of insisting that communist as well as other governments let the church be free to be the church, to fulfill its own essential role.

Insight: Is the role the Roman Catholic Church played in Polish society under communism an example?

DLK: Yes. Obviously, there were moments in Poland of speaking up and standing up to the state. But mainly what the Roman Catholic Church did was create and protect a space in civil society that wasn't controlled by the government. It was a space that was independent of government, a creative place for intellectuals and artists and others.

Insight: How did left-wing activism become so prominent in your church, the Episcopal Church, and other mainline Protestant churches?

DLK: At its heart I think it probably stems from an erosion in basic Christian doctrine. The issue of the deity of Christ, the issue of the bodily resurrection -- core Christian doctrines -- have been called into question on seminary campuses for decades. Laypeople are just catching on.

I think we're seeing a transition. The older generation was full of materialists. Jack Spong -- that is, Bishop Spong [the controversial Episcopal Bishop of New Jersey] -- doesn't believe anything he can't touch. He's not taking anything by faith. He believes in science. But suddenly we see that he's kind of old-fashioned. We see the rise of new, postmodernist spiritualities. A friend of mine calls it cafeteria religion -- pick and choose what you like. It reflects and reinforces some of the worst trends in our society.

There is syncretism with Asian religions, religions from indigenous peoples, goddess worship, New Age spiritualities, pantheism. The older generation of theologians and public [religious] figures threw out the transcendent element in the Christian faith, and now we see a generation so hungry for spiritual faith that they pursue the old paganism.

Insight: The IRD seems very interested in the corrosive forms of theology, which usually spring up as fads adopted by many people.

DLK: In the eighties we looked at liberation theology. But it's over and [has been] replaced by "green" theology, or ecotheology, and overwhelmingly by feminist theology. Now we're dealing with feminist theology and I look back at liberation theology with nostalgia and longing because it was orthodox in comparison with what we have now.

Insight: What does feminist theology give us today?

DLK: The cutting edge of it arrived around the "reimagining" movement, which came on the scene around 1993. A lot of people made the mistake, thinking they were saying "reimaging," which is a different thing. Of course we have different images of God and, within some important parameters, are expected to make use of these differences in our worship of God and the way we talk about Him.

But reimagining implies that it was human beings -- and primarily men -- who first imagined God, and so now it's women's mm to imagine God. And what we are trying to communicate in opposition to that view is that it is God who imagined us. He's the one that first imagined us and who reveals Himself to us.