Ketchum: It might be more helpful if Christians tried to find more ways to agree
I’m a Christian.
What does that tell you about me? In today’s Age of Division, it can mean almost as many things as there are people to ponder that statement.
The term “Christian” has become more elastic than a rubber band on a slingshot. I remember an observation that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Rev. Jerry Falwell both called themselves Baptists. And they were and, at the same time, they weren’t the same kind of Baptist.
We Christians do hold onto a few common threads. We all believe that Jesus Christ was and is the son of God. We pretty much subscribe to the Apostles Creed. The Creed says Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried and, on the third day, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God.
And he’s going to judge the living and the dead. Swallow hard.
From there, we believers travel a host of different highways to heaven. That helps muddy the picture for inquirers outside the faith to understand just how it is we get along. More and more these days, the getting along is getting harder, mostly because politics gets in the way.
Liberal and conservative believers like to bet that politicians will solve things in their favor and thus try to elect the ones who promise to do so. Putting your faith in politicians or judges often becomes a fool’s errand.
Author Steven Waldman points out that conservatives have placed their bets on a friendly Supreme Court to carry out their wishes. So far, a majority of justices have complied. Think Roe v. Wade and affirmative action rulings.
But Waldman points out that this kind of thing comes imbedded with fish hooks. Waldman cites statistics that 14.5% of Americans considered themselves evangelical Christians in 2020, down from 23% in 2006. One reason cited for the drop: the perception among 70% of millennials that evangelicals are “too judgmental” on gay and lesbian issues.
Beyond that, Waldman says as court rulings seek to protect evangelical Christians, they also open the door for similar protections for followers of Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and other non-Christian faiths. “If cases … are a victory for the Christian God, they are also a victory for Allah,” Waldman writes in a recent essay for the Religion News Service.
Waldman also points out that the legal doctrine you create for “your side” will eventually be used against you by the “other side.” The moral: Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.
I have to agree with Founding Father James Madison who said government should not stymie religion and should not necessarily help it either. Government support, he said, will weaken religion, not strengthen it.
That seems to be why the Constitution’s First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …”
Call it separation of church and state if you like.
In the long run, it might be a lot more helpful if we Christians tried to find more ways we can agree with each other and work on those issues and less time circling the wagons to keep the infidels out.
I think Jesus would agree.
Jim Ketchum is a retired Times Herald copy editor. Contact him at jeketchum1@comcast.net.
This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: Ketchum: It might be more helpful if Christians tried to find more ways to agree
