{"id":224,"date":"2006-11-16T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-11-16T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godspolitics\/2006\/11\/diana-butler-bass-how-to-defea.html"},"modified":"2006-11-16T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-11-16T12:00:00","slug":"diana-butler-bass-how-to-defea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/11\/diana-butler-bass-how-to-defea.html","title":{"rendered":"Diana Butler Bass: How to Defeat Fundamentalism Without Losing Your Soul"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"DianaA couple friends asked me why I\u2019d been so quiet on this site since the Democrats won both the House and Senate \u2014 as well as a fair number of governor\u2019s seats \u2014 last week. <\/p>\n

I confess: I was stunned by the Democratic wins. Then, reading the polls and surveys, especially the changes in the religious vote (the \u201cGod gap\u201d between Republicans and Democrats shrank in all religious categories<\/a>), I felt grateful that religious people broadened their understanding of \u201cvalues\u201d to include the war in Iraq and the problems of poverty. Candidates, issues, and points of view that matter to me had emerged victorious in a national election for the first time in a decade. <\/p>\n

Winning is a funny thing, especially where faith and politics are involved. It is tempting to think, \u201cAlleluia! God has vindicated his people!\u201d We might believe that God has uniquely blessed us, vanquished our enemies, and led us to the Promised Land. That is, of course, the way that the Religious Right interprets elections \u2014 each one is a barometer of a cosmic holy war.<\/p>\n

But the tendency to interpret human events as a measure of God\u2019s blessing is not unique to the Religious Right. About eighty years ago, American Christians were embroiled in another great conflict between fundamentalist and liberal versions of faith involving toleration for Catholics and Jews, the social gospel, changing views of biblical interpretation and Christian history, and the relationship between faith and science. The 1920s were one of the most contentious, contested decades in American religious history \u2014 people lost jobs, churches split, families and communities divided, and entire religious institutions were threatened.<\/p>\n

In 1922, at the height of the conflict, Harry Emerson Fosdick<\/a>, one of the great liberal ministers of the day, preached his famous (and by some standards, infamous) sermon, \u201cShall the Fundamentalists Win?\u201d<\/a> By the end of the decade, the answer to Fosdick\u2019s question became apparent: the Fundamentalists did not win. Instead, liberals won \u2014 they controlled every major institution in American Protestantism. And liberals basked in their victory. <\/p>\n

In 1935, at the height of liberal prestige and power, Fosdick preached another sermon \u2014 one far less noticed \u2014 called \u201cThe Church Must Go Beyond Modernism.\u201d In it, Fosdick accused liberalism of being overly intellectual, \u201cdangerously sentimental,\u201d of losing a sense of \u201cthe reality of God,\u201d and abandoning its ethics. He complained that liberalism had won its battle with fundamentalism, but lost its soul. Liberals had accommodated so much to culture that they were failing to be Christian; they were just like \u201cthe world.\u201d \u201cWhat Christ does to modern culture,\u201d he finished, \u201cis to challenge it.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Fosdick, winning engendered wisdom \u2014 the wisdom of internal critique, of being able to see the pitfalls of success, and of recognizing the hypocrisy of self-righteousness. \u201cUnless the church can go deeper and reach higher,\u201d Fosdick warned, \u201cit will fail indeed.\u201d No wonder his great hymn, God of Grace and God of Glory,<\/i> includes the prayer, \u201cGrant us wisdom.\u201d <\/p>\n

I think that is why I\u2019ve been quiet this week. I haven\u2019t been thinking about Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton, about exit strategies or balancing budgets. I\u2019ve been thinking about Harry Emerson Fosdick. Winning gives you a rush of success \u2014 a rush that can be interpreted as spiritual success and \u201cGod is on our side\u201d religion. But for mature Christians, winning should give pause. Can the church go deeper and reach higher? At this moment in history, to what depth and height is God calling us? Winning should not only yield the rush of victory; winning might yet yield a harvest of wisdom. At the very least, we should pray for that. <\/p>\n

And maybe the Democrats should consider praying for wisdom, too. <\/p>\n

Diana Butler Bass (http:\/\/www.dianabutlerbass.com\/<\/a>) is an independent scholar and author. Last week, Publishers Weekly<\/i> named her recent book, Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith <\/i>(Harper San Francisco) one of the best books of 2006.<\/p>\n

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