Brother Al vs. the Liberals (2)

As I mentioned in the first post on this topic, our friend Brother Al Mohler recently did an aticle that I find fairly revealing about his approach to theology: Air Conditioning Hell: How Liberalism Happens 01/26/10. It's about promoting fear-based theology. But the argument is couched in terms of a menace he considers allied with Hell if not even more dangerous: liberals.

I broadly summarized the history of Christian fundamentalism in America in the last post. Because to understand the way fundis see "liberals" as enemies, you have to realize that in fundi-speak, "liberal" doesn't just mean civil libertarian or someone who supports health care reform. (Most of them are likely only vaguely aware of what "liberal" means outside US borders, if at all.) For the fundis, "liberals" are theological enemies out to undermine the True Religion, enemies of God, allies of Satan.

Brother Al cites in his column a 24-year-old article by Martin Marty, a leading American religious historian, "Hell Disappeared. No One Noticed. A Civic Argument" The Harvard Theological Review Jul-Oct 1985, which doesn't seem to be available on the open Web. Marty's article was adapted from his 1984 Ingersoll Lecture on Immortality of the same title at the Harvard Divinity School (which also doesn't seem to be available on the open Web).

Marty's argument wasn't so much about the theology of Hell as it was about the claims by the Christian Right that teaching religion or "values" in the public schools would result in better behaved young people. He argues that for any kind of religious instruction to have the claimed salutary effect, it would have to carry the threat of punishment. Which means, as Marty puts it, it would have to include some form of teaching about "hell", i.e., eternal retribution for sins.

But Marty also explains that fear of Hell has become "culturally unavailable" for use in public schools. What he means is that so few people in America, even among active churchgoing believers, really take the threat of Hell seriously. If they believe in it at all. And for those who do believe in it, most are pretty confident that it's going to be the eternal residence of someone else other than themselves. His main point is directed at the claims advocates of "values" education make for such courses in public schools that without being able to credibly invoke some sort of eternal punishment, a concept that is "culturally unavailable" because too few people take it seriously, the claimed benefits of improving behavior through "values" classes are unlikely. As Marty puts it:

Rewards and punishments already exist on the sub-God, secular level. There are report cards, demerits, merit badges, trophies, rewards, awards, detentions, expulsions, suspensions, blue ribbons, congratulatory letters, parent conferences, diplomas, and the like to assure some framework, some structure for regulating and endorsing or disapproving action. If religion is to be an enhancement of the above, then there must be specifically religious sanctions or rewards. Indeed, rewards and punishments would be the very linchpin of the system, and these relate to and derive from the character of the One who does the rewarding and punishing. This is the substantive issue that would come up sooner, not later, if and when God comes with content and attributes as God must in moral education.

I love the concept of "sub-God".

Brother Al in his article quotes from Marty's argument only, "Hell disappeared. No one noticed." He follows that immediately by writing:

The liberal theologians and preachers who so conveniently discarded hell did so without denying that the Bible clearly teaches the doctrine. They simply asserted the higher authority of the culture's sense of morality. In order to save Christianity from the moral and intellectual damage done by the doctrine, hell simply had to go. Many rejected the doctrine with gusto, claiming the mandate to update the faith in a new intellectual age. Others simply let the doctrine go dormant, never to be mentioned in polite company.

Interestingly enough, and despite the impression Brother Al's placing of the Marty citation gives, Marty actually makes the point that Christian thinkers should give more attention to the fact that Hell has largely dropped out of credibility among American Christians, even conservative ones.

He makes clear that he is not nostalgic for the prominence of the concept of Hell in Christian theology and preaching. His point is that in the Catholic tradition, in the Protestant Calvinist tradition and in the teaching of Jonathan Edwards, who was so influential among American Christians in the early years of the Republic, Hell was used "as a metaphor or threat ... in ways that should not permit dismissal by simple derision."

This is a way of saying that, if and since hell has largely disappeared from the culture, and even from the mentality, of its church members, someone ought to notice. Religious agencies can come up with other props for moral action with respect to God. Civil institution which lack such props because they are not constituted as agencies of salvation might, lacking the threat of eternal punishment, do well to elaborate moral system which do not, merely superstitiously or routinely, invoke the syllable "God" as an instrument for promoting "traditional values".

If Brother Al read more than the title of Marty's article, his own piece doesn't show any sign that he took this reflective passage to heart.

My point here is not to dissect the results of Brother Al's fundi theology. It's to point out the attitude in the article is very characteristic of the way many fundis approach politics as well as religion. Enemies are especially important for this outlook. And Brother Al mentions the following enemies: "Theological liberals" "theological liberalism" "theological liberalism" (again) "classic liberals" "modernists" "modernism" "secular culture" "the Enlightenment" "Protestant liberalism" "European sources" (no, not those!!!!) "Liberal theology" "Unitarianism" "revolution and intellectual liberty" "the larger culture".

Brother Al argues that shying away from the doctrine of Hell as understood by 18th- and early-19th-century Calvinists is one avenue by which true Christian doctrine gets onto that slippery slope that to liberalism, atheism and voting for the Democratic Party. Okay, that's my short version, he doesn't specifically mentioned the Democrats. Here's how he puts it:

Are we embarrassed by the biblical doctrine of hell?

If so, this generation of evangelicals will face no shortage of embarrassments. The current intellectual context allows virtually no respect for Christian affirmations of the exclusivity of the gospel, the true nature of human sin, the Bible's teachings regarding human sexuality, and any number of other doctrines revealed in the Bible. The lesson of theological liberalism is clear—embarrassment is the gateway drug for theological accommodation and denial.

Be sure of this: it will not stop with the air conditioning of hell.

Now, the fundamentalist posture and to a significant extent the largest born-again Christian approach (which isn't synonymous with fundamentalism) stress what we could legitimately call counter-cultural themes, though to them "counter-culture" still means hippie dope-smokers. They take pride in positioning themselves as possessors of God's Truth in the midst of a hostile majority culture. Although, as I discussed in the first part of this post, they manage to identify at the same time with what Nixon famously called the Silent Majority, who they assume share their basic approach to "family values" and American nationalism. You'll never understand American Christian fundamentalism if you try to see it as functioning according to an overarching formal logic.

But it's fairly conspicuous of Brother Al's polemic in favor of Hell - or at least the doctrine of Hell - that he doesn't give an real picture of what role he thinks Hell should play in the fundi worldview and preaching.

This is where Martin Marty's observations about the doctrine of Hell having in practice lost its terrors even for many of the most conservative Christians is relevant to the point Brother Al is making. Or, in Marty's phrase, "culturally unavailable" to them. Even the fundis that take it seriously tend to view Hell as the place their enemies are destined to wind up, not as a particular threat to their own eternal fate.

I would suggest that the other enemies mentioned by Brother Al in this column, as well as the terrible pressing immediate mortal threat represented by a few Islamic fanatics hiding in caves in the badlands of Pakistan, largely plays the role of conformity-inducing fear the Hell might once have played in the consciousness of fundamentalists and evangelicals. Along with voodoo-worshipping Haitians in a Pact With The Devil and other bogeymen that pop up from time to time.

So the question is, just what the hell does Brother Al want to do with the doctrine of Hell?

Tags: albert mohler, christian fundamentalism