In early March - or a million years ago in blog time - Brad Wilcox of the University of Virginia published an article suggesting that if President Obama's plans for expanding America's social safety come to fruition, the USA will become ever-more secular and end up as godless as European nations, perhaps even like Denmark and Sweden.
Wilcox shows that there is an inverse correlation between the size of a particular society's welfare state and its religiosity. Correlation is not causation, of course, and Jamelle does a pretty good job of arguing against seeing causation here and gives some alternate reasons why this correlation would exist.
Theologically, though, there is reason to believe that Wilcox is exactly right.
For some reason, there is a widespread, nearly universal even, belief that religion is inherently and exclusively spiritual. In other words, that religious belief - and for the purposes of this blog post that will mostly mean "Christianity" - compels acceptance of a dualistic model for humanity: soul and body. Once again we see how my old nemeses, Greek philosophical constructs, have perverted Christian beliefs. The idea that we are eternal spirits encased in mortal shells is what allows Christians to ignore their ethical obligations; they can hoard their wealth so long as they convince themselves that their real treasure is in heaven, they can refuse to alleviate suffering so long as they tell someone that Jesus loves them, thereby "sharing the gospel" and fulfilling their obligation. This spiritualization, if you will, of Christianity necessarily entails a reduction of material help to those in material need, because people will always focus on what they believe is most important. If you think that telling someone that Jesus died on the cross to save us from gay marriage is the height of Christian activity, then that's what you're going to spend your time doing.
But this spiritualization is completely opposite of what we see in the Bible. From Genesis all the way to Revelation, the reasons for believing in and obeying God have nothing to do with disembodied Truth or spiritual enlightenment. Rather, these reasons revolve around what God does for and to his people in their earthly, material lives.
Adam and Eve were supposed to obey God because he gave them a great garden, Noah because God saved him from the flood, Abraham because God brought him from Ur to Canaan and made him a rich man. Moses and the rest of the Hebrews were supposed to follow God because he freed them from slavery in Egypt - a constant refrain in the Old Testament.
It's important to understand that the ancient Hebrews weren't strict monotheists until the Exile (when Babylon sacked Jerusalem and deported a large part of the nation's population in 586 BCE). Before then they were theologically henotheists while functionally polytheists. So when Moses proclaimed to the Hebrews what is now known as the Shema, it's more accurate to translate the Hebrew word 'echad' as "alone" instead of "one," making the statement, "Hear, Israel. YHWH is our God, YHWH alone."
Which begs the question, "Why this god and not another?" Deuteronomy 6, which contains the Shema, goes on to explain that it's because God is giving them a really nice place to live, and because he made life hell for the Egyptians in order to get the Hebrews out of slavery. And they have celebrated these events and recounted these mighty acts of God, among others, all the way to the present day in the celebration of Passover. It's a big deal. The entire basis for the Jewish religion is that God intervened in people's lives.
When Jesus comes into the picture it's no different. He set about making wine for people to drink, bread and fish for them to eat, healing them so they could see and walk again and so their skin diseases would go away. After Jesus left his followers did the same things. We can see even in the Bible the transition from supernatural methods of meeting physical needs to more mundane methods; Jesus's original disciples are portrayed as performing miracles and a few others get in on the action, but soon the Christian community is full of people selling all their personal property and holding it in common so that no one, no matter their status, would be in need. Paul, when dealing with the many problems of the church in Corinth, spends some time chewing them out for the way in which the wealthy bring a bunch of food and eat themselves sick at church dinners while the poor go hungry. James says that Christians who show favoritism to the rich and who don't use their wealth to help the poor don't actually believe in God at all, don't really have "faith" to speak of. John says that love for God can only exist alongside love for other men and women.
Christianity is firmly and fully based in the here and now, in this material, physical existence. When Christians abandon their ethical obligations, they abandon their faith. And when the practitioners of a religion abandon that religion, it withers and dies.
Despite the tone of Wilcox's article, neither President Obama or anyone else is trying to "crowd out religious institutions in America." Christians have been using this excuse for years, and it's pathetic. The welfare state has been created as a response to pressing societal need, not out of a desire to stick it to the Christians. If Christians were fulfilling their ethical obligations there wouldn't be such a need for public assistance. Christians are never opposed or mocked when they're busily feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. They're never criticized for having "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control."
And as I've said many times before, if Christians insist upon abdicating their responsibility to act ethically in this world - whether out of misplaced concern for their spiritual sides or mere selfishness - not only will the USA continue to become a more secular society, we'll all be better off for it.
