I'm neither a Conservative nor a Liberal. I'm neither a Fundamentalist nor a Progressive. Funny enough, though, I'm often accused of being one of those four, depending upon who my conversation partner might be at the time.
I think that's because I'm Christian. My allegiance to Jesus comes first. Being a "conservative/fundamentalist" or a "liberal/progressive" are flip sides of the same coin. Both respond in their own way to the Enlightenment ethic of historical progressivism -- either it's good or it's bad.
I reject both because I reject that ethic as a lie.
So let me answer charges often laid to me in as direct a way as might be possible.
1. "Why do you hate America? Why are you trying to make Anerica less Christian?"
I don't "hate" America. I do, though, challenge the idea that we can draw lines on a map. I challenge the notion that those lines become determinative for our identities.
America is not now -- nor has it ever been -- a Christian nation. This America-Christian thing is a lie.
Because Christian faith has built within its very spiritual DNA a refusal to be political -- at least political in the sense that we've meant political since the Enlightenment. Jesus actively resisted any nationalist undertones that those who followed him might insist upon. In fact, that resistance is what got him killed. He was such a disappointment to nationalist hopes.
So think about it. How would we come from following a man who rejected taking a throne with borders, to insisting that borders now define the very essence of Christian? How'd that happen?
Look at the past 300 years of human history. Wars of Religion, the rise of the modern nation-state. And there's your answer.
It's not that I'm concerned to make America less Christian. America hasn't been Christian from the start. It was born in violence and bloodshed. It's kept itself perpetuating power through the violence and abuse and isolationism that names the fear of otherness. Check that against Acts 10 and tell me how that's working for America to be Christian.
It's not that I care to make America unChristian. I care that the Kingdom of God is shown to be coming on the earth. That's what I pray for, work for, hope for. And that's going to be a lot larger than America. Just read Acts 10 again.
2. "You're just a Marxist masquerading as a Christian."
I believe that Jesus calls me to a justice that is social and personal. I believe that Jesus envisions a wholeness that overcomes national, economic and gender boundaries (Galatians 3.28). Which is to say, I believe in social justice.
But if you think that justice must then necessarily be Marxist, you're intellectually lazy and spiritually dishonest. Because I don't need Marx to follow Jesus.
Read the Gospels. Jesus cared about a lot more than souls. The concern for equitable economics and meeting the physical needs of the poor is written into the very social fabric of God's call to Israel in Deuteronomy. It's echoed in Jesus' preaching and ministry. Read Luke 4 again.
Like the Hebrew prophets before him, the one way to get Jesus worked up was to be someone concerned with their own spiritual improvement over loving their neighbors. Read Matthew 23 here.
If you're more worried about your "heart", and neglect caring for others, that doesn't bode well for your following Jesus. If your primary obligation is your own spiritual happiness, while others go hungry and cold. If you're worried about your celestial destination over someone's lack of adequate housing. The New Testament has some strong words for you: "Those who say, 'I love God', and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen" (1 John 4.20).
And notice, I never even mentioned Marx.
Because I have Jesus: "I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me" (Matthew 25.42-43).
3. "You're just supporting anti-Christian agendas like same sex marriage or abortion or free health care."
Folks try to pin this on me often. And my response is always the same: I think these are issues dreamt up by the rich to keep us Christians from noticing that we're obese and drive Audis.
The Bible has over 2000 verses that speak to the spiritual dangers of wealth and not caring for others. 2000! And not one verse that approaches modern abortion or same-sex marriage.
Now, there's a lot I can say against abortion and same-sex marriage. Just like there's a lot I can say against serial monogamy and divorce. But those have to take their proper place alongside a genuine Christian critique of our culture.
This particular critique of me points to how both fundamentalism and liberalism really are flip sides of the same coin. Both claim to read the Bible, but that reading turns out to be too myopic. They end up ignoring the central issues the Bible means to address, and focus with a red-hot intensity upon certain texts, ignoring large swaths of others.
4. "You obviously don't believe the Bible."
This one is nearly laughable, except for one thing: It's sort of true.
I do not believe in the Bible. It is not the object, nor is it even the subject, of my faith. My faith is in the God who made heaven and earth, who has sought to reconcile all its brokenness in Jesus Christ, who is as near as the divinely-gifted Breath I take every minute of every day. I believe in God. Because of the Bible.
I take the Bible seriously. Anyone who listens to me for five minutes knows as much.
But what I find outlandish in this claim, is the assumption that I bend over too much to take our culture seriously, instead of the Bible.
Karl Barth once quipped that the preacher should be someone who has the Bible in one hand, and the newspaper in the other. That we inhabit the strange new world of the Bible, as pilgrims in this world. I think he was right. That we should let the Bible read the newspaper.
The things I think, I don't think in spite of the Bible. No, I think them because of the Bible.
Christian fundamentalists think that a "literal" or "common sense" reading of the Bible is the only reading possible. I mean to challenge that. Because even Jesus read the Scriptures more deeply than that. So did Paul. So did Christians for the first 1700 years.