The End of Christianity (6 page)

While the first generation of fundamentalism was discredited by foolish activities like the Scopes “monkey” trial in 1925, it reemerged in the mid-twentieth century in two new and effective guises: Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism. Evangelicalism, perhaps represented best by Billy Graham, is the “good news” wing of contemporary American Christianity. An evangelical is a “born again” Christian, one who has made the personal commitment to Jesus and become a messenger of the Gospel. Pentecostalism goes a step further, stressing the “gifts” of faith like speaking in tongues, laying on hands for healing, and what would be regarded in any other religion as possession or trance experiences. Both of these trends were mostly nonpolitical through the 1950s and 1960s, a period that also saw the “Jesus freak” phenomenon and, more ominously for the mainstream, the rise of feminism, the hippie counterculture, and the atheist movement. By most accounts, the final straw was the legalization of abortion in the
Roe v. Wade
decision in 1973. From that time, Christianity began to become more politically mobilized in such forms as the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition and behind such leaders as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Ralph Reed. Of course, American Christianity had never been entirely nonpolitical: the essentially Christian KKK had been politically active for a century and had been energized by the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. But now, as Robertson expressly stated, Christians were going to exert their political power: “We have together with the Protestants and Catholics enough votes to run this country. And when the people say, ‘We've had enough,’ we are going to take over.”
²⁷

Christian fundamentalism gets much (deserved) attention in the United States, but few people probably realize how diverse it is. At one extreme are the peaceful fundamentalists, folks who take their religion exceptionally seriously but merely wish to be left alone, like the Amish. At the other extreme are the “reconstructionists” or “dominionists,” folks who want to impose their brand of Christianity on everyone else. Christian Reconstructionism as expressed by R. J. Rushdoony and his organization, the Chalcedon Foundation, seeks to institute Old Testament law to the tune of banning all non-Christian (and other Christian) religions; rolling women's status back to ancient times; setting the death penalty for adultery, blasphemy, witchcraft, abortion, and homosexuality; and eliminating the prison system (since most of the criminals will be dead anyhow). In between are more or less fanatical groups, from the Christian Identity, who promote an exclusively Caucasian identity of Christianity, to the Christian Exodus movement, which has given up on “mainstream” America and started the process of creating its own society somewhere on American soil.

Finally, American Christianity has never been shy (although it has often been ambivalent) about borrowing whatever the popular culture has to offer. Ever since there was radio, there was Christian radio. The advent of television led to the advent of televangelism (people are watching TV anyhow, so why not give them Christian TV?); the fruits of this labor have included Jimmy Swaggart, Oral Roberts, Jim and Tammy Bakker, Benny Hinn, and many more. Christians now offer whole television stations and networks, from Robertson's
700 Club
to Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) to the Trinity Broadcasting Network to the Daystar Television Network, to name but a very few, each with its own website.
²⁸
These are joined by an incalculable number of others, including many private and local sites, blogs, YouTube videos, and such. Beyond appropriating the media of modern culture, American Christianity also unavoidably appropriates its content. The result is Christian rock, Christian rap, Christian dating services, Christian movies, Christian popular literature (the
Left Behind
series being only one small example), and Christian computer games (including a “Left Behind” PC game
²⁹
).

Finally, Christianity cannot help but adjust to its constituency, providing them the kind of experience that makes sense and appeals to them—black churches, Hispanic churches, rural churches, suburban churches, urban churches, and so on. For middle-class corporate Americans, the “megachurch” phenomenon, pioneered by the Willow Creek Community Church, makes Christianity feel like another day at the office. The style of the various churches suits the “consumers” of the religious “product,” and what do Americans want more than success? Hence, the “prosperity gospel” represents perhaps the apex of American Christianity: God wants you to be rich, God wants you to have a big house and a fancy car; in fact, God will arrange for it to be paid for if you can't afford it.

How could American Christianity be anything but diverse, syncretic, ersatz, unorthodox, and frankly contradictory, since Americans are all those things? American Christianity is, in the final analysis, less Christian than American—and Americans are a diverse, creative, and cantankerous people.

CHRISTIANITY GOES GLOBAL

Christianity started out in Palestine as a fellowship; it moved to Greece and became a philosophy; it moved to Italy and became an institution; it moved to Europe and became a culture; it came to America and became an enterprise.
³⁰

The original species of Christianity evolved as one of many mutations of Judaism in the fermented environment of Roman-dominated Jerusalem. Christianity quickly ceased to be a Jewish reform movement and quickly became a Hellenistic “new religion,” eventually being elevated to a Roman imperial religion. As it spread into Europe, it became largely a European religion, with medieval and Renaissance components, and it picked up whatever was there as it moved, from pine trees and Yule logs to “Easter” (originally the name of the Nordic goddess of spring). Each of these phases and influences left an indelible mark on the religion(s) so that the Christianity inherited by the United States was a distinctly European, even British, Christianity, which met some Spanish and French Christianities on the continent—not to mention Native American, African, and, later, Eastern religions.

In other words, although like any “world religion” Christianity has claimed and aimed to own the world, it has been for most of its history showing its local origins very conspicuously; it has been essentially a European religion carried around the world. However, just as it continued to morph and mutate as it passed north from Palestine to Rome to Western Europe and then west to North America, so it would inevitably adapt and transform as it encountered other lands and other peoples. The result would be another generation of Christian evolution.

Global Christianity as an early-modern European phenomenon cannot be separated from colonialism: like a virus (and like literal viruses) it was spread by explorers, settlers, soldiers, traders, and administrators as much as by missionaries, and it left as permanent a mark. The first substantial contact between Europeans and native peoples occurred in the Americas, and this was naturally the site of the first crossbreeding between Christian species and local religious species, producing a sort of “native Christianity.” An early manifestation of indigenous Christianity was the “Lady of Guadalupe,” an apparition of a homegrown Virgin Mary experienced by a Nahuatl (Mexican) man in December 1531. By that date Christianity had been in Mexico for twelve years, and the conquistador Hernan Cortes had done all he could to transplant the Mary meme in the New World: “in Spanish chronicles of the conquest he leaves a trail of Marian images in native temples as he marches on Tenochtitlan, the most famous of which is the statue known as La Conquistadora [the female conqueror],” while his crowning achievement was “his ejection of the image of Huitzilopochtli from the Mexica's Great Temple and its replacement by a crucifix and a statue of Mary.”
³¹
Soon a spectral Indian Mary appeared, a “beautiful girl with tan complexion” who spoke in the Nahuatl language, according to the legend—a legend that was not fully invented and disseminated until more than a century later, in a 1649 book written by a Creole priest named Luis Laso de la Vega. The indigenization of Mary culminated only in 1999 when Pope John Paul II declared the Lady of Guadalupe the patron saint of the Americas, yet in another way this incident can be taken as a (rather typical) case of the identification and integration of a native god with a Christian character, namely the Aztec goddess Tonantzin, also known as “Our Revered Mother” and upon whose former temple the Basilica of Guadalupe was built.

The pattern of reformulating Christianity into a local shape, and/or blending it with other non-Christian elements to generate some hybrid Christianity, has been repeated in the Americas and beyond. Often the processes that moved Christianity in new directions were intimately linked to processes that moved people to new locations, especially the transfer of Africans to American soil already occupied by native societies. Among these Afro-American religions is Candomble, an African-Brazilian mix with components from Yoruba, Fon, and Bantu belief: African gods called orishas or orixas with names like Ogun and Obatala and Shango operate through specific Christian saints and human (especially female) priestesses or spirit mediums (
maes de santo
, or “mothers of the saint/deity” and
filhas de santo
, or “daughters of the saint/deity”) to intervene against sin and to aid with salvation. Umbanda is another Afro-Brazilian cult, one that not only practices possession rituals along with baptisms, consecrations, and weddings and believes in a supreme god called Zambi or Zambiapongo but also features Buddhist symbols and images alongside Christian ones. Probably the best known of the Afro-Caribbean religions is Vodun, popularly called “voodoo,” which includes a supreme being (Olurun) and a lesser god (Obatala) in perpetual struggle, as well as many minor spirits and saints (
loa
and
rada)
and guardian angels (
bon ange
).

More recently, Jamaica has witnessed the appearance of the Rastafarian movement, bringing together a number of quite disparate influences such as Marcus Garvey's early-twentieth-century black nationalism, Russian Orthodox Christianity, East Indies Hinduism, a reverence for the Ethiopian leader Haile Selassie (who was named Ras Tafari before his coronation), and a focus on the Abrahamic or Old Testament side of Christianity. For good measure, Rasta culture adds in a distinctive hairstyle (dreadlocks); the red, gold, and green colors; and the use of marijuana.

While Mexican
curanderismo
(spiritual curing) is not an entire religion, it is definitely an amalgamation of Christian aspects (prayer to God, Jesus, and Catholic saints) and pre-Christian facets like trance and possession and the use of herbs, all sometimes channeled through the spirits of famous dead healers. Most recently, in response to the social and racial injustices in Latin America, a movement known as “liberation theology” emerged. For many inside and outside the Catholic Church, the dominant Latin American Christianity was often perceived as in collusion with political and economic leaders to exploit the weak and the poor, especially indigenous peoples. Religious thinkers like Gustavo Gutierrez, Juan Luis Segundo, and Lucio Gera in the Catholic tradition, and Emilio Castro and Julio de Santa Ana in the Protestant tradition began to propose ways to marshal Christian sources for the purpose of effecting real social change, ending oppression, and achieving equality and liberation.

The Americas have hardly been the only site of Christian evolution. Asia and the Pacific have also been active areas for religious development and speciation, yielding unique results because of unique historical encounters and the strong local religious traditions. The Taiping “rebellion” or movement in 1850s and 1860s China is a fine example of religious syncretism—not only of the confluence of religions but of the confluence of religion with nonreligious bits and pieces. In this case, a man named Hung Xiuquan had a vision in which he met his true mother and father, namely God and God's wife, making Hung God's other son and Jesus’ younger brother. Hung soon organized the
Bai Shangdi Hui
or God-Worshipping Society, instituted a number of rules for members, and formed his followers into military units to conduct their war against the evil powers of Confucianism, the Chinese government, and foreign (European) invaders. In 1851 Hung decreed the era of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, an era that died in 1864 after his death, the defeat of his godly army, and the loss of tens of millions of lives.

In colonial Vietnam a similar, although locally specific, Christian-related religion formed, known as Cao Dai. The founding prophet was Ngo Minh Chieu, who began receiving revelations from the high god Duc Cao Dai in 1920. The faith that coalesced had much in common with Catholicism, including a “pope” and a church structure with a “college” of church officials and administrators, “archbishops,” and “priests.” However, Christianity is not Cao Dai's only source: it also draws from, and claims to draw together, the major Eastern religions of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism. Each of the historical founders of these religions is seen as an emissary of the great god, bringing a local message to a particular people. Cao Dai, though, is the final unification of Eastern and Western religions alike under the watchful left eye of god and celebrated through the three key personages or saints of Trang Trinh (a fifteenth-century Vietnamese nationalist poet), Sun Yat-sen (leader of the 1911 Chinese revolution), and French novelist Victor Hugo.

Speaking of unification, Asia also spawned the Unification Church of Reverend Sun Myung Moon (whose followers are often dubbed “Moonies”). Officially called the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity and formed in 1954 in Seoul, South Korea, it sprang from a vision of Jesus received by Moon in 1935 at age fifteen. In 1959 Moon moved his church to the United States, that land of overgrown religion. When a predicted apocalypse failed to materialize, the church began its institutionalization, much like the Seventh-Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses before it. True to its name, the Unification Church sees itself as the one religion that joins and fulfills all previous religions (Moon has even stated that Jesus, Muhammad, the Buddha, and other religious and secular figures have conceded this point). Even so, its Christian roots are obvious, though like all mutations it develops those roots in new and sometimes heretical directions: the church rejects the Trinity, gives its God both male and female aspects (the Holy Spirit in particular is a feminine energy), believes that Eve had a sexual affair with Lucifer, and places its hopes on the “third Adam” (Adam being the first Adam and Jesus the second Adam), who was born in Korea before 1930—conveniently, around the time Moon was born.