The widely publicized case of military Chaplain Lt. Gordon James Klingenschmitt awaits appeal. Klingenschmitt, a priest with the Evangelical Episcopal Church, prayed in the name of Jesus while wearing his uniform at a White House ceremony organized to protest the Navy's ban on sectarian prayers at military events that soldiers are required to attend.
Klingenschmitt was reprimanded and fined $3,000 — not for praying in Jesus' name but for violating a direct order by wearing his uniform at a political protest or media event. Nonetheless, his prayer was seen by many as a sectarian imposition at a public gathering.
At face value, this case appears to be about pluralism: We live in a pluralistic society and it is unfair that any particular perspective or religion should dominate. In the public sphere, so this thinking goes, no one should be allowed to impose his or her convictions on others.
And yet, as it turns out, this incident reveals that pluralism is not about diversity but about the homogenization of language. Particular convictions are domesticated so as to maintain public, national unity.
Centuries ago, Augustine observed this same phenomenon in the Roman Empire: “[T]he imperial city has endeavoured to impose on subject nations not only her yoke, but her language, as a bond of peace.…” Our imposed language is “pluralism.”
Pluralism maintains that a variety of perspectives should be allowed so long as no one particular perspective dominates. For those of us who are Baptist, we might see this as simply good common sense. After all, Baptists have long opposed the wedding of any church with the state. We have long supported religious freedom in the face of a theocratic state. Baptists have maintained that no authority can usurp the authority of God.
All this is to the good. And yet embracing the ideology of pluralism as the best alternative is equally problematic because pluralism masks “powers” at odds with the life of the church. According to Scripture, the “principalities and powers” are created good by God (Col. 1:15-17) but are also fallen, and thus have a tendency to set themselves up as gods and idols. The “powers” have a collective nature and include things like economic systems, governments and other institutions. One way Christians are tempted to practice idolatry is to assume that nations and markets ultimately determine history.
But what does pluralism have to do with the idolatry of nations and markets? In a vivid parable, Douglas Wilson compares the unity of economic empires to gigantic yard sales, with every imaginable kind of thing placed before the shoppers. “‘Look!' one might say, getting out of the car, ‘pluralism!' The avid yard sale shopper can buy canning jars, water skis, jigsaw puzzles, tablecloths and so on. Even here, however, there is a unifying principle — there is only one cash box.” The economic empire assigns the church of America the following role: “To neutralize the Faith by making it just one more item in the yard sale.” (1)
So also pluralism relegates belief to one more item on the market shelf, fine to use in the private sphere so long as it doesn't threaten the public good. In the public sphere, the state itself is the ultimate good, and it is not neutral. It imposes particular goods: the value of the market, the necessity of violence and so forth.
The irony of Klingenschmitt's case is that it highlights how our nation-state, by naming only itself as the public good — as that which truly unifies — has become idolatrous. And as Augustine added to his statement about national unity: “[H]ow many great wars, how much slaughter and bloodshed, have provided this unity!” (2)
In contrast, the early church refused to avail itself of the protection of a cultus privatus (private cult) that it could have had under Roman law. Rather, those early believers saw that Christianity entails a whole way of life, one involving both the private and public spheres. Embodying this life centered on the faithful worship of God enabled them to name the “powers and principalities” that would otherwise determine their lives.
It's easy today to imagine idolatry in terms of the golden calf. But our idols are more subtle. They are those “powers” that cause us to place the church in a limited sphere, handing the public over to the state and the market. My criticism of pluralism is not a matter of wanting to rule the world but rather a call to live in such a way that acknowledges the rule of God over all.
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Beth Newman
Professor of Theology and Ethics
Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond
(1) Douglas Wilson, “The Emerging American Empires, Mammon Versus Allah,” Chronicles, June 2005, pp. 14-15.
(2) St. Augustine, Book XIX, Chapter 7.