Perspectives

“Who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister.”

—Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley

Hmmm? What to make of Alabama Gov. Bentley’s recent Martin Luther King Day remarks? He spoke at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church; King had spoken there on occasion. He praised the civil rights leader, and then before the largely black congregation, he announced, “Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister.”

Really? This ability of Christians to publicly renounce their love and acceptance of their fellow man, while at the same time professing outrage that their Christianity could ever be questioned belies F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous quote: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” Either a Christian acts Christian-like or their ability to function is, in and of itself, profound hypocrisy. No first-rate intelligence is at work in Alabama.

Maybe it’s, to paraphrase Donnie and Marie Osmond, “I’m a little bit Christian and a little bit, well, I’m a little bit something else entirely.”

Why the need to separate and castigate? Where does that come from? Since all religion is a human construct, we must assume there is some inherent, fundamental human need to separate ourselves into “we” and “them.” You know, “them.” The different, the outcast, hoi polloi, the unwashed, unsaved and for sure, the unchosen. Such ludicrous idiocy would be outrageously funny but for how often such intolerance has been sufficient justification for this inquisition or that pogrom or, when reviewing the specific history of The Southern Baptist Church, splitting with northern Baptists over southern support of slavery.

Blessedly, we live in a secular society. How does it serve humanity, our nation to have drilled into the heads of its citizens, from professed “Christian” pulpits no less, that some of us are worth associating with, yet many are not? Simply, because their faith is different from your own. Not only that, but those who refuse to believe as me are damned. Eternally. Quite candidly, such beliefs are profoundly unhealthy, not only for the individual but for America.

At the very least, let’s bring back the old Christian practice of “homo naturaliter Christianus,” the naturally Christian man. Early Catholics were perplexed over how to accept such classic Greeks as Plato and Socrates, men who had not been exposed to the grace of biblical revelation yet had led moral lives. How to square that circle led to “homo naturaliter Christianus,” which is why we have some Classic Greek texts intact. But that is grist for another essay.

My sister had a running bet with her husband over the relative importance of religion when constructing and implementing an ordered and moral society. While leaving Japan one time (after months living in that nation), she laughingly turned to her husband and said, “I win the bet. Japan is a civilization that works really well. The people behave responsibly without resorting to the fear of heaven and hell. No punishing God required for them to act with accountability.”

Shall we accord our fellow Americans the same intellectual respect?

Yes.