Dreaming of a Future for "Neural Christianity"

In my world the phrase, “favorite conservative commentator” might be considered an oxymoron. But I want to give credit where it’s due. David Brooks is one of the most thoughtful, least biased of all commentators in the popular media. And his reach goes beyond partisan politics. Yesterday’s column in the New York Times is a good example. He describes recent trends in neurological research which suggest a native tendency in our species toward goodness:

“Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.”

That’s great news and what he writes should help feed optimism for our future. But what Brooks says next shows what a poor job we in the progressive church have done in spreading our enlightened understanding of Christ to our culture. “The cognitive revolution,” Brooks asserts, “is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going end up challenging faith in the Bible.” He goes on to say that this new research will most likely “lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.”

Now, Brooks doesn’t explain his concept of Buddhism so I’m not sure what he means, except to imply from his other comments that he views it as a kind of loving instinct for good that transcends our personal biology. We can all say “amen” to that.

What he doesn’t seem to understand very well is Christianity. Or more accurately, he understands Christianity the way the Evangelicals have taught him to understand it, which is no surprise. Speak of James Dobson and everyone nods in recognition. Say the name Marcus Borg and you get a quizzical look. “Faith in the Bible,” as Brooks describes it, is the literalist belief in the word-for-word inerrancy that Dobson peddles. Somehow Brooks has failed to realize that millions of Christians have a more sophisticated view in which Jesus is a transcendent spiritualist, and a social activist. When it comes to biblical faith, we don’t labor over the syllables but interpret intention in the full light of the God’s message of love, mercy and compassion.

Brooks could open his horizons by reading Borg’s side-by-side comparison of very similar teachings from Jesus and Buddha . And Borg isn’t the first to link the two. Christian teacher, philosopher and pastor Paul Tillich, recognized by many as among the leading thinkers of the 20th century (not just religious thinkers), often yoked Jesus and the Buddha together as the greatest spiritual prophets in human history.

I don’t blame Brooks for any of this. I blame our inability to move our progressive message outside the sanctuary and into the public spotlight. Interestingly, when we do, it is often in the form of confrontation with the Evangelicals. An article in Dobson’s online publication this week told of the Christian gay rights group Soulforce traveling to six so-called mega-churches around the country as part of its American Family Outing campaign. They kicked off the journey with a visit to Joel Osteen’s church on Mother’s Day. Osteen refused to meet with them. Now the others are trying to figure out how to handle their turn in the barrel. A spokesperson for Dobson’s organization Focus on the Family advises they should try to balance “the inerrant truth of God's word regarding sexual behavior and the compassionate grace of our Lord Jesus toward those living outside of it.”

“Living outside” of God’s grace? Foolish me, here I am thinking that even under the Evangelical definition Grace belongs to all who accept Jesus as God‘s son. I think that’s what Paul said -- that all of us on our own fall short of God’s glory but thankfully are justified by God’s Grace. Maybe Grace sounds to them a little too much like what Brooks described: an instinct for good -- in this case God’s instinct for good. Funny how inerrancy can ebb and flow as it suits one’s political purposes.

What I long for is a time when groups like Soulforce can just bypass the Evangelical mega-churches as irrelevant. In that day, hopefully, there will be no more mega-churches, only faithful communities of believers embracing and sharing God’s loving spirit. Soulforce would disappear into the mainstream in the true church of Jesus Christ, a church known by Jesus’ commandment to love one another as he has loved us. Brooks would no longer need to speak of undermining faith in the Bible, and could predict an age of “neural Christianity.” If he wanted to include the Buddha, that wouldn’t bother me.