April
26, 2005:
Election
of Ratzinger Signals Another Step Toward a Distinctive, North
American Christianity
by Jon
M. Sweeney
The
election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the next pope has
brought a simmering issue into clearer focus: North American
Christianity increasingly stands alone.
Once
viewed only as a place across a wide ocean where religious
dissidents fled persecution, North America is now seen around
the world as a land of religious independents, set apart from
the tradition, opinion, and growing influence of the two-thirds
world.
“Two-thirds
world” is how Pennsylvania State religion scholar Philip
Jenkins refers to Africa, Asia, and Latin America and their
increasing impact on Christian identity. As Jenkins writes
in his book, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global
Christianity,
by 2025 Africa and Latin America will likely be the regions
of the world with the most Christians, rather than Europe or
North America, and by 2050 only 20 percent of the world’s
Christians will be non-Hispanic whites.
Many
pundits predicted that the next pope would be a cardinal from
Latin America or Africa, reflecting the gradual moving of the “center” of
the Church from the first world to the two-thirds world. With
rare exception, Christian leaders in the two-thirds world view
changes to traditional teaching and practice with suspicion,
or regard such changes as unfaithfulness. There was no greater
champion of this stance than the German cardinal, Cardinal
Ratzinger.
In
contrast—and the contrast is clearly noticed outside
of North America—during the 26 years of Pope John Paul
II’s reign, the American and Canadian Catholic churches
effectively created a distinctive brand of Catholicism—one
that respects the pope without actually heeding many of his
teachings.
That
trend appears ready to continue under the new pope. It may,
in fact, even strengthen the divide between North America and
the rest of the Catholic world.
According to a CNN poll conducted earlier this month just before the death
of John Paul II, most American Catholics hold opinions on stem cell research,
married men and women in the priesthood, and birth control that are out of
line with the teachings from the Vatican, and clearly out of line with the
new Pope Benedict XVI, who actually wrote most of John Paul II’s opinions
on these matters. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said that the next pope
should allow for the use of birth control; 63 percent said that priests should
be
allowed to marry and 55 percent that women should be allowed to become priests;
and more than half responded that Catholic teaching should allow for a more
open attitude toward the value of stem cell research.
In an interview with Phyllis Tickle, former contributing editor in religion
for Publishers Weekly, explorefaith.org editorial board member and
the compiler of The
Divine Hours, she explained, “Where once religion observers
could speak of ‘Euro-American’ Christianity, we no longer can do
so with any real precision or utility. Even more telling is the fact that to
be accurate in our terms, we have to speak of ‘North American’ Christianity
instead of ‘U.S.’ Christianity, the trends and changes presently
in process with the U.S. being more or less as identical to those in Canada
as they are distinct from those in Europe.”
This
distinction and trend is seen even more clearly in the worldwide
Anglican Communion, of which the U.S. Episcopal Church is a
part. Today is the second day of meetings of North American
bishops of the U.S. Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church
of Canada, in Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, Michigan. The
Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, was invited to attend
the gathering,
but declined. According to an interview with the leader of
the Anglican bishops in Canada, Archbishop Andrew Hutchison,
published last month in the Anglican Journal, “The message
it [Williams’ declined invitation] sends to us is that
at the moment he does not want to be associated with the Canadians.” The
meetings will conclude on May 1.
Sure
to be on the list of topics is how the Anglican/Episcopal bishops
will continue to respond to accusations that the North American
church is on its own in the worldwide communion of Anglicans
in its support for an openly gay bishop among its members.
Again,
Phyllis Tickle: “Minus a Reformation, an Enlightenment,
and Rationalism, two-thirds world Christianity can hardly be
expected to cohere with the theology and praxis of the first
world, especially as two-thirds world Christianity gains dominance
over first world in sheer numbers as well as spiritual enthusiasm
and sacrificial allegiance. That separation is fairly easily
explained.
“Almost
as easily understood, however, is the separation in views and
praxis between European Christianity and that of North America.
Absent the experience of a vast new land mass and its settling,
Europe can never develop nor comprehend the sacred individualism
of the North American with its penchant for the idiosyncratic
and its almost pathological insistence on equal air space for
every opinion.”
This
trend of North American individualism is also felt in the Jewish
community on this continent, where the ratio of Orthodox to
liberal believers follows the inverse trend of what is seen
in the rest of the world. In Israel, for instance, if almost
ninety percent of religiously observant Jews are Orthodox,
and no more than ten percent represent the Reform, Reconstructionist,
or Conservative movements (the three “liberal” denominations
within modern Judaism), the reverse is true in North America.
The
vast majority of Jews in the United States and Canada represent
liberal movements, and a very small percentage is Orthodox.
Even so, it is the Orthodox and the ultra-Orthodox who we most
often see pictured in the media as representing Judaism.
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, Emanu-El Scholar at Congregation Emanu-El of San Francisco
and the author of Jewish
Spirituality: A Brief Introduction for Christians, reflected last
week on this situation: “The divide between North American Judaism and
Israeli Judaism—which together account for probably more than three quarters
of all Jews in the world—is more than political or even social. It is
theological.”
Kushner
continued, “Those who reside outside Israel are said
to live in ‘The Diaspora,’ or in ‘Exile.’ But
Jews in America have fashioned their own unique and unmistakable
religious subculture. And it is very different from Israeli
Judaism. By comparison it is assimilationist, non-traditional,
and introspective.”
From
their beginnings, North Americans have often followed conscience
over tradition. We have often taken prophetic stands for what
we believed to be right. In the future, we may be standing
alone.
Jon Sweeney is an author and editor living
in Vermont. His new book is
THE LURE OF SAINTS: A PROTESTANT EXPERIENCE OF CATHOLIC TRADITION. More
by Jon Sweeney.
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