– American Catholic nun, Joan Chittister
…Is Christianity reconcilable with bigotry, hate, xenophobia and racism if the victims do not look like us? If so, which Christianity is that? Is Christianity living the Gospel of Jesus Christ as we correctly know it or is Christianity an ideology as practiced by the American Christian Right and Christian “conservatives”?
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” – Hebrew 11:1
Given Donald Trump’s moral history, including his words in the famous access Hollywood tapes, representing a history which many Christians know does not signify an enviable Christian life, I (as a member of the Christian laity) have struggled since his election (and the role some Christians and Christian groups played in that poll) to understand my faith on one hand and Christians (those often referred to as the Christian Right or “conservatives”) who have turned Christianity into an ideology on the other hand. These are Trump’s Christians. This is because if we look into history, it should bother any Christian how Christianity was made to enable racism, bigotry, xenophobia, hate, slavery and colonialism.
The American Christian Right and “conservatives” who gave a bloc vote to Trump seem to take Christianity as an ideology, rather than a belief in Jesus Christ and his Gospel. This view of Christianity as an ideology makes us go back into history in order to understand the present. It is well known that many Christians and Church groups trafficked in the slavery of people of African descent during the transatlantic slave trade. They sold and bought slaves, yet they saw and actually called themselves Christians! This is a troubling religious, spiritual and moral paradox – one that is not too far from the paradoxes that define the contemporary practices of adherents of “prosperity Christianity”, the Christian Right and “conservatives’.
Also, today, we know that many elite and Ivy League American universities, which were founded by Christian missionaries, were fully and consciously invested in the dispossession, enslavement and the slave trade of people of African descent and Native Americans.
So the questions are: Is Christianity reconcilable with bigotry, hate, xenophobia and racism if the victims do not look like us? If so, which Christianity is that? Is Christianity living the Gospel of Jesus Christ as we correctly know it or is Christianity an ideology as practiced by the American Christian Right and Christian “conservatives”?
The election of Donald Trump and the role which the alliance of racists and race supremacy groups and some Christians and Christian groups played in that election, has produced the same thought. Today, given the role of Steve Bannon (a self-confessed enabler of the racist, white nationalist, race supremacist group, the alt-right group which is the digital version of the old Klu Klux Klan) in the White House as Donald Trump’s adviser, one can hardly distinguish between the substance and language used by the racist and race supremacist alt right organisation, and their mouthpiece – Breitbart, formerly headed by Steve Bannon, and the substance and language of declarations of the Trump administration.
So, to further understand this troubling phenomenon for our Christian faith, the religious and spiritual divide between Christianity as intentionally living the Gospel of Jesus Christ on one hand and Christianity as an ideology on the other hand, I dug into history and found an interesting interview between an American Catholic nun – Joan Chittister, and a radio journalist, Bill Moyers. The interview was conducted in 2004 but it is illuminating, fresh and as pertinent today as it was then. The radio station is WSKG, a member station of the American Public Broadcasting Service. Please read:
Moyers: Welcome to NOW.
Chittister: Thank you, Bill.
Moyers: It’s always surprising to discover that nuns look like you.
Chittister: Yeah, that’s right. Well, as in what does a nun look like?
Moyers: I read a column you wrote a week before the election in which you said the election won’t be over when it’s over. Well, as we’ve just seen, the Religious Right says it’s over. And they say they’ve won. What do you think about that?
Chittister: Well, I think the word religion is being used very loosely in this day and age. I don’t think that is religion. This whole notion that my truth is everybody’s truth, there’s something wrong with that in a world of differences.
Moyers: I can hear them saying this. I can hear James Dobson and Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (some of these Evangelicals campaigned for Donald Trump. For example Falwell is the president of Liberty University, an Evangelical University which Falwell used as a platform to campaign for Donald Trump) say, “I was called by God to do what I’m doing.” You feel called by God.
Chittister: I do. But I don’t feel called by God to impose my life on yours. I believe that I’m called by God to keep God a constant question in the human heart. I believe that anything that isn’t… that anything that uses God, as an instrument of oppression of other people is not of God. And I believe that their belief is a powerful witness. I just simply do not believe that it can be imposed on the beliefs of people who are witnessing to another face of God.
Moyers: What do you mean ‘impose’?
Chittister: Well, I believe that when, to have the voice of religion, to have the religious voice in the public arena, as far as I’m concerned, is very faithful to the intention of the founding fathers. Therefore no established church, no established church, no single church or tradition that monitors and weighs and measures everybody else’s attitudes, approaches or moral decisions. I believe that that’s absolutely essential especially in a pluralistic world where we’re all looking for the voice of conscience in our hearts. But when you take the religious voice and you turn it into a religion in the centre of the system, do it our way, there’s something wrong with that.
Moyers: But they are saying they’re acting from moral concerns. That they are trying to carry their moral values into the public square.
Chittister: And so did the Puritans and the Prohibitionists. It was exactly… they believed that their moral values should be carried into the public arena. And we did it. When the Puritans did it, they burned witches all in the name of God. When the Prohibitionists did it, they decided what you could and couldn’t discipline yourself to do.
Moyers: But I don’t hear these people talking as harshly as that. They’re not going to burn you at the stake, although some of them might think you’re a witch, right?
Chittister: Well, yeah…
Moyers: Or pagan.
Chittister: Listen carefully for the twigs.
Moyers: They’re not… do you see them as extremists like that?
Chittister: I do, in many instances. When you begin to use that kind of religious criteria and translate it into law, into God’s call for Armageddon, why are we in Iraq now? (Please note that this interview was conducted in 2004) God apparently wants us there. Not my Jesus.
Moyers: All right, then they would say, “We went to Iraq to overthrow a brutal dictator who was persecuting his own people and to prevent Iraq becoming a terrorist haven.” You know what they say.
Chittister: Sure and we have a terrorist haven in Iraq right now. We don’t have the so-called dictator anymore. But if those are our criteria, then we’re going to be, for religious reasons, in a lot of other countries in the next 12 months.
Moyers: Depending on the sources, Sister Joan, there have been some 37,000 civilians killed in Iraq, or maybe a 100,000. Why is abortion a higher moral issue with many American Christians than the invasion of Iraq and the loss of life there?
Chittister: Could I ask you that question? Because that is the moral question that brings me closest to tears. I do not understand that, Bill. You see, I’m absolutely certain that some of the people that we’re killing over there are pregnant women. Now what do you do? Now what do you do? That’s military abortion.
Moyers: Somebody said to me… that’s what?
Chittister: That’s military abortion. Why is that morally acceptable?
Moyers: Somebody said to me the other day that Americans don’t behead, but we do drop smart bombs that do it for us.
Chittister:: And that are not smart as we think they are.
Moyers: What do you mean?
Chittister: Well, what is this smart bomb stuff? We’ve still got an image in our head from 1991 of this little golf ball dropping down a furnace. It’s not working that way.
Moyers: Dobson, Falwell, Robertson and a lot of secular pundits and columnists are saying that moral issues decided this election. Do you think moral issues were that decisive in this campaign?
Chittister: Well, I don’t believe… I’m not exactly sure that they were as decisive in the end. And I’m not sure that there’s any way we can measure that. But even if I say, “Yes, they were,” the fact of the matter is that they are some moral issues, they’re not all moral issues. The fact of the matter is that they’re all in contention with something else which is also a moral value and also equally important unless you put it completely out of your mind or your heart. For instance, let’s look at the abortion question. I’m opposed to abortion.
But I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking. If all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed and why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.
Moyers: This seems to me to be the dilemma of American democracy today and of American religion. That there are dogmatists who do not want to admit that the other side might have some claim to credibility.
Chittister: Dogmatism will always get you there. Ask a Catholic. We’ve been there. We do it well. It was dogmatism that split us in the first place in the 16th century. It’s dogmatism, this whole notion that there is a truth, the truth. That is the eternal truth and the unquestionable truth means that whatever the Holy Spirit, whatever, whatever the impulses of a creating God goes on creating. We have to close our mind to those.
We learned at the end of a telescope that it got us nowhere. Galileo tried to tell us then scientifically, look at this. We didn’t want to listen. The religion threw Galileo into house arrest for two or three years. Why? Not because of his science, that’s silliness. Because of his theology. The theology taught that we were the centre of the universe. We were God’s rational and best creatures. When the little telescope, when he handed the Pope a telescope and said, “Look, we’re not the centre,” they wouldn’t even pick up the telescope. That’s dogmatism. And that’s what we have to be very careful of.
Moyers: Do you have anything in common with the Religious Right?
Chittister: I have Jesus in common. That’s enough for me provided that we’re all allowed to talk about and to hold in our hearts that aspect of the Christ life that we really believe must be raised at this time.
Moyers: And what are those? What are the moral issues that you would like to see us pursuing as a people, as a country right now?
Chittister: Well, I believe we got the cue on the mountain. I think…
Moyers: The Sermon on the Mount?
Chittister: I do. I do. The Beatitudes, as far as I’m concerned are the most overlooked and underdeveloped aspect of Christian scripture.
Moyers: Well, for all the people who are watching who don’t know what the Beatitudes are, what are you talking about?
Chittister: Well…
Moyers: The Sermon on the Mount.
Chittister: The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gets up, faces a crowd who’s saying to him, “What are we to do now?” And he said, “Remember the poor. Keep the poor as your criteria.” We have one out of every 318 people on this planet this morning, Bill, are refugees. They’re following garbage cans in the back of restaurants around the world. They’re following the resources that we took from their countries that are now jobs in somebody else’s country.
Moyers: Blessed are the poor?
Chittister: The poor, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice. We’ve got somehow or other to recognise that when we go into a country and pay a little kid 20 cents an hour for a 70 hour week to make our shoes and our jeans, we have to ask ourselves how is it that we can export our industry but we can’t export our Fair Labour Standard Act.
Moyers: So, blessed are those who seek justice?
Chittister: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice. Blessed are those who mourn. Remember those who are in grief, those mothers with dry breasts in Africa right now are mothers. And we’re pro-life? Where are we? Where are we in Darfur? Why do we have an army in Iraq for killing other mothers when with the power of this country, if this is going to be a moral country. (Please put this in context, interview was conducted in 2004 though still alive, relevant and fresh) Blessed are the peacemakers, the peacemakers, not the warmongers who are simply planting seeds of war for the next generation. That’s our criteria. The Beatitudes must be our criteria.
Moyers: See, this is the issue. People read scripture and reach different conclusions.
Chittister: That’s what scripture’s supposed to do. Scripture is not a driving test. Scripture is a challenge to the heart and this moment. Scripture is the whole scripture. But we don’t believe it’s frozen in time.
Moyers: Why are you a Christian?
Chittister: Well, because of the Jesus story is my story. There’s nothing else that really touches my heart or my spirit the way Jesus does. There isn’t any other answer for me. There’s no question about that.
Moyers: Why are you a Catholic? I mean, the Catholic Church is still a paternalistic hierarchy. You’re never going be a Bishop, because doctrine forbids it. Your own Pope says, “Never.” So why do you remain a Catholic?
Chittister: Well, we’ve said “never” to a lot of things. We’re very good at never, and then we say 400 years later, “as we have always taught.” I’m a Catholic because I believe that the church is a treasure house of the Christian tradition.
Moyers: You remember when the President called on the Pope earlier this year?
Chittister: Yes.
Moyers: You said something quite harsh. You said after the President’s visit with the Pope that, quote, “This is not a President whose concern for life matches the life concerns of this Pope.”
Chittister: That’s right.
Moyers: How is that?
Chittister: This Pope had said very clearly three times in a row that he disapproved of this incursion into Iraq, and that he did not accept the notion of a preemptive war. That’s a major life concern. This was the biggest PR trick I had seen in American history maybe ever.
Moyers: Great photo op. Lyndon Johnson did it when the Pope came to New York in…
Chittister: Tell me about it. But, when Lyndon Johnson did it at least the Pope could be understood, and what he himself was saying physically. This man is suffering from Parkinson’s. He said, if you read the text later, he said to the President, “Thank you very much for the medal, but you know that you and I disagree on this Iraq thing. I have told you three times.” That’s in the text.
Moyers: The President went to present the Pope with America’s highest honour, the Medal of Freedom…
Chittister: That’s right. And, it isn’t that the Pope doesn’t deserve it. He did. He does.
Moyers: But in your eyes, Sister Joan, can the Pope be right about Iraq, and wrong about abortion?
Chittister: The Pope can be right about anything, and wrong about another thing. Yes, I mean, we have a terrible misunderstanding about what infallibility is. We grow as a church from the Pope on down.
Moyers: But the church does not grow on the issue of women.
Chittister: This woman’s question is a dangerous question.
Moyers: Why?
Chittister: Because they’re trying to deny that it’s a question. People… I have never said that I know the answer, but I know it’s a question, and it ought to be allowed to be reviewed.
Moyers: What is the question?
Chittister: Bishops have called for that.
MOYERS: What is the question?
Chittister: What is the role of women? What is the role of women in the church? Is there such a thing as a woman being called to priesthood? Those are questions. Cardinals have called for that. Bishops have called for that. I’m in good company calling for that discussion. I have never insisted that I know the answer. I do know that it’s a question, and the church isn’t going to be… isn’t going to come to fullness ’til it’s addressed.
Moyers: But, while you’re contemplating, meditating, lecturing, and writing these wonderful books, the religious right is going to be running the government of the United States.
Chittister: Uh-huh. So will I.
Moyers: What are you going to… how’s that?
Chittister: Oh, I’ll write my letters. I’m doing my things. We have Sisters demonstrating at the School of the Americas every single year. I’m not going to stop that.
Moyers: That’s the school in the South where Americans have been training military officers from Latin America.
Chittister: That’s right. Yes. Yes.
Moyers: So, you think more people should get out and protest. Take to the street with this?
Chittister: I think each of us should become part of the conversation any way we can. (On January 21, about 4 million people world wide led by women protested against Donald Trump’s inauguration. Trump is a candidate of American Christian Right).
Moyers: Let me read you and share with our audience something I read just this morning. Michael Feingold is a theatre critic here in New York; playwright spent 25 years in the theatre. He said this, quote, “This is the election in which American Christianity destroyed itself. Today the church is no longer a religion but a tacky political lobby with an obsessive concentration on…compel[ling] someone else’s daughter to bear an unwanted child and depriv[ing] someone else’s son of the right to file a joint income tax return with his male partner.” Do you think he’s right when he says this is the election in which American Christianity destroyed itself?
Chittister: Well, I think American Christianity has brought itself to the brink. And I’ll tell you why. There’s a disconnect between our private morality, or private piety and the call of the Gospels, the call of Matthew, of the Beatitudes, to this public concern for a world that comes out of the mind and heart of God.
Moyers: Her latest book is Called To Question, A Spiritual Memoir by Joan Chittister. Thank you very much, Sister Joan, for being with us on NOW.
Chittister: Thank you, Bill. And God bless you.
Though this interview was conducted way back in 2004, it is timeless for its biblical relevance, scriptural depth, and the eternal truths contained in it.
Adeolu Ademoyo, aaa54@cornell.edu, is with the Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
