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 PrintableVersion Letter from AmericaLosing my religionOn July 21 2007, William Lobdell, the Los Angeles Times Religion writer, authored a piece which described how being a reporter for religion caused him to lose his. Apparently, Lobdell had viewed the post as Religion writer for the LA Times as a calling, an opportunity for a serious Christian like himself to set straight the many inaccuracies that the main stream media foisted on an unaware audience. He had come to Christ years previously at a retreat run by an Evangelical Mega Church. He had accepted Christ in his heart, had sensed that he was born again, and had become part of the culture that encourages quiet times and devotion to God. HypocrisyAfter several years of campaigning he finally persuaded the editors of the LA Times to allow him to begin a column called ‘Getting Religion’. He had challenged them that there was an institution in Orange County that drew 15,000 people a weekend and that the paper had written hardly anything about. They couldn’t believe that they’d missed such a phenomenon (that institution was the well-known Saddleback Church, pastored by Rick Warren). And so the story continued — he thought he had won the jackpot in terms of spiritual opportunity with his column in the LA Times, but, bit by bit, as he was exposed to religious hypocrisy, he finally came to a place where, ‘My soul, for lack of a better term, had lost faith long ago — probably around the time I stopped going to church. My brain, which had been in denial, had finally caught up.’ Lobdell certainly lists some disheartening behaviour. There are priests behaving despicably in sexual scandals with minors, there are television evangelists manipulating the needy for their own aggrandisement, and more besides. What struck me, though, was how fundamentally confused Lobdell was, or had gradually become, about the nature of the Christian gospel itself. After his ‘born again’ experience he had converted to Roman Catholicism without any apparent concept that this was a particularly big deal. Then he was shocked to find Mormons shunning ex-Mormons in an unloving manner (‘I wondered how faithful Mormons — many of whom rigorously follow other biblical commands such as giving 10% of their income to the church — could miss so badly on one of Jesus’ primary lessons?’) The Roman Catholic child abuse scandal appears repeatedly in his narrative. He is stumped by the problem of suffering, despite the well-intentioned and carefully argued emails on this subject from a former Presbyterian pastor of his. He is finally pushed over the edge by witnessing (again) another terrible incident involving a sexual scandal with a Roman Catholic priest, whose lawyer badgered a desperate woman so that the priest would avoid paying child support for this child sired while the priest had been a seminary student. He takes no refuge in the well-known integrity of Billy Graham, for he finds him tarnished by the Billy Graham organisation’s association with TBN, the television network that also broadcasts Benny Hinn, and other ‘prosperity gospel’ ministers. Can’t see differences?I got more and more confused as I read on. Part of me resonated with everything I read. Yes! I wanted to say. I’ve seen the hypocrisy too! It’s terrible! We need to shout about this and not shut it up! Good on you Mr. Reporter! Go for it! The other part of me wanted to say, do you really not have the theological sophistication to distinguish between a) Mega-Church broadly speaking ‘evangelical’ ministries, b) Presbyterian churches, c) the Roman Catholic Church, d) Mormons, and e) Benny Hinn. Are you really telling me that all your research in these matters has not enabled you to understand that there are important differences here? And is Billy Graham tarred with the same brush because the Billy Graham Evangelistic Organisation makes use of TBN, and, if so, does that mean that anyone who, say, writes for the LA Times has to be in fundamental agreement with every other column? Must Dr. Phil agree with Jay Leno in order to appear on the same network? I’m not sure that kind of criticism of Lobdell is entirely fair, but the basic confusion seemed to be profound. Find a BibleAnd it made me wonder whether — in fact — in modern America, the culture historically is fundamentally religious (whether of the nominal sort or not), and that the terminology about ‘God’ has been so over-used as to have been downgraded like an inflationary theological economy, to the extent to which I can stand in the pulpit and say ‘justification by faith alone is the standing or falling of a church’ and someone can still deduce that we’re all the same really as Mormons and Roman Catholics? Or maybe there are just very few (evangelical even) pastors who are saying ‘justification by faith alone’ any more. Perhaps we are more frequently encouraged to ‘buy God’ of a Baptist sort or a Roman Catholic kind, in a similar way to how we are encouraged to buy Pepsi or Coke. And so people make their choices, but they tend to think, after all, that they’re all just sweet, bubbly, soft drinks. Losing your religion? Go ahead, be my guest. Make my day. Just make sure when you do, you find your Bible. Josh Moody,
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