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Q & A
Q&A: A faith that enhances, not harms relationships Amy Forbus, Nov 2, 2009
Russell Rathbun
David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons’ 2007 book unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity . . . and Why It Matters (Baker Books) highlighted common impressions non-Christians have of Christians: hypocritical, judgmental, sheltered and overly political.
Russell Rathbun, a founding pastor of House of Mercy, an emergent church in St. Paul, Minn., recognizes those criticisms are often valid. His book nuChristian: Finding Faith in a New Generation (Judson Press, 2009) encourages transformation that “looks more like loving God and neighbor than it does being better behaved.”
Mr. Rathbun spoke recently with staff writer Amy Forbus.
Research for the book unChristian turned up a lot of criticism leveled against Christians. So is nuChristian reactionary? I wouldn’t say reactionary. I think “response” maybe is a better way to put it. At the end of their book, they encourage people to join the conversation, and they hope that pastors and people will really talk about these issues and the ramifications of that research. So I feel like what it really is, is joining the conversation.
You ask people to consider looking at the Bible as a book of questions rather than answers. Have you found resistance to that idea? Well, I think that people who have always read the Bible a certain way, namely as a book of answers—meaning one single answer for each one single question—if you’ve read the Bible like that, you’d be a little bit put off or taken aback. But I think for most people, when they really think about it, it rings true to them.
You’ve gone from street-corner witnessing to saying that saving people isn’t our job. What prompted that shift? What led me to change was a transforming of my understanding of what it meant that God has reconciled me and that God saves me. It was the realization that there’s not one thing that I could do, one action I could take, that could sort of kick eternal salvation in. I realized that it’s not me who moves, it’s God who moves to reconcile me.
The ability of somebody who is 13 years old to understand fully what it means to accept Christ as their Savior, or the ability of a person who is 50 or 90 or 100, is no different than somebody who is an infant. These things are beyond us and are incalculable. We have shadows, hints, of what the love of God is really all about.
You address the idea that Christians are sheltered. I think I’d call it a kind of evangelical schizophrenia. There’s this notion that Christians remain sheltered; they think and act as if they’re not exposed to all sorts of things. But it’s really not true. Christians don’t consume media any differently than non-Christians do. I think a lot of Christians think they aren’t exposing themselves to this media, or they’ll do it with a sense of judgment: “I’m not letting it warp my mind like somebody else would.” So it’s a sort of denial, I think.
One can be aware of what’s going on and be in the midst of it, and be on all kinds of social networks and still make choices. You can say: “I’m not into that. I’m not going to do that.” It doesn’t mean you have to place yourself in some morally superior or judgmental position. You can simply choose not to involve yourself in something that somebody else might choose.
Like reality TV? That’s a good example. I mean, the whole notion of reality TV is: “You are bad. You’re ugly. Your house is horrible. And we have some people who are going to come in and save you.” Those are crazy shows. It sounds like evangelical theology to me. I think that’s why they’re so popular.
Because they’re proposing that it actually can be fixed? Right, that you can fix it. It reinforces the notion that you need to save yourself. That’s the main thing I want to engage in Kinnaman and Lyons’ book: this notion that, “Christianity has an image problem and it’s your fault. So you need to act better or people won’t like Jesus.”
That’s not the solution at all. If us acting better was ever going to fix anything, we’d be in bad shape. We’ve never acted better, ever. You know what? God likes us anyway. You have a chapter on faith and politics. What’s your take on that combination? I think that people need to engage in more true politics: the art of compromise, proposal and debate. Politics is the art of coming together as a community to make things happen that benefit the greater good. The kind of politics that we see from the very right wing, that’s not real politics at all. It’s just ideological rhetoric and name-calling.
But faith-informing politics is necessary. I think it’s very important to be guided by a set of principles. I just think that the loudest people of faith are the least helpful.
That is changing some, especially around the environment. I hope that will transfer from just the political issue of the environment to other issues as well, and that evangelicals will be able to take a more engaging approach.
Your last chapter includes a conversation with your dad, a Baptist minister. At one point he jokes, “I raised a Universalist.” Well, it’s funny. I think he moved; he thinks I moved. I came of age in the late ‘70s, and I think he was more progressive back then. I think I learned everything from him; he doesn’t see how that could be true. We’re apart in a lot of things, but one place we’re not apart is that we’re always striving to build relationship with others. That’s really something I learned from him.
And that’s the heart of what I’m trying to say: A faith that causes us to move in ways that sever relationships and turn our world into an us-and-them situation is not a faith I can believe in. How can we act in ways that enhance relationships, to move in ways that love our neighbor? That’s the core of it, I hope.
Russell Rathbun
You’ve gone from street-corner witnessing to saying that saving people isn’t our job. What prompted that shift? 
