Is Christian Theism Dead?
The Problem With Re-Framing Christianity
I snapped that photograph on a cold December morning at the Nashville National Cemetery. It encompasses 65 acres and has over 35,000 interments.
My father led a tank battalion in WWII, serving under the command of George S. Patton. He arrived at Omaha Beach with the bodies of dead soldiers floating in the water. Dad fought in some key and decisive battles in the war including the Battle of the Bulge. At his funeral there was a 21-gun salute, and Taps was played on a bugle. His only son, I carried his casket to the grave. My father never talked about his experience of war. I carry some regret and sadness that we talked so little about it. I know the war affected him in ways I could never understand.
The First Noble Truth of Buddhism is human suffering results from our inability to accept change. The world and lived human experience is characterized by impermanence, fragility, transience and temporality. We suffer when we become attached to the world under the delusion of certainty, predictability and staying power. All things in the phenomenal world have a beginning, evolve and change, and come to an end.
There are some deaths that result in new life. Mary Queen of Scots wrote, “In my end, is my beginning.” In the deconstruction work I do, people who walk away from their religion often experience many deaths:
The death of one’s identity
The death of one’s social support and relationships
The death of one’s existential certainty
The death of meaning and purpose
These deaths can become fertile ground for reconstructing a more authentic, meaningful, and liberating spirituality.
Perhaps the greatest death for some people who leave religion is the death of one’s religious version of God.
One of the most famous lines attributed to German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is, “God is dead.” Nietzsche’s point is not meant to be taken literally, as though he believed that the God of Christianity existed and then died. Nietzsche's "God is dead" idea is that what the God of Christianity represented, died. Darwin's Origin of the Species and theory of evolution had been published, and now science had answers to the origins of our species that did not necessitate belief in a creator God.
Through the use of critical thinking we know that the discussion of God isn’t a binary one - either the “God” of Christianity or no God at all. Christian theism is only one of many conceptualizations of “God”.
My latest podcast is entitled: Is Christian theism dead? I discuss why I believe traditional Christianity’s concept of God is fundamentally flawed. The foundation of classical Christian theism is separation theology, which is a belief-system built upon the premise that humankind is separate and/or separated from God.
For me, there are at least these ten problems with traditional Christian theism:
Christian Theism conceives of God as a supernatural supreme being, separate from the universe and humankind.
Christian Theism operates on the false narrative that God and humankind are estranged and that this is a catastrophic problem to be fixed.
Christian Theism casts God with maleness, which lays the foundation for the dominance of patriarchy.
Christian Theism creates an inescapable cognitive dissonance of a God who is all-good, all-powerful, and oversees, is intimately involved, and intervenes in human affairs… but then doesn’t.
Christian Theism requires the death of Jesus to mean the atonement of humankind’s sins to satisfy God’s holiness.
Christian Theism undermines the shared scientific, philosophical and spiritual understanding that existence, the universe, and ultimate reality are one thing of which everything else finds its being.
Christian Theism anthropomorphizes God, evil, and afterlife narratives, which prevents or limits more expansive, meaningful, and consequential understandings of these metaphysical realities.
Christian Theism asserts its authority based upon a literalist interpretation of an ancient writing that predates modern science.
Christian Theism’s theological edifice is built with fantastical doctrines that cannot be verified or reasonably believed such as: the fall and original sin, virgin birth of Jesus, trinitarian view of God, and eternal conscious torment (Hell).
Christian Theism propagates the notion of separation from God, and therefore a transactional “relationship with God”, whereby a person shoulders the burden of doing this relationship correctly in order to access and enjoy its benefits.
I’ll stop there.
After leaving religion, I deconstructed the bulk of my Evangelical Christian theology away, and though I had my stint in “progressive Christianity” (a kinder and gentler theism), and an assortment of varied biblical hermeneutics, I realized that I should not be steering people toward re-framing Christianity as the obvious deconstruction path forward… unless they specifically find meaning in it.
As shared previously, too much of what is being passed off as “deconstruction” these days amounts to popping out the old belief-system CD (remember those?) and popping in a new one. The flaw in this is not addressing more foundational deconstruction work such as: human development deficits; trauma work; toxic indoctrination blind spots; and essential self-reconstruction work. Whether or not the result of any of this looks “Christian” is besides the point.
For many people, the death of classical Christian theism is clearing space for a more meaningful, healthy, and liberating spirituality. This is because classical Christian theism (separation theology) is chock-full of damaging doctrine (original sin, substitutionary atonement, eternal conscious torment, etc.) that sabotages a person’s relationship with themselves, the world, and their mental, emotional, spiritual and existential health.
Insert Generation Z (born between 1999 and 2015). Gen Z is the nation’s least religious generation. It’s not only a lack of religious affiliation that distinguishes Generation Z. They are far more likely to identify as atheist or agnostic. The percentage of Gen Z that identifies as atheist is double that of the general U.S. population.
From what I’m seeing, Gen Z are not typically up for reinterpreting the Bible as a path forward. They really aren’t all that concerned about whether a God that is depicted in ancient literature really commanded armies to commit genocide, they are trying to figure out if life has meaning and worth living, given that God is dead… the religious notion of “God”… the classical theistic conception of “God” is dead. And in their minds, trying to reframe it is like putting lipstick on a pig.
What is the greatest spiritual need of our day? What is the real deconstruction work that needs to be done with people who have lost faith in religion? What is the most hopeful path for our species to live more meaningfully, compassionately, harmoniously and constructively? What will most liberate people to more fully embrace transcendence and ultimate reality?
Is it to reframe classical Christian theism with a nicer biblical hermeneutic? Or should we just let Christian theism die, and seek elsewhere?