Parting Souls

The war in Iraq exposed many continuing fissures in U.S. society, but none more evident than the divide between the clerical establishment and the laity. The gap presages more fragmentation in the structures of religious faith in this historically devout global power.

The schism is felt, and reflected upon, in churches and synagogues across the country. Typical is St. Andrew United Methodist Church, in a working-class neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio. Pastor Robert Sholis embraced “the Gospel message of peace” and fervently opposed the war in Iraq. Many in his congregation, which includes migrants from Appalachia, firmly disagreed with him. The depth of the division in Sholis’ church was all the more pointed because he is not a young, idealistic, pacifist pastor. The ministry is his second career, and he has spent many years of reflection on war and the Gospel. Yet, the image of Christ on the St. Andrew Web site during the war -- Jesus wrapped in an American flag -- is not the one held by Sholis.

The split at St. Andrew, and between pew and pulpit in general, reflects opposing conceptions of Christ. Clergy tend to embrace the forgiving, loving “God of Peace,” but parishioners favor the stern notion of a “God of Justice.” That difference in theology helps to explain why clergy and laity disagreed on the Iraq war.

Virtually the entire leadership of every mainstream Christian faith -- from the Roman Catholic Church, the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ and the National Baptist Convention to the United Methodists, as well as the National Council of Churches -- adamantly opposed the war against Iraq from the outset. Like many on the secular left, religious leaders denounced the conflict as one of U.S. aggression and needless destruction, and likely to evolve into a long, bloody conflict.

In contrast, the people in the pews, for the most part, were among the strongest backers of President Bush’s goal of ousting Saddam Hussein. According to a prewar poll conducted by the Pew Research Center and Forum on Religion and Public Life, more than 60% of mainline Protestants and Catholics favored attacking Iraq; greater than 75% of evangelical Protestants supported a military effort.

Significantly, this gap between the ecclesiastic establishment and the laity extends beyond the issues of war and peace to a wide range of social and political issues.

Wade Clark Roof, professor of religion and society at UC Santa Barbara, traces the divide to changes in ecclesiastical education and training that began in the 1960s. Since then, he contends, there has been an increasingly leftward, or “progressive,” shift within the mainstream clergy on issues ranging from race relations and economic “justice” to homosexuality and women’s rights. In that sense, Roof suggests, the Iraq war represented only the latest “milestone in a larger feud” between parishioners and clergy.

During the Vietnam era, Roof notes, church leaders were as divided as the general population on the war. Today, there is far more solidarity in the pulpit. As a result, the “gap between mainline religious beliefs and what the people actually think has grown worse,” says Roof.

The Catholic Church’s recent history illustrates one cause of the split. The principles of Vatican II stressed the importance of a progressive ecumenism over strict adherence to traditional doctrine. Although many individual Catholics opposed these changes, Vatican II principles have dominated the education of new priests since the 1970s.

These are precisely the people, says R. Scott Appleby, a historian of the American Catholic Church and professor of history at Notre Dame, who are in positions of power not only within the church but also in its key academic institutions. The intellectual takeover by progressives pushed clergy beliefs well to the left of churchgoers.

The sex-abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, Appleby says, have widened the gap between clergy and laity in that priestly misconduct has raised such issues as homosexuality and corruption within the priesthood. Grass-roots groups such as the Voice of the Faithful, as well as such conservative Catholic intellectuals as Michael Novak, have gained stature and influence as a result.

More disturbing to liberal Catholics such as Appleby have been the inroads made by conservative evangelicals into such groups as Latinos, the main engine of church growth in many parts of the country. By 2010, a majority of American Catholics will be Latino, but their loyalty seems to be weakening, particularly in the second and third generations. An estimated 600,000 Latinos, according to Catholic sociologist Andrew Greeley, leave the church every year; he predicts that within a decade as many as half of all Latinos will be outside the Catholic fold.

The exodus from the church may be more pronounced among non-Latino Catholics. One alienating factor is what Appleby calls “xenophobia” among American Catholics -- others might call it patriotism -- that conflicts with a church overwhelmingly internationalist and pacifist in outlook. “The fundamentalists are perfectly prepared to take advantage of this,” Appleby says. “They can take advantage of special-interest politics and people’s worldview.”

A similar, though more muted, split has developed among American Jews, traditionally among the most progressive and least pro-military of groups in U.S. society. Like their peers in Christianity, many American rabbis have been raised in a liberal tradition. Their interpretations of Judaism have largely been shaped by the experiences of past discrimination, the shtetl and the Holocaust.

“It has to do with our training,” says Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben, president of the 250-member Board of Rabbis of Southern California. “We tend to see ethical action and mitzvah work [good deeds] putting us on the liberal side of the spectrum.”

Rabbi Ed Feinstein of Valley Beth Shalom agrees that Jewish clergy tend to be “far to the left” of their congregants. The Iraq war deepened this division, pushing many Jews toward the center. It was difficult for many, if not most, Jews to oppose a military effort that overthrew one of the world’s most murderously anti-Semitic and anti-Israel regimes.

More broadly, the war in Iraq may have accelerated a shift in religious values. Among Jews, for example, this might mean a gradual abandonment of the ideology of the oppressed, a cornerstone of Jewish identity in the last century, in favor of a more muscular and aggressive identity reflective of Israel’s evolution as a warrior society and closer identification with the U.S. state.

Within Christianity, the change in values may be more religious in nature. Mainstream clergy generally view Christ as pacifist, loving, meek and forgiving. Although this conception is a powerful component of Christian divinity, it is not universally held. There is also the confrontational Christ, one who stands in strict judgment of evil and sees the full embrace of faith as the road to salvation. This Christ is often ignored by mainstream clergy but accepted by many Americans, including President Bush.

The image of Christ as warrior and judge, some scholars agree, appeals to the moral concerns of many parents, who feel that religion must and should play a central role in setting their children’s values. Liberal clergy’s more forgiving and inclusive attitude toward drug users and homosexuality, for example, disturbs people who regard religion as a bulwark against deviation from traditional norms.

Over time, the changes in religious values and the split between a liberally trained clergy and increasingly conservative laity are likely to accelerate religious fragmentation at the expense of mainstream denominations.

According to the Assn. of Statistics of American Religious Bodies, with the exception of the Catholic Church, membership in almost all mainstream Protestant faiths, including the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., the United Methodists and the Episcopalians, has either stagnated or declined in the last 10 years. The strongest gains have been made in more conservative churches, ranging from the Mormon Church to various evangelical and charismatic churches, including the Assemblies of God, Evangelical Free Church, the Pentecostal Holiness Church and International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. There has also been an upsurge in what Roof calls “experimental” religions, including New Age variants of Christianity. Just how widespread these religious groups are is difficult to gauge because they are relatively new and unstructured.

What is most disturbing for the future of mainstream religion in America, Roof suggests, is the lack of a middle ground between evangelical fundamentalism and the increasingly out-of-touch clerical elite more united with one another’s common vision than with their parishioners’. What’s missing, Roof says, are spiritual figures with the stature of a Reinhold Niebuhr or Abraham Joshua Heschel, who were able to transcend religious differences and heal rifts with commonly accepted truth.

Given the absence of such leaders, the great clerical shift toward liberal ecumenism seems to be producing an unintended result. Instead of a nation more united in a general appreciation of religion, we are witnessing a growing fragmentation among those who believe that faith should have a powerful role in the shaping of society.