RE: Modern Excommunication

Though I'm (as we all know by now) not in the group you identified, I thought I'd throw in a comment.

I think the reactions many people are having to the Pope's statement are indicative of how poorly Americans understand religion. The Pope's statement isn't really anything new - he insists (quite correctly) that he's not doing anything more than clarifying some things that the Vatican II meeting left ambiguous. He's clearly enunciated the core position that the RCC has always had with respect to other branches of Christianity.

Those who haven't read Stephen Prothero's Religious Literacy might find it worthwhile. He makes some very strong points along these lines.

Originally, "education" in America was pretty much equivalent to religious education. Most people learned to read by reading the Bible (shudder - this despite its obvious unsuitability for children). Sunday sermons were published in local newspapers and they were common topics of discussion. The earliest universities were divinity schools - Harvard, William and Mary, Yale.

The early reading primers all doubled as vehicles for religious indoctrination. Instead of the modern, "A is for Apple, B is for Book, ...", the very influential New England Primer starts:

As a result, literacy rates in the US skyrocketed to levels unparalleled in Europe. John Adams wrote, "a Native of America, especially of New England, who cannot read and wright is a rare a Phenomenon as a Comet." Historian David Paul Nord wrote of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England as "perhaps the most literate place on earth. There is scarcely an adult individual in all New England who cannot read, and write, and keep accounts."

Moreover, included in this knowledge was the basic theology of their religion. Those published sermons weren't today's personal anecdotes, they were very often intellectual and theological arguments, which the churchgoers were expected to understand. There would have been very few Catholics who couldn't articulate precisely the concepts that the Pope has in Dominus Iesus. And there would have been very few Protestants who couldn't articulate the corresponding Protestant doctrines that served as counter-arguments.

Then came the period that historians call the Second Great Awakening - the origin of the tent revival meeting. This was the beginning of the nineteenth century, and it's largely responsible for the modern face of religion in America.

There was a deep shift in the way Americans perceived religion. Instead of sound theological doctrine, they were encouraged to substitute pure emotionalism. As an example, one of the foundations of Protestant Reformation was Luther's sola scriptura - that the Bible is the sole authority on Christian doctrine. It was nearly a slogan among Protestants - a mantra for the movement. During the revivalist period, it was pretty much replaced with sola Jesus, and a focus on a "personal relationship with Jesus".

Sermons shifted in the same way. The rector at Boston's Trinity Church - the most influential Episcopalian preacher of the nineteenth century, Phillips Brooks - encouraged preachers to talk about their own experiences, and to focus on Christ, rather than doctrine. He wrote, "Beware of the tendency to preach about Christianity, and try to preach about Christ" in a popular homiletics manual. As Prothero notes, "The trouble with this approach, of course, is that it makes church teachings about Jesus optional, and wherever church teachings are optional there is the temptation to forget about them altogether."

This led to the shift from theology to morality as the central element of Christian belief, for most American Christians. There was a strong feedback between the sola Jesus idea, the rise of non-denominationalism, and the success of modern science. Protestant groups sought to work together "to Christianize the nation and vanquish the Catholic menace", and needed a basis for that cooperation. But doctrine would be a complete non-starter - there were too many issues on which they disagreed. But basic morality was a common ground. They focused on the common ground and lost their doctrine.

Doctrine was also a casualty of the rise of modern science. As scientists found more and more evidence of errors in scripture, sola scriptura became less and less credible.

This led to a strong anti-intellectual movement in the revivalist period preachers. Instead of preaching doctrine, these people were basically charismatic storytellers, and had very little respect for theology. Dwight Moody once said, "My theology! I didn't know I had any." And on another occasion, "An educated rascal is the meanest kind of rascal." Sam Jones claimed, "If I had a creed, I would sell it to a museum."

So the result of all this was the rise of ecumenicalism - bland, empty moralizing devoid of any noticeable theological content. Megachurches that provide a sense of community, but no sense of deity. People who think of themselves just as "Christians", rather than Baptist, Episcopal, Catholic, or whatever.

You'll also notice that a common feature of the various splinter churches that formed as a reaction to the revivalist period is that they've got a much stronger focus on doctrine than mainstream churches have. These are mostly "restorationist" churches that believe that Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches fell away from the "true path" at some point in their history, and believe that they're bringing back the "original" Christian belief. The Campbellites, Christadelphians, Millerites, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Mormons all have their roots in the restorationist movement.

Personally, I find it amusing that the very effort to widen the spread of Christianity in America is largely responsible for its having been so undermined that today, the average self-described Christian knows almost nothing about Christianity.

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