It provides the answer to the question, "Why?" It provides the overarching and unifying purpose, the moral measure of every action. It is, in evangelical Christian terms, the thing that makes life "purpose-driven," or so Rick Warren once described it.
I share that essential understanding, although I came to it via a quite different route. When I began my return to faith, it was through the writings of 20th century Christian existentialists. Kierkegaard, of course, but also Tillich. Tillich's understanding of faith was that it was our "ultimate concern," meaning it was that goal that defined all other goals, that was not "contingent," but defining.
I've not taught Tillich over the years, or preached explicitly from Tillich, for two reasons. One, people just don't get him, and I see why. His big thinky theology tended to be a wee bit abstracted from the day-to-day choices that define our moral lives. Second, his form of Christian faith has no purchase in contemporary Christian debates. His philosophizing ain't gonna fly if you're conservative and evangelical, nor does he...as a dead white man...have any lingering voice amongst the progressive oldline.
But still, that basic truth about faith remains, and it's the plumb line against which I measure both my actions and my inactions. If I'm committed to following Jesus, which I am, then that commitment defines all other commitments. It's how you operationalize the Great Commandment. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength and all your mind," said Jesus, and if that's not a clear indicator of Ultimate Concern in the Gospel, I don't know what is.
I was meditating on this reality yesterday, after I bumped into one of those peculiar little faith factoids that regularly drop from the table of Ryan Burge. Burge is an American Baptist Convention pastor and a professor, who gathers and discusses the state of religion in the United States.
The data point that caught my eye tracked the responses of Americans to this survey question:
How important are your views about religion to your identity and how you think of yourself?
The possible responses were: 1) Not at all, 2) A little, 3) Somewhat, and 4) Very much. Now, I'd prefer a Likert approach to this data, myself. Four possible responses doesn't provide a meaningful midpoint, eh? That, and I don't quite like the phrasing, which modifies importance. "Very much important?" That's kinda clumsy sounding.
But the replies, broken down by forms of faith, showed a striking outlier.
Self-identified evangelicals responded to the question with a resounding supermajority going with the highest category. As Burge noted, this is a strong signal, twice that of every other group. Non-evangelicals, which presumably includes the oldline denominations? Seventy percent replied with an answer ranging from Not at all to Somewhat.
Having bumped into this data point on very progressive BlueSky, the responses I encountered there were all from progressive folks who inhabit the non-evangelical category. All equated the evangelical response with extremism and oppression.
But I took this another way.
The Gospel and the teachings of Jesus aren't secondary, or one input among many. There is nothing in them that would suggest that's an option. They define all other categories. They are more important than my race and my gender. They define my moral actions as a father and a husband, as a neighbor and a citizen.
Why do I stand for the rights of the last, the least, and the lost? Because it's what Jesus did and taught. Why do I reject the politics of dominance, resentment, and ethnonationalism? Because Jesus demands that his disciples set down that sword. Why do I reject crass mammonism? Because resisting the corruption of greed is a core theme in Christ's teachings. Why do I press back against willful cruelty to the stranger and the foreigner in our land? 'Cause Jesus makes it real clear that's a non-negotiable.
If religion does not shape identity, does not form our souls at the most fundamental level, then what is it? Faith that does not clearly give us both purpose and Ultimate Concern has buried the lede.
It is salt without saltiness, as a friend once put it.
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