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Earlier this week I heard a story about the “nones”—those who answer “none” when asked about their religious affiliation. This group is heavily under 30 and represents a higher percentage of nones than their parents or even earlier under-30 groups. What is interesting is the high degree of respect and honor our culture currently gives those who claim allegiance to God, or even specifically Christ, while spurning communal expression of their beliefs. They may call themselves “spiritual” without any ability (or interest) to be more specific. After hearing this I read a fine article in Books and Culture from Baylor professor Ralph C. Wood dealing with the contrast between atheist Christopher Hitchens and 20th century Catholic apologist G.K. Chesterton. Hitchens wrote, shortly before his own death, a scathing review of a recent biography of Chesterton. Here’s a Chesterton quote that Professor Wood turned up:
Man may be defined as an animal that makes dogmas…When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined skepticism, when he declines to tie himself into a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating them all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backward into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded.
Only someone of Chesterton’s caliber can get away with a sentence that long but I think his point is well taken. Does the fact that we are overrun with “independent” voters and unaligned spiritual people mean that we must tacitly affirm the trend? Is the urge in some evangelical churches to downplay doctrine the proper response to a-theological theists?
I can understand why Mr. Hitchens would prefer harmless theists to articulate spokesmen like G.K. Chesterton. His agenda was clear and his antipathy for biblical Christianity made him blind. I do not understand why anyone who leads a church or names the name of Christ would prefer or even peddle this vagueness. The rise of the nones fairly shrieks the need for us to teach MORE doctrine, not less. Some will always find the revelatory qualities of light uncomfortable; it’s insane to think that they will more attracted to a dimmer bulb.
