Who is a person of faith?

Are we all “people of faith?” Leaders of a recent rally aimed at ending the Senate filibuster against some of President Bush’s most significant judicial nominees claimed the nominees were being held up because of their religious and moral beliefs. The response from the left was overblown offense at the suggestion that a political issue might have a religious component. “We are also people of faith,” one liberal spokesman protested, speaking of those criticized for their novel application of Senate filibusters. Many others echoed the message. In a sense, they’re right?all of them.

Faith always has an object. It’s a claim that you believe ? something. It may be expedient to keep the object of our faith vague, but for all of us, something is number one on our list.

For many, the ultimate thing is a personal God who made us and gives life each day. For others it is a pale version of God. Many others worship personal desires and appetites, even while attending their churches. What we have in common is that we serve our god faithfully. That’s how we know he/it is our god.

Faithfulness to just any god is not necessarily a good thing. All faith and religious practice is not equivalent. When a confused celebrity “gives all thanks to the Lord” for his Oscar or on the liner notes of his hit CD, my immediate reaction is to hope nobody else confuses my Lord with his. The same is true when a philandering politician insists that he too is a person of faith. He is, but it’s not necessarily something to brag about.

The same is true of terms like “faith-based,” “faith groups,” and “faith tradition.” They mean something to someone and this meaning should be considered every time you hear it.

This vague “God bless you” faith is more popular as elections draw near. In the wake of the 2004 election cycle, many who rarely referred to God before couldn’t speak without reminding us of their fervor. It was rarely clear what that fervor was aimed at. Perhaps we are meant to plug our own faith?in God or in something lesser?into this spot and assume the speaker to be “one of us.”

Then we have the variety of gods among the devout. It is politically correct to say that religion is a social good and all religions are therefore equally desirable, but that claim is less appealing when we look at it directly.

Manmade religions from Zoroastrianism to Mormonism to secular materialism are religions of self-defined righteousness. I can be good enough for a god of my own imagining by trying, or by being better than others. Of course this sounds good to us but the relativism that comes with this focus of faith is rarely positive. It’s as likely to spawn Stalin as Gandhi.

On the other hand, we are not all “people of faith” in the common understanding of the thought. It implies some level of submission and devotion to a spiritual ideal. Most often in Western culture we think of ritual and prayer and Bible reading. Most Americans, most of our politicians, fewer still of our celebrities, are not devout in this plainspoken way. Maybe we all admire the ideal in the same way that we wish we were as kindly as Grandma. In reality, we know we’re not that committed to the thing that made her good.

Is it OK to say that? Is it judgmental to respond to religious-sounding protestations by suggesting that the speaker come off it? If it is OK, I don’t hear it said often enough. If a lapsed Methodist or Catholic or Baptist begins to go on about his faith, we should take him at his word. He has opened his religious practice and morality up for public scrutiny in same way that a preacher does from the pulpit. Where he is known to fall short, he should be called on it.

Compare it to the way the whole country has access to our president’s annual physical check up. If the doctor says that he needs to drop a few pounds or cholesterol points, every Big Mac he eats becomes news. If he claims devotion to God or to treasure a deeply held faith from his childhood, expect him to act that way and rebuke him when he doesn’t. A prominent person who talks like a Baptist preacher during the campaign can rightly be expected to live like one (and yes, most preachers are virtuous men) after the election.

Our claims to a deeply held faith should mean something. In our culture it implies that we are Christians. That term should also be more than a cultural identifier.