Delighting in our Neighbors Who are Non-Religious: A Lutheran Theological Proposal

What does it look like for Lutheran thought to move beyond theological neutrality with those who are non-religious? This presentation affirms the claims by John Schmalzbauer and Kathleen Mahoney and Peter Berger that the current age is not a secular one but instead a plural one (Fenggagg Yang). The presentation utilizes the work of political scientist and pastor Ryan Burge, author of The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going to support the claim that the U.S. context of religious dis-affiliation is multidimensional and plural as well, with the “nothing in particulars” especially mobile along a spectrum of faith and religious participation.

In crafting a Lutheran theological response to those who are non-religious and potentially open to exploring faith in new and plural ways, recent work by Lutheran feminist theologians helps reveal why a Lutheran worldview should compel us to talk about how we are impacted by our relationships, including relationships with those who are non-religious. Kathryn Kleinhans offers helpful insights from Luther’s imagery in “On the Freedom of the Christian” of the unity between Christ and the Christian. Drawing on Finnish scholars and their challenge to a forensic reading of what happens within this union, Kleinhans suggests that Luther’s use of marital imagery suggests a fundamentally relational reality; indeed “identity is defined and expressed in relationship.” The Christian’s union with Christ leads to Christ’s “alien righteousness” engendering a “proper righteousness” in the Christian and frees them up to attend to the specific needs of the neighbor.

Building on Kleinhans’ work, Elisabeth Gerle notes that this view of the self-in-relationship differs from the unitary subject from which some post-Luther Lutheran theology has often proceeded. Gerle also proposes that Luther’s privileging of a marriage metaphor over a monastic one helps emphasize that God’s creative activity is not limited to a religiously-designated sphere of life. This insight, Gerle insists, leads us to claim that God is also present in spaces that many today consider “secular.” Gerle draws on Gustav Wingren’s vision of how Lutheran theology orients one toward the neighbor: “Delight at one’s neighbour [sic], that is love’s breakthrough . . . . There is no more delightful or loving creature on earth than one’s neighbor. Love does not think about doing good deeds, for it takes delight in people, and when something good is done to one’s fellow human being, it is not as a deed of love, but, on the contrary, merely as a reaching for gifts. Love must never do anything good. It may do it.” And delighting in our neighbors, Wingren insists, is central to Christian vocation.

Thomas Rodgerson’s Overhearing a Christian Apology to the Nones: Revealing Still Hidden Truths in Dialogue proves to be a good conversation partner, with his model of a process of dialogue between Christians and those who are non-religious, a process where Christians (and their partners) commit to “standing together where truths will emerge.” A key component of this process of dialogue is a practice of listening called “interpathy,” a combination of “inter,” “cultural,” and “empathy” where we attempt to imagine the world from the perspective of the other’s point of view.35 A Lutheran commitment to loving and delighting in the neighbor needs an interpathic approach to be theologically impacted by relationships with those who are non-religious.

In his dialogue between Christians and those who are non-religious, Rodgerson holds on to the term “none,” even as he acknowledges problems with the term. He continues to wonder, though, if the term might help increase Christian interpathy over why those who are non-religious have rejected religion. The first half of his book examines the many reasons nones reject contemporary versions of American Christianity, and Rodgerson models ways American Christians might apologize for the anthropocentrism, individualism, and capitulation to market capitalism that animates much of what counts for Christianity in our current context. Rodgerson proposes that this is a time to “do the spiritual work necessary to tolerate the anxiety, allow the stories we have told ourselves about our Selves, our religion, and our society to come to light for evaluation, and position ourselves as co-creators in an exciting time of ‘something is happening’ as we wait for the revealing of still hidden truths necessary to revise our stories.”

What might happen if Lutherans (and indeed Christians more broadly) were to engage more directly in this type of spiritual work? Borrowing from the insights of Caroline Fairless, Rodgerson proposes that it is on this “apophatic pathway” where Christians and those who are not religious might meet. “It is the pathway of unlearning, unsaying, and self-emptying where out of the ‘nothingness’ we find something new emerging in the space between things.” In committing to sustained conversation and relationship with those who have delinked religion from faith and spirituality, Rodgerson’s approach encourages more robust theological reflection on Christian understanding of this particular incarnation of self-in-relationship. Those of us who still identify as religious, he notes, are not Nones, but often are “not not-Nones” in our inner questioning and doubts, which make us open to the possibility of transformation. And many who are not-religious, as Burge and Eggen have pointed out, are “not Somes [Rodgerson’s term for those who are religious], but they are often not not-Somes in their prioritizing of relationships or their desire for truth.” Here we stand, at a threshold where we can move beyond binary thinking to plural realities ripe for connection. It is here that we might find an opening “to a place where we often must “sigh” because it is too deep for words. And in the sighing, we find ourselves resonating with something that is unspeakable yet happens to hold all things together and is pregnant with the possibility of revealing still hidden truths.”

In order to move beyond theological neutrality in an increasingly plural society where the numbers of people who identify as non-religious is growing rapidly, it is important to highlight Lutheran understandings of self-in-relation alongside the vocational call to delight in one’s neighbors and those compel movement beyond a religious/non-religious binary, open to new spiritual truths that emerge through interpathic relationships with those who are non-religious.