The Death-Dealing Sickness at the Roots of American Christianity

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. Each summer, I pick a different book each month to read with members of my parish. It’s a great way for me to get through some texts I’ve been meaning to pick up and I enjoy it each year. This year’s first book is The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality within the Biblical Story by Old Testament scholar Christopher Hays and his father, the world-renowned New Testament Scholar Richard Hays. I’m about one hundred pages into it and it is absolutely excellent, a brilliant synthesis of the best of Biblical scholarship, tracing the overarching narrative of the witness of Scripture, making it clear that love and mercy is what lies at the core. If you’re curious, you can join our parish’s discussion of it at 5:30pm on Monday, June 9—details are on our website at http://sjegh.com. But what struck me particularly was right at the beginning of the book, before the authors dive deeply into the witness of Scripture. They begin by plumbing the depths of American Christianity and find some darkness at its core. So, today I want to take a swing at the myth that American Christianity is exceptional and suggest that it may even have brokenness at its heart. The authors go back in time to Jonathan Edwards, and 18th century preacher and theologian who was active before the Revolutionary war. Edwards was the third president of what became Princeton University and is generally seen as one of the most important and leading theologians in early colonial America. One of his most famous works was a sermon called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Here is a brief excerpt, “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire, he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire.” Historians often use this sermon as an example of the sort of preaching that was common during the First Great Awakening in colonial America. None of this was new to me, but what they next shared was something I had never known. I’ll quote the authors of the book directly here, “Notably, Edwards preached it in 1741, half a decade after his preaching sparked a rash of suicides and suicidal ideations among his congregation in Northampton, Massachusetts.” They go on to note that one of those who died by suicide was even his own uncle. What the authors have done is pinpoint with scholarly precision the sickness that is at the heart of American Christianity, a sickness that has been with us since the beginning and has been killing people for nearly 300 years. This sickness is a theology that teaches people that God hates who they are, and then tells them that they are supposed to see this as a form of love. So, let’s make one very clear categorical theological statement: God does not hate you. God does not hate any part of you. And any preacher who tells you differently is not a preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Rather, they are a preacher who has been infected with a diseased theology that has plagued Christianity in America from the start. And that sort of preaching kills people. No sinner is in the hands of an angry God. Rather, each and every one of us can look at the pierced hands of Christ, the Son of God, and know that it is God’s love for you that is the actual real deepest truth. Thanks for being with me. To find out more about my parish, you can go to sjegh.com. Until next time, remember, protest like Jesus, love recklessly, and live your faith out in a community that accepts you but also challenges you to be better tomorrow than you are today.