Faith in Action, Part 1: Conversion

(a second follow up from holiday – most of the time we went walking, honest)

When my friend set up a church community project seven years ago he used to tell secular agencies that ‘faith is our motivation, not our hidden agenda’. He aimed to alleviate people’s unspoken concerns that we might be raving bible bashers, whilst not apologising for our faith. I appreciated the fact that he raised the issue directly, but still felt uncomfortable that we weren’t getting to the root of non-Christians’ feelings or being completely honest ourselves.

The general gist of the secular argument goes something like this: If you are helping vulnerable or young people from a faith motivation then by helping them they might feel indebted to you or psychologically or sociologically pressurised to become a Christian. A faith based charity might have some groups which are ‘non religious’ but there is always another group or event which you need to ‘believe’ to be a part of. Vulnerable people who have experienced friendship and acceptance for possibly the first time will not want to miss out and so will conform to gain acceptance. If evidence of this pressure is limited the sense of unease remains - ‘well, you’re still setting out to convert people’.

And this is the heart of the matter. Yes. Christian based organisations love to see people become Christians. Christians love to see people discover that they are valuable in God’s eyes – to recognise that they were created with a purpose which no other person can fulfil. To hear the excitement in someone’s voice as they tell the story of how God met with them and filled them with His Holy Spirit, about how the anxieties and sin that had held them and weighed them down for years begins to lift from them. To see people’s confidence grow as they start contributing in a meaningful way to a community.

How could any sympathetic onlooker - Agnostic, Muslim, Hindu or Atheist have a problem with this?

It is clear that that person’s life has changed for the better – they are happier, more content and a more active participant in society. Any funder looking to measure the effectiveness of a charity would be delighted to hear of such a ‘success story’.

Unfortunately for some non religionists there is still a problem. The person now believes the wrong thing! They haven’t changed their life to become an ordinary middle class secularist like them, but now fervently believes all kinds of religious mumbo jumbo. They’ve been hoodwinked into happiness and that’s worse than living their former life of poverty and desperation.

I’ve got two suggestions at this point.

The first is go and persuade people by word and deed that your way of life is both attractive and true ( I appreciated Duncan’s comment here) .

The second is: get over it. Christianity’s either true and they’ve hit the jackpot or it’s false and they’re living a life of more-blissful-than-before-ignorance. If it’s not true they may even grow out of it.

Either way there is no third option: people are entitled to choose to receive support that they think transforms their lives without being patronisingly told that they are being converted to something that isn’t in line with the current intellectual hegemony.

Of course not all strands of Christianity are the same; of course there are occasions where people are manipulated or even abused in the name of or under cover of religion. Of course there are churches which promote unhealthy guilt in their congregations.

Sadly there are abuses of power and trust in all walks of life – secular and religious, some deliberate some without even realising it. Nursing homes and schools, shops and billboards, peer groups and parliament – none escapes the scourge of evil and twisted humanity. If you’re concerned about a particular faith organisation or charity and the impact it may be having on vulnerable people then go and see them. Are they open and transparent or trying to hide their practices away? What do those who are helped by the organisation say about it? If you’re still concerned inform the appropriate authorities – we must all look out signs of abuse.

However, the overwhelming majority of churches or Christians who want to set up a faith based organisation whether it be school, charity or hospital are acting from a rubric of compassion and care. They genuinely want to relieve poverty and distress in a broken, lonely society. They are prepared to put time and money into their efforts. True, some churches have the desire to help, but not the expertise producing poor efforts, but that is why we have inspection regimes and frameworks in the UK to regulate and protect.

Many churches have another motivation which is the transformation of people and society’s lives by the power of Jesus. Or as most would call it, conversion.

Occasionally, the two motives are contradictory because people are seeking conversions as trophies and for protection against the long term decline of their dying rules and rituals. But don’t worry as such groups are unlikely to be very successful – few people choose to board a sinking ship where their only value is as a number on a pew.

Often the two motives take time to work through as church’s grapple with their responsibility to proclaim the Good News with sacrificial actions and efforts as well as words.

Most times the two motives come to mingle together in a powerful and passionate way. Both unconditional compassion and a desire for conversions that change lives day in and day out – for good.

Relationships, roles and responses.

Almost without realising, as I've grown up, I've developed ideas and values that help to form the core of my identity. I define myself as a woman, a feminist, a graduate, and these things inform my attitudes and beliefs about almost every moral and social issue I encounter.

One of the great things about having friends who come from entirely different ideological roots is that sometimes you are introduced to a way of thinking about something that is entirely alien to your own. I think it's all to easy to dismiss things that don't fit with your particular world view, but somehow when such things come from people you like and respect you are forced to engage with them regardless.

Over dinner with Christian friends recently, in the course of a discussion on relationships in a more general way, the notion of male headship came up. This, as I understand it, is the idea that within a Christian marriage the man should take on the more protective, assertive, decision making role, while the woman acts in a supportive, nurturing capacity. It is a Christian ideal, and perhaps examining it out of that framework is a little unfair, but since Christianity believes the whole world would be happier turning to its faith this must have implications for the rest of us too.

My instinctive reaction to this, if I'm honest, is dismissive incredulity. After all, versions of these arguments have been used to keep women out of government, in the home, subservient, docile, and submissive. Surely we have moved past the 'different but equal' arguments that have been used in the past to stop individuals making their own choices based on their own unique talents and interests, rather than ill fitting stereotypes of what behaviour is 'natural' to men and women. These kinds of models for relationships are at best outdated, and at worse dangerous; allowing the unscrupulous to justify domestic violence and the denial of female emancipation.

This is what I think, and it is still what I think at the most fundamental level, but there is another, more uncomfortable side to things. For starters, old-fashioned and untenable as such ways of thinking may appear, the friends who raised the issue appear to have an extremely happy, secure and successful relationship, so something in this idea clearly works for them. Of course, it is entirely possible to see that a relationship model where one partner protects and provides, and the other supports and nurtures might work well, but there is absolutely no reason whatsoever why such roles should be ascribed on the basis of biological sex.

Except that... there is still something in me, and for that matter a majority of my female friends that does on some level desire a man to step into that protective role. I do want, if I'm honest, a mate who can step up, make decisions, take control when necessary, in short a partner I can respect. I have only recently started thinking about how I can square this with my feminist beliefs. And just to complicate matters further, equally I still loathe the idea of letting go of my reasoning and emotions to allow any man to make the final decision, no matter how worthy and dependable he may be.

Perhaps this unwitting attraction to the idea of a man who can fulfil the traditional role is simply evidence that culturally men and women are still conditioned to want and be different things, in spite of themselves. This would explain my simultaneous fascination with and horror at the idea. There is little doubt that this kind of conditioning can be harmful to both men and women and has massive self esteem implications, particularly for those who don't feel able to live up to the stereotypes held up as the ideal. Just as I know that I would quickly tire of the assumption that however valid my opinions they would need to be 'signed off' by another, equally a partner could become weary of the pressure of being responsible for all of the most important decisions.

And then there is the fact that all of this is incredibly hetero-normative. Either we accept that either sex can take either role in this relationship model, or we totally exclude same sex couples where one or both would inevitably end up in the 'wrong' role. This may be less of a problem for schools of Christian thought that judge homosexual pairings to be outside of the ideal anyway, but for more progressive expressions of Christianity such a rigid approach to gender roles does gay Christians a massive disservice.

Ultimately, the idea of headship remains extremely problematic idea for me as a feminist. After all, surely the ideal scenario is one of mutual respect between and for all partners within a relationship, regardless of sex and gender, where all voices are equally heard and equally valid. (Of course, some models of male headship would not technically speaking exclude this). But regardless I don't think that feminism can automatically dismiss Christianity as purely patriarchal and irrelevant, any more than I believe that Christianity should demonise or ignore feminism. Almost every political, religious or philosophical way of seeing the world has something to recommend it, and it is harder, but more rewarding to engage with these than to dismiss them out of hand. And that is a big part of what this blog is about.