Christianity: Religion or Philosophy

Fox News' Bill O'Reilly has been a good soldier in the culture wars in recent years. In 2006 he even put out a best seller called Culture Warrior. He describes the opposing forces as, "those who embrace traditional values and those who want to change America into a 'secular-progressive' country." He makes it clear in his writing and on his television program that by "traditional values" he means the Judeo-Christian foundation on which this country was built.

O'Reilly's latest battle in the war is not going to be helpful in the long run, however. O'Reilly has been insisting recently that Christianity is a philosophy, not a religion. This position violates the "no-spin" pledge O'Reilly is so proud of. In an article in Real Clear Religion, Jeffrey Weiss makes my argument better than I could. (I highly recommend this article.) Trying to redefine a word so that it means what you want it to mean is Humpty-Dumpty's trick. It is not sound reasoning. I agree with Weiss that O'Reilly has done just this.

There are two reasons why this is an unfortunate move by O'Reilly. First it is unsustainable as a debate point. This is another way of saying he is wrong. There is such a thing as Christian philosophy, as Weiss points out. However, Christian philosophy is founded on Christian religious beliefs. The philosophy is an outgrowth of the religion, not the other way around as O'Reilly is trying to arrange. If someone came from another planet and stumbled upon the tenets of Christianity, it would be obvious that they are religious tenets. Weiss makes this point also.

The second reason O'Reilly's position is troublesome is that it becomes a classical slippery slope: if Christianity is merely a philosophy as he asserts, and if the Constitution forbids establishment only of religions, then the government could establish Christianity as a philosophy. While this may sound attractive to believers at first glance, it becomes less so upon further thought. This freedom to establish philosophy would then extend to atheism, pragmatism, nihilism, or any other dreadful "-ism" that might hold popular sway in a given Congress. This is precisely what the First Amendment prohibition against establishment was intended to thwart.

This does not mean that our government runs without philosophical underpinnings. Quite the contrary. No structure in human society is void of philosophy. The word "philosophy" simply describes how one views the world. It might be thought of as a lens through which one sees surrounding circumstances and behaviors. O'Reilly is correct to assert that our founding fathers held a decidedly Christian world-view and crafted a Constitutional government that would uphold and propagate that view.

Our real problem today is that a competing philosophy has grown so influential in society, particularly in government circles, that the Christian world-view no longer holds a clear majority. Our national elections which hover around a fifty-fifty split demonstrate this fact. True, there is not a bright line dividing Christianity into one political party or the other, although on the social issues, conservative Christians certainly lean more towards Republican platforms than Democrat. The battle we are fighting today in the public square is over Constitutional interpretation: will we maintain the perspective of the founders, or will we take a more dynamic approach and recast the principles upon which we govern.

We will continue to hold elections to decide the Constitutional issue, but I wonder if O'Reilly hasn't stumbled on a good argument in spite of his faulty application. Christianity as a philosophy is precisely what the Bible calls for: believers are supposed to view the world through God's eyes. "Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things." Even though seventy-five percent of Americans polled recently self-identified as Christians, other poll numbers and daily headlines suggest that far fewer of us actually live as though God had anything to do with our lives. George Barna found that only four percent of believers say they base their decisions on a biblical world-view.

These numbers tell me the church is failing in its primary task. The Great Commission was to make disciples; disciples are followers of their leader; our Leader modeled a radical new way to view the world. Apparently only four Christians in one hundred even try to operate with that world-view. Maybe O'Reilly is onto something. Maybe we should put more stress on the "philosophical" aspect of Christianity and less on the "religious." Maybe we are simply inoculating people with a weakened form of Christianity instead of infecting them with the powerful real  thing. (See Jeff Musgrave.)

Here is a new cause: let's forget about all this "1%" nonsense. After all, what profit is there in gaining the world and losing the soul. Let's start working on the 96% of our fellow-believers who have missed out on real Christianity. For that matter, let's make sure we are in the 4% who do get it. Let's agree with Bill O'Reilly: Christianity is a philosophy in the truest sense of the word. And it just happens to be founded on the religion that rests upon the true Word.