Faith — Personal or Private?
by Pastor Mark Nordtvedt, Ballard Church (Seattle, WA)

We are living in a day that is charged with conflict. This conflict is between right and wrong, good and evil, secular and religious and is playing out on the world stage and even the political arena in America. As people of faith, we are responsible to stay informed and attempt to understand the issues that not only affect our families and neighbors, but can also have a lasting impact on our entire nation and world.

The question for all of us is, "What role does my Christian faith play in this conflict?" Is my faith a private concern relegated to the privacy of my home? Or is my faith to be public? Is my religion just something between me and my God? Or is my religion to be exercised for the common good of my community?

John Leo writes in U.S. News & World Report, "The battle behind the 'under God' issue (in the Pledge of Allegiance), pits true pluralists against intolerant secularists who are willing to accept religion, but only if it is defanged and totally privatized. The late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago pointed out how odd it is to claim a respect for religion while simultaneously insisting that people keep it to themselves."

Some secularists believe God should be a "hobby" that is kept marginal and private like woodworking or bird-watching. But they are against religious people acting on their beliefs. They would define this as "forcing" something on someone else.

The "religion-is-private" theme has been raised in our presidential campaign, proposing that religion is exclusively between an individual and his God. John Leo says, "Actually, it isn't. Most religions demand that believers exert themselves to shape a better society, not just sit and worship in some corner."

Looking back at America's history, we discover that our country was birthed in conflict, and this competition between the secular and religious has waxed and waned many times over the last 200 years. Seymour Martin Lipset writes that America is "the most religious, optimistic, patriotic, rights-oriented and individualistic country in the world." This presents some interesting paradoxes since the practices of faith and individualism may occasionally collide. Jay Toulson writes of America, "Some 60 percent of its citizens say religion is very important to their lives. ... But the divine looms even larger in most Americans' hearts than those figures suggest. Some 90 percent say they believe in God — 94 percent if you add those who revere a 'universal spirit' — while less than 1 percent call themselves atheist or agnostic." In the battle of secular vs. religious, most people in America are religious. However, they tenaciously hang on to the individual's rights to privacy and self-expression.

In light of all this, is our Christian faith personal? Yes. Is it to be kept private? Absolutely not! But our basis of truth and action is not the culture or religious state of America, nor the history of our country. Our actions are not to be governed by the liberal judges' erroneous interpretation of the Constitution of the United States regarding the establishment of religion clause.

Our basis of faith and practice is the Bible, God's Word, which explicitly commands us to "make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19). Personal? Yes. But hardly private.