It’s a rare lecture that has the potential to cause a significant spike in Amazon sales of the selected writings of Calvin. And it is a still rarer lecture that can be accurately described as ‘prophetic’ in the best Biblical sense. So the Theos Annual Lecture for 2013, by the great American novelist, ‘liberal Calvinist’ and public intellectual Marilynne Robinson, was special indeed. Her theme was religion and contemporary America, and while her arguments and examples were rooted in US history, culture and politics, they had much wider resonance.

Dr Robinson began by noting the formal separation in the USA of church and state, which in practice have always been intertwined. Her argument was that much of American Christian culture was now disastrously bound up with a particular strand of American politics that distrusts or even despises the state. In this perspective, the state is guilty of aggressive secularism, and the line between Christian America and its internal enemies has to be policed ever more fiercely. This makes for a toxic atmosphere between the ‘Religious Right’ and its Republican allies, and ‘liberals’ of any faith and (increasingly) none.

Dr Robinson pointed to the warping of Christian faith entailed by this cultural and political confrontation. ‘Christian’ is becoming a badge of identity, rather than being an ethic: on the fundamentalist right, there is a focus on personalised salvation inside a narrow circle of the born-again, with endless capacity for self-forgiveness coupled with condemnation of everyone outside the sectarian boundary, not to mention support for policies that oppose gun control and punish the poor, all in the name of Jesus. (It would be a good project to document just how often Christ is actually quoted by the US Religious Right - not often, one imagines, since the Gospel message is so much at odds with the agenda of those brandishing ‘Christian’ as a tribal and political identity.)

The upshot is that much American Christianity is now pitted against public goods and social justice: it’s ideology rather than faith. As Dr Robinson observed in an essay in her collection When I Was A Child I Read Books, “Anger and self-righteousness combined with cynicism about the world as he or she sees it are the marks of the ideologue. There is always an element of nostalgia, too, because the ideologue is confident that he or she is moved by a special loyalty to a natural order, or to a good and normative past, which others defy or betray.”

Her diagnosis was bleak. She sees a loss of nerve in the mainstream churches in the USA , a failure on their part to transmit the best of their traditions. Instead, they have been drowned out by the furious fundamentalists, and have no better answer than to try to copy some of their techniques. Dr Robinson was optimistic that the US political system will ‘self-correct’ against the tribalism of the Right - but she wasn’t sure that the churches will be able to restore themselves.

The themes were American but they have great resonance for Europe, where politicians in hard times are tempted by tribal ideologies and harsh measures against migrants and the poor. Dr Robinson offered messages in a prophetic voice that should speak to us all:

- It is Christ who decides who is a real Christian, not the churches;
- Christianity is ethos, not tribal identity;
- It is entirely possible for those beyond the churches to be better exemplars of Christian values than those within, and we are living in such times;
- The churches need to rediscover the message and model of Christ, and speak of it humbly.

This was an evening with a softly spoken, witty, wise and gentle woman channeling the spirit of Micah: He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

All that, and confirmation from Dr Robinson that another novel is coming in the New Year. Some evenings are unimprovable.

Ian Christie is Research Fellow at the University of Surrey and part of the Theos Advisory Board

Image by Dominick Tyler from www.dominicktyler.com/ under the Creative Commons Licence