So a Gingrich aide just got released for his opinion on the Latter-Day Saints. Here’s the essence of it:
Craig Bergman during a focus group last Wednesday with the Iowa Republican and McClatchy newspapers said he thought Romney’s religion eventually would cost him votes.
“A lot of the evangelicals believe God would give us four more years of Obama just for the opportunity to expose the cult of Mormon,” Bergman said during the focus group, according to The Iowa Republican. “There’s a thousand pastors ready to do that.”
In a statement Tuesday evening, the Gingrich campaign said Bergman had “agreed to step away from his role with Newt 2012.”
…and frankly, I disagree with the action. In fact, I’ll go a step further — from a man as highly regarded (self or otherwise) as an intellectual, Gingrich should have been able to turn a blind eye and allow a conversation about religion and culture to ensue.
Catholics have always been slammed as a “cult” by our Protestantized cousins, namely because Catholics never pushed off against the idea of Catholicism as culture.
For Catholics, we embrace the idea of cult — whether that is devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a particular way of life (Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, and perhaps Anglicans when the union is complete?), or a specific charism of the Church (speaking in tongues).
These are the cults that build culture.
The problem is that whenever Americans use the term in the vernacular, we don’t think of cult as culture… we think of the Branch Davidians, or the Wiccan tree huggers, or hipsters and their fondness for Salvation Army thrift stores (I keed… I keed… but only so much).
In addition, there is a massive difference between cult as culture, and the entire opposite of this: the occult.
Now the reader will have to forgive me at this point. I have very little toleration or interest in exploring this facet of spirituality, and therefore will not dwell on it here.
I will mention this much — occultism is what we generally think of when we explore the idea of a “cult” in America: something that is separated from culture, something that is separated from the community of believers, something that offers secret knowledge or gnosis either through a select reading of Scripture or a distorted lens of reality, something that is aimed at Truth, wings it, and then comes away with a highly distorted idea of what Truth is.
That’s the occult. This is what St. Peter warned about in 2 Peter 1:20 – 2:3
First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you , who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their licentiousness, and because of them the way of truth will be reviled. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words; from of old their condemnation has not been idle, and their destruction has not been asleep.
There’s a lot to digest in here, but I’ll condense it as best I can: (1) the community of believers is a public body — visible and extant, (2) false teachers and false prophets will come from within the community of believers, (3) their methods will be “secret” and “denying” and “destructive” and “greedy”, and (4) the last line, which is the most chilling — “from of old their condemnation has not been idle, and their destruction has not been asleep” — tells you the source of this division… and it is occult.
Now obviously, Christians are not lock-step automatons. I prefer Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Others prefer reading Sacred Scripture. Others volunteer. Some pray the Rosary. Others sing in the choir. Some view their faiths through the traditions of their denominations — Lutheran, Anglican, Franciscan, Jesuit, Baptist, nondenominational (yes folks, that is a denomination), Mormon, etc.
We are not one, as Christ prayed we would be. Yet we are all believers.
And so the question arises: Are these cults as culture? Or cults as occult?
Now I am quite certain that our friend working with the Gingrich campaign intended his remarks to be entirely negative. But it does not erase the fundamental point of cult as culture — or whether differing faiths are automatically occult by virtue of their differences.
As for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I fundamentally disagree with them on points of theology. Namely, I believe Jesus Christ is true God and true man. I believe in the Holy Trinity.
Alternatively, I do not question for a moment their sincere and faithful love of Jesus Christ, their devotion to family, and truly envy at times the ties that bind… yes, the culture of Mormonism.
Perhaps it’s time that we, as Americans, set down the whole negative spin on culture and start discussing how faith is integral to the idea of culture. What has happened over the last 50 years as American culture has divorced itself from faith, checked it at the door to public offices and schools, denied it in our “holiday seasons” and from our public greetings, even to the point of allowing in to infect our Sunday worship.
Is this not the pinch of incense to the Roman gods our 3rd century forebearers would have sacrificed physical martyrdom for, yet when the pinch of incense to our 21st century gods of consumerism and secularism (every bit a belief system as Christianity) we refuse to sacrifice spiritual martyrdom for?
And we wonder why America is falling apart.
There are good forms of belief and there are bad ones. There’s cult as culture, and then there’s the sort of cult that St. Peter so accurately warned about — the occult. Be on guard against the latter… but consider the former. Culture, truly independent culture, is what we have lost after the advent of the French Revolution, replaced with secularism or nationalism or consumerism or socialism. This degrades humanity… one giant “cult as culture” that is distinctly separate from what many Christians would identify as orthodoxy.
Let’s embrace culture, in all forms. Let’s have the healthy conversation. Let’s not use language to sweep aside what we agree upon in favor of the tiny bit that divides us. Be on guard against the occult, but do not fear the idea of culture.
It’s good for us… and it’s what we’re sorely lacking in America today.
