Theological Journal – July 28 Sin and Guilt have made a comeback…but they aren’t what they used to be.
JULY 27, 2020 BY FREDERICK SCHMIDT
For a long time, sin and guilt were really unpopular subjects in American life.
Until recently, if they figured in the American
psyche at all, it was the toxic projection of antiquated religious ideas, and
its best antidote was good therapy. Only on a rare occasion did it
feature in public conversations. The experience of Tiger Woods comes to
mind. People weighed in on his personal trials, declared him guilty and
recommended that he seek absolution in a public confession-come-conversation
with Oprah Winfrey.
Sin and guilt were so unpopular, in fact, that
one book asked, Whatever Became of Sin?[1] And
more than once over the years, I have had seminarians tell me that I am the
only professor who has ever mentioned it. That’s extraordinary, when you
think about it, since sin and the burden of guilt have been at the heart of the
Christian faith for centuries. Whether one thinks of the church’s
hymnody, its creeds, or its message, both have played an important part in
describing “the human condition.” For that reason, they have also played
an important part in describing the saving work of Christ.
But sin and guilt are back, and they are back,
as the center piece of the new American religion: Politics. It is so
central to that religion that it has acquired its own literature; its own
liturgy; its own means of finding confessing one’s guilt; and its own
priesthood. Chief among its practitioners is Robin DiAngelo.[2]
(Who knew that there could be so much money in religion beyond the
fundamentalist world? It’s enough to make Joel Osteen blush.) But
it has become so generalized throughout American culture that it has replaced
the old deistic religion of America at the beginning of every baseball and football
game.
·
But, as one might expect
from a religion with such shallow roots, this new American religion also has
features that are at odds with any deeply considered theology of sin and guilt.
·
It lacks a relevant god,
because there is no agreed set of civic convictions that there is one – let
alone what that god would be.
·
Its definition of guilt is
racial, not universal.
·
That sin is ontological,
not moral. (i.e., It is predicated on who you are, not on what
you’ve )
·
There is no confession to
be made, certainly not private confession.
·
There are no confessors,
apart from ill-defined groups that may hear your confession. And, for that
reason, there is no guarantee that your confession will be held inviolate,
because – by definition – there is nothing confidential about a public
confession.
·
It offers no absolution,
because you cannot be absolved of something that is imprinted on your body.
·
This new religion has
little or no interest in the amendment of life that follows on confession,
because amendment of life robs both sin and guilt of its political potency.
Tragically, this distorted use of sin and guilt
has moved to the forefront at a difficult juncture in our national conversation
about race. But the distorted version of the conversation about guilt
will have predictable results: It will become an obvious tool of political
manipulation. It will resonate with some, inviting a public and largely
self-referential exercise in virtue-signaling. It will repel others and
breed cynicism about the value of that conversation.
Frankly, I have little hope of shifting the
public conversation about sin and guilt and that is not my purpose here.
Those changes will only happen if enough people of enough races join hands to
make common cause against the divisive and corrosive nature of this new
religion. In the absence of a different kind of religious orientation,
the conversation about sin and guilt will always lurch between therapeutic,
legal and political categories – if it receives any treatment at all.
What I can do and plan to do here is offer an
orientation to sin, guilt and its resolution as understood in the Christian
tradition and then I would like to return to the issues I have outlined
above. In that way I can speak to issues that are within my wheelhouse
and do the one thing that I can do as a priest, theologian and spiritual
director: Offer a way that Christians might orient themselves to the context in
which we find ourselves. This forum doesn’t offer a space to do that at
length, so I have tried to be as direct as possible:
Guilt, properly understood arises out of the
choice to sin and as such alerts us to the dangers inherent in those choices. .
.
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