New Quaker Notebook

Protestant churches will gaze at navels in 2005. The Barna Research Group, a California marketing research firm, has just released its findings in a nationwide survey of Protestant churches in America and their priorities for 2005. The Barna Group's survey data disclosed three distinct levels of priority:

"The most frequently mentioned priorities were discipleship and spiritual development (47%); evangelism and outreach (46%); and preaching (35%)."

"The second level of priorities included congregational care efforts, such as visitation and counseling (24%); worship (19%); ministry to teenagers and young adults (17%); missions (15%); community service (15%); ministry to children (13%); and congregational fellowship (11%)."

"The lowest priorities among the dozen ministries described by pastors were ministry to families (4%) and prayer (3%)."[1]

With prayer and ministry to families at the bottom of the interest spectrum for Protestant churches, a bedrock of the Christian faith and our faith's most immediate cultural benefits for Americans will get set aside for more of the same sort of congregational business—making sure that the choir gets bigger and is preached to.

The Barna Research Group conducted telephone interviews with "a nationwide random sample of 614 Senior Pastors of Protestant churches conducted in December 2004."

1. "Church Priorities for 2005 Vary Considerably," Barna Research Group, February 14, 2005.

Well, George Soros is right. In a recent article on the Open Society Institute website, George Soros takes issue with George W. Bush's understanding of what a democracy really is and argues that promoting freedom and democracy must be distinguished from promoting American values and interests. "If it is freedom and democracy that are wanted," says Soros, "they can be fostered only by strengthening international law and international institutions."[1] Where Bush errs is in his dogmatic insistence on the probity of American interests, at the same time conflating those interests with the very values that have given rise to America's success as a democracy. Says Soros:

"To explain what is wrong with the new Bush doctrine, I have to invoke the concept of open society. That is the concept that guides me in my efforts to foster freedom around the world. The work has been carried out through foundations operating on the ground and led by citizens who understand the limits of the possible in their countries. Occasionally, when a repressive regime expels our foundation—as happened in Belarus and Uzbekistan—we operate from the outside."

"Paradoxically, the most successful open society in the world, the United States, does not properly understand the first principles of an open society; indeed, its current leadership actively disavows them. The concept of open society is based on the recognition that nobody possesses the ultimate truth. To claim otherwise leads to repression. In short, we may be wrong."[2]

Now whether or not our current president believes that there is an ultimate truth, the challenge of American democracy is to keep its distance from the inflexible doctrines of religion or religious belief. Soros is right that democracy demands this openness, for without it our government becomes not a representative order but an oppressive regime—without a real promise to the will of the people.

The challenge for our current president is for his administration to stop pretending that its policies advance either a Christian agenda or liberty and freedom, against tyranny, for current US policies do neither.