The Fissures of "Inclusive Orthodoxy"
On Navigating Freedom, Identity, and Community
About the author: Ed Watson is a PhD candidate at Yale University, focusing on questions of theology and conceptualization. He is currently working on a dissertation exploring the relationships between Christian talk of grace and racial difference.
To tell a broad story in a somewhat reductive fashion: the last few hundred years have made a significant number of people feel less free to affirm “orthodox” interpretations of creedal Christian doctrines. In one respect, this sense of constriction is for reasons of “rationality.” Various and persistent intellectual revolutions sparked by figures such as Francis Bacon, Immanuel Kant, Charles Darwin, and Friedrich Nietzsche have created an intellectual atmosphere in the West within which Christians can feel compelled to choose between creedal faith and critical thought. It is difficult, after all, to affirm both bodily resurrection and biological science if one has learned that the latter must be paradigmatic for divine action. In another respect, matters of justice have made it harder to inhabit this affirmation. Especially in the last sixty years or so, for example, the idea of “orthodoxy” has been cast as necessitating vicious stances on gender and sexuality. Christians and non-Christians alike take for granted that creedal Christian orthodoxy entails maintaining patriarchal hierarchy, condemning anything other than heterosexuality, and absolutely rejecting the idea that queer and trans life is part of God’s good creation. Christians have been compelled in these contexts to choose between doctrinal faith and their fundamental sense of what is right; Christians have been compelled to choose between this faith and their own survival, their own flourishing.
I tell this story in part because it frames my own. Through no fault of my own, I became a Christian when I was 20, having grown up without any sense that faith could matter. I could not believe otherwise than that the God Christians talked about was real—and I found myself unable to affirm things like bodily resurrection or Scriptural authority. I inhabited a paradigm where doing so meant forswearing too much, and I latched onto theologians like Paul Tillich who I felt allowed me to use the language without committing myself to the reality (as shallow a reading of Tillich as this might have been). Funnily enough, it was reading Karl Barth while I was working as a teacher and living in Christian community that shifted this paradigm. Far from the overbearing dogmatist I expected, I found in Barth someone who always and everywhere expressed freedom for belief—who expressed that if one believed in God, then one was free to believe that the Word was made flesh in Christ, and that Christ was raised from death on the third day. Far from eliding deep commitments to justice and critical reflection (as shallow readings of his work had suggested to me), Barth’s reflections made real for me the claim that faith is indeed a possibility in a world where these things are valued.
I also tell this story to contextualize how “Inclusive Orthodoxy” has emerged as a rallying cry, most visibly (to me, at least) in the context of online communities of like-minded Christians. Again, very broadly speaking, these communities are comprised of Christians who had been told by Christians and non-Christians alike that holding to “orthodox” interpretations of Christian doctrine requires checking either one’s brain or one’s sense of justice at the door, and who found this to be spurious. In their experience, there is no zero-sum choice to make between doctrinal faith and critical thought or social justice. Indeed, many find themselves deeply committed to working for economic, racial, and sexual justice because they believe that Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh in an actual, not a metaphorical, sense. Many find themselves deeply critical of both secular and sacred authorities because they believe that God created ex nihilo. Given the fact that many Christians have been taught that these possibilities aren’t available to orthodox faith, there is thus an imperative to show that one didn’t have to choose between doctrine and critical thought/social justice is not binding. Christians committed to justice and reflection are not just free to be “orthodox” in their faith; orthodox faith can be (and has been) a generative foundation for these commitments. An Inclusive Orthodoxy is both possible and desirable
I was an outside observer in the development of “Inclusive Orthodoxy” as a collective term, though I sometimes engaged in debates that clustered around the term. I am writing about it here for two reasons. The first is that the promise of Inclusive Orthodoxy strikes me as important. I am deeply compelled not just by the project of removing artificial barriers to creedal faith, but also by the project of articulating that faith as ground for justice and reflection. The second, however, is that the term strikes me as encompassing a profound ambivalence—an ambivalence with relevance to the possibilities of theological communion writ large.1
The ambivalence of Inclusive Orthodoxy can be articulated as follows. On the one hand (and with sincere apologies to any Orthodox readers), “orthodoxy” can be understood as primarily connoting the fact that certain beliefs have a specific sociological function—they are normative for Christian identity. These beliefs have typically been expressed in creeds and other conciliar statements, as well as certain widely accepted doctrinal claims grounded in close readings of Scripture or received from tradition. Under this view, to be a Christian is to accept that one should believe in the Triune God and the two natures of Christ. Under strong renderings of this view, it isn’t just the case that Christians should hold orthodox beliefs—orthodoxy is a criterion for Christianity, such that if one does not affirm a certain critical mass of orthodox doctrines, one is not a Christian.
On the other hand, “orthodoxy” can be understood in a looser sense, as primarily connoting the theological content of those beliefs which have emerged from credal and conciliar reflection. Without either affirming or denying their sociological function, that is, “orthodoxy” can be used to connote the logics and symbolisms of certain positions that have been collectively worked out and taken as foundational by Christian theologians over the last few millennia—beliefs regarding the equality of the divine persons, for example, or belief in Jesus’ bodily resurrection. Under this view, claiming a belief as “orthodox” is more descriptive than normative (though it can certainly be grounded in the fact that a belief has de facto been normative in Christian community).2
Both approaches have much to commend them. The sociological emphasis has the not insubstantial benefit of being truer to historical understandings of orthodoxy (which, after all, means literally “right belief”), as well as the primary significance of the term itself. However much one might rail against any particular orthodoxy, moreover, every community does have some set of affirmations that serve either a normative or a constitutive role. Unitarian communities eschew creeds, but the seven principles express an orthodoxy nonetheless; anarchist groups are notorious for lapsing into arguments over fundamental principles. The question for Christians, as for anyone else, is not “orthodoxy or not,” but “orthodoxy how”?
The theological emphasis, meanwhile, has the advantage of drawing attention to the fact that forasmuch as the development of orthodoxy is shaped by the workings of power, sociological function is not the fundamental rationale behind orthodox positions. For example, though Nicaea was deeply influenced by the pressures of imperial politics, what became the orthodox position on the Trinity was not finally accepted because an orthodox position was required. On a purely formal level, Arianism could have served this function just as well. Figures like the Cappadocian Fathers argued for the Nicene position for both ethical and logical reasons; because there were compelling theological grounds for asserting the consubstantiality and equal dignity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Allowing for the fact that no orthodoxy is established apart from power, Trinitarian doctrine also became orthodox because it was theologically compelling—and when all is said and done, the significance of doctrinal reflection for Christians most fundamentally rests in the character of its theological content before (and perhaps even apart from) its sociological function. Emphasizing theological content also draws out the fact that, as Rowan Williams illustrates in Christ the Heart of Creation, orthodox doctrine has developed and transformed over centuries of Christian reflection. To use Sarah Coakley’s phrasing, suggested to me by fellow God Here and Now contributor Morgan Bell while discussing this post, this focus makes it easier to broach “orthodoxy” as a project rather than a deposit.
These two points of emphasis are entirely compatible with each other—one can emphasize the sociological aspect of orthodox beliefs and their theological significance in the same breath. One can argue that these beliefs should have normative force because of their theological content. Which point of emphasis is taken as determinative for Inclusive Orthodoxy, however, has significant ramifications for matters of space, relationship, and community.
If one primarily emphasizes the sociological aspect of orthodoxy, “Inclusive Orthodoxy” is a way of understanding the beliefs that are normative for Christian identity in such a way that people who have historically been excluded from normative ecclesial spaces can now be included. More people can belong, that is, to spaces determined by these beliefs. However, the space of belonging should also be defined by the normativity of orthodox interpretations of doctrine. At minimum, belonging to the space thus impels assent to the fact that Christians should hold these doctrines in these ways. At most, assent to orthodox interpretation of creedal doctrine is cast as a condition of belonging, as a criterion for Christian identity. In this regard, full inclusion is made contingent on believing rightly.
If one emphasizes the theological content of beliefs, either downplaying or ignoring their normative function, then “Inclusive Orthodoxy” revolves more around the question of what it looks like to believe and to think creatively in these doctrinal terms. Irrespective of what Christians should believe, this emphasis motivates exploring different ways of believing old things, or what possibilities for thought and life are opened up by, e.g., thinking creatively with creedal Christologies. “Inclusiveness” in this regard takes on a slightly different aspect. Because the emphasis is less on what Christians should believe than on what Christians can believe, this approach can make it easier to hold to creedal orthodoxy in a way that is not just inclusive of other people, but also of other positions and spaces as worth relating to and belonging with. Inclusive Orthodoxy in this sense can find it easier to belong to spaces it does not control, without watering down the significance of its claims.
A great many people I know and respect find the rationale for what I’m calling the “sociological” approach attractive. It makes sense, after all, to want to know what it means to be what one is—to know, for example, that being Christian means affirming this and denying that. Normative identity also appears to give a solid ground for ethics, for belonging, for articulating one’s purpose. And again, every community will have its norms in some sense. This is just the nature of community.
All the same, this approach strikes me as conceptually unworkable and, in specific ways, undesirable. I have argued formally elsewhere that doctrines cannot be used to regulate or constitute Christian identities, so I will not rehearse that argument here. The matter of undesirability is a little trickier to express and has to do with what I take to be the promise of Inclusive Orthodoxy. At least in the story as I sketched it above, Inclusive Orthodoxy offers freedom for belief—a freedom to be compelled by the witness of Scripture without being compelled to reject oneself or wound others; a freedom to think creatively within the doctrinal reflections of Christians across the centuries without being compelled to either assent or dissent as a matter of subordination. This freedom is offered in any articulation of Inclusive Orthodoxy.
Nonetheless, it strikes me that to then position my beliefs as the criterion for my neighbor’s Christianity, even and especially when they motivate matters of justice, risks betraying this freedom. It risks positioning myself as possessing the truth that they need, whether they see this or not, after the fashion of Willie James Jennings’ “traditioned man,”3 such that I might conceive my vocation in terms of forming others in my faith rather than growing in faith through communion with them (even and especially when there are genuine arguments to be had and disagreements to be broached). This can make it very hard for me to engage others without condescension, as if they can only be walking down a path that eventually leads to where I stand. It can make it very hard for me to listen to others, under the assumption that they have something to say from which I can learn something new and of fundamental significance. These fears encompass clergy-folk as much as laity (in my experience, there is little more toxic for spiritual formation than a priest who knows what their congregants must be). They are not just concerned about whether we are kind to others (though I have little desire for theology without kindness). Nor do they motivate watering down the strangeness of doctrine, or diluting the transformative potential of Christian community. They are concerned with neutralizing the creative potential of what creedal faith can make possible in Christian life, through the imposition of a mode of relationship that makes loving theological communion with others difficult, if not impossible.
There are complexities here, and I use the first-person deliberately, conscious both that Christian theology is a communal endeavor and that the character of this community matters. There is debate to be had between the positions I have sketched, which would ideally lead to mutual transformation. I anticipate, and hope, that readers will differ from me in many ways for many reasons.
I will end, however, by reflecting on a line I have seen repeated all too often: “If I did not believe X, then I would not be a Christian.” In every argument I have seen about whether creedal orthodoxy should be normative for Christian belonging, good and kind people have made this claim—and it is used to imply that others who do not believe X should be suspected of wanting to be Christian for shallow reasons. As it happens, I would not be a Christian if I did not believe in Jesus’ bodily resurrection. There was a time, however, when I did not believe this, and when I knew myself a Christian with others. The same has been true of many Christians I know, from fellow parishioners, to students, to priests. The desire for Christian belonging is a deep one, even when lived out in what has been dismissively termed a desire for “Sunday club” sociality. It may well be that many Christian communities should be other than they are, maybe even in terms of a less contemptuous attitude toward “sound doctrine.” And the desire for Christian belonging can be a desire to belong with others in spaces of spiritual communion, even apart from assent to what have been normative Christian beliefs. To say that others must believe rightly to belong fully (“as I believe and the church fathers believed”), or to even want rightly to belong to each other and to God, risks betraying the power of this communion.
Inclusive Orthodoxy can add to our freedom for belonging. And no one should ever look with contempt at those who dare to have faith that Jesus truly is the Word made flesh, as if this faith were unenlightened or regressive (this is a normative claim). Inclusive Orthodoxy can also name a way of claiming power, even unintentionally, over my neighbor’s freedom, for claiming authority over my fellow worshipper’s desire for God. This power is no freedom at all.
In tracing this ambivalence, I am not going to engage particular arguments that have in fact occurred or refer to any particular interlocutors. I have no interest in controversy or polemics, and though this may render my analysis a little less substantial, I do not think that rehashing old debates is necessary for this post. For a first-person account of Inclusive Orthodoxy, see Chris Corbin’s opening editorial for Earth & Altar.
I am not attempting a rhetorical sleight of hand in framing this distinction in terms of “sociological” and “theological” emphases. “Sociological” approaches to norms and identity can, after all, be expressly theological in their rationale. This is simply the best way I can articulate a distinction between “orthodoxy” in terms of communal function and “orthodoxy” in terms of theological positions.
See Willie James Jennings, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2020), 44–46. It is worth noting that Jennings here broaches the counter-argument that one is showing commitment to a tradition bigger than oneself, rather than imposing one’s own belief.
Ed- a great reflection! I wonder how you might frame the relationship between ‘inclusive’ and ‘generous’ orthodoxy? You describe your own pilgrimage as one of both growing into certain convictions (about the ‘bodily’ resurrection of Jesus, while at the same time remaining open to those who may differ. Is there a likeness here to what has been referred to as Paul Ricoeur’s ‘detour and return.’ It is only by critical, even oppositional questioning that we come to a ‘second naïveté’ where we may believe the same things, but this belief is held differently. If this makes sense.
John
This is wonderful. Thank you 🙏