What Does It Really Mean to ‘Believe?'

Last week, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship was derecognized at California state schools, barring the group’s access to on-campus meeting rooms, school funds, and other student functions. While InterVarsity welcomes all to participate in its campus-based student groups, it was derecognized because their leadership policy, which requires students in positions of leadership to sign a statement of belief, conflicted with state-mandated nondiscrimination policies.

From the standpoint of religious liberty in this secular age, it’s hard to get around the troubling nature of this policy. Part of me squirms and rolls my eyes at the increasing irony of the intolerance of tolerance. Why can’t we — as a religious community born of a 2,000-year-old tradition — retain some beliefs that have become out-of-style in the modern academy? The principle irks me: Shouldn’t Christian groups be allowed to require that their leaders are Christian?

On the other hand, might this be another example of evangelicalism prioritizing doctrines over compassionate love of the world? I mean, can’t InterVarsity recognize why nondiscrimination policies exist, stop complaining about persecution, welcome their LGBTQ members into leadership, and get on to the real business of redeeming creation to the glory of God? Is this yet another haunting specter of fundamentalism clinging to its evangelical host?

Given that the crux of this issue revolves around what InterVarsity’s student leaders ostensibly do or do not believe, perhaps this is an opportunity for Christians to (re)consider their affinity for “belief statements.” Are they really that important?

Now, wait — before you throw your hands up and shout “liberal postmodern relativism,” let me explain.

Drawing on sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, Christian philosopher James K.A. Smith writes in Imagining the Kingdom that belief is not primarily “assent to propositions but rather a functional, enacted trust and entrustment to a context and a world.”

In other words, it is not primarily our intellectual assent to a correct doctrine that constitutes belief. To our enlightened modern minds, this may sound frightening. What we think doesn’t matter? Aren’t propositional belief statements the very bulwark which has preserved Christian orthodoxy against centuries of secular onslaught?

But consider: what does it really mean to believe in something?

Imagine a Creation Care club selecting leaders. What does it mean for me, as a candidate for leadership, to “believe in” creation care? If I agree with the statement that climate change is a serious, human-caused problem but don’t try to change my own environmentally harmful habits, will my belief carry much weight? Probably not.

The far more important thing is how I care for creation. If the Creation Care committee is searching for leaders, they won’t worry much over my intellectual beliefs on climate change if I demonstrate my love for creation in every facet of my personal choices and public life. In the same way, my coworkers probably won’t ask me if I “believe” in the Internet if I continue to email them every day. And my friends won’t ask if I “believe” in chairs as long as I keep sitting in them.

In the same way, we should reconsider how we value belief statements as metrics of Christian leadership.

In practice, most Christian groups do not treat these as statements as particularly significant parts of the leadership process, though they might not admit it. Rather, what determines a leader are the prayers, the written reflections, and the conversations that already constitute the bulk of a leadership application in a Christian fellowship.

Signing your name at the bottom of a two-dimensional list of letters and symbols does not ultimately offer a very helpful understanding of how a human being relates to God, Jesus, or the world.

We already recognize that students can make awful Christian leaders even if they intellectually affirm correct doctrine. We know Christians can affirm belief but live consumerist, nationalist, racist, or selfish lives. We see that correct belief fails to prevent moral corruption.

So why is this the line where we dig in and defend?

InterVarsity’s position does not really reveal a dichotomy between a utilitarian bid for resources and a righteous defense of our core identity. This construction of the issue falsely assumes that belief statements capture our core identity as Christians. In reality, this is not how we select leaders. Although these statements are valuable statements of purpose, and should be celebrated as such, we should not pretend that they are the cornerstone of our leadership selection when they make up a small part of our actual selection process.

Let me be clear—I’m not saying belief statements don’t matter at all. I’m not saying it isn’t problematic that universities have decided to bar Christian groups from using belief statements. There’s certainly an argument to be had in relation to religious liberty laws. What I am saying is that we must temper our response to such policies.

It deeply saddens me to see InterVarsity lose important resources across the state of California. My experience with InterVarsity during college — in California, no less — had a huge impact in my life, especially in regards to my concern for racial and social justice — as well as my understanding of what it means to have a personal, loving relationship with Jesus. I learned to pray, to love, to listen, to study Scripture, to contemplate, to praise — not to sign belief statements. So why does the signature — the intellectual assent to correct doctrine — matter so much all of sudden?

InterVarsity, along with other university ministries across the United States, will soon have to face these questions on a national scale. Although I believe they shouldn’t do away completely with creeds, perhaps we should, in the face of university derecognition, step back and situate our belief statements in the much broader, and more significant, cultural context of our evangelical communities.

Perhaps students in these ministries can celebrate these beliefs together in communal readings, but publicly recognize that a tacit, embodied affirmation of faith in practice is more important. And perhaps publicly accepting the academy’s nondiscrimination policies could demonstrate that these students and ministries prioritize “an enacted trust and entrustment” to God more than an intellectual assent to propositions about God.

When the choice is belief statement signatures or university resources, I think we can accept the resources without feeling as though we’re fundamentally sacrificing our principles. At the very least, we cannot continue to pretend belief statements will function as an unadulterated kernel of Christian essence that will protect ministries against secular influence. Rather, we should affirm that our identity, and indeed our essential hope as human beings, lies not in our written knowledge about God but in our enacted knowledge of God.

Ryan Stewart is Online Assistant for Sojourners.