Born again: How fundamentalists have hijacked a term that belongs to all of us "Are you a Christian?" asked my colleague inquisitively as I took another sip of coffee.
"Yes, I am," I replied.
"A born-again Christian?" she probed.
"I don't acknowledge any other kind," I replied quickly.
I knew immediately from her enthusiasm as she announced, "Oh, good, there's quite a few of us, then," that I had given the wrong answer, and I was desperate to back myself out of what I'd just said. The problem was that while I meant that all Christians are "born again" in Jesus Christ, it was more than obvious to me that she understood me to mean that if a Christian isn't a so-called "born-again Christian", he's a mere "nominal" Christian.
It's a sad fact that a biblical metaphor has been hijacked by fundamentalists to mean something that has more to do with a particular conservative Christian subculture than it has to do with the Bible or Christianity. Perhaps saddest is that many non-fundamentalists are loathe to use the language of rebirth and regeneration because of its associations.
When I say it's been hijacked, I mean that certain fundamentalists for so long have claimed exclusive ownership of the term, it has become synonymous with a sociological grouping, a single brand of Christianity, a subculture whose distinctives have more to do with Jesus-bumper-stickers, WWJD bracelets and happy-clappy choruses than with Christ himself. A biblical metaphor that testifies to the reality of a renewed cosmos, healed lives and a redeemed world in Jesus Christ has become a label claimed by a few fundamentalists as a marker of their supposedly unique relationship to God, a stick with which to hit non-fundamentalists, an instrument of exclusion.
While I'm not a Born-Again Christian, I am a Christian and I am born again. What's more, I don't think I was born again simply when I decided to "ask Jesus into my life" -- in other words, my conversion. That's another way fundamentalists have hijacked the term. While there's something of the rebirth metaphor that belongs to that moment when we respond positively to the gospel for the first time, I think by limiting it to that we miss out on the great truth that the world was reconciled to God in Jesus, that a corrupt world became new again two thousand years ago in Christ. And I really don't have a problem extending that to nonbelievers, either. Did Jesus die for the sins of the world or not? Was the world reconciled to God or not?
"Born again" is a metaphor I want to reclaim, for me, for you, for the whole world, not for a small band of holier-than-thou evangelical Christians.
I've been meaning to blog something along these lines for a while, by the way, but credit to Adam over at PoMoMusings for providing the little inspirational kick I needed.
Dave
10:24:11 PM 
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