OUR GOD PROBLEM

July 17, 2025

 A month and a half ago, a fifty-seven-year-old from a community south of Minneapolis drove his black SUV, designed to look like a law enforcement vehicle, to the homes of four different Minnesota state legislators. Sporting a counterfeit police badge, he gained access to two of the homes and proceeded to gun down the residents, in one instance killing the former Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, along with her husband and the family dog. Subsequently, he shot and seriously injured a state senator and his wife. Only an alert police officer in another nearby community prevented him from committing further mayhem.

    For several days, news reports claimed that authorities were still looking for a motive for these crimes, even though the perpetrator, Vance Luther Boelter, had compiled a long list of prospective victims. Every one of them was either a Democratic lawmaker and/or a supporter of abortion rights.

    Boelter himself was a MAGA Republican, but more than that, he practiced a form of charismatic Christianity that advocated taking extreme measures against those who didn’t subscribe to its own rules of faith and practice. The perpetrator in question had attended a “college” called Christ for the Nations Institute, from which he emerged with a pseudo-degree in theology. The Institute itself is affiliated with The New Order of the Latter Rain, an ultra-conservative denomination whose membership includes a significant number of rowdies who assaulted the nation’s capitol on January 6, 2021.

    As a follower of this sect, Boelter “would have been taught to see the world as a great spiritual battleground between God and Satan, and to consider himself a kind of spiritual warrior,” The Atlantic’s Stephanie MacCrummen reports. Further, she writes,

 He would have been told that actual demonic forces can take hold of culture, political leaders, and entire territories, and thwart God’s kingdom. He would have been exposed to versions of courses currently offered, such as one that explains how ‘the World is in an era of serious warfare.’ He may have heard the founder’s slogan that ‘every Christian should pray at least one violent prayer a day.’

    Ten days after Boelter’s killing spree, my son and I attended a baseball game at Target Field in Minneapolis. Prior to the first pitch the American flag was raised, then lowered to half-staff to commemorate his hapless victims.

   Now, in their exhaustive study of the religious attitudes and practices of American teenagers, Christian Smith and Melinda Denton found that the overwhelming majority are perfectly comfortable with religious diversity.  “Whatever,” is the word these teens would often use: whatever a person chooses to believe is fine with us, if that’s their preference.

    Moreover, this tolerance isn’t just an adolescent phenomenon. As Smith and Denton observe, America’s youth tend to mirror the attitudes of their parents: if their elders are not scandalized by the broad range of religious perspectives and practices that clutter the cultural scene, the kids won’t be bothered either. 

   As my Unitarian Universalist colleague Galen Guengerich has commented: “Ours is a secular age not because God is absent, but because we now have a plurality of options…. Secularism is not about the elimination of religion, but about the proliferation of choices.” 

    Nevertheless, what people think about God – how he is constituted, what he requires of us, where he makes his presence felt – on those issues opinions vary widely. So it is worth examining these differences in people’s perceptions because, quite often, they affect not only the individual’s devotional life, but control their moral sensibilities, political convictions and social attitudes as well. Vincent Luther Boelter is a case in point, and his strongly held beliefs about God and his intentions for us turned him into an assassin.

    Paul Froese and Christopher Bader are sociologists at Baylor University and they have developed surveys that expose significant cleavages among Americans with respect to God. Interestingly, they have found that denominational affiliation isn’t necessarily the best predictor of people’s beliefs. Not all Baptists conceive of God in the same way, nor do all Roman Catholics or Methodists.

   In analyzing their voluminous survey data, Froese and Bader found that respondents fell into roughly four different categories. First in their typology are those whose God closely resembles the one portrayed in the Bible, and in particular the Old Testament.  Roughly 31% of the U.S. population venerates this Authoritative God: humanlike in appearance, male in gender, a father-figure given to anger and with a penchant for violence. This God is a stickler for rules and expects obedience. He is a judging God who metes out harsh punishment when ignored or opposed. The Authoritative God is actively engaged with the world and signs of his displeasure are clearly evident. 

   In a discussion with Pat Robertson carried by the Christian Broadcasting Network the late Jerry Falwell invoked the Authoritative God to explain the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This tragedy was, Falwell intoned, God’s way of punishing America for its sins: 

The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, the abortionists, and the feminists and gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way – all of them who have tried to secularize America – I point the finger in their face and say, “You helped this to happen.”

    Believers in the Authoritative God conceive of him as a being with whom one can experience a privileged, personal relationship.  Although he is demanding – a strict and uncompromising patriarch – he is also approachable. This is the God Vance Luther Boelter felt he was serving – the MAGA god, if you will.

    A second class of believers identified by Froese and Bader also think of God as a being with whom one can establish a personal relationship. But the nature of the rapport is rather different from the one that characterizes the Authoritative God. 

   This is the so-called Benevolent God, who shares many of the anthropomorphic traits attributed to the Authoritative God. In either case we have a being who is both awesome and attentive, which is what many people long for. 

    On the other hand, the Benevolent God is much less belligerent than his counterpart. This God’s adherents picture him as merciful, forgiving, caring and helpful. The Benevolent God may allow misfortune and destruction to happen in the world, but he does not mete it out as a punishment for sin and disobedience. He is the preferred choice of about a quarter of the population, and bears a close resemblance to the God Jimmy Carter talked about in the Sunday School classes he conducted.

   This is also the God many professional football players, who genuflect or make the sign of the cross after every touchdown, subscribe to. He is the God who wishes for us nothing less than success and prosperity.  And indeed, the Benevolent God does appear to be the favorite of many of America’s young people. In their interviews with teens, Smith and Denton found that most regarded God as “a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist.” 

…he is always on call, takes care of any problems that arise, professionally helps his people to feel better about themselves and does not get too personally involved in the process…. Perhaps the worst this God can do is simply fail to provide his promised therapeutic blessings, in which case those who believe in him are entitled to be grumpy.

   About 20% of those surveyed by Froese and Bader fall into a third category: they believe in a Critical God who scrutinizes human behavior, expects moral rectitude and obedience, but who doesn’t become put his nose into in human affairs or affect the course of history. Ever-observant, the Critical God will exercise judgment and dole out rewards and punishment in a future life, or on Judgment Day.  Dispossessed, historically marginalized people often prefer this God, deriving some comfort from the thought that in the end their oppression and their sufferings will be vindicated. 

   As a society becomes wealthier, more just and equitable, support for the Critical God wanes. Writing in The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik put it this way: “When incomes go up, steeples come down…. Happiness arrives and God gets gone.”  That is almost certainly true for the Critical God, but perhaps less so for the other types mentioned.

   Which brings us to the fourth and final member of this typology. the Distant God – an impersonal cosmic force lacking human features. A quarter of Americans conceive of God this way.  Some are undoubtedly Deists, like Jefferson, Franklin and many other Founding Fathers.  Deists credit God with creating the physical universe and establishing the laws of nature, but they see no evidence of his active, ongoing presence – he has long since quit the scene

    Others think in terms of Cosmic Consciousness, a Universal Spirit, the (nature) goddess or some other self-transcending principle with which one might connect through meditation, but that neither judges nor supports us in any demonstrable way.

   The Distant God has the advantage of preserving our autonomy, liberating us from any cosmically sanctioned moral demands. But conventional theists argue that in accepting the Distant God we sacrifice something important: the assurance that the cosmos has a stake in us and at some level is concerned about us. “A God who communicates with no one and causes nothing seems a surprisingly trivial acquisition,” Adam Gopnik writes.

    In contrasting Nature Religion, which he describes as “awesome” but impersonal, with Biblical Religion, the Roman Catholic philosopher George Dennis O’Brian expresses his own strong preference for the latter. “The Bible has a superpower who can be addressed,” he observes.

Nature religion calls for austere silence; Biblical religion is mostly talk…. The Hebrew God reveals himself when and where Nature is barren – not in trees and beasts but in the ever-present coin of human talk…. The superior power we are looking for – if he is there and on duty – must be not only muscular, but also a good listener. 

   It’s important to note that Americans are, often as not, a little confused about God, and thus inconsistent in their professions. People may express a general preference for one or another of Froese and Bader’s four types – Authoritative, Benevolent, Critical or Distant – yet assign to that God a capacity that doesn’t quite fit their choen model.  Thus, more than 80% of Americans agree that God performs miracles, which would have to include more than a few who otherwise describe God as “disengaged” and unavailable.

   Nor is this four-part typology exhaustive. Galen Guengerich, whom I mentioned earlier, was raised in a conservative Mennonite household where God was regarded as an Authoritative figure. Although he has long since rejected supernaturalism Guengerich continues to find the concept of God both useful and desirable. 

I won’t worship a God who clears parking spots for favored believers, while allowing innocent children to be ravaged by cancer or swept away by a tsunami (he writes). Yet I do believe in a mystery that lies beyond human reason. I believe God can be deeply felt, even if the experience isn’t directly mediated by a person-like presence….

   Guengerich maintains that the word “God” refers to something real, something enriching and life-enhancing, but outside the realm of discursive thought, empirical testing or logical proof.  This intangible God can be “loved, but not thought,” as The Cloud of Unknowing, a medieval mystical text, put it. “I believe God exists in the way beauty exists,” Guengerich writes:

…but not in the way that an apple exists…. Beauty itself never appears to us, but we find the idea necessary to account for our delight in the symmetry of certain objects and experiences: sunsets, symphonies, and sculptures by Bernini.  While different in many other respects, beauty and God are both qualities of our experience. 

    Up until now we’ve been discussing God as an overarching reality, a supreme possibility, without reference to the cultural icons which command so much more of our attention: The Elon Musks, Aaron Rogers and Taylor Swifts; the Free Market, social media, streaming services. From a practical standpoint, these and other humanly contrived idols figure more prominently in our lives than any God, except perhaps when a natural disaster overwhelms our human systems and prayer becomes the strategy of last resort.

    Be that as it may, God still matters. And, despite today’s laissez faire spiritual environment and growing acceptance of other people’s choices, we should not assume that one God is just as good as any other.

    For you see, those who believe in an Authoritative God are the most likely to lay the blame for hurricanes and terror attacks on gays and lesbians, and they are also the most enthusiastic proponents of U.S. military action. God imposes his will on the world through American muscle, they believe. In rarer instances, they sic God upon their own country’s “demonic” politicians.

   Devotees of the Benevolent God, on the other hand, may be more susceptible than most to disillusion and despair when life deals them a bad hand. It can be hard to reconcile the experience of personal adversity with a God conceived of as good and caring.

   And in general, those who believe in either of these all-powerful deities who are actively engaged with and have a pre-existing plan for the world are probably less likely to agree that climate change, fresh water depletion and species decline represent severe threats to the world’s well being. If he’s “got the whole world in his hands,” as the song says, why should we worry?

   Ask a person to describe their god and you will likely learn something about their values. A person’s conception of God, their politics, their social outlook and sexual mores all tend to be mutually reinforcing and, for the most part, internally consistent.

     At the heart of our ongoing debates over religion’s role in human affairs – whether it has been baleful or benign – lies God. We may never know who or what God is, but what we think God is makes all the difference in the world.