It was, to be sure, a straightforward audience question during a previous talk: “Are you a Christian?” But as Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. explained March 9 during a visit to Elon, with the way some churches and its members have invoked God’s name “like a Louisville slugger,” his answer is anything but simple.
“What’s happened is that Christianity has allowed itself to be co-opted by a political movement,” Pitts said during the keynote address to cap daylong “Faith, Doubt and the Media” conference on campus. “God is not a Republican. I reject that kind of thinking as an American … and I reject it as a Christian. God is not a Republican. God is not a Democrat. God is not a conservative. God is not a liberal. God is God.”
Pitts shared personal stories about his role as a columnist and his faith, arguing that Christians of liberal political leanings rarely, if ever, raised their voice in the past two decades as conservative Christians claimed that their actions were at the behest of God.
The problem, he said, is that some fundamentalists started using God to push their own agendas and to marginalize people. “Fundamentalism seeks to answer all questions with one answer: God,” he said. “It’s like God was kidnapped in the 1980s and put to work in a Republican field office.”
As the media reported spiteful rhetoric toward groups such as homosexuals and pro-choice supporters, Pitts said, people started to associate being a Christian with being judgmental and demonizing opponents. He said all of these observations made him think for a moment before answering the question posed by the audience member on his faith.
But the answer was “yes.” For Pitts, God isn’t judgmental or spiteful, and he told the audience in McCrary Theatre that he questions how man can possibly know the will of the universe’s creator. He said it’s hard enough to follow one of the most important lessons shared by Christ in the New Testament – love thy neighbor.
“I don’t think God empowers you to do what you want,” he said. “I think God obligates you to do what you don’t want.”
Born and raised in Southern California, Pitts was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2004. He was a finalist for the same award in 1994. His syndicated column runs twice each week in newspapers across the nation, and his first book, Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood, was published in 1999.
A second book, Before I Forget, is his first attempt at fiction due out later this month. For more information about Pitts, click on the link to the right under “E-Cast.”
The conference, “Faith, Doubt and the Media,” was hosted by the Truitt Center for Religious and Spiritual Life and the School of Communications.