Years ago, the American sociologist Robert Bellah and some of his colleagues wrote about a particular religious phenomenon that they had uncovered. Mind you, a sermon that begins with the words “American sociologist” doesn’t fill the heart with confidence; I’d be inclined myself to begin tuning out, but stick with me for a moment. The phenomenon that Bellah had identified was “Sheilaism.” That’s right: “Sheilaism,” a kind of religious individualism that Bellah saw as typically American.
“Sheilaism” was based on an interview with a young nurse to whom Bellah gave the name Sheila Larson. Here’s what Sheila said in that interview: “I believe in God. I’m not a religious fanatic. I can’t remember the last time I went to church. My faith has carried me a long way. It’s Sheilaism. Just my own little voice … It’s just try to love yourself and be gentle with yourself. You know, I guess, take care of each other. I think He would want us to take care of each other” (Habits of the Heart).
Times have moved on, of course, and Sheila’s American context is different from Britain, but I venture to say that there may be “Sheilaites” lurking outside the doors of Pusey House in the city and university of Oxford, and even further afield in the UK and Europe. Even some of us here may be (for lack of a better term) “lapsed Sheilaites,” people who’ve given up on the solitary religious quest in favor of the more robust and institutional features of the historic Catholic tradition. “Sheilaism” didn’t die out in the 1980s, of course, but has gone on to incarnate itself among those who are “spiritual but not religious,” or in the burgeoning ranks of those who when it comes to religious institutions, are “none of the above.”
Whatever its other virtues, you can say this for “Sheilaism”: at least it has a notion of the transcendent, even if that notion is singular, subjective, and solipsistic. It’s worlds away from hard-knuckled atheism or even the modern default drive of unbelief. There are points of connection where one could take up the apologetic task and begin a conversation about faith. “My faith has carried me a long way,” says Sheila, and that opens up a larger consideration of faith itself. For us, “Faith in what?” is the question.
Here we come to the ringing affirmations of our Epistle, set forth in a series of structural triads. Notice the poetic line: one body, one Spirit, one hope; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. Here we have not only a definite structure of faith but the assumption of a definite content. There is one God and Father, one Son and one Spirit; one body, one faith, one baptism. The emphasis on unity is balanced by the triadic, trinitarian structure of the passage. St. Paul here is not only poetical but theological, in speaking explicitly of the one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and who is revealed in the power of the Spirit through Jesus Christ our Lord: “above all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:6), as he says. Note again the trinitarian structure of this final verse.
When Ephesians talks about the “one faith,” content is assumed. Faith here is belief in the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead, which means new life for us in the Spirit. Christianity is not something we make up for ourselves; an empty box into which we can pour whatever we like. It has a definite form: “the standard [or pattern] of sound teaching” (2 Tim. 1:13) that Paul refers to in another letter, to his colleague Timothy. Faith is belief in the God who has acted in quite particular and definite ways in the world.
Faith is also something that is received, handed over; not something we improvise on our own. When St. Paul writes to Timothy, he reminds him that his faith “lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice” (2 Tim. 1:5). Then Paul goes on to say, “For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands” (2 Tim. 1:6). Faith is received, and takes institutional form in the one body and the one baptism, to bring in other parts of our poetic line.
Faith is ordered in a community, that is, with its own form and content. Faith comes by hearing, as St. Paul says in the Letter to the Romans; there must be a community that proclaims the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection. “And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?” (Rom. 10:14), St. Paul writes. “So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17).
Now just in case you are beginning to think that when it comes to faith, a Catholic formalism of doctrine is at risk of choking the Protestant principle that faith is the individual’s trust in God, pay heed to St. Augustine’s wise words about faith, in his treatise on the Trinity. As he says there, faith is common to all who believe in the same way that the human face is common to all. Human beings have a common aspect, a common look. In the same way, Augustine says, citing St. Paul in our reading, there is “one faith” (Eph. 4:5).
But of course each of us has his or her own face, our own individual identity. “We certainly say very truly,” Augustine writes, “that faith has been impressed from one single teaching on the hearts of every single believer who believes the same thing; but what is believed is one thing, the faith it is believed with is another… faith is in the consciousness of the believer” (De Trin. XIII.5). The faith by which we believe has to be our own.
That’s the kernel of truth in Sheilaism: faith has content but it must be appropriated. It has to become our own, even though we are not its source, contra Sheila. Faith must find its home in each of us. In this sense, faith has to be personal. It manifests itself as trust and love. As Augustine says, what is believed is one thing, the faith by which it is believed is another. That faith, founded on trust and taking form in love, by its very nature must be our own.
Faith comes from God: it is not something we can gin up on our own, though it must become our own. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8), as it says earlier in Ephesians. We put ourselves in the way of grace with each act of prayer and petition, with each act of repentance and love, and each time we approach the altar of God in faith. Christ lives in each of us by virtue of our baptism, itself the gift of God, but we continue to grow in grace as we draw near to God. The “one hope of our calling” is one common hope, but it incarnates itself in the call of each of us. You might say that our hearts must move each one of us to our knees, for faith to be truly our own.
