At one time indifferentism meant the idea that one religion is as good as another: You were no more likely to get to heaven through the Catholic Church than through the Presbyterian, Methodist, or Episcopal churches. You were free to choose your religious home based on aesthetics or social interests or family customs and did not need to worry about doctrine. One Christian church was as good as another.
Sometimes indifferentism was applied even more broadly: You were no more likely to get to heaven through the Christian faith than through the Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu faiths. Being religious was important, but which religion you embraced was not. Religion helped you to be a “good person,” and that could be accomplished no matter what beliefs you held.
These senses of the word fell into disuse a lifetime ago. Today, indifferentism means the belief that no religion matters at all—and that none is necessary. For people other than oneself, religion might be a good or, at least, not a harmful thing—”like stamp collecting,” quipped Catholic apologist Frank Sheed—but most thinking people can dispense with it altogether. “The average man now regards any adult who practices religion with the kind of amiable contempt that we reserve for the more harmless sort of crank,” said Sheed.
Most Americans identify themselves as Christians, but most American Christians do not even bother to go to church. They see no reason to. Their religion is no more functional than a man’s tie. They sport one only because it is expected, not because it is needed.
The problem with indifferentism—especially the new kind but also the old kind—is that it refuses to ask basic questions. Indifferentism is the lazy man’s out. A man must be lazy if he refuses to ask the simplest question of all: “Why am I here?”
Perhaps that is too harsh a judgment. Perhaps I should say that, instead of lazy, such a man is fearful. He is fearful of receiving an answer. If he learns why he is here, he may feel compelled to change his life. If the answer he receives is the one given at the beginning of the child’s catechism (“God made me to know him, love him, and serve him in this life and to be happy with him forever in the next”), certain consequences will follow. After all, whoever says A must say B.
If God made me to know him, I should know him. If he made me to love him, I should love him. If he made me to serve him, I should serve him. I should not be satisfied with knowing, loving, and serving only myself. I should not succumb to the narcissism that has Sinatra’s “I Did It My Way” as its theme song.
This is not the logic that most people want to hear. They want to do things their way. They do not want to change, they do not want to be bothered, and they certainly do not want to hear the barking of the Hound of Heaven.