The Rev. Rob Schenck grew up in a Jewish home but became a Christian in his teens. He has been sharing Jesus’ message ever since. Today, the 51-year-old ministers to D.C.’s power brokers as the president of the influential Christian outreach group Faith and Action. He is also the president of the National Clergy Council, a network of religious leaders who work to infuse national policy with Christian moral principles. Schenck spoke with The Examiner about his faith’s foundations, and the work yet to complete.
Do you consider yourself to be of a specific faith?
My Christian faith was born in a very diverse community, and what I came to know was a New Testament Christianity — not denominational in any way. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodists, describes it as being a Bible Christian — that’s what I’d like to call myself. It has given me a very broad experience in Christian fellowship, worship styles, approaches to the Bible, and to Christian living and Christian witness. I can say without hyperbole that I feel just as comfortable in a Southern Baptist church as I do in a Roman Catholic Mass.
Did anyone or any event especially influence your faith or your path in life?
Coming from a Jewish family, it was quite a departure to embrace Christianity, and something of a crisis in our home. That demonstrated to me that this was a very serious decision, because it caused a lot of tension — it almost ruptured the very close bond that we had. I realized early on that this was not a hobby, but something with serious consequences. I also had an early mentor in the Christian faith — a high school Latin teacher who was a lay Baptist minister. He had spent some time with persecuted Christians in the former Soviet Union, and he came back to tell us that they were praying for us because they worried that it was too easy to be a Christian in America. I thought then, “Wow, this has cost some people their lives and their freedom. I’d better take it seriously.”
The political influence of evangelicals has waxed and waned through the years. What’s your assessment of its position right now?
I think it still has an important influence, but greatly diminished over the last several years, and there are probably two reasons for that. One, its influence was exaggerated in the media, so that balloon was bound to burst. And the second — evangelical influence in the political arena was largely new when it really exploded around 1994, so there were a lot of lessons to be learned. Mistakes were made, there were failures among some luminaries, and there were bound to be disappointments because no group can perform flawlessly, and no single Christian will ever be flawless.
Ultimately, I believe that evangelicals have a critically important role to play, both in politics and the larger social arena, but we’re really only one of many important Christian influences in our society, and that should be kept in balance.
What have other Christians done better?
There are many groups that do a much better job on certain issues than evangelicals have done, or can do — Catholics on poverty, for example. They’ve led the way. They do it with exquisite excellence, and with profound philosophical reasoning. And I think that Eastern rite Christians have a particular way of seeing personal spirituality and piety that evangelicals don’t fully practice or appreciate. We’re good at preaching a plain and simple Gospel message, and that’s important. And we’re doing better and better on some of the core issues — sanctity of life, sanctity of marriage and family. But sometimes we come off as maybe a bit too harsh, or scolding, or sanctimonious. Christian groups with longer histories tend to be a bit more realistic about the human condition. We’re still learning.
At your core, what is one of your defining beliefs?
I believe there is a God in heaven to whom we are all held to account. That he is abundant in mercy, and loves the crown of his creation — the human race. And though we fail to achieve the highest ideals of our creator, he’s given us assistance in the form of his son Jesus Christ, who is the manifestation of God in the flesh.
– Leah Fabel
