BLOG 7/9/19. THE STORY OF BASE CHURCHES, AND SOCIAL CHANGE

What happens when the church doesn’t have clergy to lean on? What happens when the church has no ‘clergy filter’ between its participants and the teachings of scriptures? Well, up front, let’s be honest: all kinds of things, good and bad, can happen. But in Latin America during the last half-century, or so, there is a fascinating demonstration of the church reverting to the form we first see in post-Pentecost Jerusalem, when believers met together “house to house” around the apostles’ teachings in a unique, mutually accountable and responsible intimacy (fellowship).

Latin America was inhabited by a dominant Roman Catholic population, where the church was something of a political force and thus somewhat beholden to the governments in power. But there came a time when there were not enough clergy to provide priestly services to many of the smaller communities, so those churches took on a smaller communal form, meeting in homes to read and discuss scriptures (without clergy filters), and to hold one another accountable for living out those teachings. These became known as base churches, or base ecclesial communities. (The church in many places over history has done exactly the same thing.)

This was disturbing to the Latin American Fraternity of Bishops, since they had always presumed that it was necessary for an ordained priest to perform the rites of the church and interpret scriptures, and this was no longer possible. Could these multiplying Base churches be true churches? But another effect of this exposure of the (mostly) peasant folk to the radical social and ethical implications of the gospel of the kingdom. Whereas the priestly dominated church had sought the blessing of the (often corrupt) governments, these lay folk (campesinos) were under no such constraints. The omnipresent Biblical requirements of righteousness and justice, and the ethical requirements of Jesus’ teachings, … put them in inescapable missionary confrontation with governments, ruthless and powerful drug cartels, and made them the instruments of humanitarian aid, and social justice—salt and light in the context so alien to such.

The emerging result was that these Base churches became forces for righteousness, whereas when they were the passive participants in a clergy-dominated and clergy-interpreted church and gospel, this role was not part of the church’s calling. (I’m generalizing and overly-simplifying, I confess). There began to be developed an interpretation of the gospel which was given the label of: Liberation Theology, which was anathema to the conservative and traditional Catholics (and Protestant) establishment. It began to put this popular grass-roots Base Church movement in diametric opposition to political and economic forces. When an archbishop (Oscar Romero) became an advocate of this understanding of church and gospel, he was assassinated by the government.

My purpose in bringing this up is two-fold: 1) small, base-church gatherings of God’s people around scripture is a growing phenomenon, even in our traditional churches. But 2), such unfiltered exposure to the teaching of Jesus and the apostles is not “safe”. The gospel of the kingdom is radically transformational and has implications in personal ethics, politically, economically, and culturally, … and will cause waves. Moreover, we are accountable to one another for the living-out of this gospel. We become the incarnation of God’s mission in Christ to put the world to rights, to incarnate God’s new humanity.

And, finally, those clergy who see it as their calling to make such an understanding of scripture clear and inescapable are a blessing. Those who just want to be popular clergy delivering comforting homilies are part of the filtering that impedes God’s mission.

Run with that! And the Lord be with you.

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