Enchanted Community

BLOG 12/2/15. WOULD ANYONE VOTE FOR JESUS?

A half century ago, before another presidential campaign, the colorful, brilliant, and witty church historian, Martin Marty, wrote something of a crazy and unforgettable article in a national journal about what would happen if, by some weird set of circumstances, in some contemporary post-resurrection appearance, some political interests tried to get Jesus to run for president. In his imagination/fantasy, Marty, with his sense of humor, had the reporters from the national press all over Jesus to know what would be his platform, were he to run, and what might be those things he would challenge in the current scene.

I, frankly, have forgotten the details of the article, except that a couple of things linger with me all these years later. First, when approached as to what his platform would be, his curt response was that he thought he made that platform quite clear when he walked the roads of Palestine, i.e., the content of the New Testament gospels. The other thing that lingers is that he would somehow rebuke his church for spending billions of dollars on buildings and real estate, which was never a part of his calling to them.

This all comes back to me as I watch our current crop of presidential candidates courting different ostensibly Christian constituencies, and presenting themselves to be in harmony with their Christian positions. What is unmistakable is that not only are the candidates not aware of the agenda that Jesus heralded in his earthly ministry, but ‘churches’ have also grown all to deaf to his teaching. Jesus, for one thing, never promised his followers that they would be successful. Quite the opposite: “Blessed are you when men shall revile you, persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake.” He also, from his very first public proclamation to his prophecy of what would happen when he returned in power at the end of the age, had an affinity for the economically helpless (this when today’s news speaks of the top ten or twelve wealthy persons in this country controlling more wealth that the bottom half of the population—or something to that effect). He would say: “Woe to you rich … blessed are you poor.” He had an affinity for those who were homeless, to the strangers in our midst (refugees?), and to the hungry. And, note: righteousness would be the essential lifestyle of his followers.

Jesus’ primary platform, as recorded in Matthew and Luke, was in his Sermon on the Mount/Sermon on the Plain. There he says that those who are truly blessed would be the peacemakers, those suffering for righteousness’ sake, the merciful, . . . as well as those who deny themselves and take up their cross and follow him. Those who are great in his New Creation community are those who are servants to all, not the self-seeking.

Face it: the Age to Come, the New Creation, the Kingdom of God that Jesus was inaugurating was counter-cultural to the core. The political principalities and powers of the day (the Roman Empire), and the religious principalities and powers of the day (the Temple establishment) were obviously there, … but were not determinative to that radical New Creation that he was inaugurating out of weakness, and from the margins. Jesus’ power was of a whole different genre than that of the powers of the day. Jesus was declared to be the Son of God with power by his crucifixion and his resurrection from the dead. And the new order that he was inaugurating was irresistible and would ultimately result in every knee bowing, and every tongue confessing that he was Lord of all, …  and that his counter-cultural New Creation would be all in all—and that it would be composed of the weak, and the foolish, and those humbly born, not of the strong and wise and self-important (or political opportunists).

Question: if Jesus ran for president (or even as chairman of a political party) on such a platform, would anyone vote for him? I suspect that the pundits would tear him to shreds. Could Jesus ever be elected? I doubt it. But such a platform should be the church’s unmistakable agenda, and its message  demonstrated to the world!

BLOG 11/29/15. WHEN IS A CHURCH REALLY A CHURCH?

I apologize if I revisit this unanswerable question far too often with you faithful readers of these blogs, but it keeps cropping up in my conversations, especially as I find so many people offended by, or bored with, or dismissive of some particular expression of an ostensible church they have encountered. Are there guidelines that might be used to measure a community’s authenticity as a true colony of God’s New Creation … as over against something like a merely respectable religious institution?

One cultural anthropologist had been asked to do a study the reasons behind the decline of a formerly vital Christian missionary organization.[1] His conclusion was that every such Christian community, if it was well founded, started with a vital and determining founding myth, or a compelling sense of God’s intent for its founding. His conclusion was that when that selfsame community diluted, displaced, or forgot its ‘founding myth,’ that it “reverted to chaos.” The same is true across the board. Christian communities most often (I would assume) are founded by a group of believers, who sense that it is important for them to establish a vital Christian presence in some form and with some message in some place. How, then, does that good beginning devolve into just a sterile religious institution?

There are all kinds of pieces to answering that question.  For one thing, it is my conviction that Christian communities have a life span, that Christian communities are initiated by one generation, but that the compelling vision frequently fades in the second generation, and becomes but a memory by the third generation. Christian communities that have successfully kept the founding myth alive and formative over succeeding generations can continue to be fruitful in the mission of God. But the proliferation of dying or sterile old and venerable church institutions that dot our landscape would indicate that they are trying to live on former momentum but have long since diluted, displaced, or forgotten their dynamic sense of God’s purpose for them in his mission—they have forgotten their founding myth.

This reality comes with all kinds of ancillary issues and questions. How does such a community continually refine, keep focal and dynamic, and equip the emerging generation to be the dynamic incarnation of God’s New Creation community? How to equip and re-evangelize every individual for their work of ministry in the daily marketplace? How to distinguish between true goals, and those which are simply goals of institutional survival.

Run these questions by the rank and file of most congregations and you are not likely to always get convincing answers. What does you church want to produce? Individually? Communally? What celebrations and disciplines keep the individuals’ faith rich and mature and contagious? How does the leadership of the community answer these questions?

A few years ago a poll of a large denomination did a study along these lines, and though the denomination’s tradition was rich theologically, the poll concluded that it was a denomination of Biblically and theologically illiterate laity. Ouch! That, even though its leadership were ostensibly trained in substantial and accredited theological institutions. One could only conclude that the theological schools had also forgotten their founding myth, and were producing church professionals who were part of the chaos that Gerald Arbuckle addressed.[2]

[1] Gerald Arbuckle. Out of Chaos, Orbis Press

[2] Ibid

BLOG 11/25/15. ALL OF US WERE RACISTS!

All the ‘flap’ at Princeton about Woodrow Wilson being a racist, which is in the press so much in the past couple of days, calls for a confession on my part: Nearly all of us who were raised in the racist South are racist—both black and white (though in different ways). I have a very much loved black friend from Mississippi, who is also an outstanding Christian leader and civil rights champion and we on occasions mutually confess our sins to one another.  We are both octogenarians. We were evidently one one of the first white families ever to invite him and his family into the hospitality of our home in Georgia. Likewise, my wife and I have been wonderfully hosted in their home in Mississippi. We can candidly acknowledge to one another that we were both formed in the racist South. Try as I may to delete racist responses that crop up from time to time out of my deep sub-consciousness, they are there and are part of the culture in which I was formed. He acknowledges that, having endured all of the brutal injustices of rural Mississippi in the post-World War II era, that he also has similar racist responses in his deep sub-consciousness, try as he may to expunge them.

In that culture in the South there were the well-defined black and white communities. Everything was segregated: neighborhoods, schools, seating, restrooms, … everything. I was from a more “separate but equal” racist family, and was taught to at least be polite to black folk, but I can remember a few times when I infringed too closely upon the black territory and got the response: “What are you doing here? You don’t belong here white boy. Leave!” I can only imagine the rejection and resentment on the part of my black counterparts who were so often dealt with brutally.

I was fully adult before I ever had any significant contact with other adult brothers and sisters in the black community. During Civil Rights movement heyday of the 1950-60s, we marched, sang: “We shall overcome, we shall overcome, we shall all be one … someday.” That was a dream, but it wasn’t yet a reality.

So when the protesters at Princeton University want to delete the name of Woodrow Wilson from all of its significant places there because Wilson was an extreme racist, my response is: Of course he was a racist. We all were. Wilson was born in Augusta, Georgia in the mid-19^th century ‘for crying out loud.’ His father was pastor of the church where the Presbyterian Church of the Confederate States of America was formed at the beginning of the Civil War. Wilson grew up in that racially charged—black –vs- white, slave –vs- free—culture. He was growing up during Reconstruction what with all of the racially charged responses to the South’s defeat—K.K.K. and all. He went first to Davidson College in North Carolina during Reconstruction days, then after a year off dealing with an illness, transferred to Princeton. The rest is history.

But the whole culture was racist. Robert E. Lee was evidently one of the more humane slave owners, who was always (by report) impeccably polite to black folk he encountered, … but he was also a product of the culture. Resentment among today’s younger generation of black men and women is not at all surprising, nor unwarranted, … but it does need context. The shooting in the black church in Charleston is horrifying evidence that racism is alive and well, and that, not only in Charleston but also in Northern and Mid-western communities obviously.

Transforming culture and attitudes defies easy solutions. Meanwhile, it has been the grace and forgiveness and ministries of reconciliation emerging from the black community (such as in Charleston) that are the signs of hope. Hopefully my grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be formed into those ministers of reconciliation that will change the climate significantly. Racism is, after all, a denial of our Christian ethic of love and justice. God help us.

Happy Thanksgiving!

BLOG 11/22/15. “FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD …” INCLUDES MUSLEMS!

It needs to be said, … and to be said as plainly and dogmatically as possible, … that God’s reconciling love for the world includes his love for the Islamic people, and for them to know his reconciling love in Christ. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life” does not exclude those whose only experience has been that of their Islamic culture. More than that, it is universally understood by those who are the Christian church’s missional strategists, that the major priority of the church’s missionary focus in the 21^st century is the Islamic people.

This becomes the more focal for us in recent days when radical Islamist (ISIS, etc.) have visited horrendous assaults on those who are not of their Shia branch of Islam, and as they behead Christian people in Syria and elsewhere. But we who are followers of Christ have our own embarrassing episodes of inhumane cruelty against Islam for centuries. Otherwise pious saints, such as Bernard of Clairvaux, blessed the crusades in which ostensible Christian armies went to reclaim the Holy Land from its Islamic conquerors, and the cruelty they imposed is one of the very dark chapters of Christian history This was also obvious in recent years in the Balkans when the animosity between Muslims and Christians produced horrible and inhumane crimes against one another.

Those ostensibly Christian public and political figures who have been engaged in diatribes in recent days against Middle Easterners and against Islamic people have somehow never even begun to internalize the teachings of Jesus themselves. His word is that when his gospel of the kingdom shall have been preached to every national/ethnic group in the world, then the shall this age come to an end. Jesus also was most unmistakable when he taught: “Blessed are the peacemakers, … blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, … blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (Matthew 5:9-12).

So also we who profess faith in Jesus we must never forget that “while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (Romans 5:8-11). Jesus came to reconcile the (whole) world unto God by the death of his Son. That make us debtors to those who still don’t know his love and forgiveness. This is the message that Islamic people need to hear from us.

What is interesting is that even in countries where the Christian faith is outlawed, or severely restricted, there are reports of movements of Islamic people to Christ. This will never make it into the New York Times because the Christian community in these nations has to stay underground for the most part. But what many Islamic people are discovering is that the Quran often says more positive things about the Prophet Isa (Jesus) than it does about Muhammad. Islamic people who are revolted by the cruelty of the radical fringes of Islam are looking with fresh eyes at Isa/Jesus. There are reports of Imams in Mosques who are engaging in study of the place of Isa/Jesus in the teachings of Muhammad, and often coming to faith. In an era of social media and the internet, it is also true that the communication of the teachings of Jesus into the Islamic world does not depend upon missionaries. There is evidently emerging an underground church in the most unlikely places as Jesus builds his church against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. Islam is a religion of law and strict obedience. It has little place for grace, forgiveness, and love, … and because of this many Islamic people are looking with fresh eyes at the gospel of God’s reconciling love in Christ. May we all become messengers of such

Those public figures in this country who profess to be Christians, but who are engaged in hate language against Islam are contradictions of the very faith they profess, and are a detriment to the mission of God in this strategic moment when they should be incarnations of God’s love.

BLOG 11/17/15. “AND THOUGH THE WRONG SEEMS OFT SO STRONG …”

The chaotic events of recent days: the unbelievably huge and massive migration out of Africa and the Middle East, capped by the terrorist attacks in Paris last week, have called for all kinds of paranoia and mindless diagnoses of solutions—and this often from those who are ostensibly believers in Jesus Christ, i.e., those who ought to know of their own history and calling as the children of light in a dark world. I was reminded of the oft sung, but not always ingested hymn: This Is My Father’s World. One verse goes: “This is my Father’s world, and let me ne’er forget, that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.”

Some seem to forget that it is written into our very calling that we are not only called to believe in Jesus’ name, but also to suffer for his sake (Philippians 1:29). One presidential candidate objecting against allowing Syrian refugees into this country, added that those Moslem nations “don’t even allow Christians to build church buildings” … as though church buildings were of the essence of the Christian faith.

It is helpful to read back over the history of the church and to realize that until the 12^th or 14^th century the middle east was the center of the Christian church, and Europe and Great Britain were way out on the fringe of the heathen world occupied only by missionary outposts. It is easy to forget that North Africa was also a center of Christian witness—laces such as Ethiopia. It is east to forget that violence is a very real presence in our history beginning with Jesus who was tortured and cruelly executed by a hostile Roman Empire. It is easy to forget that some of the primary documents were written from a Roman jail cell, or in very hostile settings.

Of course, we who are followers of Jesus should be profoundly grateful for aa civil magistrate/government that seeks out security against violence, but we should also remember that we are not primarily citizens of a particular contemporary government, but we are primarily citizens of the Kingdom of Our God, and of His Christ in which we may well be called upon the forsake all that we have and to suffer for his sake. It is a kingdom where hospitality to strangers, and love of enemies is of the essence of our identity as God’s New Humanity.

Hospitality is one of those virtues so often mentioned in the New Testament, but so overlooked by so much of the ostensible Christian public. If, perchance, the church were to forsake costly sanctuaries and move, rather, back around the kitchen table, then hospitality becomes much more practicable. If the vast numbers of migrants from places such as Syria were to find hospitality in Christian homes … it would be in tune with what has always been true of the spread of the gospel. It has so often (most often) been communicated among workers, peasant, refugees, immigrants, and a rural underclass … but it has also been so often communicated house to house.

Easy? Of course not. Safe? Hardly. I think it was G. K. Chesterton who commented that God had promised to his people three things: 1) they would be absurdly happy, 2) completely fearless, and 3) constantly in trouble. That all comes along with our baptism into the mission of God and is of its essence, i.e., to take up our cross and follow Jesus. It is obviously costly, and often very inconvenient. This has been illustrated most graphically in the exponential growth of the church I China, which after it was outlawed by the cultural revolution went underground into clandestine house churches, and is now arguably the largest Christian church in the world. Homes and hospitality engaging in dangerous but faithful practices were like leaven.

The colorful and graphic/apocalyptic Book of Revelation portrays the suffering people of God under the altar crying out: “How long, O Lord?” But it goes on to say that they overcame “by the blood of the Lamb, the word of their testimonies, loving not their lives even unto death.” Yes, the wrong does often seem so strong, but stronger is the kingdom of our God and of his Christ, and those who incarnate that love in difficult settings.

BLOG 11/15/15. REAL CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE COMES FROM THE MARGINS

What with all of the posturing and influence-seeking by so many in the news these days, let me put on my hat as a teaching-pastor and remind my readers that from the beginning to the end, God has a unique way of invading his broken creation from the margins. The first major figure in God’s design to recreate this creation was the selection of a remote nomadic middle-eastern sheik by the name of Abraham, whose heirs (Israel) became slaves in Egypt when Egypt was a dominant empire in the world. After Israel was delivered from Egypt, they became a nation, but always overshadowed by the vast empires which surrounded it, … and yet that small nation was a light to the other nations. But when they became wealthy and of some influence, they caved in and sought greatness in way that violated their unique calling to live by a code that was 180^o different from that of the other nations. They were to serve one God in a unique way and so be a light, and a model—a nation of priests. Ostensibly, they were always to remember that they were delivered out of slavery and were always, before the world to be a nation of aliens and exiles serving one God

In Israel’s apostasy from its calling, God called forth a unique breed of prophets from the margins, from all different and unlikely backgrounds to remind Israel of its forgotten calling. But then … in the fullness of time and from the margins was born a peasant child, who in his adulthood would declare that whoever had seen him had seen God, and that he had been sent from God and would return to God after inaugurating a New Creation (Kingdom) … which would always be a people operating from the margins. Their huge eschatological and cosmic influence would come as they were servants of all, out of weakness and maybe obscurity.

“For consider you calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many of you were powerful, not many of you were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to put to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being may boast in the presence of God” (I Cor. 126ff). Further, Jesus was unequivocal when he taught his followers that any who would be great among them must be servant of all.

Jesus redefined the pathway to true influence. His New Creation comes through those who deliberately seek to be authentic as God’s New Humanity in the backstreets, in obscure and unlikely settings. In a much overlooked passage in Peter’s letter to a persecuted church community with no prestige and no quests for power and influence, he said: “May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who has called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature …” (II Peter 1:2-4).

Where does such a calling take place? It takes place most often where no one is looking. It takes place on the margins. It does not often take place in the posturing, influence-seeking public figures who call themselves after Christ’s name. It takes place in that vast multitude of ordinary folk on the margins who are the ‘doers’ of Christ’s teachings and so display his divine nature in the corners and crevices of this dark world where they shine as lights. These are usually ‘little people.” These are the aliens and exiles living at the margins who demonstrate New Humanity.

These are people who have found hope and meaning and acceptance with God and in Christ, and who are the practitioners of his reconciling, caring love—people who demonstrate his glory and excellence. What an incredible calling, and what eternal consequences … from the margins.

BLOG 11/11/15. QUASI-‘EVANGELICALS’ AND POLITICS

Hey! This may just be ‘snarky Bob’ venting again, but I don’t know whether to be embarrassed or to laugh at the politicians seeking the (ostensible) ‘evangelical’ vote in places such as Iowa and elsewhere. The platform that most of these candidates are running on is so totally other than anything that can be remotely identified with the evangel of New Testament Christianity that it is absurd—and no one seems to get the contradiction.

I’ve blogged this before, but the word evangel is a common Greek word that the New Testament writers adopted to define the teachings, as well as the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is a word that conveys thrilling good news. If folk are truly evangelical then their political principles and choices as citizens are going to reflect those same teachings of Jesus, and the agenda of Jesus, as are clearly recorded in the evangel/gospel accounts of the New Testament.

So here is the Jesus we discover in those documents. His mother Mary, in her Magnificat extols the God who has made her the bearer of the promised Messiah of Israel, and who has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts, … has brought down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of humble estate, … has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away (Luke 1:46ff). This is the Jesus who begins his public ministry by announcing that he is the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives [usually in debtor’s prison] and the recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” [Jubilee year] (Luke 4:18ff). That’s at the beginning of his public ministry … but skip over to the final days of his pre-crucifixion life and it gets even more pointed as he tells of his ultimate return at the end of the age.

“When the Son of Man [Jesus] comes in his glory, and all his angels with him … Before him will be gathered all the nations and he will separate people f rom one another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats … Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. Then the righteous will answer him saying: ‘Lord, when did we [do all these things]? And the king will answer them, “Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it unto me (Matthew 25:31ff).

If I cannot relate this teaching to the issues of poverty, minimum wage, prisons, immigration, refugees, economic injustice, homelessness, affordable medical care, etc. … then I can never claim to be an ‘evangelical’. As if this were not enough, in the couple of years of Jesus’ ministry he went about preaching God’s in-breaking New Creation, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and bringing hope and healing. In the midst of those teachings are his devastating parable of the rich man, Dives, who fared sumptuously every day and dressed elegantly but was totally indifferent to the sick and poverty stricken Lazarus who was laid at his gate daily in hopes of getting a few scraps. Economic justice was not a minor theme for Jesus. Feed in the encounter with Zacchaeus, or the parable of the unjust steward … and the economic justice demands of the evangel come closer to home.

I am willing to label those conservative folk who are indifferent to human need, at best, quasi-evangelicals, or imposters who claim the blessings of Jesus but not the requirements of repentance. The gospel of Mary’s Magnificat, and the teachings of Jesus are radical stuff!

BLOG 11/8/15. A PERSONAL NOTE: A LIBERATING ENCOUNTER

I have experienced a most helpful encounter in recent days, and it has to do with whole GLBT issue, which has been so controversial. I was formed in a very well-structured family with very well-defined male and female roles. My frame of reference really had no place for any other. Sexual roles in my ‘traditionalist’ life were probably defined by teachings such as are expressed in the (Puritan) Westminster Shorter Catechism. We were conservative-evangelical folk with a very strong sense of the authority of scriptures as our rule of faith and practice.

Years later, in my days as pastor in New Orleans, we had a very colorful and out-in-the-open gay community in the Vieux Carre/French Quarter, with whom I had some contact, but then the Vieux Carre was expected to be a bit weird, … but I was made aware of a whole culture of gay folk. But about 1978 two things occurred that challenged my traditionalist thinking on the issue. First was that it was at that time that the first overtures came to our Presbyterian General Assembly to ordain gay-lesbian persons—but the overtures came from the theological ‘left’ who were always a bit cavalier in the dismissal of scriptural authority, and so I assumed that this was what was behind their overtures, i.e., make scripture mean what suited their purposes.

The other event was that I received a call to become pastor of a historic old Presbyterian Church in upper west-side in New York City. The church actually had an evangelical history that was quite impressive. But in visiting it, I found that they had a gay elder on their Session of elders, and to me that was a ‘yellow light’ (maybe a red light) to my traditionalist persuasion. I assumed that the church had compromised its sense of Biblical integrity. And so I refused the call. But the reality of that decision has haunted me over the years, … how could it be that a person who was considered to be one of the most mature and respected Christian persons, a person of wisdom and grace, and celibate in his gay experience be refused as an Elder? Again, my frame of reference had no place for such.

Thereafter, I had some minor role in the leadership of the evangelical coalitions within the Presbyterian Church, USA, and much of that including our continued resistance to the whole GLBT reality. … But the cultural tide was rising. Children of some of my closest friends ‘came out’ so that the issue came closer to home. I am, at heart, a teaching-pastor and a disciple-maker. I want the grace and love of God to come to real broken, lost, hurting, confused person. But, again, the GLBT community had a difficult time finding a place in my frame of reference. I moved into a neighborhood with a number of gay-lesbian neighbors who were not only some of the most responsible neighbors, but became the first real gay-lesbian folk to become real friends.

Much of the advocacy on both sides of the issue I found unconvincing. Both sides seemed to me to be interpreting scripture and the human realities to confirm their predetermined conclusions. In my octogenarian years I was aware of this blank spot in my sense of the mission of God. Then, at the recommendation of some trusted friends I encountered David Gushee and his book: Changing Our Mind. It was uncanny to me how his whole pilgrimage and experience mirrored or paralleled mine, how his struggle and his traditionalist convictions were so similar to mine—he as a brilliant evangelical ethicist, and mine as a missiologist and pastor. In his quest he never equivocates on the authority of scripture, but also he also never equivocates of the love of God for the real human beings in the GLBT community.

The book has been liberating. Dr. Gushee is gracious, Biblically thorough, brutally honest, … satisfying my spirit, liberating and powerful. He is compassionate and lucid. His book is a gift. I can accept the conclusions he reaches. I am at peace on this issue for the first time in my adult life. He has defused the issue for me. I commend the book to my readers and subscribers.

BLOG 11/4/15. “AMERICANS BECOMING LESS RELIGIOUS” …OH? DON’T BE SO SURE.

The news source Al Jazeera America recently ran an article (of which there have been counterparts in a number of journals) that Americans, especially younger adults, are becoming less religious. I’m willing to challenge that. The sources note that there is less and less participation in religious institutions, and that a considerable number have forsaken their belief in God.

At the same time there are all of the evidences of a common human quest after meaning, justice, relationships, and spirituality are very much there, and intense. These all point to some sense of curiosity about this haunted universe in which we live. There are those needs, common to all humankind, of: 1) a center, 2) an authority, 3) a creative source, 4) a guiding line, and 5) a final goal. These often reside in the hidden depths of one’s sub-consciousness … but are inescapably there.

For centuries, the Christian faith was captive to the church institutions, what with their clergy, sanctuaries, hierarchical authorities, and traditions. But as modernity has diminished these, and the challenges of post-modernity has emerged full-blown to become the dominant cultural climate, the traditional institutional structures of Christendom have struggled to survive … but have often done so at a huge price—they have diminished their focus on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, and have replaced them with comfortable church activities that give an appearance of religion, but miss the essence. Or to use the Biblical illustration: the comfortable church communities have left Christ outside the door.

But … those common human longings for meaning, acceptance, and hope remain. Young adults may profess to be irreligious, and may find the church to be a dry well, but that doesn’t mean that they are irreligious. They keep questing after ‘spirituality’ in odd forms, or in different kinds of settings/communities.

Face it: the teachings of Jesus are quite radical, and require a forsaking of the autonomous self in favor of an alternative narrative that speaks to the (above) need for a center, an authority, a creative source, a guiding line, and a final goal. Jesus’ teachings speak to the deepest longings, the deepest hungerings and thirstings of the human heart. And when institutional Christianity substitutes ‘churchy’ activities, and comfortable religion for that radical message, then the church ceases to be a faithful incarnation of God’s design (ceases to be a church?) to set us free and to make all things new in Christ. Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke of institutional Christianity as a counterfeit that heralded a “cheap grace,” i.e., a religion that made no radical requirements and produced no light or leaven in society (he was coping with the tragedy of the ostensible Christian church in Nazi Germany in the 1930s). Or perhaps I need to retrieve the quote by the Christian novelist who said that her literary colleagues were not willing to discuss the Christian faith with her because: “Christianity is too wild and free for the timid.”

Add to that the current spectacle of presidential candidates who, in seeking support make claims to be Christian, or religious, and yet seem to be totally and embarrassingly unfamiliar with the teachings of Jesus, or of the Jewish community, or of scriptures—its embarrassing, even scandalous, and would be a ‘turn-off’ to any thoughtful young person on a spiritual quest. Then there are all of the sex scandals that seem to inhabit the church, such as the revelation of sexual exploitation of youth by priests (not mention the church’s often clumsy dealing with the LBGT issue). These would make any thoughtful person discount that kind of religion as an answer to their quest.

But all of this does not make younger Americans irreligious. It only means that they are looking for authenticity of religious profession. And though they are forsaking institutional Christianity … they are not thereby irreligious, just disillusioned. They might want to take a thoughtful and leisurely read through the New Testament document!

BLOG 11/1/15. THE SAINTS YOU WILL MEET ARE USUALLY LITTLE PEOPLE IN VERY MODEST CIRCUMSTANCES

Let me take one more crack at the celebration of All Saints Day here on this November 1, 2015. As I have related in my previous blog, I find All Saints Day a wholesome occasion to stop and think of all of the real people who have blessed my life as a follower of Jesus, and who have been instrumental in forming my life as such. In the Roman Catholic tradition, to become a saint is to fulfill certain remarkable criteria, which sets some apart as something of a ‘super-Christian.’ But according to New Testament teachings all of those who have responded to the life and teachings of Jesus, and have owned him as God’s Son, and as Lord, are: saints (cf. I Corinthians 1:1-3).

The vast majority of saints are little people, people who live out their calling by Christ in modest, non-glamorous circumstances and so demonstrate their role as the salt of the earth and the light of the world. It is not the grandiose figures, or the super-star Christian figures, or the church professionals, or the television preachers, . . . or even Pope Francis, or Billy Graham . . . that you and I know. Rather, it is modest believers who take Jesus Christ seriously, who have his teachings embedded in them and forming their daily behavior. “He who has these teachings of mine and does them,” Jesus said, are his true disciples/saints.

Our Latin American Christian friends have used the word: orthopraxis, or the ‘doing’ of the teachings of Jesus that is effective in communicating the message of God’s love. Paul gives us the quintessential rule for orthopraxis: “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. He humbled himself …” (Philippians 2:5-8). There’s your definition of sainthood. It is such folk, who have this mind in them, that are the ‘saints’ whom you and I will meet in the ordinary routines of everyday.

One has only to consider those twelve that Jesus chose to be his primary disciples. They are an unlikely lot, and though they stumbled and struggled with the demands of Jesus’ calling, they became to primary initiators of the mission of Jesus Christ in the world. But then, stop and think about the implications of the beginnings of the Christian church, what is not written but is obvious. There were only twelve apostles at the start, but within a very short time the thrilling news of Jesus Christ has called forth a huge body of believers, and “the word went everywhere” so that even previously hostile personalities were profoundly converted. The message permeated the empire through little people who were God’s saints. The followers of Jesus were salt and light where they were, where they lived, in often humanly impossible circumstances. Grassroots saints.

Jesus said that he who would be great among his followers must be servant of all. Saints are servants. Saints are self-effacing and modest. Saints are the embodiment of love and caring.  Saints are those who do not seek their own, but the welfare of others. Saints display the image of God in their very human lives.

Saints are not those ostensible spokespersons, who seek popular acclaim, … or ‘church professionals’/’clergy’ all vested and collared. Saints are those communicators of the new life in Christ, who in the words of Pope Francis, “smell like the sheep.” They are those who incarnationally demonstrate the nature of God in ordinary places of daily existence. And, note, since we are all “a royal priesthood, and a holy nation” we should be tuned-in to those around us, and Christ to one another. That’s real sainthood.

So on this All Saints Day, accept again the baptismal vows that you took that renounce the darkness and give yourself to be a faithful disciple, i.e., a ‘saint’ in the vicissitudes of your own daily life, … not somewhere else, but here and now. Salt and light in this needy world.