They still don't get it

It may be old news here but it isn't in continental Europe. The reports of clergy sex abuse in Catholic schools have rocked Germany and are spreading to other countries, as well. The wrinkle this time is that now the pope himself has been at least indirectly implicated in his previous capacity as archbishop.

The New York Times had a summary story on Friday. As it reports, one obvious potential casualty is Benedict's campaign to "re-Christianize" Europe. What glorious Catholic past would he have Europe to return to? Andrew Sullivan, in two posts yesterday titled "The Current Vatican's Death Throes," reports in amazement that the church hierarchy is responding with the same reflexive defensiveness seen previously in the US and Ireland.

In the second of Sullivan's posts, he prints excerpts of a reader's report of German press coverage of the unfolding story. The reader reacts with incredulity to an interview with Regensburg Bishop, Gerhard Mueller, who says:

"Leutheusser is a liar," referring to Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, the Justice Minister. He goes on to says that the justice minister is part of a dark and secretive conspiracy led by Free Masons who want to bring the church down. This guy is just nuts. But how revealing of their strategy. Presented with undeniable evidence of abuse, they claim to be the victims!

The reader then quotes an editorial in the Bavarian newspaper Sueddeutsche:

The crisis of confidence affecting the church has not occurred because the church is an association of abusers. The church is in crisis precisely because, confronted with undeniable evidence of abuse, it expresses concern for itself instead of offering to help the victims of the abuse....

Repudiating Christ's call for self-denial, when under threat institutional Christianity time and again retreats behind walls of denial, blame and slander. It is unable to imagine its own welfare as not being identical with the mision of its founder. Nor can it imagine that its behavior could actually be that mission's greatest obstacle.

Holy crap

The chorus is growing of those calling for major rethinking and restructuring of the American church. I’m not aware yet of people within denominational structures issuing such calls but they surely must be hearing and reading them. Those calls must be hard to hear, though, since the conclusion of many is that such denominational structures need to experience some of the most radical transformation and downsizing.

One recent essay comes from Walter Russell Mead, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also the son of Loren Mead, an Episcopal priest and founder of the Alban Institute. For many years Alban has provided critical reflection on the deteriorating state of mainline Christianity in the US.

In “The Holy Crap Must Go” Walter Mead argues for a drastic downsizing of congregational and denominational facilities, structures and staffs. He parallels this with Luther and the reformers’ campaign against (among other things) the ridiculous accumulation of holy relics around the church and the absurd understanding of Christianity they facilitated.

Mead makes the now obvious case that churches simply cannot afford the parish buildings, professional clergy, seminaries and regional and national church bureaucracies that mainline Christianity (and others) have built up over the past century and more. The world has changed but churches have not kept up:

[T]hey are in trouble because they are trying to address the problems of the twenty first century with a business model and a set of tools that date from the middle of the twentieth. The mainline churches in particular are organized like General Motors was organized in the 1950s: they have cost structures and operating procedures that simply don’t work today.

This is an important observation and Mead is right that many/most institutions in society are struggling with these changes. In his brief description of a downsized church, however, he seems to be making a virtue of necessity. It just isn’t clear that after clearing away all the “crap” there will be much left to the church that will be of real interest to many people. Laity-led house churches will appeal to some (as they do now) but somehow it seems this is just acknowledging a trajectory already well established. “Church” will just be one of countless options people have providing opportunities for socializing, spirituality, service to others, and personal support. How well will church compete with the heath club, yoga class, 12-step meeting, or book group? How well does it now? It’s not hard to imagine future historians seeing this as the time that “the church” came to an end, even if Christianity somehow continues perhaps as a life-stance not unlike Buddhism.

Mark Christianson responds to Mead at his blog, Theological Oddments, that the church is having an “identity crisis, not [a] structural crisis.” I think he is right in putting the emphasis on identity but I am not sure the two are ultimately that different. I don’t think he or Mead realize how much of mainline Christianity’s identity is tied up in its structure, or to what degree that structure was created to support that identity. This is more obvious with Roman Catholicism but Protestantism is not nearly as different as it might present itself to be.

Christianson is commendably honest in admitting he doesn’t have an answer to the church identity question. In that admission, however, he points to why church leaders have been so reluctant to take it up: they don’t have an answer either. The result, as both Christianson and Mead realize, is a church that spins out endless programs, projects, experts and layers of administration, all to ensure that “things happen.” (When I questioned my bishop recently about a new synod congregational renewal program which has little if any prospect for success, he responded, “Well, we have to do something, don’t we?”) There is no basis for evaluating them or for promoting some while getting rid of others. Chaos results when the money runs out, as is the case now.

The reality is that over a century of critical biblical scholarship and theological reflection have chiseled away virtually all of the church’s pre-modern identity, and no modern or post-modern reconstruction has emerged as a convincing replacement. On top of this, dramatic cultural changes have eliminated or provided alternatives for most of the social needs met by religious communities, regardless of theology. The unspoken fear of church leaders is that if we get rid of the “holy crap,” there may not be anything left.

The bottom line is that Americans by the tens of millions have voted with their feet. Church is now something a majority of people simply don’t need or want, at least on any frequent basis. And the church cannot make the case, with real honesty or enthusiasm, why they should.

We won! (Why aren't we cheering?) (Sunday Reflections for January 17, 2009)

Within hours of the catastrophic earthquake that struck Haiti this week, individuals, charitable organizations, and governments around the world began mobilizing rescue and relief efforts. Monetary donations began coming in almost immediately to support those efforts. Haiti was on everyone’s mind and people wanted to help.

It’s what we have come to expect. So much so, that a day after the quake there was some criticism that relief efforts were not happening fast enough. A corner of some kind was turned in public response to disaster with the horrific Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami just after Christmas, 2004. It killed over 230,000 people in 14 countries and generated an enormous worldwide humanitarian response, including monetary donations of over $7 billion.

The assumption that unaffected people should aid those suffering from disasters in other parts of the world has been taking hold for some time. What has changed most recently has been greatly increased awareness and ability. Global media coverage, now supplemented by a variety of internet outlets, brings almost instant news of major disasters. Modern transportation and organizational resources make it possible to deliver aid within days or even hours of these events.

Yet as impressive as those technological abilities are, what is even more remarkable has been the change in attitude. It is simply assumed that when people are suffering, wherever they might be, we will come to their aid. Why? How did that happen? And do we even realize what a tremendous human advancement this has been?

Helping the poor, sick or other victims of misfortune is encouraged or commanded by most of the world’s religions. For Christians, nowhere is this better summarized than in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. Indeed both the Old and New Testaments say that acts of charity are more important than observance of religious ritual. Thus, the parable both lifts up the Samaritan’s generosity and condemns the religious authorities who pass by the injured man they meet on the road.

Over the centuries institutions like hospitals and orphanages were established by the church to care for the poor and weak in fulfillment of Jesus’ injunction to love one’s neighbor. Still, at times of major disasters like wars, famines, plagues or earthquakes, most everyone was on their own—as they knew. The resources and social organization simply didn’t exist to provide large scale help.

Two developments which mark the Modern Era caused that to change: the Enlightenment’s social revolution and free market capitalism’s Industrial Revolution. From the former came the notion of the essential equality and worth of all people and from the latter came the ability to turn those ideas into reality.

Perhaps the best known literary example of these two developments coming together is Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Ebenezer Scrooge holds to the ancient notion that misfortune is somehow the victim’s fault. When asked for a contribution to help the poor at Christmas he expresses mocking dismay at the possibility that the poor houses (debtor prisons) have gone out of business. The poor should be punished for their condition, not rewarded.

After a series of Christmas Eve visions, Scrooge experiences a dramatic change of heart and becomes a benefactor to Tiny Tim and Bob Cratchit’s family. In Dickens’ secular view this is redemption, yet it actually comports well with the Bible’s own practical understanding of repentance and salvation. A Christmas Carol was an instant success and gave voice to the growing belief that all people have a duty to come to the aid of those in need. In the decades to come, large-scale aid organizations would be established (Red Cross) and a growing body of legislation would: first, restrict abusive practices (slavery, child labor), and then, create government programs to help people in distress (unemployment benefits, public hospitals).

The biggest change, however, came with the global catastrophe of World War II. Millions of people were displaced and needed aid of all kinds. Donations of food, clothing and shelter were made on a scale never before seen. The shattered economies of Europe also came in for help in the first true foreign aid program, the Marshall Plan. But the really dramatic change came in the victors’ treatment of the vanquished. After World War I, enormous reparations were laid on Germany in punishment through the Versailles Treaty. This was now recognized as simply planting seeds for the next war. This time Germany and Japan also received aid to rebuild as a means to keep them from returning to their militaristic past.

So not only has Jesus’ admonition to love our neighbors been accepted as a standard of human behavior, so too has his much more ambitious challenge to lover our enemies. Are either of these observed fully or perfectly? Of course not. Yet they are now seen as norms, not just for individuals, but for nations as well.

This dramatic advancement in human relations has not gotten the notice or appreciation it deserves. Oddly, this is especially true in the church which, it can be argued, should take some credit for this change by its spreading of Christianity over the centuries. The reason for this, I suspect, is the strange ambivalence the church feels about its own mission.

In spreading the message of Jesus, does the church really want, or expect, to succeed? I don’t think it is a stretch to see that one of the church’s problems today, and at least a partial explanation for its modern decline, is the success of its outreach. It has succeeded in convincing people of Jesus’ and the Bible’s view that all people are of equal value and all need to be cared for: we are our sisters' and brothers' keepers. In the struggle for people’s hearts and minds, the church won!

But there hasn’t been a lot of cheering. For one thing, I don’t think Christians really believed it would or could happen. Did Jesus really believe the kingdom of God was at hand? Aren’t people inherently evil? Hmm, we may need to rethink that one. Second, whenever an organization accomplishes a task it’s faced with a new challenge: What next? In some ways that is the church’s dilemma right now: What do we do for an encore? This is another twist on the popular adage: Be careful what you pray for because God may just give it to you.

Yet we should be cheering, even as we recognize that humanity still faces many challenges ahead. Besides the earthquake's damage, much of Haiti’s misery now is the result of its poverty and the abuse it has suffered from its own leaders and as well as foreign governments. What’s needed is the will to do what’s necessary to change that situation. And while not easy, that challegne is nonetheless obvious and accepted, demonstrated by the aid flowing in from around the world.

It’s easy to be discouraged or depressed by the world’s many problems. We also need to recongnize that there have been real accomplishments, to give us strength and hope for the struggles ahead. Only then can we look past the horror and suffering that is Haiti today and see the new world of justice and peace emerging at the same time and in just such places.

Hard work (Sunday Reflections for December 6, 2009)

The words had my Lutheran sensibilities quaking. I was listening to a CBC radio interview of world religions scholar and author, Karen Armstrong. “No, no that’s all wrong,” my Lutheran consciousness was telling me. “Religion,” Armstrong had emphatically declared, “is hard work.” “But salvation is a free gift of God’s grace,” the theological voice protested. Yet as I listened to Armstrong I understood what she was saying and, what’s more, I knew she was right.

Armstrong is traveling around the world discussing her new book, The Case for God (I’m still working through it). As a young adult, she abandoned the Catholic faith which had led her to become a nun. Later as a journalist, Armstrong came to a new appreciation of religion. She became acutely aware, however, that religious conflict was poisoning its value in the world. As a result, she has been on a crusade to reassert the priority of religious practice over religious doctrine and beliefs.

Since the scientific revolution four hundred years ago, the world’s religions have become preoccupied with the truth of their words and ideas. This was done, in large part, to “compete” with the new claims to truth being made by science. In this competition, religion has basically fallen on its face. Worse, it has led to increasing conflict within and between religions, usually revolving around disagreements over whose “words” were right.

The intellectualizing of religion is a relatively new and disastrous turn. Armstrong’s goal is to re-center religion on its practice, rather than on its theological ideas. She believes this has, in fact, been the essence of religion through the centuries, around the world. By doing so, Armstrong hopes the world’s religions can regain a toleration and even appreciation for one another that characterized humanity’s earlier history. They will also rediscover their true purpose and find new ways to be of value to people in the 21st century.

Her recently launched Charter for Compassion is bringing religious leaders and adherents together in a commitment to the Golden Rule as a unifying ethos for all humanity. It is, Armstrong believes, the fundamental core of religious life: challenging people and teaching people how to live in harmony with their neighbor. That is the context of Armstrong’s assertion, “Religion is hard work.”

Would Luther have agreed with her? On some level I think he would. The Reformation, for all the words spilled in carrying it out, was nonetheless primarily about religious practice, about how the Christian life was lived on Sunday mornings as well as the rest of the week. It occurred at the dawn of the scientific age, however, and, as Armstrong says, evolved in response to it. As the Renaissance gave way to the Enlightenment, Lutheran theologians in particular just couldn’t stop talking, arguing and writing about all this. Bookshelves groaned under the load.

In the 17th century, there was an inevitable backlash against this “dead orthodoxy” (as it was called). Tired and bored with the unending stream of theological oratory (churches seemed more like lecture halls than places of worship), people began searching for religious experience—they wanted to feel something. Thus began the movement known as Pietism and, as when someone suddenly grabs the steering wheel, the church veered from one misdirection to another.

In the years since, these essentially have been the two options people have had to choose from: churches offering either an intellectualized Christianity or a “feel good” Christianity. You could either have your brain fed or your emotions. For a growing number of people, however, an awkward question began to be asked: Does any of this feed my life? The steady exodus of people out of churches in the developed world over the past two centuries is pretty good evidence that it doesn’t.

Are we “saved by grace apart from good works?” The failure of medieval Christianity was that it had become obsessed with one thing: getting to heaven. It nearly drove Luther crazy, saved only by his discovery of Paul’s teaching of justification by faith. Where Luther went wrong was in not realizing that the problem was not just the Roman Catholic Church’s answer but it was the question itself.

Christianity as a means of achieving immortality is a stunningly reductionist view of Jesus’ message (and of Paul, for that matter. Most New Testament scholars today think this was a relatively minor theme for both of them). Rather, Jesus seems to have had essentially the same concern as the prophets that preceded him: religiosity serving as a cover for injustice and a substitute for genuine spirituality. Hence, he embraced and taught the centuries-old core of the Jewish Torah: love God with all your being and love your neighbor as yourself.

In doing so, Jesus taught something else: Religion is hard work. Why? Because to love God and neighbor we have to turn our attention off of ourselves—one of the hardest thing for any of us to do. I think that the place where Christianity has most seriously gone off track is in its assumption that God is as obsessed with us as we are with ourselves. It has been often said that humans create God in their own image. It’s not a surprise then that we imagine a God who is watching and thinking about us all the time, just like we do.

According to Armstrong, religious practice the world over is about “dethroning ourselves,” wrestling our egos off center stage and out of the spotlight of our consciousness. Jesus, of course, teaches this repeatedly: lose your life in order to find it, don’t worry about tomorrow, if someone wants your coat give then them your shirt as well, take up your cross and follow me. It is, Armstrong and Jesus both say, a life-long journey and commitment.

Armstrong also says we talk too much about God. God is not an intellectual concept we are going to figure out. In fact, theologians past and present have said God does not “exist,” not in the way that anything in the world we experience exists. Rather, we experience the love and transcendence of God when we forget ourselves and reach beyond ourselves, in moments of silence, reflection and artistic expression; and in acts of charity and self-giving.

The truth of Luther’s and Paul’s (and the Bible’s) grace is simply that God is not some “thing” we have to worry about. God is not Santa Clause, “making a list and checking it twice.” In the mystery of our existence, God is instead both our companion and our destination. God is “our rock and our salvation,” our strength and inspiration for the hard work of religion, which is at the same time, and nothing less than, this joyous gift of our life’s journey.

Wandering in the wilderness (Sunday Reflections for September 27, 2009)

I attended our annual synod pastors’ conference this week and, as most of these have been in the past, its focus was on revitalizing the church. Mainline Christianity reached its peak in size and influence sometime in the late 60s or early 70s, so its decline was well underway when I was ordained in 1983. That slide has only accelerated in the years since. Just about every formal gathering of clergy that I have attended has dealt with this issue one way or another. That’s a lot of handwringing.

The two speakers for this conference couldn’t have been more different. One was a semi-retired Methodist minister. His last full-time position was as pastor of the Chicago Temple, the famous Methodist church housed in an office building in the Loop and believed to be the oldest congregation in the city. The other speaker was a female ELCA pastor developing a new congregation in central Denver, following an Emerging church model. Its members tend to have a lot of tattoos and piercings—just as she does!

While Gene grew up in the church and has been a minister his whole adult life, he clearly recognizes how much has changed and how many ministry practices no longer work. The church is now in the wilderness, he says, like the Israelites who escaped from Egypt. We’re about half-way through the journey, he thinks, so the church has about another twenty years yet to go before it gets to the Promised Land.

What is important about this image is that it recognizes the wilderness to be a condition that needs to be lived with and adjusted to—not a problem that can be solved. Unfortunately, as Gene said, too many churches are wearing themselves out trying to come up with schemes to “solve” Christianity’s current state of decline. It can’t be done. For now, we just gotta live with it.

Of course, the key point of the Exodus story it that the Israelites didn’t go back to Egypt—and neither will the church go back to where it was. When Gene was asked what he thought the “Promised Land” would look like, there was a long silence. He didn’t know—no one does. Except we know it won’t look like where we’ve come from.

It’s often observed by commentators and preachers that the forty years of wandering in the wilderness was the time it took for the generation that remembered life in Egypt to die off. No more pining and whining for the leeks and cucumbers (Numbers 11:5). Life is going to be different now—get over it. And on into Palestine they marched.

But we haven’t gotten to the Promised Land yet. We’re still wandering around in the wilderness, still remembering how good life was in Egypt, still wondering how we might get back there. It was kind of amusing that as the conference went on it was obvious not many had really heard what Gene had said. Most of the questions and discussions were still about “fixing” the church’s problems, still wondering who had the map that could show us the way back to Egypt, back to the church of the past that we remembered and loved.

Nadia’s presentation certainly gave us a glimpse of a very different church. Was this what the Promised Land would look like? Starting with just nine people two years ago, “House for All Sinners and Saints” has grown to—well, about three dozen. She was remarkably honest about the trials and tribulations of her congregation. Would the church ever get big? Oh no, she admitted. Would it ever be financially self-supporting? Probably not. As earnest and enthusiastic as her band of urban, post-moderns is, they nonetheless have the frustrating characteristics of most young adults: they’re over-committed, not entirely reliable, and move a lot. Planning and execution is a real challenge.

We all seemed to realize that not a lot of her church experience could transfer to ours (nor did she encourage us to try). And the irony did not escape us that this new way of doing church was only possible because it was being underwritten by a bunch of traditional churches. So it left the problem solvers in the group kind of frustrated. While Nadia’s presentation was appealing, it didn’t leave us with much we could “try back home.” And besides, was this the outcome pastors were looking for: a congregation smaller, poorer and even more erratic than what they already had?

In its own way, then, Nadia’s story reinforced the point Gene had made earlier. Whatever Christianity is going to look like when we get out of the wilderness, it’s not going to be what we knew before. “House” is a ministry to the population most disconnected from the church. To reach them, this experiment indicates, means doing church very differently—and even then the results may be numerically pretty meager.

All of this reinforces my growing suspicion that it is the formula “Christianity = Church” which is really at issue here. Nadia is still trying to do church in some conventional ways. Their worship is very innovative yet it follows the church calendar and a liturgical format. Her church is looking for members who will join and support it with time and money. It’s appealing, but only to a few.

A study was released this week of the 15% of the population (double what it was less than twenty years) that claims no religious affiliation—the “Nones” as they are called. (This group makes up 22% of those under 30.) What is noteworthy about this group is that a majority of them still claims a belief in God or higher power. What they apparently don’t believe in is religious organizations. And those numbers would swell significantly if we include those who still claim a religious or denominational identity but haven’t darkened the door of a church in years.

Christianity without church? Can we even imagine such a thing? To church members it’s like talking about a square circle. Yet it is the reality more and more people know. People no longer need church as a social outlet. Traditional religious activities are replaced by personal prayer, meditation, yoga, psychotherapy, 12-step groups, books, the arts, and TV and radio programs. Thousands of local, national and international nonprofit service organizations function with little or no religious involvement or affiliation, yet are often guided and inspired by religious teaching and tradition.

Will churches—and the Church—just disappear? I doubt that. Yet—rather obviously since it’s already happening—there are going to be a lot fewer of them. But instead of fighting this trend and exhausting ourselves (trying to “fix the problem” as Gene said), I am wondering if in some way we shouldn’t just be rolling with it. Perhaps we should be watching it, thinking about where it’s going, and wondering how we can be a part of it. One model—and an ancient one, at that—that some have said we should consider is Buddhism. It has almost no formal organizational structure and relatively few congregations, yet it has existed as long as the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Or perhaps what will evolve will be something completely different and unprecedented. To allay our anxiety, however, we need to seriously consider that, while what follows the wilderness won’t be Egypt, it could be just fine. It’s happened before, and when the Israelites arrived in the Promised Land they said, “It is God who has led us here.” It was his idea all along.

I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43:19)

Ditch the religion? (continued)

I am attending our regional church professional leaders’ conference. Like most of these events the past ten or twenty years, the focus of this one is on church renewal. In this case the buzz word is “reimaging” the church. I’ll have a fuller post later in the week when I’m home.

The speakers and conversation have made me think more about my earlier post about branding Buddhism. Overall, church membership is declining rapidly. Congregational innovation (of whatever kind) is leading some churches to succeed but only at the expense of others. It’s simply the case that fewer people are interested in belonging to a religious organization, whatever its size, shape or flavor. Yet surveys, reports and personal experience show that interest in spirituality and some traditional religious activities remain.

So, as I asked in the earlier post, is religionless Christianity a possibility? Is this the “new thing” that we need to be looking at or is it in fact already beginning to happen? For traditional Christians, of course, this is practically beyond comprehension. Whatever could it mean?

Here are some quick “back of the envelope” thoughts and fantasies. In particular I am wondering about existing congregations transitioning into something new, something other. So here is an outline for church reimaged as a non-sectarian provider of spiritual services. Feedback is welcome and appreciated.

• Churches become community spirituality centers. The existing congregation would be one user of the space. Other congregations could also meet there. This takes advantage of existing church buildings, many grossly underutilized. It could also facilitate the preservation of architecturally or historically significant buildings.
• The center could be incorporated as a separate nonprofit organization. The congregation could donate its building to the center in exchange for free and priority use of space for a set number of years.
• A variety of services and programs are offered, open to anyone, on a fee-for-service basis.
• These could include: counseling services, yoga and meditation classes, 12-step and support groups, book and arts groups, studio and gallery space, rehearsal and performance space, youth activities and groups, community service activities (food pantry, basic health needs, tutoring, etc).
• Worship/assembly space would be available to the public for weddings, funerals and other rites and worship services. These could be led by on-staff clergy or others.
• Rites of passage would be available to all. These could be combined with preparation programs. Such rites could include baptism and confirmation or similar but renamed events. Other rites could be developed, including community services of blessing for pets, beginning of school, graduation, deployment, and activities or events of local interest. Regular services of healing, memorial services, and services for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter could be held.
• Such centers could exist without any resident congregation at all. Membership could be offered in the center, as with a health club. Center activities and services would be free or discounted for members. Center members would be encouraged to take leadership in programs. A sense of community would likely develop for some but not all.
• Such centers could be branded and franchised. Training of leaders and a consistent quality of programming would be supported and promoted. Certain programs would be available at all centers but local needs would also be acknowledged and met.

Thoughts?

Christianity: religion or cult?

In general, US law enforcement and other government authorities treat churches with kid gloves. This is a long standing tradition based both on constittional grounds and the unofficial special status Christian churches have in the socio-political community. Occasional exceptions occur with regard to churches pushing the boundaries of their tax-exempt status or in the mistreatment of members on health and welfare grounds, especially children. The recent mass removal of children from a Mormon camp in Texas was a dramatic increase in government intervention, thought subsequently overturned by the courts.

I suspect, however, that such interventions are going to be more frequent. Fundamentalist groups are being seen more often as outside the norm of "acceptable" religion. Their more extreme behavior and beliefs are drawing increased scrutiny from the press and independent watchdog groups. I think law enforcement is going to be under increasing pressure to intervene in alleged abuse cases and are going to feel freer to do so.

The news today features the story of a fundamentalist church's graphic YouTube video of their exorcism of a 16-year-old boy. The objective was to cast out a "homosexual demon" from him. Calls are being made for an investigation by the Connecticut Department of Children and Families. An incident like this raises a question being asked by nonreligious people: What really is the difference between a religion and a cult and doesn't Christianity behave increasingly as much like the latter as the former? We are likely to hear more often of extreme example of Christian beliefs and behavior being branded as crazy and/or illegal--and not without justification.

A meeting of magical thinking (Sunday Reflections for June 14, 2009)

I attended one day of the synod’s day-and-a-half long annual assembly meeting. The synod assembly has been shortened in recent years to save money and because of the difficulty in getting people to attend. Being so brief it’s hard to really accomplish much. It would be tempting to blame these bare-bones meetings as a cause of the fraying of church life but it is almost certainly more of a symptom.

On this occasion, the main event I was interested in was the report of our bishop. I especially wanted to hear what he would say about his proposal to reverse the decline of synod congregations, called the "Turnaround Synod Initiative" or TSI. (You can find my earlier thoughts about this in the Reflections columns for May 17 and May 31.)

Predictably, the language was traditional and tired. For reasons that completely escaped me, the bishop tried to invoke a kind of “old time religion” mentality. He consciously used the evangelical term “testimony” to declare that we should be telling our neighbors about our experiences with God and the church. Then he shifted to more recent language in talking about “sharing our story”. But recent doesn’t mean new. Nearly thirty years ago, the LCA (a predecessor church to the ELCA) produced a combined Bible study and evangelism program called Word and Witness which emphasized this. I can still picture its Venn diagram of “your story, my story, and God’s story”. In seminary we often joked about “sharing our story” and the intervening decades haven’t improved its value.

All of which is to say that the bishop was simply re-plowing old ground. His language often betrayed awareness that there really wasn’t anything new here. One of his more unfortunate tacks was to try to revive a church-world, us-them dichotomy. “The world is thirsty. We must believe we have something the world needs.” And so on. All we needed was a tent and some saw dust. In fact, to top it off, we closed by singing that 19th century evangelical warhorse, “I love to tell the story”. It is fun in a nostalgic way but it left no doubt that the hope really being proposed here was to turn back the clock.

As I listened to this revival of “tell what God’s done for you” style of evangelism (which Lutherans have never been good at), I wondered just how real it ever was. Do we know it even works? In other words, are people really drawn into the church by hearing about other peoples’ religious experiences? In the New Testament, especially in Paul’s letters and in Acts, the emphasis is on telling the Jesus story, i.e. the gospel. From what I can tell, it’s really not until the rise of post-Reformation pietism and evangelicalism that this “testimonial” style of evangelism takes hold. It parallels, of course, the modern era’s rise of individualism. But I wonder if it doesn’t also parallel the fading of the power of the Jesus story, the traditional message about incarnation and redemption. “I don’t really care what happened to somebody named Jesus umpteen centuries ago. I want something to happen to me.”

I also paid a brief visit to a “workshop” about TSI. I didn’t stay long because the presenter was basically repeating what was in the printed brochure everyone had received earlier. As I listened I was reminded again of the contradictions throughout this plan. On the one hand we are told that this is not a top-down program because only people in the congregations can really know what’s needed. Then we are told that a variety of outside consultants, coaches, experts and resources will be made available. It’s hard to see how both of these can be true—and actually neither is.

The first assertion is mostly politics. Congregations (presumably) don’t want to be told what to do by church authorities above them. The second promise is just wishful thinking. “Surely there is someone out there who knows what to do!” Yet there is no evidence that is the case. Obviously, if congregations themselves knew what they needed to do to “turn around” they would be doing it. As for the outside experts and resources: who/what are they and where are they coming from? The church’s decline in the US is happening in congregations of all types and across the denominational spectrum.

Despite all the seminars and how-to books available there is nothing to indicate anyone has figured out how to keep the existing church model going. Here in the ELCA, there are not more than a handful of congregations that are growing and which are not also in growing communities (usually with lots of young families). When hearing about learning from coaches and consultants who all come from within the church establishment, it’s hard not to think of Jesus’ warning about “the blind leading the blind”.

A question and a phrase keep coming to mind as I think about all this. The question is: Why is this so hard? It’s a rhetorical question really because it obviously shouldn’t be this hard. Religious fervor spreads like an infection. Everybody catches it. That’s how it starts and grows. Then when things settle down a religion is maintained by being built into the culture. It’s what everybody does. Now, neither of those is the case. Christianity has lost its fervor and lost the support of the surrounding culture. Which of these is coming back?

The phrase I keep remembering is from the title of Joan Didion’s recent book, The Year of Magical Thinking. In it she tells of her grief-induced craziness as she tried to cope with the sudden death of her husband of forty years. “Magical thinking” describes what I keep hearing from church leaders responding to the current crisis. And grief may well be what’s behind all these fruitless rescue efforts. The church’s heyday in the US was barely a generation ago, in the 1950s and 60s. It’s what I grew up with and I am stunned at how quickly the church has declined since then. We in the church are grieving the loss of that earlier time: the filled pews, overflowing Sunday schools, constant stream of baptisms, confirmations and weddings. Now suddenly that’s gone and as with the death of a loved one, we are all prone to “magical thinking”. Surely he/she/it is coming back? Well, no, but everyone’s too polite or embarrassed to say so.

The experts have taught us about the stages of grief. It follows a natural progression which shouldn’t be rushed. Yet it’s also true that people sometimes get stuck in their grief, preventing them from returning to a normal and productive life. I am not sure whether the church is still in “normal” grief or if we’ve gotten stuck somewhere. Institutions aren’t people and I assume different rules would apply. All I know is that American mainline churches, at least, have been in decline for forty years. If we’re not stuck then we must be pretty close. In any case, it certainly seems time to put away the magic and start dealing with reality.

The age of the Spirit (Sunday Reflections for June 7, 2009)

The day of Pentecost remembers the story of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the disciples following Jesus’ death and resurrection. Filled with the same Spirit that Jesus had, the disciples and the church are empowered to continue his mission of proclaiming the gospel and making real the presence of God’s kingdom. In Christian theology, the Spirit is the third person of the Trinity and, like the Pentecost festival, has tended to get short shrift. God the Father and Jesus the Son outshine the Holy Spirit, just as Christmas and Easter eclipse their lowly liturgical sibling, Pentecost.

In official church doctrine, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are equal members of the Trinity. Each person is a “face” (Greek persona = “mask”) of the one true God. In practice, of course, the church has had great difficulty keeping all three of these balls in the air in this theological juggling act. Theologians acknowledge the impossibility of fully explaining the concept and so dub it a “mystery”. To religious outsiders, including many Muslims and Jews, there is no mystery: Christians are really tri-theists rather than monotheists.

There is another way to think of the Christian Trinity. In this view, the Trinity says more about us and our attempts to understand God than it does about who or what God truly is. In this understanding the Trinity is more about chronology than ontology, more about humanity’s evolving experience and understanding of God over time than about God’s being or nature.

The adoption of monotheism is viewed as ancient Judaism’s great contribution to the world’s religious history. The idea that there was one supreme God was certainly developing in other places but Judaism embraced it most strongly and enthusiastically. The notion’s popularity spread quickly. The gods of the Greek pantheon, for example, while personal and understandable, nonetheless seemed too human. The tales about them often resembled contemporary soap operas, with humans often the innocent victims of their squabbles and game-playing. As for morality, the rules often seemed to be made up as they went along.

The God of the Jews—at first Yahweh and then simply "The Lord"—while often mysterious and inscrutable, nonetheless proclaimed his unending love for his people. The end goal of the grand drama of the Hebrew Bible was nothing less than the redemption of the world. God’s revealed Torah/Law was seen as a firm and (fairly) clear statement of how humans should live. It was the operating manual for human life and society.

Christianity continued and spread Jewish monotheism. This wasn't surprising since it was based on the teaching of a faithful Jew, Jesus of Nazareth. As indicated above, things did get complicated, however, because Christians insisted that Jesus wasn’t just a rabbi, indeed not just a normal human being. He was also God’s Son, though the church was never able to agree fully on what that meant.

A big part of Jesus popularity, however, was the result of church's giving him a divine nature. As the Son of God, second person of the Trinity, Jesus gave God a “human face”. The God of the Jews, while combining power and compassion, was still experienced as being rather distant and even frightening. Indeed, some have seen the growth of that distance in the Bible itself, moving from a God who walks with Adam and Eve, then talks but remains invisible to Abraham and Moses, then speaks only through prophets, and and in the latest stage not showing up at all in the book of Esther!

It wasn’t long, however, before this human face of God also began to drift away. The approachable Jesus of the gospels gradually was overwhelmed by “Christ the Lord” who ruled the world from his heavenly throne. At the same time, the mission of spreading the gospel was replaced by the church's bureaucratic dispensing of forgiveness and salvation. To compensate, popular piety developed the cult of Mary and the saints who became intermediaries not unlike the alderman who can get you a zoning variance. You offered your prayers and devotion in hopes they would put in a good word for you.

Throughout this time and to the present day there has also always been, to use a recently popular phrase, a “minority report”. Christians holding this view believed that not only did Jesus give God a human face, he also revealed God’s presence in humanity—gave humans a divine face, if you will. They took seriously Paul’s and the gospels’ teaching that the Spirit which empowered Jesus was also present in his followers. Even more fundamentally, this understanding reached back to Genesis’ creation stories which said that humans were made in God’s image and that God made Adam by breathing into (in-spirit-ing, inspiring) a lump of dirt (humus, human).

What happened to Jesus after his crucifixion? An argument can be made that the real point of the Easter/Ascension/Pentecost stories is not so much that Jesus went to heaven but that via the Spirit he entered his disciples. Hence, Paul declares we are each “temples of the Holy Spirit” and the church is “the body of Christ”. We live now by the power of “Christ in you, the hope of glory”.

The notion of Christ as an intermediary between humanity and God is fading. It was overused and abused by a church that kept people coming by convincing them of their depravity and sinfulness. Fear of hell seemed more motivating than teaching that Christ’s Spirit now lived inside his followers. Go to church, take the sacraments, pray, confess your sins, leave your offerings and maybe Jesus will intervene for you with the Big Guy.

Today most people just aren’t buying it. I often hear church leaders sneer at the increasingly common confession, “I’m not religious but I am spiritual”. While there are certainly varying degrees of sincerity behind such a statement, it actually sounds more in keeping with the Bible than many church creeds. And so, ironically, it may be that “average people” have come to a better understanding of what Jesus and the Bible were trying to teach than has today’s church. Rather than a prize to be earned by jumping through ecclesiastical hoops, the life of God and the Spirit is an already present reality needing to be discovered and embraced.

Perhaps then today we have entered an age where God as Spirit is the most meaningful and appealing “face” that God can have for us. Rather than trying to reach a God who is somewhere else, we now are challenged to be empowered by a God who is everywhere and even more importantly, right here—closer than we probably ever imagined. While this understanding may be new in some ways, it is also true that one of the first persons to demonstrate it in his own life was the Jesus we find in Paul and the gospels, a child of the ancient family of Abraham. Thus the wisdom of Ecclesiastes is affirmed again: “Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new’? It has already been, in the ages before us.”

Finding wind for the church's sails (Sunday Reflections for May 31, 2009)

Earlier this month I wrote to Metropolitan Chicago Synod Bishop Wayne Miller to express my doubts and even dismay about a new church renewal program he had announced, called the Turnaround Synod Initiative (TSI). I published that letter two weeks ago as my Reflections column for May 17. Since then Bishop Miller and I have had a brief email exchange and, as promised, I’ll share the gist of it with you here.

Bishop Miller did not dispute my assessment of the church’s predicament, saying he is “much more realistic about the plight of the church” than I might think. Nonetheless, he remains convinced that “the truth of the cross is a matter of life and death for the cosmos”. Therefore, the church must be revitalized but not in a way that simply keeps old institutions alive. “This is not about institution building for me. I am not the least bit interested in clinging to dead forms…. What I am suggesting is that resignation, apathy and passivity in the face of the challenge will absolutely guarantee death.”

In his second email he added, “I find that in the climate of this synod there is so much discouragement that it takes enormous personal energy to try to find some way to put some wind back in the sails.” Most of that energy will have to come from below (“up from the earth”), of course, but he believes he has “a modest role to play in calling that energy up and then giving it a bit of shape and significance.”

Whenever you are the head of an institution in crisis, it’s inevitable that many people will expect you to be the “answer man” and I know that is occurring in our synod and across the church. As I said in my letter, the urge “to do something” is understandable. But the questions remain, “Do what? And to what end?”

As I read and listen to what others are saying, more and more agree that there is no going back. The church of the future will not and cannot look like the church of even the recent past. And so Bishop Miller says he is not interested in “clinging to dead forms”. Yet, while more and more are agreeing it can’t be done, it is hard to see how TSI and other recent proposals are really trying to do anything other than prop up our existing churches and ways of doing things. I am afraid that even as we say our intention is not to preserve “dead forms”, when those forms are all we have known it’s hard to imagine what the alternative might be.

I have said before that the church’s dilemma is very similar to that of the automobile and newspaper industries. Young people, especially, don’t buy American cars, don’t read newspapers, and don’t go to church. Those aren’t coincidences but are part of a much broader phenomenon which is affecting our society, and indeed the whole planet. And that is probably the single most significant change, which is that we are in the beginning stages of the creation of a genuinely global culture.

Dramatic improvements in education, communication and material prosperity around the world are suddenly thrusting us all together with dizzying speed. The forces of this transformation are pulling apart the bonds of traditional religion from multiple directions—and that is true not just here in the US, nor is it true only for Christianity. People’s lives are changing the world over, and one of those changes is that increasingly they find that they don’t need organized religion, at least as it has traditionally existed.

Like Bishop Miller’s passionate belief that “the truth of the cross is a matter of life and death”, I often hear it said that there is something the church has that is essential to people’s and the world’s wellbeing. This is why the church and its mission “must go on”. Yet in reality, not only do people outside the church not believe this, fewer and fewer people inside the church really think this way. Much more common is the attitude that religious involvement is a matter of personal preference. Just because it’s good for me, I don’t assume it will be equally good for you, let alone essential. Even fundamentalist churches have pulled way back on their “believe in Jesus or you’re going to hell” rhetoric, though that may still be part of their official doctrine.

Bishop Miller accurately points to the difficulty of energizing the church—putting “wind in its sails”. But the reason we aren’t raising the sails is because we don’t know where we want to go. If we aren’t saving souls from hell, and we aren’t trying to preserve religious institutions (those “dead forms”), then what are we supposed to be doing? This is another one of those elephants in the room, the awkward reality everyone knows is there but no one wants to talk about. The church’s lack of energy is really a loss of purpose and most of our movement now is momentum leftover from our past which is rapidly running out.

My suspicion about TSI and similar efforts (like the Book of Faith Initiative) is that their real purpose is to help us avoid talking about these awkward subjects. TSI proposes to re-energize the church to carry out its mission when the real problem is that the church doesn’t know anymore what its mission is supposed to be. For similar reasons engineers at Chrysler and GM debate what the next season’s hot colors will be when the problem is that too many people don’t want their cars whatever colors they come in.

We don’t discuss the church’s purpose because we are afraid that there isn’t one anymore. That’s our bogeyman—if we don’t think about it maybe it will go away. We all know how well that works. I say, what have we got to lose? I had been hoping that perhaps the church was near enough to desperation to finally start asking the tough questions. When I read about TSI I (admittedly) went into orbit because it was yet one more round of “let’s pretend”. Let’s pretend we really know what we’re trying to do and that the problem is that we just need to do it better.

People everywhere continue to have spiritual needs. People continue to search for meaning for their lives and struggle to accept and deal with life’s inevitable limitations: time, randomness and death. And in various ways, people continue to want to come together to meet those spiritual needs with others as a community. But the more a person is connected to our expanding globalized, post-modern culture, the less likely are they to find traditional Christianity or any of the other ancient world religions a satisfactory place to pursue that spiritual quest.

The church won’t disappear but the radical transformation it must undergo won’t come from its official leadership or from programs like TSI. Rather, to use Bishop Miller’s phrase, it must come “from the earth”. And it will.

Letter to my bishop--or how not to advance my career (Sunday Reflections for May 17, 2009)

I recently wrote our synod bishop to express my frustration with his “Turnaround Synod Initiative” (TSI), a plan to assist congregations to reverse their loss of members. There are few details at this point (those are promised for our convention next month), but what is obvious is that it is yet another attempt to patch our leaking boats with no more prospects for success than any of our previous efforts. Here is what I had to say:
 
Dear Bishop Miller:

I have been thinking, speaking and writing about the church’s decline for quite awhile. I am very aware of the challenges churches are facing and understand the inclination and even the sense of urgency “to do something”. In a crisis situation, however, that is often not the best first step and I think that is true in this case. “Doing something” implies we understand the problem when, in fact, I don’t believe we do. As a result, the “Turnaround Synod Initiative” (like similar previous efforts) will fail to achieve its goals, resulting in wasted resources, discouragement and frustration.

As I know you are aware, the decline of the church in the US has been long in the making. Membership in mainline denominations peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Both the ALC and LCA were shrinking prior to the merger forming the ELCA and reversing this was one of the hopes for the new church. Instead, the decline has continued with hardly a pause. The recent ARIS report showed that the number of self-identified Lutherans (of all stripes) has declined 25% in less than twenty years. By most measures, that would qualify for “falling off a cliff” status.

There is nothing to indicate these trends will change in the foreseeable future. Indeed, things may get worse. ARIS showed 30% of Gen X/Y young adults claiming no religious affiliation, the highest percentage ever recorded. The mortality rate of our congregations’ members will only increase as their average age continues to climb and we have little prospect of balancing that, let alone improving on it, with new younger members. The well publicized ARIS and Pew reports show this trend is nationwide and, to varying degrees, across the denominational spectrum.

As a result, I don’t see how TSI is going to be anything but an exercise in frustration. Your letter’s words about how every congregation “is a potential mission outpost” and many “are ready and willing to rise to the challenge” and “unleash the energy for mission” intend to stir enthusiasm but sound to me more like whistling past the graveyard. I fundamentally disagree that giving our congregations “some help and encouragement” will reverse or even stop the slide so many of them are experiencing. This kind of thinking serves only to enable us to hide from unpleasant realities and avoid dealing with real problems. Where is there any evidence that this situation is now changing? What have we learned that we didn’t know before, that we can now apply and which would make a difference? Setting ambitious goals and providing leadership training, coaches, consultants, and “resources” are the types of things we have been trying for decades. This is a classic example of “If it doesn’t work, do more of it” thinking.

The obvious rejoinder to this is: Well what would you do? In regards to our shrinking membership, I don’t know that there is anything we can do. I believe there are cultural forces at work here that are beyond our control. That does not mean, however, that the church will simply evaporate. It does mean that the church is going to be a different institution and play a different role in our society. We can influence that transition but only if we work at it. Efforts like TSI, however, prevent such planning and action by maintaining the illusion that fundamental change is not necessary and that if we all just work a little harder we can get things back to where they were before. That dog just won’t hunt.

Therefore, one of the most important things to be done now is to stop the denial that is going on at every level: churchwide, synods, and congregations. I believe this is a real leadership need, to name the situation clearly and honestly and to acknowledge that it is unlikely to change anytime soon. Engaging in this denial is resulting in frustration, anger, blaming, and guilt. Parishioners, pastors, bishops, and national church executives and staff all engage in finger pointing accusing each other of being lazy, incompetent, unfaithful, unimaginative, etc. Such behavior only serves to make the situation worse. To counteract the denial we need instead healthy doses of honesty and empathy.

We need to be talking at all levels about what should be done now to manage our shrinking resources. What kind of national and regional church management do we really need and can we really afford? Can we honestly expect to continue operating eight seminaries as we do? Can we continue to maintain the model of full-time professionally educated clergy in the face of higher seminary costs, rising student debt load, and the declining number of congregations able to afford a full-time pastor? Can we continue to maintain the model of the stand-alone congregation, with its own staff and its own building? Are there other ways to do ministry? What ministry ought we to be doing? In short, how can we think about new ways of “doing church”?

While I grew up when American Lutheranism was at its peak, my ministry has been during the years of decline. I have seen an unending parade of proposals, from the sublime to the ridiculous, to “fix” our problems. I have been in countless conversations with the theme of “What we really need is . . . a new pastor, another pastor, a youth director, a new building, a new hymnal, more Bible study, air conditioning, a new organ, guitars and drums, free child care, an elevator, more liturgy, less liturgy, better stewardship, more advertising.” And the list goes on and on. We’ve all been there. And now comes TSI to continue this unending and fruitless search for a panacea. When will it occur to us that we are barking up the wrong tree? That we are asking the wrong questions? That we need to think about the church and the world in which we live in a new way?

Right now, at a minimum, we need to be talking to each other. There is so much pain, anger and frustration among pastors and congregations as they try to manage the continuous loss of members and resources. We need our leaders to publicly and honestly recognize our difficulties and admit we really don’t know what to do about them. This sounds simple but I don’t think it will be. Denial has a very strong grip. That grip needs to be loosened, however, before we can move forward. We need to let go of what was and isn’t coming back before we can recognize and reach out for the new opportunities before us. In other words, there needs to be some dying before there can be a rebirth (John 12:24).

I know I have been blunt but that has only been because I see us trapped in an endless loop of stale thinking and fruitless endeavors. We need to shake ourselves out of our stupor. To take a genuinely new direction will be a long and difficult project which we haven’t even begun yet. This is my appeal for us to get off the treadmill and actually start moving, or at least shoot the starting gun.

I will post his reply and my thoughts about it in a couple days.

Sunday Reflections for May 10, 2009: "Biblical illiteracy" (conclusion)

(This continues last Sunday’s Reflections column posted below on May 1.)

I’ve basically stopped encouraging people to read the Bible. Well, that’s not entirely true. I still think it’s very worth reading but I just know that most people aren’t going to do it whatever I say or think. Reading the Bible nowadays is kind of like flossing: everybody agrees it’s something we should do but how many of us actually do it? I know how dental hygienists feel.

The ELCA’s Book of Faith Initiative (BOFI) was launched last year as an attempt to improve “biblical literacy” in the church. Its stated goal is to make us “more fluent in the first language of faith, the language of Scripture.” I’m sorry to burst people’s bubbles but it “ain’t gonna happen”. And it seems as if the church already knows it. Thus far BOFI looks both unfocused and half-hearted. I was at a pastors’ meeting a couple months ago where the opinion was expressed that BOFI seems to have fizzled out. No one there disagreed. The BOFI web site trumpets that “Bible studies are coming!” Coming? Nearly two years after the initiative was approved and a year after it was formally begun they’re still only “coming”? It doesn’t seem the ELCA’s heart is really in this.

ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson has enjoyed using the phrase “first language of faith” in talking about the Bible. That probably is a good way to describe it because it helps make clear what a problem the church has on its hands. For the reality is that this is a language fewer and fewer church members speak anymore. Regardless of the Bible translation one uses, the concepts in its pages are becoming increasingly meaningless and/or incomprehensible. Without this “language” people can no longer speak or think about their faith in Christian terms.

BOFI’s basic flaw is that it doesn’t recognize where the problem lies. It’s not with the people—it’s with the book. The Bible simply is a difficult book to read. There are good reasons why fewer and fewer people read it or are familiar with it. It is an ancient book (collection of books, of course), by multiple authors, in languages no one speaks anymore and which are difficult to translate. It assumes a world view vastly different from our own. It often talks about topics and issues which are meaningless to us and/or of no interest. Other than that, it’s great!

The simple reality is that people aren’t much interested in reading 2000 year old books of any kind. Calling such a book “The Holy Bible” doesn’t change that. Of course, someone can simply pick it up and begin reading and find it of value. People have done this on their own for generations. The reality today, however, is that for more and more people (especially if they’re under 50) this experience is of little or no value. They might as well be reading the phone book. I’ve led many Bible studies. I try to use the Bible a lot in my preaching. The biggest obstacle in both instances is that there is just so much explaining to do!

I have been asked many times what the best Bible translation is. Now I usually chuckle and say, “That depends what you want.” Most people say they want the version that’s easiest to read. Fine, but be aware that will also be the most inaccurate. “Oh, but I want it to be accurate.” Okay, but then it’s going to be hard to read. The “best” translations try to find some happy medium, such as the NRSV we use on Sunday mornings. Still, it is very much a compromise and you are never sure whether what you are hearing or reading is actually the thought of the biblical writer or that of the translator or of a centuries long tradition of translation and interpretation.

Does it matter? For what is often called “devotional reading”, perhaps not. But this kind of reading is often dependent on years of previous experience which most people no longer have. Such people often pick up the Bible expecting great things but quickly get lost in meandering passages of obscure history, ritual regulations, genealogies, exotic poetry, or even nightmarish prophesy. They soon put it down and head for the “Spirituality” section of the book store for something more understandable and relevant.

Where it very much matters is when we try to make personal or societal decisions based on what the Bible purportedly teaches. In recent years there have been multiple issues on which “Bible believing Christians” have taken combative stands based on what they believe the Bible says. In many of these cases I think they have based their positions on a serious misreading of biblical texts, attempting to uncritically apply ancient thought to modern issues, many of which the biblical writers couldn’t have even imagined let alone understood.

I do believe the Bible has some profound things to say about a variety of theological and existential questions—about God and about life, if you will. But they take effort to “tease out” because the Bible is an ancient document, written in a fashion we are not accustomed to and with a worldview very different from ours. Often ignoring this, the church today is stretching and straining the Bible to be things it isn’t and to speak to us on topics it knows nothing about.

Frankly, I think our biggest problem may be laziness. Even in the ancient world the Bible wasn’t treated as an answer book, which is what we often want it to be. Those who actually read it were few, and their opinions about it were listened to only if they had many years of study and reflection under their belts. Modern scholarship has actually discovered a great deal about the Bible but much of it is ignored because it doesn’t tell us what we want to hear. Modern biblical study’s totally unsurprising conclusion is that the Bible is theology, through and through. Thus, it isn’t history, biology, geology, astronomy, economics, political science, psychology or any of the other contemporary subjects which so fascinate us and about which we have so many questions. For answers to them, we must look elsewhere.

So the question the church must answer is, does theology matter anymore? Because it is afraid that it really doesn’t is one of the main reasons the church wants the Bible to be something other than what it is. As a result, preachers proclaim to their congregations their opinions about marriage, personal finance, child rearing, homosexuality, international relations, health and fitness, and countless other topics, but hide and disguise them with isolated and out-of-context Bible verses. And the innocent parishioners respond in approving amazement, “He/she makes the Bible so clear.” Yeah, right.

The church does indeed have a Bible problem but it’s not people’s ignorance about it. The question is whether the church can let the Bible be what it is: the collected thoughts of a particular ancient people, containing their prejudices and ignorance but also some genuinely profound insight into living with God and with one another in our paradoxical world of beauty and pain, purpose and confusion.

Given that the Bible has been the foundation of the church’s life, the question arises: Is that enough? If it is, then the church needs to do the hard work of figuring out how the Bible as it really is, warts and all if you will, can function that way. If that Bible isn’t enough, then we have arrived at the epicenter of the church’s crisis today. In that case, it must either find a new foundation for its being and purpose or recognize that the current decline will continue to its inevitable conclusion. To me, unimaginative and half-hearted efforts like BOFI make it seem that the church, if only subconsciously, has already made its decision.

Sunday Reflections for May 3, 2009: "Biblical illiteracy"

The denomination I belong to, the ELCA, is in the midst of a five year effort to promote reading the Bible called the Book of Faith Initiative (BOFI). I’ve been involved with a couple similar efforts earlier in my career and know the challenges such programs face. BOFI has appeared especially problematic to me primarily because its conception was so vague. Where earlier programs had highly developed (and expensive) materials at their center, BOFI seems to be more of a scatter gun approach with an optimistic simplicity verging on “open the Bible and they will come”.

Recently I became involved in an online discussion about BOFI on its web site. (It came to a premature and bizarre conclusion but that’s another story.) The posts I wrote helped me to realize how I have come around almost 180 degrees from beliefs I had when I first entered the ministry. In brief, where I once believed everyone should share my enthusiasm for reading and studying the Bible, now I see it as a much more esoteric activity requiring an interest few people share and an education few people have acquired. Coming from a Lutheran this borders on heresy.

The problem BOFI is trying address, it claims, is that of biblical illiteracy. As almost any preacher will tell you, it’s almost impossible to underestimate how little people today know about the Bible. One interesting item from the online discussion was the report of a survey comparing people’s attitudes toward the Bible and their knowledge of the Bible. Basically it showed that people who claimed a belief in biblical inerrancy generally had as little knowledge of biblical content as everyone else. So according to this survey, people who think the Bible is the verbatim “word of God” aren’t even reading it all that much! That Christians, including fundamentalists, don’t know their own scriptures is a sign that something very odd is going on.

Not surprisingly perhaps, those who proposed BOFI did so because they assume biblical illiteracy is a bad thing. From what I can tell, however, there was little or no discussion or defense of this notion. Had that happened, I think this “initiative” (a suspiciously vague word) might have had a clearer focus.

All this got started when the North Carolina Synod sent a “memorial” (formal request) to the ELCA asking it to address the problem of the lack of consensus in the church about the authority of the Bible or how to interpret it. In other words, they were asking the ELCA to clarify, just what is the Bible and how do we use it?

The memorial obviously arises out of concern over a number of issues the ELCA is struggling with and differences over how to use and interpret the Bible in resolving these differences. This problem has been festering for a long time and may well have come to a breaking point. The ELCA sexuality task force noted in its final report that a lack of consensus about the Bible is one of the main causes of division over issues of sexuality. No doubt this will be on full display at the churchwide assembly this August in Minneapolis.

Curiously, BOFI sidesteps this issue and yet claims to be a response to the memorial’s concerns. The assumption seems to be that all we have to do is get people to read the Bible and somehow our differences about it will get resolved. Well, I don’t believe that for a minute. The Reformers knew the Bible backwards and forwards and fought among themselves like tigers for decades. Their arguments have gone on to this day, if somewhat less ferociously. Indeed, both sides in the current controversy over homosexuality have ample supplies of Ph D theologians and biblical scholars arguing their respective cases.

Which raises the complaint one sometimes hears from nonreligious people and even from church members: “Why read the Bible? It just starts lots of arguments.” And so we are back where we started from: Why read the Bible? Perhaps BOFI’s unspoken response to the memorial is that we really don’t think the Bible is going to resolve these controversies. Certainly the church’s own history doesn’t give much support to such a hope.

The problem is that we can’t use the Bible to decide what the Bible is or how to read it. I could write a book which begins, “This is the perfect word of God and you must believe everything written here,” but you the reader must decide what to make of that. And the Bible isn’t anywhere near that clear! In fact, there are even arguments within the Bible about how to read the Bible. Anyone who thinks reading the Bible will resolve questions about homosexuality, abortion, the death penalty, gender roles, evolution, or any other contemporary controversy obviously hasn’t read it.

The questions raised by the North Carolina Synod are certainly legitimate and serious ones but BOFI is not going to resolve them. They do need to be resolved somehow, however. The sexuality task force’s final report basically says, “We can’t go on like this”. If, as expected, this summer’s churchwide assembly approves the task force’s recommendation to recognize gay relationships and allow openly gay clergy, then the ELCA will at least be rejecting one literalistic way of reading and interpreting the Bible. (Some would argue this was done forty years ago when the predecessor Lutheran churches approved the ordination of women.) Perhaps then the church can move on to address the questions raised in the memorial in a more systematic way, in order to have a consistent guide on biblical authority and interpretation for church action in the future.

But this still leaves us with the Book of Faith Initiative. If BOFI isn’t addressing the question of what the Bible is or how to read and interpret it, then what is its purpose? Just why are we trying to get people to read the Bible? Is it, really, all that important? We’ll turn to those questions next time.

Sunday Reflections for April 12, 2009: "Newsweek: End of Christian America?"

The most basic contours of American culture have been radically altered. The so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a post-modern, post-Christian, post-Western cultural crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture. (Albert Mohler in Newsweek)

Albert Mohler is the President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville (one of the world’s largest seminaries). He was interviewed for the cover story of the most recent issue of Newsweek, titled “The End of Christian America”. As the quote above indicates, he is very disturbed by the religious trends in this country that have been highlighted in two recent surveys, the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) and the one released last year by the Pew Trust. Both showed a continuing trend of fewer people identifying themselves not only as Christian but as having any religious identity at all. The ARIS results showed 15% answering “None” when asked to name their religion. Newsweek’s new poll reported 30% of Americans identifying themselves as “spiritual” rather than religious.

There is no question that this is a dramatic development and a genuine change in our cultural character. It is less clear what its significance is. Some, like Mohler, view it as a “the country is going to hell in a hand basket” moment. Conservative Christians like Mohler believe that Christianity is an essential element of our national identity and to lose it, or to have its influence significantly reduced, threatens its very foundations.

The author of the article, Newsweek religion editor Jon Meacham, is more sanguine. He believes religion doesn’t go away but it does change over time: “America, then, is not a post-religious society—and cannot be as long as there are people in it, for faith is an intrinsic human impulse.” In his view, the growing rejection of Christianity is the result of the church shooting itself in the foot. Evangelical Protestantism and conservative Catholicism both overreached in their attempts to impose their values on American society as a whole. Their strident battles against abortion, homosexuality, stem cell research, the teaching of evolution, and so on have not just alienated those holding different viewpoints. These struggles have led many to view Christianity as a threat to an even more fundamental value of American society, that of liberty. Meacham writes:

If we apply an Augustinian test of nationhood to ourselves, we find that liberty, not religion, is what holds us together. In "The City of God," Augustine —converted sinner and bishop of Hippo—said that a nation should be defined as "a multitude of rational beings in common agreement as to the objects of their love." What we value most highly—what we collectively love most—is thus the central test of the social contract.

For decades the Catholic Church has lived with the reality that a large portion of its members often disagree with and even disobey church teaching on social and moral issues. This same phenomenon is now being recognized in evangelical churches, especially among younger members. The haranguing by bishops and pastors to vote this or that way has turned off not only secular voters but even members of their own churches.

More importantly, the increasingly strident arguments that these various trends are evil and dangers to society just haven’t been persuasive. Younger people, especially, take our growing cultural diversity for granted. They use birth control, have gays as friends and family members, were taught evolution, and have increasing contact with members of other religions. At the same time they wonder why churches have shown little concern for global warming and the environment, clergy sexual abuse, and Third World poverty. In short, a growing number simply disagree with church positions in the “culture wars” while others, even if they are sympathetic, have just grown tired of all the shouting.

I think Meacham has this part right but I also think that this isn’t the whole story. What is significant about the recent survey results is not only that a growing number are leaving churches but also that they are not joining new churches (or even other religions) that they are more in sympathy with. Large numbers of younger people (under 40) especially have made the decision, consciously or not, that they can simply do without the organized religion experience altogether. The problems Meacham identifies may have pushed people out the church door but in the past most would have then searched for a new more comfortable pew to sit in. That isn’t happening now.

In a recent conversation with local ELCA pastors, one commented on the “deafening silence” from our bishops on the avalanche of stories about declining church membership and the succession of church closings just in our synod. The silence is telling but it may be a good sign actually. Mainline churches like the ELCA have tried just about everything to reverse their decline with no real results. Church leaders may be silent because they literally don’t know what to say anymore. It could be then that, like an alcoholic, the church is close to hitting bottom. By which I mean churches may finally be willing to consider genuinely radical change.

Until now congregations and denominations have been engaging in crisis management: How do we increase membership and offerings? What new staff and programs do we need? What staff and programs do we cut? How can we afford to fix the roof, keep the lights on, and pay the pastor’s salary? The assumed objective has always been to maintain the institution.

But what if this isn’t the goal? Does church or religion necessarily mean structured organizations with constitutions, officers, members, weekly gatherings, professional full-time clergy, and buildings costly to build and maintain? Frankly, the church has focused on these things for so long it’s hard to imagine it means anything else. Yet these are the things increasingly rejected by society or becoming economically unsustainable.

I disagree with Pastor Mohler that we are in a “crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture”. I think he is right that “there is a new narrative, a post-Christian narrative that is animating large portions of this society". It is a time for soul-searching, for innovation, and for genuine listening to the people and culture around us. As Meacham says, people will always have spiritual needs (and propping up ancient institutions is not one of those needs). What changes is how and where those needs are met. We need to face the fact that we are in the midst of one of those changes.