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?

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.

What happened to Jesus? (continued)

(CCBlogs users note: For some reason CCBlog links are not going to the correct post. "Drip, drip, drip" can be found here.)

(This continues the thought of the Reflections post below on April 16, "What happened to Jesus?").

One can, of course, take the conclusion that the Easter experience was one of visions and apparitions of Jesus a step further. Some would say this is all Jesus ever was. The voices have been slowly but steadily growing more numerous who say Jesus never existed as a flesh-and-blood human being. Jesus was never other than in people's heads. Personally, from my own reading and thinking on the subject, I have to say it is possible. Certainly the modern "quest of the historical Jesus," as Albert Schweitzer called it, has raised far more questions than it has answered. To borrow Churchill's phrase, Jesus has become "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma".

Perhaps the simplest and most helpful explanation of the problem comes from New Testament scholar Robert Price. What Jesus research has produced, says Price, is too many Jesuses. No one has been able to construct a picture of a historic Jesus that can encompass all the various personality traits, theologies, and social agenda that scholarship has uncovered. It's as if we are at the end of the old TV show "To Tell the Truth". When the host asks the real "John Doe" to stand up, each of the candidates make a move as if to get up until one finally does. In this case, however, the real Jesus won't stand up. We just get a lot of shuffling from the candidates.

The explanation that Price and others have come to is that there is, in fact, no "real Jesus" to be found. The bumper crop of Jesus possibilities is the result of his being a constantly evolving figure in the literary and kerygmatic imaginations of the early Jesus movement. One theory is that rather than Jesus being a real person spiritualized into the Christ, he actually have started as a mythical and heavenly figure that was the central character in a great mythical salvation drama of death and rebirth. Over time the stage moved from heaven to "history" and the cast found their feet planted here on earth. Indeed, without too much difficulty, one can imagine the Jesus Paul talks about as just such a mythological character. Hence, the near absence in Paul's letters of any references to Jesus' "earthly" life and ministry as one finds it in the gospels.

When I first heard of this theory it seemed, of course, radical and revolutionary. If accepted, if "true," the church would never be the same. That's a common reaction of both proponents and opponents of a mythical Jesus. Now, however, I wonder if it really makes all that much difference. The historicity of all ancient figures is pretty fuzzy. We have our Alexanders and our Caesars. But even the lives of the greatest rulers and generals are missing many of the details modern biographers want and those we have often appear suspiciously like romantic embroidery.

As we move to lower levels of prominence, the historical reconstruction process becomes nearly impossible. And ancient religious and philosophical figures are several levels below that of royalty. Do we really know anything about Socrates' teaching, for example, given that virtually our only source is a hardly objective Plato? Historians today cast doubt on what we really know about any of the great religious figures of history: the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Mohammed, as well as Jesus. The fact is that all we have to deal with today is the religious traditions that trace their origins to the stories, historically accurate or not, surrounding these figures. We know there was an explosion, but there is so little left of the building it's doubtful we'll ever know what really caused it.

So the historical Jesus is likely to remain hidden—perhaps forever—in the fog of the ancient past. But what if a convincing mythological proto-Jesus were found in some yet undiscovered document, thus shifting the argument in a non-historical direction? Again, I suspect, it wouldn't make all that much difference. After the media splash, those of a fundamentalist persuasion would remain unconvinced and those more liberal would repeat what they already say, which is that it's "the story" that matters, and the philosophy and ethics that goes with it.

And that, of course, is where contemporary Christianity's problem lies. The question is not what is or isn't historically believable about the Bible and the Jesus story. Rather, the question is whether we really care about them anymore. "The story" (which actually unites Christian conservatives and liberals more that they realize) comes to us from very distant time—from another world, really. The attempts of preachers and teachers to make it "relevant" are now so strained that many have basically given up on it. For those that haven't the results are often laughable and pathetic. Verses and texts are seized willy-nilly to frame this or that teaching on marriage, sex, child rearing, personal finance, and countless other contemporary topics, many of which ancient people couldn't have even imagined let alone had an opinion about.

And all this focus on contemporary life issues in the church is a not very effective screen for the growing disinterest among Christians in the classic themes of sin and salvation, the mystery of God and eternal life. We simply live in a different world than did our ancient spiritual ancestors. Do Jesus and the Bible generally have anything to say to us about life and death and the meaning of existence? Of course, but then so do many sources of ancient wisdom—but it’s found only after sifting with difficulty through much that is irrelevant or incomprehensible to us. And even if we concede that the biblical and Christian traditions have insight and wisdom unique in the ancient world, it still doesn't mean they can provide us an overarching philosophy or even mythology with which we can understand and organize our lives today.

This is the Jesus the church needs to find today, whether historical or not—a Jesus whose story and message can give inspiration and meaning, purpose and comfort to people living in a confusing and evolving post-modern world. For the contemporary church, as for the women at the Markan tomb, this Jesus isn’t here. What’s uncertain is where or whether this Jesus can be found.