Ross Douthat: Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?

"Liberal Christianity" in this case means the Christianity represented by the so-called mainline denominations: Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, and United Church of Christ being the primary examples. There are, of course, conservatives within those groups and liberals found in other denominations. In any case, it is the viability of these American Christians that the New York Times’ designated conservative columnist Ross Douthat wondered about in an op-ed piece earlier this summer. 

It was prompted at the time by yet another story of mainline denominational decline, even as that same denomination was engaging in a favorite mainline exercise: rearranging its theological, liturgical, or organizational deck chairs. In this case the subject was Christian conservatives’ favorite denominational whipping boy, The Episcopal Church USA. This American expression of the Church of England is, of course, the epitome of cultural religious self-importance. As a result, its numerical decline and internal divisions have made it an easy target and the object of more than a little schadenfreude among Christian conservatives.

Theology has never been Anglicanism’s forte, so while its attempts to reshape itself for the modern world have been sincere and determined, they have often been flat-footed. Thus, Douthat’s critical summery is not so far off. The denomination's changes, he writes, have left it

flexible to the point of indifference on dogma, friendly to sexual liberation in almost every form, willing to blend Christianity with other faiths, and eager to downplay theology entirely in favor of secular political causes. Yet instead of attracting a younger, more open-minded demographic with these changes, the Episcopal Church’s dying has proceeded apace. Last week, while the church’s House of Bishops was approving a rite to bless same-sex unions, Episcopalian church attendance figures for 2000-10 circulated in the religion blogosphere. They showed something between a decline and a collapse: In the last decade, average Sunday attendance dropped 23 percent, and not a single Episcopal diocese in the country saw churchgoing increase.

As Douthat goes on to point out, this is not a unique experience for Episcopalians. “Practically every denomination — Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian — that has tried to adapt itself to contemporary liberal values has seen an Episcopal-style plunge in church attendance.”

Douthat does not write off liberal Christianity, however. He is well aware of the valuable role it has played in promoting social justice. He is also aware that the conservative Christianity that has risen during liberalism’s decline has often been “theologically shallow, preaching a gospel of health and wealth rather than the full New Testament message.”

Thus, rather than wishing its demise Douthat hopes “that liberal Christianity recovers a religious reason for its own existence.” Amidst their attempts to modernize their denominations, liberal church leaders need to “consider not just what they would change about historic Christianity, but what they would defend and offer uncompromisingly to the world.”

The decades-long numerical decline of liberal or “mainline” denominations is indisputable. The causes, however, are not nearly as simple or clear as Douthat would have us believe. Membership in these churches peaked in the late 1960s and early 70s. If there was an ideological trigger for their decline at this time, however, it was a reaction against the social and political involvement Douthat seems to champion. Most of the theological change came later, at least partly in response to membership loses already evident.

Recent declines within American Christianity have also never been restricted to so-called liberal churches. For example, the decline of moderate and liberal Lutheran churches has been matched by the shrinking of the much more conservative Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. It is widely recognized that overall Roman Catholic membership would have declined had it not been for Hispanic immigration. Recently, more traditional conservative denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention have been reporting flat or even moderately declining memberships.

Then there is the ambiguity of the liberal-conservative distinction. As Douthat says, many successful conservative churches have embraced the so-called “prosperity gospel” which often downplays or avoids much traditional Christian teaching and doctrine. Thus, Joel Osteen’s preaching packs a former NBA arena in Houston and draws a global TV audience in the millions, yet many of his strongest critics are conservative Christians because he avoids taking firm positions on many of their litmus test social and theological issues. On the other hand Robert Schuler, a prosperity gospel pioneer, has lived to see his church empire collapse into internal acrimony and bankruptcy.

Conservative churches, also, have not been above conveniently adapting to social change. As divorce rates climbed and became socially acceptable, it quietly disappeared as one of the favorite topics of hell-fire preaching—especially when the preacher himself was divorced.

There is growing evidence that conservative churches are finding themselves behind the curve in another area of rapid social change: acceptance of homosexuality. As gays and lesbians have become increasingly open about their sexual orientation, like everyone else conservative Christians are finding themselves with growing numbers of gay friends, co-workers, and family members. Many are finding it difficult to accept their church's judgment of people they personally know and like. Many younger evangelicals are challenging their congregations and denominations to change their theology and policies and the voices of some elder leaders are beginning to join them.

The changes in American Christianity over the past forty years have caused much head scratching among both church leaders and more disinterested academic observers. While there is still no agreement about what is going on, simplistic and argumentative explanations like those of Ross Douthat have been generally dismissed. Instead, from the duration and depth of the change, from the research I have seen, and from my own lifelong experience within mainline Christianity, I would say that the decline of American Christianity is more about sociological and demographic change than unfaithfulness or failure of church leadership.

Because church issues so easily become contentious it’s easy to lose sight of the basic reality: more people are leaving churches and fewer people are joining churches. There are a number of factors almost certainly involved. There is evidence that singles and couples without children have less interest in belonging to a church and that segment of the population been growing. Until just recently, our population has been increasingly mobile, inevitably resulting in more fluid church membership roles. New research shows that people in personal or economic distress are actually less likely to be a part of church communities, probably because of the difficulty of maintaining relationships based at least in part on previous states of being (marriage, employment, etc.). Whatever religious needs they meet, churches also fulfilled important past social functions (finding friends, spouses, employment, etc.) which many people no longer need or are meeting in other ways.

All of these sociological issues circle around the more fundamental question which Douthat points to at the end: do people still have a religious need that liberal churches can meet? For a growing number the answer seems to be no. In fact, this has probably been true for longer than we realize but successfully meeting people’s social needs kept churches from realizing it. Now that has changed and such churches’ pews are increasingly empty and remaining members increasingly elderly.

The reality is that liberal/mainline churches stopped believing their own founding religious story a century or more ago. It is what religious modernism and liberalism have been about. Intellectual developments since the Enlightenment have led the church to realize Christianity didn’t fall from heaven fully formed but has a history like every other human endeavor. Its discovery of other religions made it aware that many of its ideas are not unique or very original. Scientific knowledge has made impossible almost any literal understanding of basic Christian teaching. Preachers can no longer speak coherently about heaven or hell, judgment and salvation, or an after-life. Church members’ conceptions of God now have little to do with traditional biblical views or theological teaching. More often they are of a vague, guiding and comforting, "presence" of almost embarrassingly childlike quality. Few Christians can state even basic orthodox church teaching, let alone confess it.

Recently I left my congregation to move out-of-state. Thus, I am temporarily “unchurched” and have visited the two local ELCA Lutheran congregations of my denomination. One is moderate sized, with a middle age and older congregation. The other is small, somewhat younger, but can support only a part-time pastor. Neither congregation could be described as thriving; both are smaller than they once were.

At both congregations I was welcomed warmly at each visit, sometimes almost uncomfortably so. Both used traditional Lutheran liturgy with user-friendly, in-house produced booklets. Sermons (by the parish pastors and guests) were fair and the hymn selection fair to poor. In each instance I found myself wondering how a visiting non-Lutheran would experience all this, what would draw them in in the first place, and what would entice them to come back or join such an organization. Working a normal “9 to 5” job, I am very aware of the value of my limited free time and how choosy I am in allocating it. How much time, if any, would I give to “church” and, if I did, what would I get in return?

In the end, I think Douthat’s challenge to mainline churches is actually the right one: what is the religious reason for their existence? With most of their social functions gone, mediocre worship and preaching centered on antiquated and/or nonsensical theology is often all that churches have left. The “renovations” that Douthat decries have often been silly, and certainly ineffective, because they only served to redecorate a theological structure that actually needs rebuilding from the foundation.

The decline of liberal churches is understandable and even appropriate as they have become organizations functioning primarily to maintain themselves. While Douthat’s answer to this crisis is the wrong one, his framing of the problem is correct. What is to be the religious function of mainline churches? What remains to be seen is whether awareness of the mainline crisis will ever lead these churches to realize they have lost their reason for existing, and that if they don’t find a new purpose soon they will become only the latest chapter of religious history.

Mrs. Jesus?

The story, of course, is made for sensational headlines: an ancient fragment of papyrus is revealed with Coptic text containing the phrase, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife ...’ ” Enigmatically the sentence breaks off there. Debate about whether Jesus was married has occurred throughout church history, revived most recently by Dan Brown’s fictional bestseller The Da Vinci Code.  Does this discovery help resolve that question?

While journalists had to raise the issue, the stories I read all dutifully reported the judgment of the eminent Harvard scholar, Karen King, who disclosed the finding: No. The fragment does tell us interesting things, however. It comes from a time almost certainly two or more centuries after the time of Jesus. It is a testimony, therefore, to a debate still going on in the church over the role of women. It also shows that at a fairly late date the story of Jesus’ life was still fluid, making it possible for writers to creatively build upon the Jesus’ tradition.

The reporting of the story, however, illustrates again how we are culturally programmed to chase after the wrong bus. A century after Albert Schweitzer coined the phrase we are still in our quest for the historical Jesus, a Jesus we will never find. Was Jesus married? Did he have children? Did he go to India? Was he really a space alien? Pick any scenario you like or make up your own; we will never be able to say what is true and what isn’t.

The reason for this is that there simply is no reliable evidence with which to make such judgments. Jesus (like all other the ancient founders of the world’s great religions) is like the Big Bang of contemporary cosmology. He is the beginning point of the Christian “universe,” the place where its historical lines of development converge. Yet while historical Christianity is real, we can only infer Jesus as its origin. Or rather, “Jesus” is the name we give that starting point. As to reliable witnesses to that event and his life, we simply have none. No one saw it; no one knew him. All the testimony we have is after the fact and with an ax to grind.

In trying to shape the story that would be told about her revelation, Prof King told reporters, “At least, don’t say this proves Dan Brown was right.” Which is true, of course, yet also misunderstands what Brown was about. For what he was doing is really no different than what the anonymous creator of this fragmentary tale was up to, or all the other ancient creators of the Christian tradition were up to: telling a story with a character named Jesus.

Go West (Sunday Reflections for June 3, 2012)

(My blog has languished for several months,. This post is the last Sunday Reflections column I did before leaving my congregation in Illinois. I am now relocated to Santa Fe, NM and working at an art gallery there, while I decide what next to do with myself.  I am also musing a lot and mentally gathering material for future blog posts, which hopefully will begin appearing soon. So stay tuned!)

As many of you know, New Mexico has been one of my favorite vacation spots. Soon it will be my home. Visiting a place and living there are very different experiences, of course, and New Mexico is not perfect. It has pockets of wealth and large areas of poverty. It has a wide variety of racial and ethnic groups that do not always get along well with each other. It can be dangerously dry, with wild fires a constant threat. And then there are the snakes.

Nonetheless, I am excited about moving to New Mexico, and to Santa Fe in particular. To borrow a phrase, it is, I believe, the next thing to do with my life. I look forward to being closer to the natural world, something which is so easily obscured in the city. I look forward to being surrounded by mountains and to the sun shining far more often than not. I look forward to seeing stars at night.

Christianity has an ancient tradition of nurturing and re-energizing itself in the desert, and I have felt a similar pull since my first visit to New Mexico. The desert is not lifeless but it is certainly lean, gently but firmly doing away with whatever is superfluous and hindering. It is this environment which has profoundly shaped and defined the Native American culture and spirituality of northern New Mexico. It has also nurtured the state’s century-old artist community. The spare landscape and thin dry air of the high desert together encourage a unique clarity of thought, feeling, and vision.

So I look forward to this move as an opportunity to do some clarifying and re-orienting, some winnowing and whittling. It doesn’t feel like a retreat or escape but rather a “strategic withdrawal,” allowing me to regain my bearings and set a new course.

One thing I am not doing at this point is looking for a new pastoral call. That could happen later but right now I it seems better to step back and regain some perspective. The church-at-large is a confused mess: directionless, dysfunctional, delusional, demoralized, and depressed. Sadly I see nothing on the horizon to indicate this situation will be changing anytime soon.

I have spoken and written about this many times, in part to provide some context for the challenges faced by our own congregation and an understanding that this is now the norm. The bottom line is that none of this is anybody’s fault. We have become stuck in this downward spiral, however, because it is so hard for the church to understand how profoundly our world has changed. We are completely out-of-step. We want to tinker when what we really need is a complete overhaul. And my conversations with both pastors and denominational leaders show we still just don’t get it.

People keep asking me (often in response to an essay or sermon like this), then what’s the answer? But I have no answer because I know what the questioner really means is, how do we get things back to the way they were? And that is just not going to happen, nor do I think it should. It is time for the church to come to an end which, in fact, is what’s happening. It’s not going to completely shutdown like a defunct factory but it is--slowly--transitioning to something new and very different.

So the issue is not finding “the answer” to the church’s problems, but rather gaining some understanding about what’s going on and some clarity of vision about where we are heading. Then maybe we can do things to nurture the process, encourage it rather than fight it, and perhaps even guide it a bit. 

By getting away to New Mexico I hope to get a little of that understanding and clarity, and if that happens, put it to some good use. In the meantime, I also hope to do some hiking and writing, perhaps some weaving and painting, and just maybe, learn how to make a really good margarita.

Ghost stories (Sunday Reflections for April 22, 2012)

^36b Jesus said, "Peace be with you."  ³⁷They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost.  ³⁸He said to them, "Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?  ³⁹Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have."  ⁴⁰And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.  ⁴¹While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?"  ⁴²They gave him a piece of broiled fish, ⁴³and he took it and ate in their presence.

The Reflections columns the past few weeks have dealt with the problem of reading the gospels’ Holy Week and Easter stories as historical events. This excerpt from today’s Gospel reading is yet another dimension of that problem: the risen Jesus as a resuscitated corpse.

The earliest New Testament writings are by Paul and, as I wrote earlier, his understanding of the “Easter experience” is that that the resurrected Jesus “appeared” to his disciples at various times, and ultimately to Paul himself. The use of the word “appear” here and elsewhere is the experience of a vision or a dream. For ancients, such experiences were very real but were also considered to be different than normal everyday living.

In Mark, the earliest gospel, there is no Easter appearance of Jesus. Instead, the women at the tomb are met by a “man dressed in white” who tells them Jesus has been raised, and that he can be seen by the disciples if they go back to Galilee. The women run from the tomb in fright.

In the Easter stories of Matthew, Luke, and John, Jesus does appear in tangible form. These later gospels were written at least 50-70 years after the events they are recounting. We are all familiar with the notion that a story grows in its telling and that seems to be the case with the gospels. But rather than thinking of this as exaggeration or even lying, it’s more helpful to see each of them trying to address questions and problems in their various church communities.

In our story today from Luke, the resurrected Jesus has skin and bones which he invites the disciples to touch and feel. He even eats a snack. Taken literally this story raises almost comical problems and impossibilities. From a modern perspective it is absurd.

But Luke is not a modern person and is not writing for a modern audience. Luke tells us his concern: the risen Jesus was not a ghost. The appearance of ghosts, the spirits of dead people, was a commonly accepted phenomenon in the ancient world. Apparently this is how some were interpreting, and probably dismissing, the stories of Jesus’ resurrection appearances. Jesus was seen after he died? No big deal; people see ghosts all the time. 

Luke feels the need to refute this interpretation and does so in the only way he can, by making the risen Jesus a physical reality. He was not just a ghost; he has been raised. For modern people, however, and I suspect even some people in his own day, Luke only digs the hole deeper. Now that Jesus has a body, what will happen to it? Where is it now? Our minds spin with new questions and problems.

Unless, of course, we understand this text for what it actually was: a story, very likely created by Luke himself. The problem for us is that we separate fact and fiction into hard categories without overlap: fact=true and fiction=untrue. In practice, however, the division has never been so clean, even today. 

Before modern times, history was almost always told through what we would now call “historical fiction.” Detailed factual history was simply impossible to write because the information was unavailable. The interest in telling about people or events of the past was how they could help living in the present. From the courtroom and the laboratory we have developed a laudable appreciation for demonstrable facts and data. Our modern world would be impossible without them. We make a mistake, however, in assuming ancients had those same standards or judging them by them. 

In today’s gospel, Luke is interpreting one story (the empty tomb) by telling another story (of a resuscitated corpse). What’s essential for us to appreciate them is realizing they are both stories. It is entirely possible that Mark created the first account of an empty tomb. Paul never mentions it and it’s hard to imagine that he wouldn’t have known it if it existed, and that he wouldn’t have talked about it if he did know it. 

Having told the story of Jesus’ life and death, Mark wanted to conclude his gospel in a way that pointed to the future. The women, representing Jesus’ followers, are turned away from adoration of Jesus’ corpse and told instead to go to Galilee, which for Mark is the center of the new church’s life. “There you will see him.”

In the ancient world, stories took on a reality all their own. The gospel writers that followed Mark each interpreted his work in their own unique way. One result is that their subsequent Easter accounts differ significantly from each other in nearly all their details. This is a problem if we imagine them as accounts of historical events. It’s not a problem with we understand them as theological stories built on the foundation of earlier stories, guiding and inspiring faith.

So today we can hear a story of the risen Jesus eating a piece of fish, or cooking fish on the beach as in John, and smile. I suspect at least some ancient people did as well. The essential message of all these stories is that the Spirit of the crucified Jesus yet lives. The question is whether we have our own stories to tell of that Spirit alive today in our world, and in our lives.

To believe or not to believe (Sunday Reflections for April 15, 2012)

Why do we believe what we believe? One problem with answering that question is that we stretch the word “believe” to mean many different things. Here are a few examples, all dealing with President John F. Kennedy.

• Do you believe JFK existed? Easy—of course he did. It’s undisputed.
• Do you believe JFK was a practicing Catholic? A little hesitation—we know he was Catholic. But there’s that word “practicing.” Well, yes, he must have been. There are pictures of him at church.
• Do you believe JFK was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone? Okay, this is tougher. There are arguments both ways. He either was or he wasn’t but which is the case is in dispute. Take your pick.
• Finally, do you believe JFK was a great president? This is obviously a matter of opinion which could be argued endlessly. Again, take your pick.

Notice that in each of these questions, ranging from indisputable fact to debatable opinion we can use the word “believe.” Could each of these questions be resolved by factual evidence? In the first and third, it would seem so, though getting that evidence is much easier for the first than for the third. The fourth question we would probably say “No” because people have different understandings of what it means to be a great president. The second question could also be problematic since there might be some disagreement over what constitutes a “practicing” Catholic.

Questions of fact and opinion often seem to be clearly different at first glance but then get less clear as we look at them longer. You may be aware, for example, that there are some who contend that Shakespeare’s plays were not, in fact, written by William Shakespeare. In their view, the man from Stratford-on-Avon did not have either the talent or the worldly experience to produce works as profound as these. 

Instead, they believe “Shakespeare” was a front or pseudonym for someone wishing to be anonymous, possibly in Elizabeth I’s court. (“Anonymous” is the name of a recent movie based on this possibility.) The majority of Shakespeare scholars—but not all—dismiss such a notion as nonsense. The problem is that four hundred years is enough time for most tangible evidence to have disappeared. Who is right? Can we ever know? Does it matter?

You probably are not aware that there is a similar dispute about Jesus. The question at issue is even more fundamental: Did Jesus exist? Our inclination is to say that, of course, he did. This is like the first JFK question. Yet when we begin to examine it more closely, the question starts to look like one of the more disputable ones.

Again, the problem is lack of evidence. There are no birth records or any documentation of anything that happened to Jesus. We have nothing written by Jesus himself. Scholars today doubt we have eye-witness accounts of anything Jesus said or did. We have nothing reliably from any of his disciples. The earliest biblical writings are by Paul, from about twenty years after Jesus (presumably) died, and he makes it clear he did not know Jesus. The gospels are written at least 40-70 years after Jesus and even their occasional claims to have second-hand information are now widely doubted. 

Yet, of course, the New Testament was written and Christianity did happen. Something must have caused it and the most obvious something is “Jesus.” The “Jesus Myth” advocates (as they’re called) contend that his story and personality were basically cobbled together from a variety of ancient characters and stories, historical and fictional, Jewish and pagan. The vast majority of scholars, even very critical/liberal ones, say there is no reason not to accept the most obvious explanation, which is that someone named Jesus was the origin of the Christian movement. 

One mythic Jesus scholar has put his finger on what may be the real problem. Dr Robert Price writes in a recent book, “There may once have been an historical Jesus, but for us there is one no longer. If he existed, he is forever lost behind the stained glass curtain of holy myth.” In other words, with nearly 2000 years of theology and religious story telling between us and Jesus of Nazareth, as a historical person he has become nearly invisible. And religious scholars say much the same about Abraham and Moses, the Buddha, Mohammed, and all the great religious figures of the ancient past.

What is important to realize, however, is that these are all questions about beliefs, not of faith. We can believe what we want about persons or events of history but those things are all gone. All we have are the stories, the words, or “the Word” in Christian terms, and the faith that they create. 

These words create a “faith reaction” within us, as they interact with our own experiences and our own view of the world. We hear “good news” and then respond by living our lives in a way that is shaped by that gospel. We live with love, compassion, and hope rather than fear, jealousy, and selfishness. 

New evidence and discoveries may change our beliefs. Faith, however, as Paul says, comes by hearing the stories and the Word within those stories. We can never genuinely recover the past. Yet stories from and about the past have the power to move us and change us. They are the Spirit’s tools for our transformation and even salvation.