Friday, April 16, 2021

("Don't) Gimme That Old Time Religion

Start here and you get a better idea why Americans are turning away from organized religion.

The Baby Boomers followed the lead of the “Lost Generation” and questioned almost every principle of society in the pursuit of a morality they had assumed held true and found out didn’t. Their objection was not to morality, but rather the lip service their society paid to the concept. It was honored in the breach, never in the keeping. And so the “Lost Generation,” then the Boomers, and now Millenials and high school students, critique the fundamental culture of the country, and the institutions (which include religion) because the immorality of it sickens them.

These are the words of the Lord of Hosts the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, that I may let you live in this place.  You keep saying "This place is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!' This slogan of yours is a lie; put no trust in it.  If you amend your ways and your deeds, deal fairly with one another, cease to oppress the alien, the fatherless, the widow, if you shed no innocent blood in this place and do no run from other gods to your own ruin, then I shall let you live in this place, in the land which long ago I gave to your forefathers for all time.

-Jeremiah 7:3-7

For crime after crime of Israel
I shall grant them no reprieve,
because they sell honest folk for silver
and the poor for a pair of sandals.
They grind the heads of the helpless into the dust
and push the humble out of their way.

-Amos 2:6b-7

Your countless sacrifices, what are they to me? says the Lord
I am sated with whole-offerings of rams
and the fate of well-fed cattle
I have no desire for the blood of bulls,
of sheep, and of he-goats,
when you come into my presence.
No more shall you tread my courts,
To bring me offerings is futile;
the reek of sacrifice is abhorrent to me.

Wash and be clear;
put away your evil deeds
from my sight;
cease to do evil, learn to do good.
Pursue justice, guide the oppressed,
uphold the rights of the fatherless,
and please the widow's cause.

Isaiah 1:11-13-a, 16-17

I spurn with loathing your pilgrim-feasts
I take no pleasure in your sacred ceremonies.
When you bring me your whole-offerings and your grain-offerings
I shall not accept them,
nor pay heed to your shared-offerings of stall-fed beasts.
Spare me the sound of your songs;
I shall not listen to the strumming of your lutes.
Instead let justice flow on like a river
and righteousness like a never-failing torrent.

-Amos 5:21-24

The prophets of Israel, in the name of religion, rejected “organized religion” in their day. From our perspective they were reformers; but to their audience they were radical and even dangerous. They were a fundamental challenge to the religious practices and beliefs. Amos was merely a dresser of sycamore trees.  Today we might consider him "blue collar."  Hosea and Ezekiel we would probably consider mad.  The joke in seminary studies was that Ezekiel found some magic mushrooms along the banks of the Chebar which prompted his visions.  But get only so far as chapter 4:

"'Next, like on your left side, putting the weight of Israel's punishment on it; for as many days as you lie on that side you will be bearing their punishment.  I ordain that you bear Israel's punishment for three hundred and ninety days....When you have completed these days, lie down again, this time on your right side, and bear Judah's punishment....See how I tied you with ropes so that you cannot turn over from one side to the other unil you complete your says of seige.

Take wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and vetches, and mixing them all in one bowl make your bread from them....The bread you are to eat is to be baked like barley cakes, with human dung as fuel, and you must bake it where the people can see you." The Lord said "This is the unclean bread that the Israelites will eat among the people where I shall banish them."

Ezekiel 4: 4-5a, 6a, 9a, 12-13

And you see Ezekiel making symbolic gestures that challenge the whole of Israel, from government to religious institution.  Hosea married a prostitute, as God directed, and he had children with her whom he named for God's punishment:  "Never Again Forgive," and “Not My People."  As Thomas Merton said of the desert fathers in the 4th century:

 In those days [the 4th century C.E.] men had become keenly conscious of the strictly individual character of "salvation." Society--which meant pagan society, limited by the horizons and prospects of "this world"--was regarded by them [the Desert Fathers, living as hermits in the Egyptian desert] as a shipwreck from which each single individual man had to swim for his life. We need not stop here to discuss the fairness of this view: what matters is to remember that it was a fact.

Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert (New York: New Directions 1970), p. 3

The students of St Francis Hugh school reject what the school stands for. And how can a school named for the saint stand for such things? What choice do they have, really? If society, and its  pillar religion, say they must accept such things, what choice do they have? Abandon the morality they were taught? Or abandon the institutions that betray that morality? It’s not quite such a clear either/or as the actions of Hosea, but the rejection of what is flawed and failed is the same. How can you stand with what is so wrong, what is so fundamentally at odds with what it teaches and professes?

When I was in ministry I quickly found out the least regarded person in the church was the pastor. I didn’t go into parish ministry for fame or fortune or praise, but I found out the institution was fundamentally broken. The place at the bottom of the hill where all the shit ran down to was the minister. Every complaint, every ill of the congregation, of the church, was in his head. I was a lawyer first. I had worked with lawyers, negotiated with them, fought them in court, been yelled at by judges and even lawyers I worked for, and none of that prepared me for the animosity heaped on pastors. And I don’t mean from parishioners.

Church officials, people in the hierarchy, were the worst I’ve ever encountered. If I haven’t been back to church in decades, it’s because of them. Every church I served (and I was not a perfect servant) involved discussions with pastors above me whose default setting was “What did you do wrong?” Not in the sense of investigation or aiding self-examination, but in laying blame.   I was offered less help in my struggles than stones, to build a wall to push me out and protect the congregation above all (well, the congregation is where the money came from, such as it was). Churches are failing, and as they do nobody wants to be responsible. The only way to shift responsibility is to put it on someone else. I was more humanely treated by clients when I lost a case, than by the people who were supposed to be my pastors. The failure of the church was laid squarely on the pastor (I saw this done to too many others) because somebody had to be blamed. Now, whether the church members see that clearly, or not, whether they understand it that way or not (and some always do, and some always don’t), who wants to be part of that toxic environment? People are angry, they want a target for their anger, and the churches that don’t dissipate that anger, that literally don’t heal it, are destroyed by it. That is an overly simplistic way of identifying the fundamental problem of church in America, but it's a starting point. Church is a place to be, or to not be; and rarely a place to work out differences. And if you don’t have to be there, why bother? Why put up with a place that lets the angry and the bitter prevail?

I have seen, very intimately, two congregations like this; both have utterly failed and ended. Well, even congregations die. But I know churches that have revived, recovered, that enjoy new life. That is not because of pastors (that way lies the “cult of personality.” I know too many who have accepted that pernicious lie as the salvation of their congregations.); it is because of people. It is because of the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit does not coerce; it is only allowed.  And in the metaphor of the wild goose from modern Celtic Christian circles, where the Spirit is not wanted or accepted, it flies on.

So what is, ultimately, going wrong in churches?  People.  We can say churches need better pastors, more charismatic pastors, more compelling preachers who preach the “true Word of God” or with “the power of the Spirit,” but that’s merely perpetuating the cult of personality.  The idea that a church is only successful because it has a pastor who draws a crowd is the guiding principle of a mega-church but also the desire of too many congregations who think it’s all about the pastor.  The fact is, it’s all about the people.  And when church is no longer a social requirement or a fixed institution as much as school or government, when attendance is again voluntary rather than obligatory, the decline is inevitable.  But it could as well point to the salvation of religion, as to its failure.

I come back to this now because of an article at 538.com, written not by a church leader nor even by a sociologist (say what you will against it, sociology provides useful data for these discussions), but by a political scientist.  And it shows in the analysis: 

What’s driving this shift? In part, it’s about people who still identify with a religious tradition opting not to be a member of a particular congregation. Only 60 percent of Americans who consider themselves religious are part of a congregation, compared to 70 percent a decade ago, according to Gallup. But the bigger factor, Gallup said, is the surge of religiously unaffiliated Americans — people who are agnostics, atheists or simply say they are not affiliated with a religious tradition. The rise of this group — sometimes referred to as “nones” because they answer “none” when asked about their faith (and, you know, it’s a play on words) — isn’t new. But the Gallup survey is part of a growing body of new research on this bloc (that includes a recent book by one of us, Ryan’s “The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going”).

I don't disagree with that paragraph, but put it in historical context and where does it get us?  The "Lost Generation," loosely Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and T.S. Eliot for our discussion (add as many more as you like), was not just a few young people rebelling against society and even religion.  In 1919, only 41% of Americans considered themselves part of any religious tradition.   Gallup says the 47% of adults who claim membership in an institutional religious setting (church, mosque, synagogue) is the lowest they've recorded, but they didn't start asking about it until the 1930's.  Basically, we still haven't hit bottom.  And the "Lost Generation" saw the hell of World War I, the industrialized warfare that blanked the casualties of the Civil War (I've seen the miles of fence Grant made with the rifle barrels alone produced for that war) and Crimea, and engulfed "civilized" Europe in a slaughterhouse of horrors.  World War II eventually came along with "Hold my beer and watch this!", and then as affluence returned to Europe, church attendance declined (or maybe it was the experience of the war on that continent). The 538 analysis makes much of the idea that, as society's grow more affluent, religious observance declines.  Look to Jeremiah:  everything old is new again.

Woe to him who says,
"I shall build myself a spacious palace
with airy roof chambers and
windows set in it.
It will be paneled with cedar
and painted with vermilion."
Though your cedar is so splendid,
does that prove you a king?
Think of your father: he ate and drank,
dealt justly and fairly; all went well with him.
He upheld the cause of the lowly and poor;
then all was well.
Did not this show he knew me? says the Lord.
But your eyes and your heart are set on naught but gain, set only on the innocent blood you can shed,
on the cruel acts of tyranny you perpetrate.

Jeremiah 22: 14-17 (REB)

I'm not saying the fate of Israel is going to be visited on America; far from it.  I'm saying we've seen this movie.  We aren't doing anymore than reinventing the wheel.  If the analysis of 538 is right, well, it's not because affluence leads to rational atheism, or because society is "progressing" to a better order than humanity has ever known before.

After World War II America, relatively unscathed by the war, boomed, and prosperity actually lead to church attendance.  The near universal, near compulsory attendance Boomers grew up with and considered both the norm and an American birthright (it's in the Constitution, isn't it?) was an aberration. And now, finally, that increase has abated, now it is finally at an end.  Is this new?  Or is it simply a return to "normal"?

Whatever it is, I think it's going to take a great deal, perhaps even a cataclysm like the first 50 years of the 20th century, to bring it back again.  I don't wish for that, obviously: partly for the horrors it would mean, partly because notions of "revolution" which usher in a clean new world order are the worst kind of adolescent dreams.  That expectation always means massive violence will cleanse the world of everyone who doesn't think like me.  What ends up happening is the logical conclusion of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth:"  everyone is blind and toothless.  No, salvation does not lie in either going backward, nor in wishing all the "troublemakers" away.

Taking people you don't like out of the equation is never the solution.  Learning to live with people who aren't like you, is the only hope.  Religious instititutions will again find their way.  Even the Desert Fathers didn't live in absolute isolation; even they had to learn to live with each other.

They told this story of a great hermit. If anyone came to ask advice from him, he used to say with great confidence, "Look, I am acting in the place of God and sitting in his judgment seat; what do you want me to do for you? If you say to me, 'Have mercy upon me,' God says to you, 'If you want me to have mercy on you, you must have mercy on your brothers and then I shall have mercy on you. If you want me to forgive you, you must forgive your neighbour.' Then is God the cause of your guilt? God forbid. It is in our control, whether we do or we do not want to be saved."

As for the starting point up there, that "racism is this country's original sin," well, the kids are alright.  It's their elders they are disapproving of, and good on 'em:

"It is in our control, whether we do or we do not want to be saved."

I know that's an odd place to leave it, but it's been that kind of a day.  So let me end with this:

After this, our Lord reminded me of the longing I had for him, and I saw that nothing kept me from him but sin, and I saw that this is so with all of us. And I thought that if sin had never existed, we should all have been pure and like himself, as God made us; and so I had often wondered before now in my folly why, in his great foreseeing wisdom, God had not prevented the beginning of sin; for then, I thought, all would have been well. I ought certainly to have abandoned these thoughts, but nevertheless I grieved and sorrowed over the question with no reason or judgment. But Jesus, who in this vision informed me of all that I needed to know, answered with this assurance: 'Sin is befitting, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.'

"With this bare word 'sin' our Lord brought to my mind the whole extent of all that is not good, adn the shameful scorn adn the utter humiliation that he bore for us in this life, and his dying, and all the pains and suffering of all his creatures, both in body and in spirit--for we are all to some extent brought to nothing and shall be brought to nothing as our master Jesus was, until we are finally purged: that is to say until our mortal flesh is brought completely to nothing, and all those of our inward feelings which are not truly good....

"But I did not see sin; for I believe it has no sort of substance nor portion of being, nor could it be recognized were it not for the suffering which it causes. And this suffering seems to me to be something transient, for it purges us and makes us know ourselves and pray for mercy; for the Passion of our Lord supports us against all this, and this is his blessed will. And because of the tender love which our good Lord feels for all who shall be saved, he supports us willingly and sweetly, meaning this: 'It is true that sin is the cause of all this suffering, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.' These words were said very tenderly, with no suggestion that I or anyone who will be saved was being blamed. It would therefore be very strange to blame or wonder at God because of my sin, since he does not blame me for sinning.

"And thus our good Lord answered all the questions and doubts I could put forward, saying most comfortingly, 'I may make all things well. I can make all things well and I will make all things well and I shall make all things well; and you shall see for yourself that all manner of things shall be well.

"And I wondered greatly as this revelation, and considered our faith, wondering as follows: our faith is grounded in God's word, and it is part of our faith that we should believe that God's word will be kept in all things; and one point of our faith is that many shall be damned--like the angels who fell out of heaven from pride, who are now fiends, and men on earth who die outside the faith of Holy Church, that is, those who are heathens, and also any man who has received Christianity and lives an unChristian life and so dies excluded from the love of God. Holy Church teaches me to belive that all these shall be condemned everlastingly to hell. And given all this, I thought it impossible that all manner of things should be well, as our Lord revealed at this time. And I received no other answer in showing from our Lord God but this: 'What is impossible to you is not impossible to me. I shall keep my word in all thing and I shall make all things well.'

"...the more anxious we are to discover [God's] secret knowledge about this or anything else, the further we shall be from knowing it...."

From chapters 27, 29, 32, and 33, Reflections of Divine Love, Julian of Norwich.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)