The Church Militant v. The Kingdom of God

The church militant is seldom the church triumphant unless it has the power of the state behind it and so can compel membership to stay with it. This, ultimately, was the failure of the Roman Catholic church in response to the challenge of Martin Luther, who was protected by powerful men in Germany from the militant power of the Church, which at one point wanted him dead.

But that power doesn’t exist at all today, and every church, the more strident it gets, is reminded that its membership rolls are comprised entirely of volunteers, and that what holds a group together is not their enemy, but their common purpose.

The SBC and the UCC are figuring that out again.

After purging liberals from their ranks, Southern Baptist conservatives who won control of their denomination are now taking aim at each other.

The Rev. Wade Burleson, a Baptist leader from Oklahoma, says fellow conservatives who crusaded to only elect leaders who believe the Bible is literally true are carrying their campaign too far, targeting Southern Baptists who disagree with them on other issues.

These leaders, he wrote on his blog, are "following the same battle plan conservatives used to defeat liberalism," and have started a "war" for the future of the SBC.

And what is it about? It is, of course, about boundaries:

"The Southern Baptist leadership is so ideologically driven that it's almost impossible for them not to continually draw lines and narrow the boundaries," [the Rev. Bill Leonard, dean of Wake Forest Divinity School in North Carolina] said. "In the early stages, this was publicly evident with the moderates and liberals. Now, when the convention meets annually in June, you wonder who they're going to throw out this year. There's always somebody."

The overall danger in this analysis is the focus on numbers, of course. Church is not about how many people you put in the pews. But there is the Church Ideally, and the Church Really, and every pastor knows it.

Every pastor also knows that, when it comes to a fight in the church, there are no winners, only losers. Every one ends up wounded, and institutions die from those wounds. Only the most egotistical of pastors stay and fight when it is their ministry on the line in the congregation. They stay, and fight, and the church loses, and the wounds inflicted almost never heal.

The Southern Baptist Convention has learned that having an enemy to fight gives the leaders of the fight tremendous power, but it is like fire that burns through wood: pretty soon the fire burns out, and leaves nothing but ashes behind. You can pile up more wood, hoping to keep the blaze going, but it’s a futile action. An institution simply cannot continue on the basis of continually having an enemy to be opposed to. External enemies are too far away, and too soon not threatening enough. Internal enemies are too few, and too soon expelled. And then you start to eat your young.

When the church is all about power politics, the church loses.

When the church insists that the first shall be last, and the last first, the church becomes truly the church; but aye, there’s the rub! When the church preaches humility, it becomes the Church of Sacrifice for Meaning and Belonging, and few are willing to join that church. Better to be the Church of Meaning and Belonging; and the shortest distance between that goal and the present, is to find an enemy.
But that enemy is soon burned up. And you are back to the fight among members, the fight for a new identity, and since fighting is the only identity source they know, fighting is what they will do.

And that's the other thing a pastor learns early in his ministry: nobody joins a church in order to fight. The people who do, are precisely the people you don't want in their church. Because the moment they run out of enemies, they create them. They turn on you, and the congregation. People who love nothing more than a good fight, love nothing more than a good fight. They are the person on fire, but to that person, the whole world looks like wood.

Or a place to practice the tolerance of intolerance:

CLEVELAND, Jan. 19 - Leaders of the 1.3- million-member United Church of Christ are reporting mixed statistical and financial outcomes -- both positive and negative -- during the six-month period that followed its General Synod's controversial decision to affirm support for same-gender marriage equality.

Since July, about 49 churches -- or less than one percent of the UCC's 5,725 churches -- have voted to disaffiliate, according to the denomination's research office. Most, but not all, of the departures appear related to disagreement with the marriage- equality resolution.

Bland statistics hide the bitter reality of this fight. The UCC has a very peculiar polity, one which has lead to an almost absolute division between General Synod and Cleveland (where the UCC offices are), and the local congregations. Resolutions of Synod are not binding on the local church, but that freedom from restraint works both ways, and Synod is often far ahead of, or even far apart from, the local church on many social justice issues. It isn't a matter of social justice so much as it is a matter of pastoral care. As a UCC pastor I had to deal with a family whose only son had been shot to death in a robbery. They learned that the church they had been raised in officially opposed the death penalty, from reading the back of a UCC published church bulletin. The shock and pain was so great for them they left the church, and I don't know if they ever returned.

Freedom is not only "another word for nothing left to lose."

While officially tolerant of different points of view, I know from experience that Associations and Conferences (the sub-groupings of the UCC) put tremendous pressure on pastors (the only group they can pressure) to get their churches to accept the more highly publicized resolutions of Synod, such as ordination of homosexuals to the ministry, and now, gay marriage. Churches which disagree with these positions find their voices ignored and their pastors find themselves between their autonomous congregations (such is the polity of the UCC) and the Conference Minister who has the power to make their move to a new church in the future pleasant, or almost impossible.

To the man with a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. Which means hammering out justice is not the simple matter it often appears to be.

So the church mlitant is seldom the church triumphant, because the church militant is seldom the church of Jesus of Nazareth. There is nothing militant about an empire, a basiliea tou theou, in which the first are last, and the last first; a kingdom that is announced not by being angry with the way it is presented in the media and reacts as the world would react, but a church that teaches you go to the extra mile, turn the other cheek, offer the coat off your back, and share your food with those who don't have any, without asking into their moral status, their religious beliefs, their personal behavior, or their political opinions.

The biggest problem with being the church is that you cannot define yourself by your enemies, or even by the enemies your actions create. You have to define yourself by God. And that will leave you neither militant, nor triumphant; but merely humbled.

And now for something completely different....

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

--The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jesus

The problem is, of course, we usually can; and we don't like what we perceive. So there's a push-back. The push-back makes a lot of noise, stirs up a lot of people (or seems to), and gets a lot of other people very worried.
This is, of course, the way the Reformation worked, or so we think. This is the way the explosion of Protestantism metastisized until there are "King James Bible" Churches (I kid you not) and so many flavors of Baptist and even Presbyterian, not to mention the varieties of Pentecostalism and the cross-denominational "fundamentalists," that the array becomes simply dizzying. I once served a church which had split, many decades before, over the decision to recarpet the worship space. The departing church members set up their own church not a half-mile from the "original" church. This is the way it used to work in Protestantism: you didn't like the way things were going, you left. Episcopal polities (those with bishops, I mean, not TEC specifically) were not immune from this. Think of the Lutheran church; and the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, and the Wisconsin Synod Lutheran Church....you get the idea.

So that's the model: Protestant churches divide like amoebas, and so churches proliferate. Except when they don't.

From my personal experience, I know of a UCC church here in Texas which left the denomination many years ago, something fairly easy to do in that congregational polity. They saw themselves as the vanguard of a number of Texas churches who would surely follow, as the UCC is very "liberal" and Texas church goers are, for the most part, famously conservative. They weren't the only ones who saw themselves as that vanguard, either; many in the UCC feared they would destroy the fragile church in this state (the majority of UCC churches in Texas are here in Houston, and I think the number here tops out at 14). But despite the best efforts of that church itself (they sent pastors full of zeal for what they hoped would be a new denomination to rural Texas churches where they were sure their seed would find fertile soil), no UCC church followed them. Oh, there are two (or were two, last time I paid attention) UCC churches in Houston which weren't happy with the UCC endorsement of gay and lesbian pastors (the UCC did that a long time ago), but I don't know that they ever really left the denomination. The church which did leave, which hoped to be the flagship of many departing churches, was the largest UCC church in its city, and one of the oldest, practically a "grandfather" church to many in the state. No one, however, felt the urge for going, and so far as I know today, their drive to establish a new, counter-UCC denomination, has petered out.

Why? Because the people in Texas really were secretly liberal? No. The church I left exploded a few years later (one church member later told me) when they tried, in desperation for a pastor, to call a lesbian. I mean no disrespect to the candidate when I say "in desperation," but I knew that congregation would never accept a gay or lesbian pastor. And, sadly, they didn't, in the ugliest way possible. Neither, however, did they try to leave the UCC. Not that there weren't grumblings when I was their pastor. The church had been an "E&R" church before the UCC was created, and one very vocal member would tell me I should put "E&R" back on the sign, because that would restore it's fallen membership. The consensus in Texas is that no one knows what "UCC" means, and if you call it "United Church of Christ," they assume it's a distaff branch of the very conservative "Church of Christ," which has a much larger presence here. But except when it involved them personally, that church never cared that much about the gay/lesbian pastor issue. Two other churches in Houston threatened to leave the UCC over the gay/lesbian pastor issue. I know at least one of them eventually went the other way, and is not "Open and Affirming," meaning the officially welcome and invite the LGBT to their church. God's love is amazing indeed.

But the question before us is: why isn't there greater energy for a schism in TEC? Because I think the effort for division is truly petering out; the vision of a new denomination is already on the skids. Fr. Jake and the Mad Priest have had posts about this recently; I'm not going to do the research to back up my assertion (I assume most of you wouldn't read the footnotes anyway). I just have a strong sense the air is rapidly departing that balloon. Why would that be?

Not because people are more liberal than we think. I think, in fact, it's an identity issue, but the issue of identity is going another way from what we've come to expect, to anticipate.

There was a time when people identified strongly with their church, their denomination; indeed, the two were one and the same. Bill Moyers tells this story, which probably sounds like every church member we know (and yet, it's never us!):

One of my favorite stories is of the fellow who was about to jump off a bridge, when another fellow ran up to him crying, “Stop, stop, don’t do it.”

The man on the bridge looks down and asks, “Why not?”

“Well, there’s much to live for.”

“What for?”

“Well, your faith. Your religion.”

“Yes?”

“Are you religious?”

“Yes.”

“Me, too. Christian or Buddhist?”

“Christian.”

“Me, too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?”

“Protestant.”

“Me, too. Methodist, Baptist or Presbyterian?”

“Baptist.”

“Me, too. Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Savior?”

“Baptist Church of God.”

“Me, too. Are you Original Baptist Church of God or Reformed Baptist Church of God?”

“Reformed Baptist Church of God.”

“Me, too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God Reformation of 1879, or Reform Baptist Church of God Reformation of 1917?”

“1917.”

Whereupon, the second fellow turned red in the face and yelled, “Die, you heretic scum,” and pushed him off the bridge.

It's a great story because it's true, right? But I think it seems true, and it isn't really true any longer. It's true for the people who want to split TEC, just as it is for the people who still want to split the UCC. Those people, however, are distinctly in the minority; and that minority is shrinking in significance and power, not growing. The persistent question is: why? And the answer is: because denomination is no longer central to our identity. And because the issue of denomination was never about theology, and always about power; it was about who got to define the theology, and how they got to do it. Now, the Reformation is often cast in the guise of power, of the Catholic hierarchy rejecting the "heresy" of Martin Luther and threatening his life, all of which happened. But Lord Acton's famous maxim, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," was made in response to Pope Pius IX's promulgation of the doctrine of papal infallibility, and many of the issues of power and theology we grapple with today are not the age old questions of the medieval church, but problems raised by post-Enlightenment understandings of secular and ecclesial authority. (The promulgation of the doctrine of papal infallibility, by the way, led to a split in the Roman Catholic church; I have met a priest of the "Old Catholic" church, which continues, albeit under the perception of most laypeople, to this day). Let us make it a maxim, in fact: Schisms arise from disagreements over power, not theology. Theology, after all, we can argue about. Power is not asserted by argument; and there can't be any real question which we take more seriously. After all, if theology was our primary concern, we'd have all followed the example of the Desert Fathers centuries ago.

But today; does anybody really care what denomination you are? The church judicatories do; take it from a minister, no one takes denominational identity more seriously than those whose paycheck depends on that identity. But do the laypeople care that much? They used to; they certainly used to. But ask a layperson the primary differences between a Presbyterian and a Cumberlan Presbyterian, or between a Southern Baptist and an American Baptist, or even between a Methodist and a Lutheran; see if even members of those churches can give you more than a shrug and can explain their choice of church based on more than habit or preference for the pastor or the people who gather in that building.
Does this matter? Not really; I certainly don't think it does. I'm much more concerned with the pilgrim's journey than with the finer points of the doctrine which guides that journey. Do we still push each other off the bridge depending on whether our church found the truth in 1879 or 1917? Do we even know the difference anymore? We used to; but we don't now.

So efforts at schism, at destruction and reformation and re-creation, are failing. Denominational identity is not the issue it used to be. Denominational identity is simply not the part of our social makeup that it used to be. That's part of it; the other part is, the entire issue of homosexuality is out in public now, and no rain of fire has fallen from the heavens, no collapse in civic standards has occurred; no doom has befallen us. Too many families have gay or lesbian children, and they refuse to reject those children, they are relieved, in fact, to be able to openly embrace them. Combine those two, and the screeching about the ordination of Gene Robinson and the demands for "purity" and "tradition" simply fall on deaf ears. People are not seeking a spiritual guidance and companions on the pilgrimage based on the narrower points of their denomination's doctrine. They are not so concerned with whom they associate with, not on that subject. The subject itself has simply stopped being that central to them. It is a fine wedge issue; it can still be wielded as an instrument of power in some places, as it has been used in Nigeria against Davis Mac-Iyalla; as it is being wielded against Archbishop Williams and the Primates of the Anglican Communion. It is not getting traction with the laity of The Episcopal Church, however; and I seriously doubt it will. I think the worst is over, and in this post-Christendom age the rage that was meant to divide the Church, if not destroy it, is already running out. Homosexuality was, itself, once an issue of identity. Accusing a boy of being a "faggot" made a fine school-yard taunt when I was young, mostly because we didn't really know what it meant. Now we do; we all do, and my high school student daughter accepts her friends who identify as gay or bi-sexual with an interest only in their personalities, not their sexuality. That is the future, at least in America, and it is the future for denominations like The Episcopal Church. I'm sure my daughter will always identify herself with her friends and her family long before she identifies herself with her church; which means both she and her church will benefit. Some people want to continue the divisiveness and schism that permeated Protestantism for centuries. The rest of us, however, left that behind in the 19th century, or at the latest in the early 20th century. God is about to do a new thing; can you not perceive it?

And that new thing means God is in charge, not us. Some of us like that; some of us don't. Same as it ever was. It's still the same old story; not a fight for love and glory, but a struggle to acknowledge God is sovereign, to figure out just what that means. "The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife sown in the sod." Thanks be to God, who gives us strength for the struggle.

The End of Christendom?

And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads,
And no man knows or cares who is his neighbour
Unless his neighbour makes too much disturbance,
But all dash to and fro in motor cars,
Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere--T.S. Eliot

Eliot captured the post-war situation with astonishing prescience. The shift from close community to scattered was already underway by World War II. After that war it caught on in a newly prosperous America with a vengeance. And it dispersed not just communities, but families; which meant it dispersed churches.

It didn't seem so at first. Church attendance in America following World War II set record highs. The percentage of the population which attended church rose to levels literally never seen before in America. It's popularly considered that the levels simply went back up to what they had been in some near, or distant, past. But studies showed the church attendance was actually higher, and has never been remarkably high in America.

And now, as Juan Cole (who is, for my purposes, simply a convenient source for numbers on this) points out, the number of people who even consider themselves Christian in America, is on the decline. Far from being the dominant religion in society, Christianity is on the way to being marginalized. Although it is still a long way from that problem. Still, it is no longer a "Protestant" culture; and that is the issue.

Protestantism, far more than Roman Catholicism, depended on the culture for its identity. Luther's reforms caught the fancy of German princes feeling their power and a new sense of inependence. As Protestantism spread, it took on the aspects of the culture it spread too: "dour" Scots took to Calvinistic Presbyterianism, while Norwegians and Swedes took to Lutheranism. A broad brush view, to be sure, but the essentials of each culture shaped the church it took on and made its own. Thus we had "Christendom," as criticized by Soren Kierkegaard; where one is simply born into a church, and no spiritual, or indeed even religious, conviction seems necessary.

And it wasn't, because the culture held the church together. But when that culture changes, when the homogeneity of the neighborhood and the community is changed, what then? When not everyone goes to church at the same hour on Sunday morning, and some don't go to church at all, and children gain more and more independence, the culture tha buttressed the church is no longer able to hold things together.

Social Security made some of this change possible in our day; but even the concept of "teenager" played a role. Look back in literature, and try to find the idea of "teenagers" anywhere in, say, the 19th century. A period for huge novels of sweeping scope encompassing persons in all walks of life and all ages from birth to death; and yet where does one find the modern-day "teenager"? The first reference to it I can actually think of is J.R.R. Tolkien's Frodo Baggins, who is said to be in his "tweens." And that's from a mid-20th century fantasy tale. The idea was current enough, and prevalent enough, for Tolkien to include it, if only as a sly joke, but a distinctive age of development between childhood and adulthood, is a fairly recent phenomenon. And it brought with it a new sense of autonomy; one reinforced by the changes in technology Eliot identified as so crucial.

"Teenagers" became, in the 20th century, quasi-adults. They were expected to work outside the home, to hold jobs, perhaps even to drive, if not own, a car. And that made all the difference. The family unit that travelled together on Sunday morning, could suddenly split up; physically and socially, children could claim autonomy from their parents. So at one end, the pool to draw from began to shrink; at the other end, it began to grow. And the result was the younger members of the church felt less and less inclined to participate in the life of the church, a church which suddenly found it could not change with the culture. The church could not change, because it could not adjust as rapidly to the idea that "young people" should have a voice in church affairs. As the young grew more "rebellious," or simply independent, their parents grew less inclined to release any authority to them. With their new autonom, then, they just left. They abandoned church altogether.

And when they returned, often as adults with children, they returned to the church they had left as teenagers, with the same people still firmly in charge, because the generations started living longer and longer; and never gave up their reluctance to let go of church power. But the reluctance was not just a hunger for power; it was a sense of loss, too. The culture that had supported the Protestant church for so long, was gone. Gone were the blue laws that kept stores closed on Sunday; gone for were 40 hour work weeks that left spare time for church softball teams and Wednesday night activities, and leisurely Sunday afternoons. Gone, too, was the notion that church was important simply because it was important, or because of some social (or even religious, though rarely) duty. Gone from the world, but not necessarily from the church.

And so churches adapted: either they became "contemporary" in their worship, and tried to compete with the entertainment industry the Baby Boomers had grown up with (and made possible), or they withdrew into a shell of amber, preserving "the best" of their "traditions." Except those "traditions" were often the preferences and peculiarities of a particular congregation, until "We have always done it this way!" became the only reason for keeping the church open at all.

In other words, the churches segregated along generational lines, and the generations became almost incomprehensible to each other.

These are generalizations, of course, and broad ones at that; but this is why "mega-churches" are always Protestant, and always non-denominational (or at least very congregational, that most Protestant of Protestant church forms) de facto if not de jure. The "mega-church" is a perfect reflection of modern American culture: it is loud, it is popular, and it is aimed at an audience. It's another roadside attraction, promising not so much salvation as entertainment, not so much meaning as simply belonging. And thriving not so much on what it provides, as what it promises to provide: mega-churches rise and fall on personality (the man, invariably, in the pulpit), and advertising. One of the largest and most popular here in Houston (its pastor has a best-selling book out, no less), exhibits billboards which proclaim: "We Believe in You!" Which even a militant atheist has to admit, has precious little to do with Christianity. Yet this mega-church claims to be a Christian church. Clearly is it Christianity that is being marginalized; but from the outside, the mega-church resembles our collective vision of the Church Triumphant.

Which is what most Americans of a certain generation remember: the Church Triumphant, the world after WWII when all Americans attended the (Protestant) church of their choice. And as the culture changed, that church was supposed to remain in place. But it couldn't; its culture, was the world's culture. Inexorably, the two were drawn apart, until now, they are barely on speaking terms.

This is the fate of "Christendom," which is not necessarily the fate of the Church.

"Should I lead? Should I follow? Won't you say, 'Come with Me?' "

Coming back to this topic:

RMJ,
To what extent do you think this hunt for "leaders"--faces for the movement--a function of discomfort with the largely devolved power structure of low-church Protestantism? (Sorry, ducking, but you know what I mean.) You want to find the head of the Catholic Church or the Episcipal Church, you look it up and find them. It's my understanding that contemporary evangelical Christianity is simply not organized that way. Or do I have that wrong?
NYMary

There is a lot of insight here, that I've considered myself as I move from a congregationally based polity to an episcopalian polity. And I've decided a great deal of this has to do with culture, and with what I've called here, before, "Christendom."

My reference for that term has come largely from Soren Kierkegaard's Attack Upon 'Christendom,' an "attack" most Americans misunderstand because we have no experience with a state church, as the Danish church was in the mid 19th century. In Europe church and state provided the culture into which individuals were born and in which they grew up. The same culture prevailed when the Puritans left England and established governments in the "New World." That culture finally started to fall under the twin pressures of the Enligthenment and the efforts of Thomas Jefferson, and no one rejoiced in it more loudly than the Baptists, who had been persecuted in England for their refusal to "pledge allegiance" to the Church of England, and so the state for which it stood, which prompted, understandably, no small amount of suspicion about them and other "non-conformists."

Now consider the situation today. The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest gathering of Baptists in the world, claiming a membership of 16 million, split a few years ago over the issue of authority. Baptists were famously congregational in polity. Each church affiliated with the Convention sent "travelers" to a meeting of all the congregations, but that meeting was never permitted to speak for the congregations. The United Church of Christ, being a merger of the episcopalian Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Church, follows a similar practice at its biannual General Synod. In the UCC, General Synod speaks for: General Synod. The local church is, by the Constitution of the UCC, autonomous and can agree with Synod's resolutions, or reject them outright. Much the same practice held for the Southern Baptist Convention, until it was decided that it should not hold.

It was, in short, a question of leadership, a question of who speaks for the Southern Baptist Convention. This lead to a split in the Convention, with a number of churches in Texas reportedly leaving the SBC, and with the SBC trying twice to exert control over Baylor University in Waco, attempts that failed largely because Baylor's charter pre-dated the SBC by several decades. "Herding cats" was the non-Texan way of describing trying to get Baptists to follow a single leader, until some in the SBC decided a leader was precisely what most Baptists needed.

Why did this happen? I think one reason is cultural. As Christendom, a sort of cultural assumption in America that we are all Christian, that despite our differences we all go to church on Sunday morning, began to dissolve in the face of reality, the cultural underpinnings that held churches together began to dissolve, too. Now, there are several ironies here, all related to the basic ahistorical nature of American culture.

1) Church attendance was never very high in American history. I don't have the statistics readily at hand, but at the time of the American Revolution I think roughly 20% of the colonists attended a church regularly, and the number never really went up much beyond that. The cantankerous, non-church going father of "Spencer's Mountain" (by the same guy who wrote "The Waltons") was a typical, not a-typical, American.

2) World War II changed all that. Literally. Sociologists and church leaders agree that church attendance spiked after World War II, for a complex series of reasons. Baby boomers like your host grew up in that "boom," and took it for the norm. It wasn't; it was the aberration.

3) A third sign of the aberration of WWII: American flags in church. I used to have a photograph of the "historic chapel" of the church I last pastored. The chapel was built in the mid-19th century, a clapboard structure that was used for worship until the 1960's, when a large stone sanctuary was built to house the 300+ members who poured into the area as employees of oil companies came to Houston and settled on what was then the outskirts of town (and is now a densely urban area with no sign of the farms that were here as late as the 1960's). The picture showed the chapel adorned for Easter Sunday. Notably missing from the adornments is an American flag.

The sanctuary had one, however, and every Scout Sunday the service was opened with a pledge of allegiance to that flag, as it was brought in by a processional, much as the cross is processed in every Sunday morning in the Episcopal church I now attend. A German pastor visited my church, and asked about that flag. She was my age, and so grew up after Nazi Germany, but still the overt sign of nationalism in a house of worship made her very uncomfortable. And hers was a church supported by the German church tax. She and I saw that flag as a symbol of nationalism, but her host on her tour, a veteran of WWII, saw it as a memorial to those who had died in that war, and subsequent wars.

I don't think any American saw the flag as that kind of symbol before WWII.

Anecdotal evidence at best, of course, but I think it is true that, before Pearl Harbor, America was still a collection of states which looked upon Washington, D.C. as a necessary evil, and called upon it only when disaster overwhelmed the states (as when Herbert Hoover helped Louisiana recover from the flood of 1929). The assault on Hawaii, however, was an assault on the nation, and thereafter the disparate states had to think of themselves as one country. It was a question of leadership.

Since World War II we have thought of ourselves, more and more, as a federal nation first, a collection of states, second. But simultaneous with that, we thought of ourselves as largely white and Protestant Christian. And yet it has become clearer and clearer that, even as the political identity gains strength, the cultural identity diminishes. We are not largely "white," and we are not largely Christian; Protestant, or otherwise.

The assumption that we were all alike, in other words, held the Protestant churches together. Most congregation members by my childhood were hard pressed to identify the significant differences between Presbyterians and Methodists and Congregationalists, or the different flavors of Baptist. Lutherans and Episcopalians were distinctive if only for their basically liturgical worship, which most Protestants would have understood as "Catholic." Those denominations which once gave their communities identity lost that importance, especially as the denominations became less episcopal in structure (moving from Methodist to Presbyterian to Baptist). But what held those less structured denominations together was a common culture, a set of assumptions that everyone lived by.

Until they didn't, anymore.

Church is no longer reserved to Sunday morning at 11 a.m. Church is no longer held automatically on Sunday, even when Sunday is Christmas Day. Church services are no longer held in quasi-Gothic structures, with hardwood pews and music provided only by pipe organs, and pastors wearing robes and standing behind pulpits, and even every pastor preaching a variation on the doctrine of sin. People no longer even need go to church, or be a member of a church, to consider themselves Christian. Indeed, Sunday is no longer a sacrosanct day upon which all stores must be closed, all forms of entertainment forced to "rest" on "our" Sabbath (which was never on Saturday).

Without the culture acknowledging the leadership of the church in such matters, and without church being an important part of one's social life, even in small towns (where it helps, but hardly has the effect it once did), the church faces a serious question its own existence, its own leadership. And so the church finds itself in the situation Antonio Gramsci described:

"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appears."

Looking Backwards

I feel painfully ignorant to have been so unaware of the photography of Sally Mann.  Her traveling exhibit, "A Thousand Crossings," is in the MFAH just now; I got to see it last Sunday.  Most striking to me, aside from the photographs of her family, were the photographs of country churches.

I have to admit the arrangement in the exhibit of these photos was disappointing.  They were usually 8 x 10's, or about that size, but clustered in groups of four on the walls.  There was a film where the discussed her work with various people, and the pictures in the film were much larger, more distinct, even more compelling.  Photography is that way, unlike any other visual form of fixed image:  size can matter a great deal, and vary from reproduction to reproduction.  The church pictures would have benefited from the larger scale afforded some of the other photos.

But that's not the point; the point is how evocative these images were.  In the film, an historian explains that some of the spaces where the churches stand were places where slaves retreated:  into the woods, where they could sing and preach and pray and not be overheard, not be punished for violating "the rules."  There is a term for such places, now; unfortunately I can't remember it.  But "holy ground" would not be wrong; and on those grounds emancipated slaves, free to at least build churches, put their places of worship.  Not on roads to anywhere (Ms. Mann talks about finding these churches, not driving past them on even the remotest of back roads), and sometimes not feeding the life of the community anymore (many of them are abandoned, though that's not entirely obvious from the pictures).

They made me think of the church then, and the church now.  That latest craze in Houston seems to be for a church to own a strip center, in which it places (or removes; I've seen both happen) a building for church activities, among retail stores and restaurants.  The point is partly to prove the church is so full it needs outbuildings for its people (and when they quietly withdraw and return those buildings to retail use....?).  It is also, of course, to provide the churches a source of income, as landlords.  I wonder about the legal arrangements there, to be honest, as a church is not a partnership, and members are not shareholders; but so it goes.  Churches must have large attendance (a charismatic preacher is a necessity), lots of big buildings and amenities (one of the largest Baptist churches in town just sent out fliers to whole neighborhoods apparently within driving distance, which means miles away in my case, advertising their new coffee shop and bookstore facilities, just outside the main worship space.  Apparently attending church is now a social event equivalent to going to the theater; there's so much more to do than just get there in time for the show, and get back home again!).  And then there are the small churches, which seem more and more like soon-to-be abandoned buildings.

The church I served (and failed?  Let's be honest in our assessments, not belligerent) had an "historic chapel" as small, or smaller, than those pictured.  It was empty most of the time I was there; we used a much larger worship space, one designed to hold 300 people, built in the church's heyday.  That days is gone, now.  The congregation left there now worships in the chapel; another UCC church, a 'gay' church (the irony is the church, after my departure, blew up over a call issued to a lesbian pastor.  I'm not sure which was harder for them:  that she was gay, or that she was a woman), uses te chapel.  Whether they fill it, or simply occupy a pew or two, at best, in it, I cannot say.  But buildings reflect who the church is, and what purpose it serves; and the grand building with the tall steeple (the roof on the larger building at my former church would cost probably half the church's budget back when they had a full-time pastor, to replace.  Unaffordable, in other words; and now they can't afford a full-time pastor, either.) is the sine qua non of a church building.  When maybe our model should be the old, small building of Ms. Mann's photographs.

My grandparents went to church buildings like these.  Small, simple affairs with only pews to distinguish them as as churches.  My fondest memories of church come from such buildings; not because of the buildings, but because of the people within them.  These churches didn't demand much of their people, didn't create burdens to weigh them down (my former church had people in it who recalled the church splitting over the issue of carpeting the large sanctuary space; some wanted to spend the money, some didn't.  Parting easily two who were never joined, I guess; but I've seen that story play out in churches before.  My grandparent's church never had carpeting.  I suppose there's a small lesson in that.)

Architecture will not solve the church's problems today (and I mourn for the apparent loss of Notre Dame, even as I recognize all things must pass).

The moment #NotreDame’s spire fell pic.twitter.com/XUcr6Iob0b

— Patrick Galey (@patrickgaley) April 15, 2019

But the poet once called for "new styles of architecture, a change of heart."  And the simplicity of the old churches reflects a simplicity of purpose our churches could, and should, aspire to.

This @AFP photo, with ravens flying above the burning Notre Dame feels like the end of the world pic.twitter.com/BwM8cl4SCz

— Roland Scahill (@rolandscahill) April 15, 2019

Notre Dame looms large in our consciousness because of Victor Hugo; not because of the significance of the building.  I must admit I'm glad I got to see it, and I'm sorry my wife and daughter may never have the chance to, now.  But Notre Dame was not an important worship space to most those mourning.  Reports are the Church has been pleading for funds to renovate it, a cost beyond the means of the local parish.  Apparently the fire was sparked by renovation work, which is even sadder.  At one end of the spectrum, then, we have a building of world cultural significance largely because of the work of a world-important author; at the other end, empty and unknown church buildings remembered only because a photographer worked them into a traveling exhibit of artworks.  The connection of art and the spiritual is not to be ignored here.  The extent to which art and religion make us human, should not be denied.  And Notre Dame is undeniably a culturally significant building; but is it spiritually important?  If it is, may it be recovered for those who need it.  That is the lesson I take from these photographs (of which I've only found two on-line to share with you).  That we must take what we need from the past, and establish our future in the present.  Should our future be the recover of grand cathedrals, in the image of steeple-topped buildings with shopping centers held as church property nearby?  Or should we take a lesson from these simple church buildings, once as important to their communities as the cathedrals or Europe were in their day.  The former were never cultural icons, but they point to the importance of church as an institution, perhaps to church as a place to go.

We've lost a lot of the sense of that:  "church as a place to go."  Perhaps we can recover it not by modeling our churches on the business of the world, but by recalling our churches as responses to simple human need.  My church in seminary had a bell tower with two bells:  once for calling people to worship (an ancient use, going back to the days when Notre Dame was being built), the other for funerals:  a clappered bell which was exactly right for starting the service.  It was a country church; bells mean quite a bit less in a city full of cars roaring by on ribbon roads.  But it still expressed a human need, for those who were there.  Perhaps the human need should be recovered from the consumer need, from the commercial need, even from the cultural need.  Perhaps we should consider the church as a place of simplicity, of humanity, even of recovery.

That's what people are mourning as they watch Notre Dame in flames.  Notre Dame was a connection to the past, even if that past owed more to Hugo's Romanticism than to history.  The past is something we need to constantly recover; that, too, is a human necessity, like art, like religion.  In fact we prefer our art to be old rather than modern, historical rather than au courant.  We need to constantly recover what it means to be human, to know the answer for the first time.

Seduced by a conversion to prosperity

We young pastors (and I use the term "young" to refer to church leadership experience as opposed to chronological age!)have a special term we use when we enter into service at a new church which has "Purpose Driven" itself into an identity crisis. We called it "getting Warrened," and see our most immediate and important task as one of reminding the congregation that they are Methodists.

Now, I don't particularly have a "theological hard-on" about Rick Warren and his Saddleback empire, and I can't speak particularly to the "Purpose Driven Church"'s relevancy to other Christian traditions. I do, however, find much of the theology within these books and programs to be somewhat antithetical to Wesleyan theology and practice. And, I have to admit, I was not surprised at any of this (Much of my current interest in Warren's empire was stimulated by this, which I will probably comment on at a later time when my post would be more coherent than the primal scream that wells up from my soul everytime I read this)

From Moriel Ministries:

Warren's book The Purpose Driven Church and the related publications of Saddleback's literature ministry have influenced tens of thousands more who have never attended any of his seminars. As Warren indicated in a closing prayer, the impact of the Saddleback experience is extensive, to say the least: "Thank you that there is a movement, a stealth movement, that's flying beneath the radar, that's changing literally hundreds, even thousands of churches around the world."

What is being changed? Well...

A spirit of compromise must prevail in the church that is to experience dynamic growth. The embrace of contemporary culture and style will most assuredly set the desired mood that totally opposes the Biblical mandate to earnestly contend for the faith and separate from error. What works, what is least offensive and what is positive and uplifting is what should define the ministry, according to Warren. The church leaders who are interested in dynamic growth must embrace the attitude that says, "Don't try to tell me the Bible requires holiness and a style for worship and ministry that is different from that of the world." This "grace-in-your-face" attitude is so prevalent today because of church elders who are not willing, or not aware of how, to instruct ones to behave in the house of God (1 Tim. 3:15).

It is interesting to note, if you haven't followed the link, that Moriel Ministries is an unappologetic "solid, Bible-believing, Bible-preaching, separated and militantly fundamental church." In fact,

mainline denominational churches or middle-of-the-road evangelical churches...are already committed to a course of compromise. It is not surprising that the vast majority of liberal and New Evangelical churches today readily fall for the superchurch growth strategy, for they vehemently reject Bible separation and have long since adopted theologies and ministries that do not insist upon contending for the Faith or for the inerrancy of Scripture.

He has something of a point in his assertion that the "Purpose Driven Church" Saddleback strategy may appeal to some in denominations that look at their falling membership and seek a handy boxed solution. I see it in Methodist churches in my neck of the woods which utilize some of the materials for study groups and church "visioning" exercises. The reason this does not worry me too much is that once the studies and "visioning" are complete, it seldom goes any further. Some small groups are formed that may continue on, usually struggling when they have to cast around to find the real "purpose" of the group once the study is complete. Occasionally, the impetus continues in relatively healthy ways and community bonds are strengthened, but all those other "strategies" for church growth are never seen as very practical, or even as something most members would like to see happen in their church.

However, I have had an experience that concerns me very much. During my internship, that time when I was supopsed to study and experience all aspect of parish ministry, I confessed to my mentor pastor that I was very weak in Evangelism and scarcely knew how to define it in a manner that made it relevant for my understanding of being in ministry to others. Frankly, I hated the whole concept. She very helpfully shared her understanding of evangelism, which was "Sharing the gospel by living it in every circumstance and every opportunity." She also suggested that I make an appointment with the professor of Evangelism at my seminary. Dr. J. was very helpful in explaining various theories of evangelism and rather gracious about it, considering that I hadn't deigned to take his class. I appreciated the basics, but wanted to know more about practical evangelism. He immediately whipped out a book that went into raptures about Rick Warren and the Saddleback Community Church, particularly the assessment of "Saddleback Sam," the target of evangelism efforts. I was appalled, quite frankly. My response, something to effect that it seemed very condescending and anti-Wesleyan, pretty much shut down the conversation from that point on. His parting comment: "Our church is going to die if we do not become successful in sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ."

Dr. J. was recently ordained a bishop.

Does "success" mean butts in the pews at the expense of commitment to discipleship? I feel quite certain that Dr. J. would not agree with this sentiment. In addition to being a noted scholar in the field of evangelism, he is also a Wesleyan scholar. Nevertheless, he opined at that time that there was much fruit in Warren's tree. I did not agree then that Warren's model of church was at all Wesleyan and I agree even less now. It is about being seduced by a conversion to prosperity.

Perhaps, it is the sense that Methodism has lost its frontier urgency that drove it to such prominence in America during the 19th century that makes Warren's methods appealing to Dr. J. There is certainly a sense in the church now that the UMC is deeply in need of spiritual renewal. I do not disagree with this and think that this would likely apply across the board with mainline Protestant denominations. There is, without a doubt, a creeping sense of calcification in the church as a whole, and, more particularly, in the individual churches. I've often joked that every Methodist Church should have a banner hanging in the narthex proclaiming "We've always done it this way!" Far more that "Open hearts, open minds, open doors" THIS is the motto that resonates at the local church level.

There's nothing new here. We've been there before. When John Wesley was 83, he undertook his last, arduous circuit around all the Methodist societies and chapels in England, Ireland, and the Channel Isles. He discovered that the people had cooled off a bit. They had succumbed to what Max Weber refers to as a "routinization of the Spirit" and had lost that sense of being driven by grace and, indeed, were experiencing a crisis of grace. Why had this happened? That "grand poison of souls" had taken its toll-"the increase in goods," "the love of the world," "the taking pleasure in the praise of men," "laying up treasures on earth." (James C. Logan, "After Wesley: The Middle Period (1791-1849)." Grace Upon Grace: Essays in Honor of Thomas A. Langford.) As I referenced in my title: "seduced by a conversion to prosperity."

The more successful the people called Methodists were in their personal lives, the less successful was the church. How does "butts in the pews" address the issues facing all mainline Protestant denominations: Identity-Who are we called to be as church? Purpose-What are we called to do as church? Praxis-How do we do it? The Church in general, and the Methodist Church in particular for me, must struggle with these issues every generation. We are not called to preserve the Methodist Church, but "to produce people who live by grace and manifest such living as a life of love for God and neighbor." (Logan) How is this accomplished by:

A contemporary-styled "Seeker Service" aimed at drawing in the unsaved and the unchurched from the community must replace the traditional Sunday worship service. To do this successfully, the church service must be non-threatening, familiar and comfortable to the "seeker" (the unsaved visitor).
The dress must be casual. The typical "Saddleback Sam" (a researched composite of the unchurched yuppie commonly found in Saddleback Church's surrounding community) dresses up for work all week, and he wants to "dress down" on the weekends. (As we shall see throughout this article, Saddleback Sam's likes and dislikes are what determine the style of the church service.) Attendees and church staff alike shun any ties, suits and dresses. Warren, dressed in a casual shirt, khakis and loafers told his seminar audience, "Get comfortable. This is as dressed up as I get in this church. My idea of winter is I put on socks, and obviously I don't think it's winter yet."
The music must be contemporary. Not only must the lyrics of the music be more recent, but the style of music should be that which the unsaved hears on a daily basis. The entertainment composite of the Saddleback sound system, band, singers and presentation would rival that of any secular rock concert. Warren stated that one of the first things a church should do is "replace the organ with a band." But he went on to say that if a band was not feasible, then at least a church could purchase a keyboard that will incorporate midi disks in order to give the sound of a band. Furthermore, the purpose of the church choir should be "backing up the soloist. That's the 90's way to use a choir rather than just having them sing."
The message must be only positive. We consider this to be the most flagrant flaw. Yes, the saved and unsaved alike can feel better about themselves after a message that often mixes psychology and an uplifting Scripture text. Such topics as dealing with guilt, self-esteem, interpersonal relationships, mood enhancement or motivation for success will encourage the worldly, weary individual. But what is God's command to the faithful undershepherd of the flock? Far, far different.
The ministries of the church must be geared to meeting the needs and special interests of the thousands who attend. Support groups for depression, eating disorders, infertility, family and friends of homosexuals, post abortion, and separated men and women were abundant. Many ministries were intended to bring together ones with similar business or professional interests, common recreational interests and so on. We could not find one single ministry listed in Saddleback Community Church's bulletin that involved the taking the Gospel message out to the lost in the community. In fact, Warren scoffed at the idea of passing out tracts or going door-to-door since "Saddleback Sam" is offended by such old-fashion, out-moded forms of evangelism.
Doctrinal instruction is not given to the church as a whole on the Lord's Day. Despite the fact that the early church clearly sets forth the example that doctrine is to be taught on Sunday to all the church body, at Saddleback, doctrine is only taught to sub-groups of the congregation apart from the regular church services. Warren emphasized Saddleback's strategy of moving new members "around the bases" by having interested Christians take special classes to prepare them for service. Although Bible study groups also meet together, our question is this: Why is not the pulpit used to proclaim the "whole counsel of God" to the whole congregation assembled before it on the Lord's Day (Acts 20:20-31)? Why make serious, systematic Bible instruction an option, heard only by the relatively few in the crowd who desire to "round the next base"? The whole counsel of God is to be proclaimed, to all seated before the pulpit, all the time!

Yes, we are losing members. We are also gaining members through baptism, confirmation, transfer from other Methodist churches, transfer from other denominations, and by profession of faith. We are gaining members who are moved by grace to be there, to participate in the means of grace with this family of God, to grow in grace and faith in discipleship with us.

It's too bad we're not successful. That's what happens when you avoid being seduced by a conversion to prosperity. I think I'd rather stick to a conversion "by grace and grace alone."

The Death Of The High Hope

When I was a kid, you were expected to be in church.

All of my friends went to church (not necessarily the one I attended).  All of my parents' friends went to church; as did their kids.  Sunday School was an obligation no one backed out on, even when we were young adolescents with big mouths and gave the teacher lip because we could get away with it.  Church was very much a social thing (covered dish suppers, Christmas Eve services, Maundy Thursday services, even Sunday evening prayer services for awhile), and a service thing (collecting clothes for the poor, delivering Christmas gifts to "needy" families, etc.).

By the time my daughter came along and I was no longer pastoring a church, the church we attended then (Episcopalian) barely had any people my daughter’s age in Sunday school (one; maybe two; seldom that many) and nobody felt the pressure to bring their kids to school. Du muss gehen!, was the German phrase I learned from my German congregants in my small UCC churches (one member remembered going to school to learn English, because German was spoken exclusively at home).  The pastor was Herr Pastor and du muss gehen!, i.e., you must go...to church.

Honestly, that was already fading when I was going to church.  

On the other hand, church was the place where I could be an "adult" long before I could vote.  I was 16 when the 26th Amendment was ratified.  I'd been voting in my church on matters of governance and who would be the deacons and elders (very Presbyterian!) for 2 years by then.  Not that the "youth vote" swamped the votes of my parent's generation.  But there was reason to believe we'd be the "leaders" of the church, or at least respected voices, by the time we were of college graduate age.

My first church as a pastor came to me when I was 42.  I was considered "young" by the majority of the members (one told me so directly, although as he put it, he wondered what someone "so young" could teach him (he was nearly twice my age at the time), and was pleasantly surprised to learn I could be his pastor.  His was a minority opinion.).  Very few people in that church were my age, or near to it.

This was a dramatic shift from the UCC church I'd joined in Austin, where much of the membership was closer to my age, or the older members were well disposed toward letting the "younger" ones (in our '30's) take responsibility for the church.  In the two churches I pastored after leaving Austin for seminary, the elderly (70+, to be clear) made it clear who was in charge and who was listened to.

Which, I soon realized, was a primary reason there were so few "young people" in the church.  Du muss gehen was long gone, and being told, effectively, that no one was interested in your opinion, drove them away, pretty much in the 15-29 cohort.  Why stay where you're not really wanted?

I should point out both of those churches were small (75 on a Sunday would have been a crowd), and both are gone now.  Defunct.  Collapsed under their own aging demographics.  One, so far as I can tell, simply shuttered the place.  The other still functions, but as a "gay" church.  It leased out its building to that church, then quietly joined forces a few years later as it became clear they literally weren't getting any younger.

Which is where I point out the largest church in the UCC, at one time anyway, was pastored by Jeremiah Wright, which is what drew Barack Obama there back in the day.  And one of the largest now is a "gay" church in Dallas, which grew precisely because it offered "open and affirming" (the denomination's term, which I prefer, too) fellowship in a time several years before Obergefell.

I mention all of this because of this:

Some, building on the work of the late sociologist Rodney Stark, have argued it’s caused by denominations growing more liberal. According to this argument, if a church emphasizes all the same issues and concerns as left-leaning political activists, then there’s no reason to do the extra work of belonging to a church. They point to shrinking mainline churches. The United Church of Christ, the first mainline denomination to embrace same-sex marriage, lost more than 40 percent of its members in the 17 years after that decision, for example.

Christianity Today has a bit of a dog in this fight, because it's a very conservative religious publication, not to be confused with Christian Century, which was once "mainstream" but is now more "liberal."  As was the UCC, actually.  And I can tell you from personal experience that there isn't even a correlation between the UCC embracing same-sex marriage and losing 40% of its members over 17 years after that.  Most church members I knew had no idea that was the church's position on the matter.  Communication between congregation and national was that bad.  This was a matter of polity: the UCC blended a very Lutheran denomination with a Congregational one.  Think Puritans joining hands with Episcopalians (because I don't want to spend much time explaining the structures of the Lutheran church.  Close enough is good enough.).  The German (Lutheran) side was used to doing things in a denominational way; the congregational side was used to being very, very loosely affiliated with other congregations (the SBC is congregational in polity, but probably still more top-down than the UCC is).  There was a lot the national church emphasized that the local churches blithely ignored.  Politics didn't cause the decline in the UCC; demographics and societal shifts did.

For reasons I can't explain without a great deal of sociological data, more conservative churches tended to be more demanding that their children go to church, and the culture of those churches held families in church together more tightly than the more "liberal" denominations.  That, I think, is the better explanation for the decline in "mainline" denominations (decline in membership, I mean), than anything cooked up by Rodney Stark or Max Weber (who is responsible for the laughable notion that industrialized societies, being better educated too, soon turn their back on "childish" things like religious belief). It’s simple demographics and a changing society where church attendance is no longer seen as a social requirement; or necessarily even a social good.

When I was in public school, Sundays were sacrosanct.  We had a Jewish synagogue in town, but it never occurred to anyone that observant Jews might want to observe the Sabbath (our Saturday) and so shop on Sunday.  Too bad, because everything was closed on Sunday. Blue laws made sure of that because, did I mention, non-Christians didn’t count. I remember the minor rumbling when a new grocery store moved to town and opened on Sunday.  Sunday was the day for church, football games in the afternoon, or naps by adults.  My wife and I both remember the long, dull Sunday afternoons when there was nothing to do until primetime TeeVee in the evening, at which point her mother would take them back to church (she was raising four children after her husband's untimely death; she needed all the help she could get).  Sundays were set aside for church and almost nothing else.  We weren't quite observant Jews honoring the Sabbath, but we almost could have been.

When my daughter was in school, extracurricular activities were regularly scheduled as early as 8 in the morning on Sundays, and ran all day.  Soccer games and baseball games and field hockey games and what-have-you, were conducted all weekend long, and no day was set aside for anything more important than that. Weekends were for all the organized sports that couldn’t fit after school in the week. 

Which is yet another reason young people left church early.  They never really attended.  Stores, of course, are open 7 days a week; odd is the store that isn't.  Church is just one more thing to schedule in an over-scheduled life.  I remember, as a young married adult who hadn't yet gone back to church, luxuriating on Sunday morning because I could buy a copy of the Sunday NYTimes (printed in Austin via satellite!  It was exciting then.) and spend the day reading through it and the Magazine and just generally not getting dressed until...whenever.  I wore a tie back then, 5 days a week.  Sunday, I didn't have to (and never did again once I bought a clerical shirt with a plastic insert for the "dog collar.").

What happened to church?  Society changed, and left it behind.  Once a pillar of society, an institution as important as school and business, it faded into almost insignificance.  Were the '80's a "revival" of Christianity?  Or just the blush on the cheek of a dying age?  I think it's more clearly the latter than the former.

Society left it to the old people, who ran it the way they wanted to because too much of the rest of the world had left them behind.  I remember in my last church hearing grumblings from those old people if the service ran 3 minutes over the hour they alloted to it (my parents were the same way.  A friend's mother died, and we all attended the funeral.  I barely got to speak to my friend afterwards before my parents were demanding I take them home.).  Why, I wondered.  Where do they have to go?  They didn't have busy social lives, business lives, children to cart to soccer games, events to attend.  They were just going to go home.

And they didn't want their routine disrupted.  Not by a service that didn't end "on time," and not by new members who might impose new social, or other, burdens on them.  And certainly not by "young people" (i.e., me, already by that time in my mid-40's) bringing in any "new" ideas.

Old age; changing social standards; the decline of the church as an authority in society.

None of that excludes the "conservative" denominations.  It's catching up with them, now.  Christmas is on Sunday again this year.  How many "conservative" Protestant churches will be open for worship to observe the "holy day"?  Next to none, I'm guessing. Christmas is about family, not Christ.  Put the "Christ" back in Xmas ("Xmas" is a term created by Christians; or Xians, if you prefer.  They saw it as the "chi" from the Greek, first letter in the Greek "Christos," not the "X" from our alphabet.  So it goes.), but put him back on Christmas Eve.  Leave Christmas morning to Santa Claus.

And some young people are loudly leaving because of the destructive politics which went so far as to "anoint" Donald Trump the new David (David was a sinner, but at least he worshipped God.  Trump?  Trump only worships Trump.)  The pastor of the largest Baptist church here in Houston got himself into some mildly warm water just two weeks ago by preaching about how his congregants should vote out all the Democrats because...well, because he doesn't like them, essentially.  This led to the NextDoor discussion I've written about before, because someone posted a link to his next sermon, on the evils of CRT, and several critics of the erstwhile pastor jumped on him with hobnail boots for his previous sermon, as well as the foolishness of this one.  I'd say the critics were stronger and more vocal than the supporters, but what does that matter? I'll also point out that pastor is an old guy (older than me); and there are rumors his "mega-church," like all of them do, is beginning to leak members faster than it can replace them.  That may well be the reason why he's gone "political."  He's trying, I suspect, to stay "relevant."  But in a very blue Texas county, I doubt his outreach efforts are going to bear very much fruit.

Certainly all the attention hasn't been positive.  His first sermon got him some negative local press, which is where I first heard about it.

The times, they are still a-changin'.

Does this all mean my experiences trump (sorry!) a Pew report?  No. But it's interesting Christianity Today is disturbed by this report.  

As the researchers charted the possible paths for the future, they tried to keep in mind what they didn’t know and the data they didn’t have. Extrapolating from trends doesn’t account for the kind of dramatic events that shape generations.

“It is possible,” the report says, “that events outside the model—such as war, economic depression, climate crisis, changing immigration patterns or religious innovation—could reverse the reverse current religious switching trends.”

Revival could happen. There’s just nothing in the current data that indicates it will

I have to note that "revival" is a very overworked term in American ecclesiological circles.  All our memories are set by the "Great Revival," which really wasn't all that great, or that much of a revival.  It coincided with the rise of the respectability of emotion over reason brought on by the Romantic movement, but it didn’t necessarily herald a moving of the Spirit over the waters of American believers; especially since church membership was down to only 41% of the population by 1906.  Church attendance increased sharply after World War II (most of us Boomers came along then, and took church going for granted.  It hadn't been before that; not society wide).  It peaked in the '80's, and has been in decline ever since.  "Revival" is not the salvation of the institution of the church; it's more like the drug some think we need to just keep going.  Even in my UCC seminary with professors so staid and Midwestern they were almost caricatures, some asked us earnestly if we thought a "revival" was coming.  They could read the sociological studies (and did), and the future was grim.  "Revival" was their only hope.

Don't bet your retirement on it, is all I'm sayin'.

Hearkening back to that discussion about CRT around the sermon by the Second Baptist (Houston) preacher, I note this:

Black Protestant churches were more likely than any other tradition to preach on racism. Both in sermons addressing race and addressing the election, they were also more likely to address voting rights.

Sermons from Black Protestants in the Pew analysis were twice as likely to encouraging voting when talking about the election (43% vs. 20% overall), while evangelicals were more likely than other traditions to speak on issues, candidates, or parties (48%).

“I just see it as a Christian responsibility for us to engage the needs of our communities. It’s always been about the community as a whole. Churches exist to proclaim the name of Jesus to those who are lost and at the same time to leave his imprint in whatever community they end up in,” said Parks. “The Black church has been a beacon of that. If that meant we’re going to rally people to a voting booth, we’re going to do that.”

A lot of people on that NextDoor discussion didn't like the idea of churches getting involved in politics, in large measure because they didn't like that pastor's politics.  I think if I'd dropped these paragraphs into the discussion it would have gone over, as we used to say, like a flash flood in a Fizzies factory (yes, you have to be this old to get that reference.  Google is your friend.  And no, they weren't good; they tasted like shit.  But we were young, what did we know?).   Let's just say, as the Rev. Dr. King observed, that 11 am on Sunday morning is still the most segregated hour in America:

Protestants at historically Black churches were seven times more likely to hear a sermon reference voter suppression, early voting, and registering to vote, according to Pew.

Evangelical churches, by contrast, spoke more regularly of prayer for the election and for the president. The Pew report noted, “evangelical pastors tended to employ language related to evil and punishment at a greater rate, using words and phrases such as ‘Satan’ or ‘hell’ at least twice as often as other clergy did.”

When addressing racism, evangelical pastors were more likely to refer to “racial tension” or mention the role of the police, while Bland mainline Christians spoke more often of “white supremacy.”

Are these things right? Or wrong?

That's the analysis from CT, which tends to favor "evangelical" denominations, and notes in its analysis that many Black protestant denominations are "evangelical."  So there's no good data there about Catholic or "mainline" Protestants.  But it's interesting information, all the same.

Pastors preach to their audience.  Quelle surprise. And evangelicals have a tighter grip on their congregations because they preach hell and damnation. And yet even that’s not enough anymore.

Huh.

The bitter, painful end of 'Christendom'

I hadn't heard about this:

Lebouvier's case is among a growing wave of de-baptisms in Europe, one of the most visible manifestations of the continent's secular drift. Websites offering informal de-baptism certificates have mushroomed. Other Christians are formally breaking from the church by opting out of state church taxes.

But I must admit it doesn't particularly disturb me. The real problem for some churches in Europe (and I don't know the laws of each country, nor how the churches are, or are not, supported), is in that last sentence: people who opt out of the church entirely, are also opting out of funding the churches with their taxes.

This, of course, prompts all kinds of retorts from atheists and those antagonistic to the Church in whatever form it takes. And, as the article indicates, it may be that the Roman Catholic church especially has brought this on itself; but I don't think so. I think there is a spiritual dimension to this, and the institution of the Church (which exists as much in America as in Europe; the crucial but ultimately minor distinction being the direct tax subsidy) as an institution may well undergo a very necessary restructuring. Or maybe it will be called "creative destruction." Whatever, it isn't necessarily the end, but rather a new beginning:

The bigger worry, experts say, are plummeting rates of new baptisms. Half a century ago, for example, 90 percent of French children were baptized, said Sorbonne University religion professor Philippe Portier. Today, roughly one in three are.

"The church considers de-baptisms a very marginal phenomena and its strategy right now is to resist it," Portier said. "It is much more active when it comes to reversing the drop in (new) baptisms -- there it's put in place a new evangelizing strategy."

The parish at Paris' historic Saint-Germain-des-Pres, for example, is offering a myriad of activities, from ski retreats to support networks for young professionals. At a recent evening youth Mass, the church was overflowing.

The parish priest, the Rev. Benoist de Sinety, is counting on faith, not numbers.

"What is striking today is that those who want to be Christian really want to be Christian," he said. "I rejoice in the fact that people are free to choose."

I would much rather pastor a church of 10 people who really want to be Christian, than pastor a church of 1000 who are only there from habit or convenience or for the entertainment value. And lest you think this is a European "problem," let me resurrect a post I wrote but never published:

The plaster is cracking again:

Of course this rapid growth of megachurches doesn't mean church attendance has increased. On average 50 small churches close their doors every week in America. We've seen 40 years of the Walmart effect -- consolidation rather than expansion. And while the latest infographic reports the average megachurch was founded in 1971, most were not megachurches in 1971. They were average-sized congregations that reached mega-attendance levels in the 80s or 90s under the leadership of a baby-boomer pastor. (I've profiled a number of such churches in the pages of Leadership Journal over the years.)

This is difficult to sum up, but let me try: basically, megachurches are the creations of personality. Jethani is too polite to call them personality cults, but I'm not. I've yet to see a "megachurch" that wasn't built around the charisma and publicity skills of a single individual. And the question not addressed in this article, or in the "infographic" he bases his post on, is the very real question of what happens when the leaders of these churches depart. Jethani mentions only one example, that of Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral. Joel Osteen's church is the best example of a mega church carrying on after its founder dies, but Osteen took over for his father. Ask Oral Roberts how often that works out.

Most of the history of such enterprises is that they fail when the original leader fails. Think of Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammye Faye Baker, Pat Robertson (whose influence began declining when he disavowed his pastoral office in order to run for the Presidency. CBN was once a cable channel. Now Robertson shows up on ABC's "Family" cable channel, for a few hours a night on his once powerful "700 Club.") Oral Roberts suffered a similar collapse when he tried to leave the church in his son's hands; and after Jerry Falwell died his university had some brief influence through it's alumni, but even that is fading now. Anybody heard from Falwell's church or university lately?

True, there are some churches which achieve large congregation status on the basis of being a large congregation. I know of one church which called a pastor specifically to make them grow, and he did. When he retires, the church will probably find a similar candidate to pursue a similar ministry, and they will probably succeed at it. In that model, the pastor is a figurehead for the congregation, not the reason for the congregation. But history shows such churches are few and far between, and besides, they do have a life cycle, like all institutions.

Near me are several former churches; the buildings emptied of the original congregations, some of them filled now with new congregations, mostly Mexican evangelical/charismatic congregations. The segregating of Sunday morning continues unabated. There are also churches which, as I've mentioned before, closed because the neighborhoods around them aged. Old people still go to church if they can, but their children tend not to go to their church. As Jethani points out, the average age of the mega-church is 50; which means, unlike most traditional churches I know, many of the people would actually be younger than me. But what about the 20-30 year olds? Where are they? What are they looking for? Ask Walt Kallestad, the pastor of a church I studied (briefly) in a class in seminary:

Walt led Community Church of Joy in Phoenix, a megachurch that had been an average congregation of 200 before he took over in the 80s and oversaw it's growth. But in 2002 he suffered a massive heart attack requiring six-way bypass surgery. The heart attack, says Walt, was a "wake up call" for the leaders to develop a succession plan to ensure the megachurch continued to thrive after Walt's tenure.

Kallestad began networking around the country looking for a young pastor he could bring onboard and eventually hand the church over to. One conversation stuck with him.

"It's a pretty good opportunity," Walt said. "We have 187 acres just off a major freeway, multipurpose buildings, and a great staff."

The leader looked him in the eyes and said, "Who'd want it? Who in their right minds would want to run that?"

"That's when it dawned on me," Kallestad reflected. "By the time we service the $12-million debt, pay the staff, and maintain the property, we've spent more than a million before we can spend a dime on our mission. At the time, we had plans for a spectacular worship center with a retractable roof. After that conversation, I scrapped it."

I have my own bone to pick with Community Church of Joy, but the story illustrates a truly chilling aspect of megachurches: they are institutions first, and whatever else second. If you are running a church with $12 million in debt to service, 187 acres of land, multipurpose buildings, and "a great staff," what is your first priority? Serving the poor? Saving souls? Or putting paying butts in the pews? To be fair to Kallestad, the article Jetheni links to indicates Kallestad took his megachurch in a radical direction, disdaining the "show" aspects I criticized in my seminary class (and elsewhere) of his ministry in favor of truly doing the hard work of creating disciples. In the process he lost, by his own account, some 4000 church members. This is not the first time a megachurch has decided to take the cost of discipleship more seriously. The New York Times noted Tim Keller's success in 2006. But it also noted that church attendance decline whenever Keller wasn't in the pulpit (a not unusual phenomenon, again to be fair. Even church members who seem to appear in church by habit rather than desire will fade away when the regular pastor is on vacation. But that's in no small part because Protestant churches have by and large learned to attend a church where the pastor pleases them, and not necessarily attend because it is a duty or even a religious obligation.).

On the other hand, Kallestad's concept of "empowering disciples" is illustrated by a grandfather asking Kallestad to come to the hospital to pray for his grandson, and Kallestad convincing the grandfather to do it himself. To infer that lay ministry is radical (I was doing it at the turn of the century, literally. Kallestad writes in 2006, as if he's invented the wheel.) is rather like saying you've found a new concept for December worship called "Advent."

So what is "radical" for a megachurch is not exactly radical for "regular" churches. Lay ministry is a concept working in many a small church where the pastor tries to "empower disciples" by getting them involved in the pastoral care of congregation members. But I have to say I wouldn't send a grandfather to a grandson's hospital bed instead of going myself.

Although, that's just me.

Churches are easy marks for complaint. The pastor is boring, or not interesting, or too loud, or too sleazy, or too.... I've known churches to split congregations over the question of replacing the carpet in the worship space. Churches never do what we want them to do, and when they do, we don't understand why everybody doesn't love the results. But churches can become institutions interested only in being institutions. That was the root of Kierkegaard's critique of the Danish church in the mid-1800's. It could be the root of a critique today by those who want to be "de-baptized" in Europe, or who have just "voted with their feet" in American churches.

Would I reject wholesale the institution of the church, then? No. I need worship, and that means I need others. You cannot worship alone. Moreover, I need liturgical worship, and that means I need a very distinctive institution, both spatially and historically. I need that sense of the "clouds of witness." But the institution, in the words of the old E&R prayer:

Grant that thy Church may be delivered from traditions which have lost their life, from usage which has lost its spirit, from institutions which no longer give life and power to their generation; that the Church may ever shine as a light in the world and be as a city set on a hill.

HEAR OUR PRAYER, O LORD.

But please note that is a prayer for a congregation; and any congregation is, almost by definition, an institution. And maybe it takes events like this for the church, as the Body of Christ and as an institution, to reconsider what baptism is for.

The Church, both laity and clergy, could do worse than to consider that question.

Taking the thumb off the scale

Where's all the bigots? 

This is not a story of national importance; or perhaps it is.  I knew First Presbyterian Church of Houston was holding a vote yesterday, after a lengthy "discernment process" required by PCUSA, to decide whether or not to stay in that denomination because it now recognized both same-sex marriages and ordination of gays and lesbians to the Presbyterian ministry.

I didn't, however, know this:

The leadership of First Presbyterian Church, which was established shortly after Houston's founding, had unanimously endorsed the move from Presbyterian Church USA to the breakaway denomination called ECO, A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians. The senior pastor, his staff, and the elected leaders from the congregation argued that PCUSA, the nation's largest Presbyterian body, had become too liberal and had drifted from the church's theological foundation.

Fortunately, this happened:

But the final count fell 36 votes short out of 1,681 ballots cast.

This kind of thing makes my statistical mind kick in, and wonder what the membership (eligible to vote) of the church is, and just how many cared enough to attend this meeting and vote today.  This article indicates the membership is around 3000; a turnout of just over half for a major vote is not surprising, and it's equally interesting the vote didn't carry.  (Local NPR this morning tells me the congregation claims 3100 members.  Either way, the vote total is a bare majority of the congregation.  Which tells me the rest don't care that much about gays or about which denomination their church belongs to.  Which is also interesting.)  That may be the part of this story that's of national interest.  Despite the united efforts of the congregational clerical staff, in a congregation that has every reason to be as conservative on social issues as any "evangelical" church, after a year of discussion this measure failed.  Perhaps Ted Cruz is on the wrong side of history, even in Texas, and the times they are a-changin'.

But what galls me is that the leadership of the church led this effort.

There was a UCC church in Texas, one of the largest (which, yes, ain't sayin' much in the scheme of things) that left the UCC back when I was in parish ministry (a decade ago, by now, in other words).  Led by their clergy as well, the church departed for the same reasons FPUC held a vote yesterday:  the UCC was "too liberal" and "had drifted from the church's theological foundation."  They left meaning to form a new denomination, and expecting many Texas UCC churches (which still aren't hotbeds of liberal, much less liberation, theology) to go with them.

No one did; in fact, the other UCC church in town thanked the departing congregation for making them the largest UCC church in town.  I expect the departing church  finally joined up with some other church denomination, or formed a new one with other, non-UCC churches.  I don't know and I don't care.  I'm not a "company man" when it comes to the denomination (I argue with it ceaselessly, and don't have much regard for my local Conference or Association), but I despise a pastor who leads that church out of its place.

When I joined the UCC before seminary, the congregation I joined was in the process of considering a merger with another congregation in another denomination.  The pastor of the church I joined knew this meant his work there was over, but he remained resolutely neutral on the idea of the merger, and supportive of the congregation as it struggled with the idea (it involved merging two disparate worship styles, among other things:  one that was essentially Lutheran with one that was essentially American Frontier Reformed).  When the merger went through, he left gracefully.  What he never did was tried to lead that church where it didn't want to go.

Let me make my thinking clear beyond just a personal anecdote.  A minister is ordained by a denomination, with rare exception.  The call to ministry is always recognized by a group, and especially when that group is larger than just the local church, the minister has a certain fealty to that larger group.  The polity of the Presbyterian church is quite clear:  the local church is not nearly as autonomous as a local church in the UCC.  Like the old German E&R church, which became part of the UCC in 1957, the Presbyterian church actually owns the church building and, in a sense, the pastor.  It is the PCUSA which can end a pastor's ordination, just as it can grant it in the first place.  But the PCUSA also owns the church building; you don't take that away from them because a majority of your congregation no longer likes what the denomination is saying and doing.  That's why the PCUSA has a complicated "discernment process," in part:  if you want to leave, they don't want a court fight over who gets the property.  Now that analysis seems to put a premium on the property, but when a group wants to leave the denomination, they want to take the property with them; so it isn't the denomination that starts this fight.

And when the denomination has given you a career, it's a bit churlish to bite the hand that has fed you for so long and to steal from them what has made it possible for you to have a career for so long.  Churlish, to say the least; it is rather like shooting your parents and then asking mercy of the court because you are now an orphan.  As I say, if you think you must leave the denomination, leave; but whether you are a pastor or a congregation, you strike out on your own.  Trying to leave by taking from the denomination what was never rightfully yours, is criminal, in the purest (if not most legal) sense of the word.

If I were pastoring a church that wanted to leave the denomination I was ordained into, even if I no longer agreed with that denomination, I would either remain neutral on the issue, or oppose it on the simple grounds you don't take your ball and go home when you don't like the way the game is going.  FPC Houston is over 160 years old.  It has weathered the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Civil Rights movement, and much more.  Now it flounders on the question of gays and lesbians in the pulpit or in the rite of marriage.  I can't see any difference between this world and the U.S. before Loving v. Virginia, or before the Civil Rights Act (although no law forced white churches to accept black members or black clergy).  We haven't moved much, in other words, from the churches Martin Luther King addressed.  50 years later we are fighting the same fight for the same reasons, and clergy ordained and representing the denomination, are leading churches to leave that denomination.

I consider that kind of leadership a sickening betrayal.  If you feel the denomination has left you, then leave it, and go your own way.  But don't try to take the cushy sinecure of a wealthy downtown Houston church with you.  That's not speaking truth to power; that's standing on the side of Pilate.  If you believe so strongly God is with you, then strike out into the wilderness and see if anyone follows.  That, or find a new denomination which will ordain you.  But don't claim your virtue makes you superior to the very body that authorized you to represent them in the pulpit; that betrayal undermines your very claim to ministry in the first place.

As for the vote:  it at least means gay marriage and recognition of gays and lesbians as full persons in the church and in society is not the hot-button issue it once was.  And for that I say:  Thanks be to God!