In God We Trust (all others pay cash)

I'm interested in this not because of some sense of schadenfreude, but because it shows why the "traditional" church may seem to have been passed by, but really isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Following the news that 21 ex-Mars Hill Church pastors asked lead pastor Mark Driscoll to step down, he returned from his planned vacation on August 24, 2014 and announced he will be taking at least six weeks off while the charges are being investigated. Mars Hill has retained evangelical PR strategist Mark DeMoss, son of the religious right funders behind the Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation and former advisor to the Romney campaign, to assist the church during this time.

Earlier this month Driscoll suffered a major career blow when the Acts 29 Network, the all-male coalition of over 500 Reformed evangelical church planters that he co-founded, removed him and his Seattle based Mars Hill Church from the organization’s membership, and asked him to step down as a pastor.

I would also note that there are two scandals that will ruin a ministry faster than anything, and they are the two most often seen when a ministry is in trouble:  money, and sex.  Driscoll isn't accused of any sexual improprieties (aside from harassment, perhaps; which is bad enough), but he has messed with the money:

Mars Hill’s growing controversies remained hidden, due in large part to a drastic change to the church’s bylaws in 2007 that shifted oversight from 24 male elders to a select group of executive elders, with Driscoll as the lead pastor. Those few who protested the change, or any subsequent decisions made by the executive elders, found themselves fired and shunned. Also, many employees are prevented from speaking publicly about Mars Hill due to a non-disclosure agreement they had signed as a condition of their employment.

As the article says, Driscoll was a rising star who, in less than 20 years, seems to have fallen back to earth.  I don't wish that upon him, but simply point out it takes a community to make a church, and no one is above that community.  Driscoll wanted to place himself apart, with his cronies supporting his actions and his hand in the till because, well...that's where the money is.

When I had a church, I left all the money concerns to the church treasurer and the church council.  I knew what the church budget was, and what my compensation was; but who even pledged what amount was something I never paid attention to, and what it took to pay the bills was not something I worried about.  Small churches are achingly transparent anyway; the books are simple, the accounts few, the balances easy to determine by anyone who keeps a checkbook or a savings account.  But I knew pastors who got in trouble, and one of the "go to" charges, even if it was spurious, was about abuse of funds and misuse of church money.  I never let myself get anywhere near that, just to be sure I wouldn't be fighting a charge of misusing church funds.

Whither Mars Hill?  I don't know, but I don't think the prognosis is good.  Every major scandal with a public church figure has effectively ended that ministry and left the church in disarray.  Despite appearances people don't go to church to fight, and they don't give money to the church to see it disappear.   And Mars Hill knows this, and they also fear it:

Now that a former employee has gone public with proof that funds donated to the Mars Hill Global Fund were allocated elsewhere, perhaps others will come forward to unearth documents Mars Hill refuses to release despite repeated requests.

The Vatican Bank may have been corrupt and scandal-ridden, but the church institution protects the local parish from too many repercussions of that kind of problem.  Most Protestant denominations can separate themselves easily from a pastor with sticky fingers, and the institution will survive.

But when one man is effectively the institution, what then?  Mars Hill won't collapse overnight, won't necessarily go the way of Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral or Oral Robert's ministry in Tulsa; but it's best days are behind it now.  It will either settle into being a mini-denomination, with all the institutional trappings thereof; or it will fade away.

And would it surprise you to know that some of the scandal engulfing Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill involves soteriology?  Because apparently all is fair when it comes to saving souls:

"Mars Hill has made marketing investments for book releases and sermon series, along with album releases, events, and church plants, much like many other churches, authors, and publishers who want to reach a large audience. We will explore any opportunity that helps us to get that message out, while striving to remain above reproach in the process. Whether we’re talking about technology, music, marketing, or whatever, we want to tell lots of people about Jesus by every means available."

But apparently "every means available" wasn't limited to technology; it involved marketing as well, such as making a false claim that Driscoll had authored a best selling book.  It's a curious evangelism that says unethical behavior is appropriate when the purpose is to save souls.  It isn't just the urgency there, it's also the question:  save them for what?  Do unethical means achieve ethical ends if the saving of a soul is understood as the greater purpose than all others?  And is that the teaching of Christ and of Christianity:  that salvation is above all and over all and trumps all?

Or is it to do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God, and to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and your neighbor as yourself?

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of Driscoll's "evangelical" theology; and that's pretty much why.  I think it puts the emphasis on the wrong person.  If my efforts to save your soul are more important than my efforts to live according to God's ethic, then what am I saving souls for?  In fact, how am I saving them?  By getting people to repeat a simple mantra, but not otherwise changing their lives?  This is the same problem I had with all the fervent Southern Baptists I grew up with, all anxious to  know if I was "saved", if I had "let Jesus into my heart"?  What did that mean, and if it meant only a "Get out of Hell Free" card, what kind of weird moral universe was I being invited to live in?

What is the purpose of this life?  To accumulate souls for some cosmic redemption of mine?  And to accumulate them by whatever means necessary, because it will redeem my evil?

No, thank you.  That theology I need no part of.

"Follow the money"

Where's all the muscular people? 

I'm left thinking of Biblical parallels like the man who built his house on sand, v. the man who built his house on rock:

Mars Hill Church announced on Sunday the closure of three of its church locations due to financial strain, with a possible fourth on the horizon.

Downtown Seattle and U-District churches in Washington will be consolidated with Mars Hill Church Ballard as of October 12th. The Mars Hill Church in Phoenix will close its doors on September 28th. The organization also announced that it has ceased development of a Los Angeles church plant and may be forced to close its Huntington Beach location if it is unable to raise funds by the end of the year.

"We have found ourselves in a serious financial situation, as giving and attendance has declined more than we had anticipated over the last few months," Mars Hill Communications & Editorial Manager Justin Dean told HuffPost by email.

The primary problem, of course, is someone else's fault:

It is your continued support that is needed now more than ever. While we were able to end the fiscal year strong, giving and attendance have declined significantly since January. Specifically, we have seen a substantial decrease in tithes and offerings these past two months, due to the increase in negative media attention surrounding our church. 

Live by good media, die by bad media; so it goes.  The air is really leaving this balloon:  having raised $3 million in 2013 for a the Phoenix and Huntington Beach churches, it has also removed from its calendar a much-touted "Jesus Festival."

And now people have found out what he said 15 years ago; but it's just icing on the cake of financial mismanagement and a determination to the be center of power of this ever-expanding church cum mini-denomination.  A power base now collapsing like a bad soufflé.

If you've paid attention to the rise and fall of mega-churches and "evangelical" ministries, you can't really be surprised by this.  The landscape of the last few decades is strewn with the disasters of Jim and Tammy Faye, Jimmy Swaggart, Oral Roberts, even Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral.  There are a lot of minor players who enjoyed their moment in the spotlight and faded away; and American history is full of charismatic figures who eventually stopped being charismatic and found the spotlight had moved away from them.

Of course the media burial of Marc Driscoll for comments made 15 years ago (and still offensive) is just the easy handle by which to grasp this crisis for Mars Hill.  The real problem is Marc Driscoll, who literally wanted to replace God as the power in his congregations.  The offerings stopped flowing and the attendance stopped growing because Marc Driscoll proved to be a petty tyrant:  not because people suddenly realized his theology was offensive.  Read that NYT article and you'll see that Mr. Driscoll's problems began in 2007 when two church elders were fired ("Fired"?  How does one fire a church elder?  Were they also paid employees?  Huh?) as Driscoll began to collect the power and finances of the church into his hands.  His complementarianism, made plain and ugly in those old Internet posts and comments, is not what turned people away.  By and large, church members liked that:

“We’ve seen how he has changed so many lives, and to see him treated this way is just sad,” said Rachel Harris, a Mars Hill member who created a Facebook group made up of supporters of Mr. Driscoll. “There’s positive stuff about our church that’s not being heard, and it feels like a family member is getting bullied.”

 I think it's clear which family member is getting bullied, and it isn't Marc Driscoll, who has "apologized" for his statements this way:

“In the last year or two, I have been deeply convicted by God that my angry-young-prophet days are over,” he wrote in a letter to his congregation in March, “to be replaced by a helpful, Bible-teaching spiritual father.”

Still not getting to the root of the problem, and still not admitting he is the problem.  Which recognition should be a basic tenet of a Calvinist, since "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" doesn't included an asterisk for "Except leaders of churches, especially very rich churches."

It is the idolatry that is the problem here.  "Complementarianism" is just another way of setting one group above another, when the clear message of the gospels is "The first shall be last and the last first" and "The first of all shall be last and servant of all."  I know that doesn't jibe with "muscular Christianity," but I can't help that.  There are so many clear indications that Jesus of Nazareth treated women equally in a social order that treated them as barely human.  His was a much more radical stance in that time than any "feminist revision" of the gospels that is advocated today.  I even understand the need for Christianity to speak to the people around it:  Paul's exhortation to the church in Corinth is as much about selfishness as it is about conforming to social custom (a lesson Marc Driscoll clearly needs to learn again).  The Dream of the Rood is a classic example of retelling the crucifixion story in terms accessible to Vikings (although it isn't that far from the Johannine passion, where Jesus doesn't die but rather hands over his soul to God).   Understanding the story in your culture can be a revelation; but it can slide over into idolatry.

Christians wrestle with the claims of the scriptures upon them; they wrestle with the revelation as understood by the clouds of witness extending from the disciples to the present day.  From the gospels Christians have always understood themselves to be subject to the community of believers.  That's not an easy thing to do, but it is a necessary one.  There are a lot of lessons in the fall of Marc Driscoll and Mars Hill, but the primary one goes back to something the prophets raged at Israel about:  building false idols and proclaiming them holy.

Knock, knock, knockin' at the deep heart's core

Courtesy of Expat in UK comes this "Hmmm...."

The "modern evangelical machine" is a product of the 1970s and '80s, when a new generation of business-savvy pastors developed strategies to reach unbelievers turned off by traditional worship and evangelization. Their approach was "seeker sensitive": upon learning that many people didn't go in for stained glass and steeples, these pastors made their churches look like shopping malls. Complex theology intimidated the curious, and talk of damnation alienated potential converts — so they played down doctrine in favor of upbeat, practical teachings on the Christian life.

These megachurches, like Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church in Houston and Bill Hybels's Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois, have come to symbolize American evangelicalism. By any quantitative measure they are wildly successful, and their values and methods have diffused into the evangelical bloodstream. Yet some megachurches have begun to admit what critics maintained all along: numbers are not everything. In the fall of 2007, leaders of Willow Creek sent shockwaves through the evangelical world when they announced the results of a study in which churchgoers reported feeling stagnant in their faith and frustrated with slick, program-driven pastors. "As an evangelical, I would say this tells us something," Stetzer says. "The center is not holding."

First, let me say: "Why am I not surprised?" Second, let me say there is, indeed, nothing new under the sun. Third, let me say: Huh?

But what is new about Driscoll is that he has resurrected a particular strain of fire and brimstone, one that most Americans assume died out with the Puritans: Calvinism, a theology that makes Pat Robertson seem warm and fuzzy.

Dude, come to East Texas sometime, where the Presbyterians (who invented Calvinism, or think they did) vie with the Southern Baptists to see how many more they can find to condemn. Growing up in the PCUS of my youth, the only difference between us and the Baptists was, they were more emotional. Reformed theology is dead? Yeah, right; replaced by what? Lutheranism?

But the issue before us is this new kind of mega-church at Mars Hill:

Mars Hill has not entirely dispensed with megachurch marketing tactics. Its success in one of the most liberal and least-churched cities in America depends on being sensitive to the body-pierced and latte-drinking seekers of Seattle. Ultimately, however, Driscoll's theology means that his congregants' salvation is not in his hands. It's not in their own hands, either — this is the heart of Calvinism. Ultimately, however, Driscoll's theology means that his congregants' salvation is not in his hands. It's not in their own hands, either — this is the heart of Calvinism.

Human beings are totally corrupted by original sin and predestined for heaven or hell, no matter their earthly conduct. We all deserve eternal damnation, but God, in his inscrutable mercy, has granted the grace of salvation to an elect few. While John Calvin's 16th-century doctrines have deep roots in Christian tradition, they strike many modern evangelicals as nonsensical and even un-Christian. If predestination is true, they argue, then there is no point in missions to the unsaved or in leading a godly life. And some babies who die in infancy — if God placed them among the reprobate — go straight to hell with the rest of the damned, to "glorify his name by their own destruction," as Calvin wrote. Since the early 19th century, most evangelicals have preferred a theology that stresses the believer's free decision to accept God's grace. To be born again is a choice God wants you to make; if you so choose, Jesus will be your personal friend.

The article goes on to link this to Puritanism, which is pretty much what this sounds like. Puritanism redux, in fact. But set aside the caricatures of Puritanism a moment, because the appeal of this theology is actually quite interesting:

Traditional evangelical theology falls apart in the face of real tragedy, says the 20-year-old Brett Harris, who runs an evangelical teen blog with his twin brother, Alex. Reducing God to a projection of our own wishes trivializes divine sovereignty and fails to explain how both good and evil have a place in the divine plan. "There are plenty of comfortable people who can say, 'God's on my side,' " Harris says. "But they couldn't turn around and say, 'God gave me cancer.' "

Or, as a pastor friend of mine put it once, when a church member told him the member preferred to stay home and watch Roert Schuller on TV: "Yeah, call him when you need someone to do a funeral." When simplistic feel-good theology runs into reality, the only response I've ever encountered is: "God will not give you more than you can handle." But I've never heard the grieving family member say that, or the dying cancer patient.

Every pastor who actually pastors a church, rather than administers a mega-church, has had to face the tough issues. In my first year of ministry, still in seminary, I dealt with a member with severe trauma from childhood; a dying husband confined to his bed; the deaths of two teenagers in a car wreck. In my first year out of seminary, I conducted a funeral for an infant who died in her crib, for a mother who was only tangentially connected to the church; and had to answer the guestion of a wife who's husband had been rushed to the hospital on life support, and just told it should be removed: "What should I do?" These are not questions that have anything to do with "seeker services" or "business-savvy strategies." And people don't cope with them because you've told them repeatedly God wants them to be rich, or simply be middle-class Americans.

Which is not to say, however, the only alternative is a throwback to the cruder forms of Calvinism.

I'm not even sure how Calvinistic this "theology" is, if only because Calvin warned against assuming you were among the elect. The central thesis of his teaching was humility, was that "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," and since no one could know who was among the elect, you must live as if your salvation depended on your actions. Indeed, Calvin is as subtle a theologian and compassionate a believer as ever Luther was; but his works, like most of Luther's, are "classics" in Mark Twain's definition of the word: widely praised, but no one reads them. So if this is Calvinism, it's the Calvinism of the Gutres in Jorge Luis Borges' "The Gospel According To Mark:" one that is in the blood, and little resembles the teachings and theology that now bears its name. This is Calvinism Marc Driscoll and his followers have inherited, in other words, not discovered. Everything old is new again. There is, indeed, nothing new under the sun.

There is, for example, something to this:

Marianne Esterly, a women's counselor at Mars Hill, says she tries to help women resist the desperation that can come with forgetting that man's chief end is to glorify God, not to obsess over earthly problems. "They worship the trauma, or the anorexia, and that's not what they're designed to worship," she says. "Christian self-help doesn't work. We can't do anything. It's all the work of Christ."

But then again, the "work of Christ" they advocate is simply what they believe people should do. Do that, and you are letting Christ work through you. Fail to do that, and you are relying on yourself. It's wonderfully simplistic, and horribly misguided. I mean, after all, Driscoll's critique of other evangelicals is that they have "feminized" Christ, and they promote a culture of "chicks and some chickified dudes with limp wrists."

Yeah, that's what Christ taught: how not to be "feminine." Precisely why he had so many women in his entourage, told his disciples to "turn the other cheek," rebuked Peter for taking up the sword when the Romans came to arrest him, and asked the Pharisee "Do you see this woman?".

To be fair, Driscoll's version of Christ is an old one. My first thought on reading this article was of "The Dream of the Rood," an Old English poem.

I saw then the Saviour of
mankind
hasten with great zeal, as if he wanted to climb up on me.
There I did not dare, against the word of the Lord,
bow or break, when I saw the
corners of the earth tremble. I might have
felled all the enemies; even so, I stood fast.
He stripped himself then, young hero - that was God almighty -
strong and resolute; he ascended on the high gallows,
brave in the sight of many, when he wanted to ransom
mankind.
I trembled when the warrior embraced me; even then I did not
dare to bow to earth,
fall to the corners of the earth, but I had to stand fast.
I was reared a cross. I raised up the powerful King,
the Lord of heaven; I did not dare to bend.
They pierced me with dark nails; on me are the wounds visible,
the open wounds of malice; I did not dare to injure any of them.
They mocked us both together. I was all drenched with blood
poured out from that man's side after he had sent forth his spirit.
I have experienced on that hillside many
cruelties of fate. I saw the God of hosts
violently stretched out. Darkness had
covered with clouds the Ruler's corpse,
the gleaming light. Shadows went forth
dark under the clouds. All creation wept,
lamented the King's fall. Christ was on the cross.
Yet there eager ones came from afar
to that noble one; I beheld all that.
I was all drenched with sorrow; nevertheless I bowed down to the hands of the men,
humble, with great eagerness. There they took almighty God,
lifted him from that oppressive torment. The warriors forsook me then
standing covered with moisture; I was all wounded with arrows.
They laid the weary-limbed one down there, they stood at the head of his body,
they beheld the Lord of heaven there, and he himself rested there a while,
weary after the great battle.

It's a death worthy of Beowulf, and no surprise coming from a warrior culture. Certainly not a very "feminine" Christ there. And, to be fair, Harvey Cox revolted against the "bourgeois," orderly, "feminized" (it was pre-feminist days for Harvey) Christ of my childhood, in the 1970's. (The picture above, for example; hardly the features of a Semite, much less a peasant; and that ethereal robe, those doe-like eyes. Precisely the imago Dei Cox was reacting to.) I don't go to the conclusion Driscoll reaches, but I sympathize with how he gets there. What I don't sympathize with is his ecclesiology:

Nowhere is the connection between Driscoll's hypermasculinity and his Calvinist theology clearer than in his refusal to tolerate opposition at Mars Hill. The Reformed tradition's resistance to compromise and emphasis on the purity of the worshipping community has always contained the seeds of authoritarianism: John Calvin had heretics burned at the stake and made a man who casually criticized him at a dinner party march through the streets of Geneva, kneeling at every intersection to beg forgiveness. Mars Hill is not 16th-century Geneva, but Driscoll has little patience for dissent. In 2007, two elders protested a plan to reorganize the church that, according to critics, consolidated power in the hands of Driscoll and his closest aides. Driscoll told the congregation that he asked advice on how to handle stubborn subordinates from a "mixed martial artist and Ultimate Fighter, good guy" who attends Mars Hill. "His answer was brilliant," Driscoll reported. "He said, 'I break their nose.' " When one of the renegade elders refused to repent, the church leadership ordered members to shun him. One member complained on an online message board and instantly found his membership privileges suspended. "They are sinning through questioning," Driscoll preached. John Calvin couldn't have said it better himself.

I consider the appeal to Reformed theology to be a thin veil of justification for actions like this (and my complaint there is with the journalist. Reformed theology is alive and well and not a fossilized relic unchanged since Calvin was running Geneva.) Calvin was more nearly following the culture of his day than establishing a theological principal. He might well have justified his actions by grounding them in theology, but the kingdom of God, where the first will be last, and the last first, pretty well drains that attitude of any justification. Nor do I see any evidence Driscoll is such a careful student of Calvin's biography; it sounds like he's just a bully who likes being in charge. When the church is yours, rather than part of a denomination, you can pretty much get away with that. See, for example, Rick Warren's since removed web-page statement limiting church membership at Saddleback to non-homosexuals, are at least those who "repent" of their sexual orientation.

One more reason I'm not a big fan of non-denominational churches. And, of course, that's of a piece with this:

Driscoll is still the one who gazes down upon Mars Hill's seven congregations most Sundays, his sermons broadcast from the main campus to jumbo-size projection screens around the city. At one suburban campus that I visited, a huge yellow cross dominated center stage — until the projection screen unfurled and Driscoll's face blocked the cross from view. Driscoll's New Calvinism underscores a curious fact: the doctrine of total human depravity has always had a funny way of emboldening, rather than humbling, its adherents.

Aye, there's the rub. When does the founder of the church that Marc built tell his congregation they can do it without him? When does he step aside and point the way, not to Marc, but to Christ?

Pastor as "cool"

So I noted this, and then moved on:

The New York Times reported last weekend on a surprising development out of Los Angeles: There is a pastor in that fair city who dresses not like Ward Cleaver, but like a Supreme model. His name is Chad Veach, and he is the founder and head pastor of the fast-growing Zoe Church—pronounced “zo-AY, like, be-yon-SAY,” as Veach likes to say. (Note: That is not, as far as I know, how you pronounce Beyoncé.)

Ruth Graham goes on to note this is a "trend" that dates back to at least 1896, though she skips lightly over the trend until it gets to 2007, where she provides quite a catalog of such announcements.  This leads her to conclude:

Is it news, then, when a pastor wears something other than pleated khakis in 2018? No. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong to report on each successive wave of hipster pastors, particularly the successful ones. In between posting Instagram stories, Veach and his peers are attracting many thousands of young people each week to their churches. That’s not just a trend, it’s a movement.

But then I circled back because, well, I guess so:

Hybels led a congregation of 25,000 and the Willow Creek Association, based on his leadership, counts 11,000 churches worldwide as under its influence. He abruptly retired last year.

Hybels emerged as a “cool” youth pastor riding a Harley-Davidson and quickly grew his flock. Unlike many other non-denominational megachurches, Willow Creek elevated women to senior positions—but that allowed the former pastor to prey on ambitious young women, according to Nancy Beach, who came out of Willow Creek and is now a prominent evangelical thought leader.

“I feel so conflicted about the whole situation because I’m so protective of the reputation of the church, not just here but globally,” she told the Tribune. “But I have confidence that the truth matters. Even though he’s 66 years old, there are still young women in his path. I certainly wouldn’t want one of my daughters or anyone else to be in this kind of situation.. He changed my life. I wouldn’t have the opportunities I’ve had… But then there’s this other side.”

Willow Creek is pretty much a denomination unto itself, and Hybels is only a few years older than me, which means he was "cool" in about the '70's (I'm too lazy to do the accurate historical research). And now it turns out his "cool," like that of Jimmy Swaggart and many an "evangelist" gone by, was also a cover for, shall we say, sexual improprieties?

As I recall, the guy who started Mars Hill church was cool, too, until his sexual appetites became public fodder.  I also recall Mars Hill pretty much lost its luster after that.  Am I damning Christianity, or non-denominational pastors, or pastors who can't keep their pants zipped outside the marital home?  No, not broadly.  I'm just wondering when a trend truly becomes a movement, and what value that movement has in the long run.  The institutional church, represented by denominations, takes its licks, but it can't be said to be supplanted by "movements" which depend so much on individuals to keep them moving; especially when it becomes clear those individuals have been moving in the wrong direction for much of their pastoral careers.  What movement will members of Willow Creek associated churches follow now?  Because, I dunno:  it's either all lies, or it's gonna get mighty ugly:

“This has been a calculated and continual attack on our elders and on me for four long years,” [Hybels] told the Tribune. “I have a wife and kids and grandkids. My family has had enough and they want the record clear. And they feel strongly supportive of me saying what I have to say to protect my family and clear my family’s name as well.”

The fuller story is here.  I'm less interested in the details and the allegations, than in the nature of "cool" pastors who eventually return to earth to be human beings. That, and the nature of church "movements," which seem to depend so much on individuals, and yet seem to be endlessly appealing to modern Americans.

Something about being "cool," I guess.  It might even have something to do with evangelicals supporting Donald Trump, or even the poisonous cult of personality in general that allows us to see "our guy" as "one of the good ones," no matter what (the women who accused Hybels never felt the process that exonerated him was fair or just; since it was run by people selected by Hybels, how could it be?).

Something about being "cool," I guess; or ultimately, about being "yourself."  Funny thing is, people can tell you that you're doing it wrong.  It happens all the time.  Often, they're right.

Merrily we roll along...

Courtesy of ex-pat in the UK, something else for our consideration. Part of me wants to drill into these numbers and find understanding:

The percentage of Christians in America, which declined in the 1990s from 86.2 percent to 76.7 percent, has now edged down to 76 percent. Ninety percent of the decline comes from the non-Catholic segment of the Christian population, largely from the mainline denominations, including Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians/Anglicans, and the United Church of Christ. These groups, whose proportion of the American population shrank from 18.7 percent in 1990 to 17.2 percent in 2001, all experienced sharp numerical declines this decade and now constitute just 12.9 percent.

But honestly, I'm neither that surprised, nor that interested. Partly because this affirms my analysis that Protestantism, far more than Roman Catholicism, depends on the culture for its identity. Notice that 90% of the decline in those who identify as "Christians" is from "the non-Catholic segment of the Christian population." "Freedom of worship" more and more means freedom not to worship, too.

Most of the growth in the Christian population occurred among those who would identify only as "Christian," "Evangelical/Born Again," or "non-denominational Christian." The last of these, associated with the growth of megachurches, has increased from less than 200,000 in 1990 to 2.5 million in 2001 to over 8 million today. These groups grew from 5 percent of the population in 1990 to 8.5 percent in 2001 to 11.8 percent in 2008. Significantly, 38.6 percent of mainline Protestants now also identify themselves as evangelical or born again.

Mega-churches, of course, thrive on telling you what you want to hear, as most preach some variant on the Gospel of wealth, or promise healing. The few who have turned away from that message, or any message of power, toward a message of service, do so knowing they face an uncertain future. It will be interesting to see how popular the Gospel of Wealth remains in a world economy rapidly retrenching and declining, but interesting only to those who favor abstraction over reality, thought experiments over the real pain this economic "reset" is causing, and is going to cause.

"It looks like the two-party system of American Protestantism--mainline versus evangelical--is collapsing," said Mark Silk, director of the Public Values Program. "A generic form of evangelicalism is emerging as the normative form of non-Catholic Christianity in the United States."

Well, maybe; but in what form? In the form of Joel Osteen, promising wealth to all who truly believe? In the older American form of Kenneth Copeland, promising healing (Oral Roberts was there first, and before him a long line stretching back through all the inspirations for Elmer Gantry)? In the form of Mars Hill Church, with its almost militant emphasis on badly distorted and poorly understood Calvinism? Or at the other extreme, in the form of Protestant ministers aping Catholic practices for what they imagine to be mystical, or even magical, purposes?

Some, of course, had thought the "more generic form of evangelicalism" was the norm in America, but it wasn't and it never has been. That it may be in the future could indicate an American movement toward the status quo of post-Enlightenment Europe, but more likely what both continents reveal is less as loss of faith than a decline in the social authority of religion. Religion is less and less the controlling factore of public life it once was, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Some pastors will speak of their congregations as "baptized heathens," and there's always been more truth in that than falsehood. One of the critiques of Protestantism against Roman Catholicism was the worldliness of too many Catholic monks and priests. Chaucer's Monk, some two centuries before the Reformation, is a man of wealth and means, despite his vow of poverty. It is the humble parson who is "a good man...of religioun" and "riche...of holy thoght and werk," but not much else. Just by his placement in Chaucer's Prologue, we know the Monk is far more important to society than the Parson, the "village priest," as the notes to my edition identify him. And just as the 14th century monk would defend his ownership of possessions then as necessary to his "ministry," Rod Parsley, who is no mere "village priest" himself, would defend his wealth and property now. What has changed is simply the influence of organized religion in society; not the players.

I realize I've had occasion to say this before. And the survey seems to indicate a gathering toward a normative point of "evangelicalism," even as evangelicalism has been said to be cracking up. It is notable that the "crack-up" of evangelicalism was said to be along lines of social justice:

For the conservative Christian leadership, what is most worrisome about the evangelical disappointment with President Bush is that it coincides with a widening philosophical rift. Ever since they broke with the mainline Protestant churches nearly 100 years ago, the hallmark of evangelicals theology has been a vision of modern society as a sinking ship, sliding toward depravity and sin. For evangelicals, the altar call was the only life raft — a chance to accept Jesus Christ, rebirth and salvation. Falwell, Dobson and their generation saw their political activism as essentially defensive, fighting to keep traditional moral codes in place so their children could have a chance at the raft.

But many younger evangelicals — and some old-timers — take a less fatalistic view. For them, the born-again experience of accepting Jesus is just the beginning. What follows is a long-term process of “spiritual formation” that involves applying his teachings in the here and now. They do not see society as a moribund vessel. They talk more about a biblical imperative to fix up the ship by contributing to the betterment of their communities and the world. They support traditional charities but also public policies that address health care, race, poverty and the environment.

The survey notes among its findings that:

Baptists, who constitute the largest non-Catholic Christian tradition, have increased their numbers by two million since 2001, but continue to decline as a proportion of the population.

Second Baptist Church in Houston, not Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church, was the epicenter of volunteer aid for those evacuated from New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina. Maybe there's a connection between there; and yet another critique of the "mega-church" movement. It's certainly safe to say I'm no fan of mega-churches. And these surveys are of dubious value. What they track is less the reality of church attendance, than the reality of social acceptance. It was once necessary to claim membership in a Christian church. But never in my lifetime has membership been equivalent to church attendance; and I don't think that's aberrational in American history. What's happened now is that church membership is no longer a social obligation. As the culture changes, the interest in Protestantism changes, and that change means a decline in members of Protestant churches. This may be news to the laity, but it is hardly news to the clergy. Some argue the "neighborhood church" is coming back, and will "rescue" Christianity. I think if Christianity survives it will be due to the small church, not the mega-church; and I think Christianity will survive. Mega-churches won't, largely because they, too, are a social phenomenon, not a new and better structure. Mega-churches which try to make religious disciples of their attendees fail miserably at the effort. Theirs is a business model, and even now it may be the ax is being laid to the root of that tree. Mega-churches were very much a product of the last few decades. If that culture is going to be radically revised, the religious institution it created may well have to be revised with it. There is a history of such things in Protestantism, after all. Mega-churches are also cults of personality; and if a new personality is not found to replace the old, they falter, and fail. The legacy of Oral Roberts and the PTL Club and Jimmy Swaggart all loom like ghosts behind Joel Osteen and Mars Hill and even Redeemer Presbyterian. There is a history of mega-churches rising and falling, while "neighborhood" churches go on and on.

Why do people go to church? There are as many reasons as there are people to go. Why should people go to church? That's the central question of ecclesiology, and of evangelism. But too far down that road lies madness, as you try either to cajole people into your vision of "church," or castrate your message by equating the greatest good with appealing to the greatest number. What is church is the better question; if only because it is a question without any one answer.

In God We Trust. All others pay cash.

I have my problems with Christian salvation, and so with most theories of soteriology.  Some of my thoughts on this subject are quite technical and almost systematic; some, less so.

Take, for example, the simple statement "Jesus Saves."  What does it mean?  If it's a sign posted by a bank; one thing.  In the picture above, another.  I even saw a picture on Google of Jesus pulling a man out of the water by the man's wrist.  Is that what the statement means?  Is that even a good metaphor for what the statement means, a better visual representation of the "correct meaning" than the picture above?

No, probably not.

Usually we mean something like this:

Which begs the question still: what does this sentence mean?

Usually, salvation from damnation; from an eternity in hell, in the burning flames of Hades, in the sulfurous tides of the land where those who enter must abandon all hope.

What a Chick tract means, in other words.  I've never been a fan of Chick tracts, but then Hitler liked dogs, too, so Chick tracts are not reason enough to set aside the traditional doctrines of Christianity.

Well, not Chick tracts alone; but the whole idea of salvation has, by and large, been a club Christians have used to beat up either other non-Christians, or other Christians they deemed insufficiently "Christian" enough for the holy tribute of salvation.  Soteriology is what led to Calvin's bizarre and ultimately perverse doctrine of the elect, and a soteriology his followers used to turn Christianity inside out.  I am thinking particularly of TULIP (which, no, is not Calvinism; except it is, once the doctrines move far enough away from Calvin's Institutes.  I am not blaming Calvin for the state of Christianity today; but I am blaming soteriology, which too many Christians think is the be-all and end-all of Christianity.).  TULIP is nothing more than a cudgel to be used against to motivate people to act as we would wish them to (and as we are sure God would wish them to).  Indeed, making people behave has become the primary purpose of soteriology.

We use it to make people join "our" church, to make people think as we do, or just to make people be civilized.  The root of the fear that the "death of God" would undermine society (and the modern day attack on Christianity, that morality can only come from a deity) was that, absent a fear of damnation (God is dead), what would keep the great unwashed on the straight and narrow?  That it had never kept the leadership in line was beside the point; but directly to the point of the purpose of soteriology (which is, after all, a human doctrine.  I don't remember Christ espousing one in the gospels.)

So how about the sheer damage proponents of "traditional" Christian soteriology do?  I've yet to meet a person whose theology emphasized individual salvation who didn't use that emphasis to deny comfort and succor to others.  Oh, they make nice noises about helping the destitute, but as far as really doing it, not much happens.  Individual salvation means you are individually responsible for the state of your immortal soul.  And if you are individually responsible for the state of your soul, you are individually responsible for the state of your life.  In this understanding, the community doesn't exist to take you in, it exists to set you straight, to straighten you out, to determine whether or not you are worthy of admission to the company of the Blessed.  Any help is short term and blunted, and meant to get you back to being responsible for yourself again, the way God intended!  Living as the widow who fed Elijah is simply not on:

After a while the stream dried up, for there had been no rain in the land. Then the word of the Lord came to him: “Go now to Zarephath, a village of Sidon, and stay there; I have commanded a widow there to feed you.’ He went off to Zarephath, and when he reached the entrance to the village, he saw a widow gathering sticks. He called to her, ‘Please bring me a little water in a pitcher to drink.’ As she went to fetch it, he called after her, ‘Bring me, please, a piece of bread as well.’ But she answered, “As the Lord your God lives, I have no food baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a flask. I am just gathering two or three sticks to go and cook it for my son and myself before we die.’ ‘Have no fear,’ Elijah said, ‘go and do as you have said. But first make me a small cake from what you have and bring it out to me, and after that make something for your son and yourself. For this is the word of the Lord the God of Israel: The jar of flour will not give out, nor the flask of oil fail, until the Lord sends rain on the land.’ She went and did as Elijah had said, and there was food for him and for her family for a long time. The jar of flour did not give out, nor did the flask of oil, as the word of the Lord foretold through Elijah. 1 Kings 17:7-16 (REB)

There are nuances, of course; variations.  Not everyone who believes in individual salvation as the central doctrine of Christianity agrees with Baroness Thatcher:

They stem not from the social but from the spiritual side of our lives, and personally, I would identify three beliefs in particular:

First, that from the beginning man has been endowed by God with the fundamental right to choose between good and evil. And second, that we were made in God's own image and, therefore, we are expected to use all our own power of thought and judgement in exercising that choice; and further, that if we open our hearts to God, He has promised to work within us. And third, that Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, when faced with His terrible choice and lonely vigil chose to lay down His life that our sins may be forgiven. I remember very well a sermon on an Armistice Sunday when our Preacher said, "No one took away the life of Jesus , He chose to lay it down".

Thatcher carefully distinguishes "spiritual" from "social," and makes it clear throughout that her emphasis is on the individual, that, as she famously said elsewhere, "Society does not exist."  "Man," in that first sentence, is clearly an individual:  only individuals choose good or evil.  And it is up to us, as individuals, "to use all our own (!) power of thought and judgment in exercising that choice."  And it is only after we have done so that we can "open our hearts [not the seat of thought and judgment] to God," who has "promised to work within us."  Because, after all, that's what Jesus did.

Which is one of the weirder theories of the crucifixion I think I've ever heard.  It's supported, to some degree, by John's gospel; but everybody agrees John's Jesus is the least human of the four representations in the canon.

Anyway....

The third is the oddest also because it doesn't connect to the acts of thought and judgement of the individual, or even of God entering your heart and working within you.  What it does connect with, is that even God has to make individual choices.  What it tells me is that even God is all alone.

Which is a very chilling place to put the emphasis (and not at all what the author of John's Gospel meant).  If Thatcher means to use it to make God "one of us," then it's even worse.  But it does explain the complete lack of Christian humility in Thatcher's speech.  Why be humble when you are equal to God?

Follow that reasoning very far, or even take it up at all, and you wind up at Mars Hill Presbyterian Church, which is not a place I want to be:

Mars Hill has not entirely dispensed with megachurch marketing tactics. Its success in one of the most liberal and least-churched cities in America depends on being sensitive to the body-pierced and latte-drinking seekers of Seattle. Ultimately, however, Driscoll's theology means that his congregants' salvation is not in his hands. It's not in their own hands, either — this is the heart of Calvinism. Ultimately, however, Driscoll's theology means that his congregants' salvation is not in his hands. It's not in their own hands, either — this is the heart of Calvinism.

Human beings are totally corrupted by original sin and predestined for heaven or hell, no matter their earthly conduct. We all deserve eternal damnation, but God, in his inscrutable mercy, has granted the grace of salvation to an elect few. While John Calvin's 16th-century doctrines have deep roots in Christian tradition, they strike many modern evangelicals as nonsensical and even un-Christian. If predestination is true, they argue, then there is no point in missions to the unsaved or in leading a godly life. And some babies who die in infancy — if God placed them among the reprobate — go straight to hell with the rest of the damned, to "glorify his name by their own destruction," as Calvin wrote. Since the early 19th century, most evangelicals have preferred a theology that stresses the believer's free decision to accept God's grace. To be born again is a choice God wants you to make; if you so choose, Jesus will be your personal friend.

And we all know personal friends are people just like us.  Why be humble when God is your BFF?  Why be a servant when you pal around with the Logos that created the cosmos?  A little of that goes a long way, and it goes a long way in the wrong direction, for my taste.

But are we totally corrupted?  Do we all deserve eternal damnation?  Is that any better than Jesus being my BFF?  And can I set any of this aside without completely re-writing traditional Christian soteriology?

Even Luther runs afoul of his own reasoning on this.  Luther decided it was God's grace that saved us, and that God's grace is wholly unmerited, because there is nothing we can do to merit it.  Yet we must do something.  We must choose to accept that grace.  Apparently if we don't, we're still damned.  Which means we were damned from the beginning, damned before birth, and only the right choice will save us.  Which means the grace is not unmerited; we only merit it if, like the characters given the decision to choose the chalice in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," we choose wisely.  Everyone watching that film knows the Nazi will not choose wisely.  He's the bad guy, they never make wise decisions.  He doesn't deserve grace because he's made too many bad choices.  He deserves only damnation.  But to switch back to Luther, we've all made bad choices, we all deserve damnation.  How is it this one choice determines our salvation?  And if it does, how is grace then unmerited?  Are we left only with the simplistic version of Pascal's wager:  it's better that I choose God than not, just to be safe?  What kind of choice is that?  What kind of soteriology is that?

So eventually grace comes to us because we make the right choice or we think the right thought or we say the right words (whether we mean them or not, even God doesn't know).  What is the point of this tail-chasing?  Historically it's been to establish precisely what Jesus specifically preached against:  a hierarchy where the believers, or at the worst extreme the "elect," get to claim privileges for themselves above all others.  And that is not only a perversion of the most basic Christian teachings, it's reprehensible.  Dare I say, it is the fundamental heresy?

If I profess a soteriology now, it is a soteriology of life, not an after-life.  My sympathies are with the nuns and monks who work especially with the poor, the ones who, as Windhorse noted:

... are concerned with trying to find food and clothing and medicine for the least among us, not lecturing them on sin or hypostatic union. Mother Teresa did not try and "save" Hindus or Muslims or Sikhs, just help them. As a result, she has become a powerful and inspiring example of Christian values while, conversely, the likes of salvationists like Jimmy Swaggart and Ted Haggard and Pat Robertson have done immeasurable [harm] to the Christian message.

I have never been so comfortable with Christianity as I have in those moments when I realized I was trying to help someone in the name of Christ, rather than to "save" them from a fate I don't think anyone is born to deserve.

The future of Christianity is not hipsters

It's David. No, seriously:

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There's something very traditional here, with the idea that reason comes from God (see, e.g., Aquinas) and so leads to faith (obviously the pre-Pietist era of Christianity). But the idea that robots will be smarter, and therefore more Christian?  Well, you know, if you can process all information on earth simultaneously, imagine the sermon you could write!

Huh?*

Really, it's just too funny.

Update:  I was going to leave this in comments, but when I finished it I realized it needed to be up here:

There is huge pressure on Protestant pastors to identify and get out ahead of the "Next Big Thing." At one time Joel Osteen was identified as the "Best Preacher in America," so everyone needed to follow his example; or we needed to be a "Purpose Driven Church," a la Rick Warren; or we needed to be the next Mars Hill, or now the "hipster" pastor.

So the leap to robot pastors is not really a surprise; not to me. It's just the logic of the relentless pressure to be "relevant." Every one of those "successes" I mentioned is actually no more absurd or dehumanizing or reductionist about the Gospel than the idea of robot preachers.

It's all a matter of looking for the "silver bullet," the "One" that will save us all. Which is the real irony.....

*I have to be pedantic enough to point out this is classic Reformed theology, with the sermon (the "Word") at the center of worship, as opposed to the Eucharist, the sacrament.  Too Catholic, ya know. And the beat goes on, with a robo-drummer......

Asking for a friend....

Because, seriously, isn't that what you think of?

To carry forward this Lakewood contretemps, I find this at Religion Dispatches:

If American Christianity as an institutional notion expects to survive, let alone thrive in the next century, it must do a better job of holding its adherents accountable. Sometimes that looks like internal review, where clergy and laypersons speak out about wrongdoings amongst one another. Most recently we saw that when many individual churches and denominations held the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) accountable for the initial failure to call and endorse a resolution that denounced white supremacy and white nationalism. Ultimately, SBC did the right thing.

But sometimes, in the case of Osteen and Lakewood Church, it looks like a larger public outside of the machinations of organized religion holding the church-folk accountable as well.

American Christianity would be wise to make sure it listens to both.

Something I almost could have found at Salon, eh?  First, what is this "American Christianity" of which Lazard writes, and where do I find it?  In the UCC?  Among the Conference of Catholic Bishops?  In the church of Robert Jeffress, or Joel Osteen?  In Saddleback Church (and whatever happened to Rick Warren, pastor/powerbroker of 2008?)?  Indeed, what is the "institution" of "American Christianity"?  The Episcopal Church, a denomination in membership with the Anglican Communion?  The Presbyterian Church USA?  The Cumberland Presbyterian Church?  The Evangelical Lutheran Church?  The Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church?  The Wisconsin Synod of the Lutheran Church?  The Southern Baptist Convention?  The Mennonites?  The Amish?  The huge variety of mega-churches like Lakewood, with no denominational ties at all, or the failed mini-denominations like Mars Hill?  Sojourners said, at the beginning of the year, that "American 'Christianity'" had failed.  Right?  Wrong?  Discuss in 500 words or less.

Who speaks for "American Christianity," and to whom does it listen?  Should we hold Rick Wiles and Kevin Swanson accountable for declaring Harvey a sign of God's divine wrath against the City of Houston for its “aggressively pro-homosexual mayor” and “affinity for the sexual perversion movement"?  How do we do that?  Shall we also hold Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Focus on the Family accountable for what they say?  Both are "institutions," but neither are churches and subject to the control of denominations (neither are most Southern Baptist churches, for that matter; controlled by a denomination, I mean).

Whom do we hold accountable, and who is the "we" doing it?  Christianity is defined by three things: acknowledgement of communion/eucharist and baptism as sacraments (at least); baptism with water in the name of the Triune God; and recognition of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  But even if a "church" doesn't proclaim one of these three, who holds that group accountable by declaring they cannot use the word "Christian" to describe themselves?

It's funny, but the more we want to assert power, even in the name of what we think is right, the more power slips from our grasp and, worse still, the farther from the central teachings of Christianity we wander.  I'm supposed to sit in judgment over others in the name of "American Christianity"?  And who sits in judgment over me?  And what happens to the directive from Christ:  "Don't judge, and you won't be judged"?

Easter Monday 2018

The Daily Beast:

Above all else, Jesus was never punitive.  In the eighth chapter of John’s gospel, we encounter the story of the woman “taken in adultery.”  She is seized by the scribes and Pharisees and brought to Jesus, asking for his judgment.  According to Jewish tradition, she deserved death by stoning.  Capital punishment was the only punishment they could imagine for such wickedness.  But Jesus replied: “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.”  [John 8:7]   This attitude is echoed in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says emphatically: “Judge not, lest you be judged.”[Matthew 7:1] 

Which is the central problem with Christianity:  nobody wants to take that admonition seriously.  So at Religion Dispatches one writer declares "Times UP" for "politely Anti-LGBTQ Christianity."  And well it should be; but who gets to be the judge?  Clearly people who agree with the author, who is ready to nail a new 95 theses to some church door in America somewhere:

It was these efforts by church leaders to leverage ambiguous language that originally inspired the work of Church Clarity, which urges churches to be clear about their convictions and “scores” them based on their transparency. People in more liberal settings are often surprised to learn that their church doesn’t, for example allow an openly bisexual man to be baptized. Similar shock exists on the other end of the theological spectrum, when people observe their pastor struggling to deliver clarity about “biblical” (i.e. heterosexual) marriage. Folks invest years of theirs lives at these churches often under false assumptions,  with many experiencing a rude awakening upon learning the truth. This pattern of being misled, has contributed to the well documented rise of the “nones” and “dones.” Ambiguity makes people uneasy. Deception is harmful.

If churches just did things his way, they'd be bursting at the seams again!  Yeah, that's the ticket!

Churches have a responsibility to do likewise. Yet, many pastors have prioritized their own capitalistic agendas, focusing on the short-sighted goal of growing their own following, building their empires, or otherwise enriching themselves. And ambiguity has become an effective means of remaining in power. If congregants take issue with something they’re preaching or not preaching, they simply respond “well, we’d rather be known by what we’re for, right Stephen?” This slow drip of placebo ensures that Christians continue to go to church, give 10% of our income, serve in Sunday school, say our prayers and go to bed feeling like we’ve done our part.

It’s also the same abdication of responsibility that has allowed Christianity to drift into its current existential identity crisis. If the Church is to deliver any hope for humanity, church leaders should embrace their obligation to lead courageously and help guide the moral compass of the world it claims to love. You can’t do this by concealing what you stand for and obfuscating what you stand against. There’s no hope in deliberate ambiguity. There’s no leadership in comfortable inaction. The reality remains that regardless of what we want to be known for, we will, as they say, be known by our fruit.

Of course, if this guy insists on being in charge (he comes from the now-failed Mars Hill Community, so the only thing that has changed is his church affiliation, really), it will be a Church of One.  Maybe he could argue with a fundamentalist instead, except RD tells us that's not a good idea either:

People who didn’t grow up in the American evangelical bubble often don’t realize what they’re demanding when they ask an evangelical to accept a fact that is contradicted by their church’s interpretation of the Bible. To those bought in—excepting, perhaps, that small demographic of Christians who identify as evangelical and are truly progressive—evangelicalism is not a collection of facts. It is an entire reality, based not on logic but on a web of ideas, all of which must be wholeheartedly accepted for any of it to work. It is complete unto itself, self-contained, self-justifying, self-sustaining. It’s your community, your life, your entire way of thinking, and your gauge for what is true in the world. Evangelicalism feels so right from the inside. 

Oddly, that describes just about anybody who goes to a good college and finds out everything they knew was WRONG!  If I were to argue with an atheist, the atheist could make the same complaint.  But it's not the same thing (or it's okay) because we know fundamentalists are WRONG!

Right?

The problem with Christianity is that it insists on humility.  Where is the humility in insisting somebody else has it all wrong about anything, even Christianity?  

It’s high time that progressive thinkers took back Christianity from the right—from literal thinkers who misread the gospels, and who argue from their own political prejudices in ways that distort what Jesus, the Prince of Peace, actually preached.

But is it really?  Who died and left you in charge of everyone else's Christian beliefs?

“He sat down and called the twelve and says to them, ‘If anyone wants to be ‘number one,’ that person has to be last of all and servant of all.’ "

That's in the Gospel of John, right after Jesus has washed the feet of all his disciples, an action one of my seminary professors described as the "sacrament that wasn't" because, while the eucharist became a lasting practice of Christian worship, foot washing waxed and waned and still makes us as uncomfortable as hell.  Try to get 12 people from your congregation to sit still for it on a Maundy Thursday evening, and you'll have 12 people who aren't so sure they want to repeat the experience.  If you can get 12, that is.  In some churches you can, in some churches you can't; which churches are "right"?  And who are you to judge, if you are busy being last of all and servant of all?  The last doesn't get to judge, the servant doesn't pass sentence on the master.  "Don't judge, and you won't be judged."  It's really the only way out of that cycle of injury and response, just like "turn the other cheek" and "in Christ, we are all equal, Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female" (a loose translation, I know, but it better serves my purposes).  How can you judge when we are all equal?

The story of the experience at Emmaus continues to fascinate me.  Caravaggio paints it as if, with a gesture, perhaps a familiar one Jesus was always doing, something his disciples and followers knew as a tic of the Master, they suddenly know who they've been talking to.  And when they know, he disappears!  But they are sure he was there, that he ate with them, that he walked with them, that he talked with them.  How could they now know it?  The story tangles up ideas of epistemology (how do we know what we know?) that lie at the root of the tangle of Western culture:  Greek and Hebrew, discovery v. revelation.  Do we discover all true knowledge?  Or is true knowledge revealed to us?  But the story also tangles up ideas of seeing as believing, because they do not see, but when they do, suddenly they believe!  But believe what?  Do they believe the victory of God over death?  Or do they believe the power of powerlessness?  Do they believe they have been empowered?  Or do they feel true humility before God, who has revealed Jesus to them, only to take him away again?

The Emmaus story is not about taking anything back; or claiming anything for the world, or even in the world.  The Emmaus story is about God in the world, but how is God known now?  Where is the thunderclap, the earthquake, the fire falling from heaven, even the voice some hear, some don't?  Jesus was there and THEY DID NOT KNOW IT!  Maybe because they weren't paying attention; maybe because they were too concerned with their own lives, their own interests, their own ideas about what should and should not be done now as followers of the man from Nazareth.  They were asked to accept a fact contradicted by their own interpretation of the world, perhaps even of Torah, certainly of human experience:  that the man they knew was dead was alive again.  Maybe they were starting to think it was already high time they took the message of the Nazarene back from the people already talking crazy talk.  Maybe they thought they had been laboring for years under false assumptions about who he was and what he was doing and they were facing a rude awakening upon learning the truth:  Jesus was dead, and some of closest followers were losing their grip on reality.

‘If anyone wants to be ‘number one,’ that person has to be last of all and servant of all.’ "  Jesus explains the scripture to them, on the road; they don't see, they don't understand.  They extend hospitality to this stranger when they get to the village:

24:28 As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on.

24:29 But they urged him strongly, saying, "Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over." So he went in to stay with them.

24:30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.

24:31 Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.

"This is my body, given for you."  And then they see his body, or him, or know who he is; and then he disappears.  That re-enactment of the eucharist is no small thing, but neither is the offer of hospitality.  What did the Scriptures actually teach?  Jesus tells them, but they do not hear.  Only when he breaks the bread, only when he shares the meal, do they see.

We want to be in charge; we want to discover for ourselves; we want to claim credit for being right.  We are on the road to Emmaus; we should only be praying that our eyes will be opened.  If we are truly humble, it is truly all we deserve.

A Serious Problem That Needs To Be Addressed

Take this:

None of this means that all religion is incompatible with science, but if so many Christians are endangering the lives of themselves and others, that is a serious problem that needs to be addressed.

Is there any hope? Giberson muses that with respect to coronavirus, “Fortunately, Trump is finally making contact with reality, so hopefully his followers will do likewise.” Yet even if they do, the larger problem of fundamentalist Christianity as a danger to democracy, human rights, and public health will remain.

(We'll come back to "how many Christians" in a minute.)  Add this:

Rock Creek Park tonight is not far removed from this https://t.co/LpvhRardKS

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 20, 2020

And toss in all the young idiots on Florida beaches for Spring Break.  And then let's get back to "how many Christians."

Before we do, let's note that almost none of those people in the second two categories are presumptively Trump supporters.  It's a dangerous thing to assume all the members of a congregation where the Pastor professes an inordinate love of Trump are Trump supporters, too; but we all do it.  Still, let's not accept as gospel that all "evangelical" Christians are also rabid political fans of Donald J. Trump and think he can do no wrong.  Then let's move on to the complaint in the article I began with.

You've probably noted that I'm putting "evangelicals" in quotation marks.  There is a reason for this.  "Evangelicals" is an umbrella term that includes anyone not in the RC church or in most mainline Protestant churches (except the Southern Baptists).  No, that's hardly accurate, but it's how most people (including the author of the article) use the term.  And yes, I did read recently about a church in Arkansas that wouldn't stop Sunday worship because the pastor is drawing in people and "healing" them (oh, and the virus is a hoax!), and there's the pastor in Florida mentioned in the article, and there are a few others scattered about getting attention because they are defying the state and "honoring" God.  My take on these pastors is that they want people to worship them, not God; or at least to have faith in them, and not necessarily God.  I question their sincerity and their theology (such as it is) because they are being defiant as a way of getting attention for themselves.  Trusting in them, they proclaim, is proof of your trust (faith) in God.  That is something even the most bearded and fanatical Old Testmaent prophet would never lay claim to, but some pastors, especially the ones crowing about staying open for crowds in a time of pandemic, do so without blinking.  I don't know what that is, but I don't regard it as Christianity.

Most of these churches, not surprisingly, are one-off churches, non-denominational in a way Chrissy Stroop doesn't really seem to understand (the word never appears in the article, and the article veers off from "evangelicals" to the Orthodox Church and outlier priests in that denomination.  What?  Major church judicatories don't mind-control all their authorized priests?!?).  By "one-off" I mean cults of personality resting solely on the charisma of the pastor.  Consider Robert Schuller's "Crystal Cathedral" as an example.  When Schuller, who apparently was ordained in the Reformed Church of America (if memory serves) died, so did his congregation.  The building was sold to the local RC diocese. In 2014 Mars Hill, which had tried to be its own mini-denomination, went out of business when its founder was discovered to be less than an honorable person.  Richard Roberts tried to take over for Oral (much further back), but that didn't work out so well.  The churches that don't collapse when their renowned and famous pastor retires or just proves to be a stained human being are the exceptions that prove the rule.  Such churches are all about the pastor, and almost never much about God.

And out of all the non-denominational churches in America, exactly what percentage of them are keeping the doors open on Sunday to spite the government and serve the Lord?

I dare say there were more people on the beaches of Florida this week than in all the congregations combined that kept a regular Sunday schedule.  At least all the ones Ms. Stroop is so worked up about.

Are church-goers, of any stripe, really a threat to "democracy, human rights, and public health" in America?  I saw people milling about in front of Costco the other day, at 8:30 in the morning.  Costco opens at 10.  Were they desperate for toilet paper, or meat?  Or just anxious for a good deal on furniture or a mattress?  Should we check all the Costcos in the country and force them to close until further notice?  Is retail (except grocery stores, of course.  Or apparently.  My local store is more crowded now than it ever is, except just before Thanksgiving.) a danger to "democracy, human rights, and public health"?  What about gas stations?  The Costco gas station is almost always crowded with cars.  Is that injurious to the entire community?  Wherever two or more are gathered in the name of commerce, is the destruction of the Republic there as well?

Honestly, what is it about religion that provokes such hysteria?

Hope y’all enjoyed the bars last weekend.

*NYC HAS HALF OF U.S. CASES, TWO-THIRDS OF N.Y. CASES: MAYOR

— Alex Wayne (@aawayne) March 20, 2020

Where's All the People?, Part Infinity

My seminary education was surprisingly reliant on sociology.  Not in the theological classes, but in the ecclesiological ones.  There was great attention paid to where the "church", writ as largely as possible, was going.  I came to call some of the conclusions "vulture theology."  Something like this:

Social science research has long suggested that Americans’ relationship with religion has a tidal quality — people who were raised religious find themselves drifting away as young adults, only to be drawn back in when they find spouses and begin to raise their own families. Some argued that young adults just hadn’t yet been pulled back into the fold of organized religion, especially since they were hitting major milestones like marriage and parenthood later on.

Vulture theology is the idea the church will always falter but never die because young people will do what they did in the '60's:  abandon church until they need it for marriages and baptisms and weddings and someplace "safe" to take the family at least once a week.  Nothing in this article surprises me; or disturbs me, for that matter.   Does it point toward a bleak, dystopian future in which no one attends church and the buildings become the "bare, ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang" that Shakespeare alluded to?  Only he was thinking of the Catholic churches taken over by Elizabeth I's father, and abandoned on pain of death.  This future is not that past, but is it as dreary and dreadful as the images make it sound?

Nah.    What's going on in church attendance has been going on for a long time.  We've becomes used to "mega-churches" replacing churches, but that's a phenomenon that's, at best, 40 years old.  And they will fade as their pastors fade (Mars Hill is gone; the Crystal Cathedral died with Robert Schuller).  I'd go so far as to say mega-churches are the Facebook of churches:  attractive to old people who think they're on the cutting edge, but of no interest to Millenials who, frankly, probably have a lot of reasons for not going to church besides politics.  We've also gotten used to the idea that church is a central pillar of American society; but that's an idea that's pretty much the experience of the post-World War II world, which is, SURPRISE!, the experience of the Boomers.  And let's face it; we're fading away, too.

The politics is an interesting issue.  Seems that doesn't attract people to church the way we imagined it would.  I remain critical of the United Church of Christ (the church which ordained me) because of the public emphasis on social justice/political issues.  Not that I am opposed to social justice; far from it.  But while LBJ and Bobby Kennedy could talk about social justice as a national commitment, it has become an issue that is purely political, as everyone now sees the world as a zero-sum game (a report on NPR this morning about a union in Nevada is illustrative.  Sanders, Warren, and Biden spoke to the union, but Warren and Sanders had to explain how "Medicare for All" would preserve the healthcare benefits the union had negotiated and was so protective of.  They didn't care how a proposal would benefit everyone; they were most concerned with preserving their benefits from any change, where "change=loss."  That's the zero sum game we practice today, a presumption Kennedy and LBJ did not have to work against.).  When the UCC talks about social justice, the world hears a "liberal" political position being advocated.  Much as I agree with Walter Brueggemann, a little attention on matters spiritual and even communal might not be a bad idea.  Then again I'm hardly a 'builder' of churches, so what do I know?

Except that I'm not surprised by the study concluding Millenials aren't going to church because they never went to church and because the public face of church is an institution interested in power and money.   The church writ large has done that to itself, selling out to Mammon and the prestige offered by the world rather than trying to be the Body of Christ in the world.  But what withers away is false, and what remains will be true, no matter how few people adhere to it.

As I've said before, when that 4 in 10 becomes 6 in 10, we'll be back to where we were 100+ years ago.  Which still won't be the worst place to be.