Never On Sunday

I suppose this makes it official: Christmas is not a day of prayer; even on Sunday.

Either that, or "mega-churches," by their own admission now, aren't really "churches." ("Church--The Eng. 'church'...come[s] ultimately from the Gk. kurion '[thing] belonging to the Lord.'"--Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church)

This Christmas, no prayers will be said in several megachurches around the country. Even though the holiday falls this year on a Sunday, when churches normally host thousands for worship, pastors are canceling services, anticipating low attendance on what they call a family day.

Critics within the evangelical community, more accustomed to doing battle with department stores and public schools over keeping religion in Christmas, are stunned by the shutdown.

It is almost unheard of for a Christian church to cancel services on a Sunday, and opponents of the closures are accusing these congregations of bowing to secular culture.

"This is a consumer mentality at work: `Let's not impose the church on people. Let's not make church in any way inconvenient,'" said David Wells, professor of history and systematic theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, a leading evangelical school in Hamilton, Mass. "I think what this does is feed into the individualism that is found throughout American culture, where everyone does their own thing."

The churches closing on Christmas plan multiple services in the days leading up to the holiday, including on Christmas Eve. Most normally do not hold Christmas Day services, preferring instead to mark the holiday in the days and night before. However, Sunday worship has been a Christian practice since ancient times.

And that "where two or three are gathered in my name" stuff? Apparently what Jesus really meant was: "At least two or three thousand."

Cally Parkinson, a spokeswoman for Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., said church leaders decided that organizing services on a Christmas Sunday would not be the most effective use of staff and volunteer resources. The last time Christmas fell on a Sunday was 1994, and only a small number of people showed up to pray, she said.

"If our target and our mission is to reach the unchurched, basically the people who don't go to church, how likely is it that they'll be going to church on Christmas morning?" she said.

Thanks to leap year, of course, this happens only about every 11 years. And it used to be that people went to church on Christmas Day, whatever day of the week it was. What this really indicates is that, as Stephen Nissenbaum points out, sometime after Clement Clark Moore's ubiquitous and iconic poem, Christmas became accepted in America as a family holiday.

A nuclear family holiday, in fact; which is why most people travel on Thanksgiving, but stay home on Christmas. (In the near future I hope to be able to elaborate Nissenbaum's thesis.)

So Christmas has almost nothing to do with "Christ" at all. And the mega-churches, being a perfect product of marketing, understand that.

This isn't all that odd, actually. Most "mega-churches" are in the Reformed tradition, and almost reflexively abhor any liturgical practices, including a liturgical calendar. A few years ago, when I was on the mailing list of various "religious publications," most of them marketing to "mega-church" pastors or wannabe mega-church pastors, I got a notice about a new book promising to remake my December preaching. It was inspired by a discovery by a non-denominational pastor, who grew bored preaching sin and salvation 12 months a year, and needed something more interesting for December. His discovery?

Advent.

Yup. He "discovered" the season of Advent, something that has existed in the Christian church since about the 4th century.

Having grown up in the Presbyterian church (also the "Reformed" tradition), I barely knew Advent, and didn't know Lent at all; much less Epiphany or Pentecost. And church on Christmas Day only occurred when Christmas Day was a Sunday; and even then, turnout was usually light. When I was a student pastor, my Church Council blithely informed me that it was a tradition to hold services on Christmas Day, but that they never came!

Now, I knew these members were the most faithful attendees at worship that I had. If they didn't come, why did they have a service? "For the old people," they told me, the last of whom, I realized, had gone into a nursing home that year. So I took a practice from a church I knew in Tyler, one I had wanted to try since I entered seminary.

I announced a "Love Feast," something I understand is a practice of the Moravian church. I offered hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls on Sunday morning, as a "sort of" eucharist. (I was not ordained then, and my advisors were at great pains to be reassured I would not call this either a "meal" or "Communion," even though I said a communion prayer that morning. This may seem reasonable to someone in an episcopal tradition, such as the RC or the Anglian Communion, but in the loose UCC "traditions," this struck me as almost laughable. It still does.)

In terms of attendance, it was the greatest single success of my ministry. College students coming home for Christmas got out of bed to come to church. 30 people showed up (which was a "good" turnout on a Sunday morning; this was a tiny and lovely church, some of the best people I have ever known). I invited them to stay after the short service to finish off the food, and we had a party. It worked so well that, to this day (and that was nearly a decade ago, now), they still have a service on Christmas Day, and still serve hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls.

So, if Willow Creek Community Church wants to get in touch with me, I'm sure we can work out the product placement arrangements.....

Eostre’s Easter Ain’t What It Never Was

I’m The Easter bunny and Easter eggs aren’t “sacred truth.” It’s adoption of pagan Eostre rituals. They have nothing to with Jesus. And “Easter Sunday” wasn’t designated as anything. March 31 was. What would Jesus say to Mike if he stood before him to say this hateful blasphemy? pic.twitter.com/DCFcug5Suo

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) March 30, 2024

Well, no; not really:

The English term, according to the Ven. Bede (De temporum ratione, I, v), relates to Estre, a Teutonic goddess of the rising light of day and spring, which deity, however, is otherwise unknown, even in the Edda (Simrock, Mythol., 362); Anglo-Saxon, eâster, eâstron; Old High German, ôstra, ôstrara, ôstrarûn; German, Ostern.

Yes, it’s an English word.  No, there was no Teutonic god/goddess by that name. So there were no “pagan rituals” connected to them. Most such information is based on what Biblical scholars call “bullgeschicte.”

New Testament scholars have noted that since The DaVinci Code became a cultural phenomenon, there’s been a surge of conspiratorial claims about Jesus, the early church, and the influence of Pagan mystery religions. Authors such as Craig Evans and Bart Ehrman have written with bewilderment at the revival of “mythicist” theories of Jesus and “nineteenth-century philosophical hokum” that was long ago dismissed by serious scholars who read Greek and Hebrew.

All religious traditions change over time. However, to tell people of a different religion that they don’t know what their religious rituals actually mean is ipso facto not a historical argument but a sectarian one. The claim that Christians unknowingly practice a Pagan mystery religion has a long history combining sectarian claims with goofy pseudo-scholarship. It was Protestant Reformers, in fact, who first accused their Catholic rivals of adulterating Christianity with Paganism.

However, it was during the French Revolution that the “mythicist” claims first surfaced. Constantin Francois Volney, in his 1791 essay “Ruins of Empire,” claimed that all religions are derived from sun worship and that “Christ” is cognate with the Hindu “Krishna.” Charles Francois-Dupuis built on this idea in The Origins of All Religions (1795) and introduced discussion of Babylonian religion, including the resurrected god Tammuz. 

Nobody really knows where the Easter Bunny and Easter Eggs came from. Probably just the celebration of spring or, especially in Europe and Russia, the end of Lent and return of eggs to the menu ( remember Shrove Tuesday and the end of eggs from the larder until Easter?). The Bunny? Well, bunnies and springtime are logical fits. 

I’m at least pretty damned sure it doesn’t predate Christianity.

And Easter Sunday just happens to be on March 31 this year. March 31 has been “Transgender Visibility Day” for a decade now.

Also, until Passover comes up in late April I don’t know why you all are talking about our Easter anyway. The Last Supper was literally a Passover Seder. https://t.co/ZVixVcMagm

— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) March 30, 2024

Yeah, about that: welcome to the computus paschalis.

The connection between the Jewish Passover and the Christian feast of Easter is real and ideal. Real, since Christ died on the first Jewish Easter Day; ideal, like the relation between type and reality, because Christ's death and Resurrection had its figures and types in the Old Law, particularly in the paschal lamb, which was eaten towards evening of the 14th of Nisan. In fact, the Jewish feast was taken over into the Christian Easter celebration; the liturgy (Exsultet) sings of the passing of Israel through the Red Sea, the paschal lamb, the column of fire, etc. Apart, however, from the Jewish feast, the Christians would have celebrated the anniversary of the death and the Resurrection of Christ. But for such a feast it was necessary to know the exact calendar date of Christ's death. To know this day was very simple for the Jews; it was the day after the 14th of the first month, the 15th of Nisan of their calendar. But in other countries of the vast Roman Empire there were other systems of chronology. The Romans from 45 B.C. had used the reformed Julian calendar; there were also the Egyptian and the Syro-Macedonian calendar. The foundation of the Jewish calendar was the lunar year of 354 days, whilst the other systems depended on the solar year. In consequence the first days of the Jewish months and years did not coincide with any fixed days of the Roman solar year. Every fourth year of the Jewish system had an intercalary month. Since this month was inserted, not according to some scientific method or some definite rule, but arbitrarily, by command of the Sanhedrin, a distant Jewish date can never with certainty be transposed into the corresponding Julian or Gregorian date (Ideler, Chronologie, I, 570 sq.). The connection between the Jewish and the Christian Pasch explains the movable character of this feast. Easter has no fixed date, like Christmas, because the 15th of Nisan of the Semitic calendar was shifting from date to date on the Julian calendar. Since Christ, the true Paschal Lamb, had been slain on the very day when the Jews, in celebration of their Passover, immolated the figurative lamb, the Jewish Christians in the Orient followed the Jewish method, and commemorated the death of Christ on the 15th of Nisan and His Resurrection on the 17th of Nisan, no matter on what day of the week they fell. For this observance they claimed the authority of St. John and St. Philip. 

In the rest of the empire another consideration predominated. Every Sunday of the year was a commemoration of the Resurrection of Christ, which had occurred on a Sunday. Because the Sunday after 14 Nisan was the historical day of the Resurrection, at Rome this Sunday became the Christian feast of Easter. Easter was celebrated in Rome and Alexandria on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, and the Roman Church claimed for this observance the authority of Sts. Peter and Paul. The spring equinox in Rome fell on 25 March; in Alexandria on 21 March. At Antioch Easter was kept on the Sunday after the Jewish Passover. (See EASTER CONTROVERSY.) In Gaul a number of bishops, wishing to escape the difficulties of the paschal computation, seem to have assigned Easter to a fixed date of the Roman calendar, celebrating the death of Christ on 25 March, His Resurrection on 27 March (Marinus Dumiensis in P.L., LXXII, 47-51), since already in the third century 25 March was considered the day of the Crucifixion (Computus Pseudocyprianus, ed. Lersch, Chronologie, II, 61). This practice was of short duration. Many calendars in the Middle Ages contain these same dates (25 March, 27 March) for purely historical, not liturgical, reasons (Grotenfend, Zeitrechnung, II, 46, 60, 72, 106, 110, etc.). The Montanists in Asia Minor kept Easter on the Sunday after 6 April (Schmid, Osterfestberechnung in der abendlandischen Kirche). The First Council of Nicaea (325) decreed that the Roman practice should be observed throughout the Church. But even at Rome the Easter term was changed repeatedly. Those who continued to keep Easter with the Jews were called Quartodecimans (14 Nisan) and were excluded from the Church. The computus paschalis, the method of determining the date of Easter and the dependent feasts, was of old considered so important that Durandus (Rit. div. off., 8, c.i.) declares a priest unworthy of the name who does not know the computus paschalis. The movable character of Easter (22 March to 25 April) gives rise to inconveniences, especially in modern times. For decades scientists and other people have worked in vain for a simplification of the computus, assigning Easter to the first Sunday in April or to the Sunday nearest the 7th of April. Some even wish to put every Sunday to a certain date of the month, e.g. beginning with New Year's always on a Sunday, etc. [See L. Günther, "Zeitschrift Weltall" (1903); Sandhage and P. Dueren in "Pastor bonus" (Trier, 1906); C. Tondini, "L'Italia e la questione del Calendario" (Florence, 1905).]

Aren’t you sorry you asked? You didn’t? Well, you shouldn’t have.

Never on Sunday Redux

This NYT article digs a bit deeper in to the issue of "megachurches" closing on Sunday, December 25, 2005. This matter raises a whole host of ecclesiological questions.

1) First, what is worship for?

"What we're encouraging people to do is take that DVD and in the comfort of their living room, with friends and family, pop it into the player and hopefully hear a different and more personal and maybe more intimate Christmas message, that God is with us wherever we are," said Cally Parkinson, communications director at Willow Creek, which draws 20,000 people on a typical Sunday.

2) Second, what is church for?

The uproar is not only over closing the churches on Christmas Day, because some evangelical churches large and small have done that in recent years and made Christmas Eve the big draw, without attracting much criticism.

What some consider the deeper affront is in canceling services on a Sunday, which most Christian churches consider the Lord's Day, when communal worship is an obligation. The last time Christmas fell on a Sunday was in 1994. Some of these same megachurches remained open them, they say, but found attendance sparse.

Now, I will be honest: the first time I ever attended a worship service on Christmas Day when that day was not on a Sunday, was the first time I pastored a church. And even then, it was a "country" church (rural Illinois town of 500), and the service was still being held "for the old people." Most churches in the Reformed tradition, in other words, don't hold a Christmas Day service. They simply worship on the Lord's Day, a practice that is as American as the Puritans. But does anyone in a church in the Reformed tradition see worship as an "obligation" anymore? Vanishingly few churches still adhere to that standard, even among "mainline" denominations.

Now here's where it gets interesting:

"This attachment to a particular day on the calendar is just not something that megachurches have been known for," Nancy Ammerman, a sociologist of religion at Boston University, said. "They're known for being flexible and creative, and not for taking these traditions, seasons, dates and symbols really seriously."

Are those "traditional" practices worthless, then, outdated, outmoded? Not necessarily:

In many Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, known for their rich liturgical traditions, Christmas Day attracts far more worshippers than an average Sunday. Grown children return with their parents to the parishes they belonged to when they were young.

I did experience, especially in my country church, a dramatic swing in attendance on Christmas Eve. The first year, the church was full that night (75+ people; it was a small church, indeed). the next year, it seemed almost empty (35+ people). The difference was family travel: families "came home" every other year, a pattern I have observed, more or less dramatically, in every church I have pastored since. Indeed, in Houston, where "native Houstonians" are as rare as hen's teeth, the pattern is usually people leaving to visit their children at Christmas (packages and "Santa Claus" are the primary reason families with young children travel at Thanksgiving, not Christmas). And it has been my experience in the Episcopal church (also known for its "rich liturgical traditions") that many people return there for Christmas Eve. Indeed, my strongest memories from my Presbyterian church childhood (not known for its liturgy) are the few quasi-liturgical moments offered by "special" services such as Christmas Eve.

In fact, I'm not so sure it's the holiday that is exclusively the draw, but the liturgy in combination with it. For liturgical traditions, it is the "tradition" of the liturgy; for non-liturgical traditions, it is the "tradition" of the congregation: Christmas "carols," the church decorations, the familiar words of Luke (one reason "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is still so popular) in a familiar place.

But perhaps the most interesting, and revealing, point in this article is when it shows just how American "megachurches" are, and how American the celebration of Christmas in this country is. Which bring us to:

3) Third, what is the claim of the church on the individual, on the family?

"We're encouraging our members to do a family worship," Bishop Long [Senior Pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, in Lithonia, Ga.] said. "They could wake up and read Scripture and pray and sometimes sing a song, and go over the true meaning of what Christmas is, before opening up their gifts. It keeps them together and not running off to get dressed up to go off to church."

This, of course, hearkens back to the "family chapel" of a place like "Castle Brideshead;" hardly an image of "communal worship." But it ties in perfectly with an "American Christmas," the kind basically invented not by Charles Dickens (Scrooge, after all, awakes to the church bells calling people to service on Christmas Day) but by Clement Clark Moore. Christmas, in other words, as the exclusive province of the family, whether nuclear or extended. But "family" does not mean one's "brothers and sisters in Christ." It means blood and marital relationships.

Of course, "running off to get dressed up to go off to church" hardly sounds like a severe separation of the family unit; especially considering most families gathering soon dissolve into some watching football, some playing with the new toys, some in the kitchen, and some (especially teenagers) wishing they could meet up with their friends and get away from their family! But this just underscores the purpose of "megachurches:" convenience. And convenience works, like utilitarianism, to provide the greatest good to the greatest number:

"I see this in many ways as a capitulation to narcissism, the self-centered, me-first, I'm going to put me and my immediate family first agenda of the larger culture," said Ben Witherington III, professor of New Testament interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky. "If Christianity is an evangelistic religion, then what kind of message is this sending to the larger culture - that worship is an optional extra?"

John D. Witvliet, director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship at Calvin College, asked: "What about the people in society without strong family connections? The elderly, single people a long distance from family, or people who are simply lonely and for whom church and prayers would be a significant part of their day?"

What, in other words, happens to: "Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me?"

Christmas, after all, is the day we celebrate the birth of a man who said: "Do you suppose I came here to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, on the contrary: conflict. As a result, from now on in any given house there will be five in conflict, three against two and two against three. Father will be pitted against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law." (Luke 12:51-53, SV)

To be sure, that is not a sentiment that needs to be enacted in the celebration of the Prince of Peace. But how ironic, in the name of that celebration,and in the name of that man, to elevate family above all other considerations on this one day of the year.

How ironic; and how sadly American.

"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."

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.

"And believe me, my admiration for you hasn't died...."

My mind is clearer now
At last, all too well, I can see
Where we all soon will be.

If you strip away,
the myth from the man
you can see where
we all soon will be.

Jesus!  You've started to believe
the things they say of you!
You really do believe,
This talk of God is true!

And all the good you've done
Will soon get swept away
You've begun to matter more
than the things you say!

Holy Week begins again.  Time to dust off the original recording of "Jesus Christ Superstar" and start playing it loudly when no one else is at home (why inflict my memories on my family?).  That's the music for Holy Week at Chez Advents:  "Jesus Christ Superstar" (original record recording, please, scratches, pops, and all.  Ian Gillan is the ONLY Jesus allowed to sing the role, IMHO.) and Bach's Easter Oratorio.  On Easter, of course.  Holy Week should be conducted with the meditation that "All your followers are blind!  Too much heaven on their minds!"  But this time around I hear the words of Judas anew.  What would it mean for Jesus to matter more than the things he said?

It's a Paul v. the Gospels question, but not the simplistic question simplistic critics of Paul think is so fatal to Pauline studies and the Pauline letters.   What Jesus did matters more to Paul than the things he said because Paul only quotes Jesus saying some of the words of institution (as we call them now) of the eucharisto (as he called it then).  It's the gospels that give us the parables and the statements about Peter ("Rock") and the miracles.  Paul only has the resurrection to rely on; but it's enough for him.

So, first:  which should matter more?  The resurrection; or the sayings of Jesus?  Well, if you go with the resurrection, then it seems that is paramount, because that is now seen as the salvific act by which sinful humanity is spared the depredations of damnation.  But if you go with what Jesus said, then the focus on the resurrection (and so salvation) is the wrong place to put the emphasis, as it tends to let you off the hook for what you do, so long as you believe the right things about the resurrection on any given Sunday morning.

Do my prejudices show yet?

It really is the dividing point of Christianity.  Easter is the most important date on the Christian calendar for the Orthodox Church.  Fortunately for the Protestant churches Easter is always on a Sunday; it isn't the moveable feast that Christmas is (this will be a problem again this year).  But in secular Christianity, Christmas is the big holiday.  Easter is relegated to hats and clothes (not so much any longer, but once.  I'm thinking that was more American aberration than not, but, no matter.) and colored eggs and chocolate bunnies.  Even churches have Easter egg hunts on Sunday after the celebration of the Resurrection; and we jammed Passion Sunday into Palm Sunday because otherwise nobody would be in church to remember the Passion story (be honest; how many people do you know attend Good Friday services?  If done right, they are seriously depressing.  If done wrong, they aren't worth the bother.  I only remember Maundy Thursday service in my Presbyterian childhood; an evening communion service, but nothing else until Sunday morning, and lots of cheery sunrise services around town.  Get up early and have the rest of the day to yourself.  Yes, I am cynical; why do you ask?).  Easter is just the other Sunday when you should be in church (well, Christmas Eve is almost never on Sunday, and when it is, do you go in the morning, or in the evening?  Never both, amirite?).

Besides, the eggs and chocolate are for the kids.  I mean, you can get a box of Godiva with affecting scenes of Spring on the outside, but chocolate bunnies are definitely not for a palate craving high-dollar chocolates.

So, which really matters more?  To the "are you saved?" crowd, it's the Resurrection, whether they realize it or not.  The whole question of faith comes down to "letting Jesus into your heart", and that means accepting the sacrifice on the cross which paid in God's blood for your sin (Anselm's satisfaction theory, but there are so many variations the distinctions begin to blur unless you are really, really interested in it.  Don't even  get me started on TULIP.  Please, just don't.)  But that's the problem with salvation in Christianity:  it's used to divide the sheep from the goats, and to make sure you are among the sheep.

An idea which would appall Jean Cauvin, by the way.  Which is kinda funny.

Anyway, as I've noted before:

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! 

Which is as good a way as any to get me around to this meditation on Psalm 73 by Martin Buber, courtesy of Pastor Dan:

The good, says the Psalmist, is ‘to draw near to God’. He does not say that those near to God are good. But he does call the bad ‘those who are far from God’. In the language of modern thought that means that there are men who have no share in existence, but there are no men who possess existence. Existence cannot be possessed, but only shared in. One does not rest in the lap of existence, but one draws near to it. ‘Nearness’ is nothing but such a drawing and coming near continually and as long as the human person lives.

Of course "drawing near to God" is, in salvific terms, being "saved."  Well, in certain salvation theories; and there's the rub.  How do you draw nearer to God by drawing away from other people, or by drawing a circle round those inside the blessed, and those outside (the damned)?  Is what Jesus said at all relevant to what Jesus did, to who Jesus was?  Is the Psalm as Buber reads it relevant at all?

Can we possess the salvation of the Cross, the blessings of the resurrection?  Or can we only share in them?  Paul never hoards them for only those who appreciate the gift; he throws it wildly, like seed.  He scatters it to anyone who wants to listen.

This idea Judas expresses, what Jesus did v. what Jesus said, comes up all the time.  Just this morning in an interview at Salon about the bombings in Brussels, Pastor Dan said this:

You mention this in passing: The matter of praying for enemies, including violent ones. To what extent does that make sense, and do you feel conflicted by the issue?

I don’t feel conflicted by it, but then I’m a conflicted Christian. I don’t expect it to make much sense to someone who isn’t. From the Christian perspective, we always have to come back to the perspective that Jesus died for us all. He died for his enemies as much – if not more – than his friends.

And not just for the good people.

Maybe it's just an easier shorthand to refer to the deed rather than the words, because you don't really connect the Crucifixion to your enemies except through the words of Jesus; and, not coincidentally, the words of Paul.  But to explain that you have to put the words in context, and as Pastor Dan notes, that's not a simple task.  Easier to mention the deed (actions speak louder than words), even though the interpretation of that deed is itself a complex exegesis.

Not for nothing I'll quote the conclusion of that interview, because it saves me writing it out again, and because it points to the true importance of the Crucifixion, the lesson that has to be learned over and over again, the lesson of Holy Week and why it isn't about "just us":

Today you tweeted: “Reminder: this week we remember a man tortured to death as a potential threat to the security state.” I think I know what you mean here, but if you could tell us a little more about where you’re going with that.

The Romans were literally an occupying force in the state of Israel; it was a military occupation. The way Jesus’ enemies got the Romans to execute him was to say, “This guy wants to lead a rebellion against your occupation.”

And the Romans take the bait. If you think about what happens in that scene with Pontius Pilate: Pilate isn’t even convinced that Jesus is the threat he’s made out to be. But, he’s not going to take any chances, so he goes ahead, and kills him.

Because Jesus is a nobody. Pilate pays no price for executing just some other guy who’s getting wise about our presence in Palestine. He’s not even a military threat – but he might possibly be one. And the response is, “Torture him, kill him. Be done with it.”

Now, understanding that story, whose side do you think we’re supposed to be on? I don’t think you can really hear that story, and take it in, and not think that you’re supposed to be on Jesus’s side. And the consequence of that is you have to reject that kind of state-sponsored violence against powerless people.

One of the points is, This government is repressive and dysfunctional. And Jesus comes in way to say, both to the oppressed and the oppressors: “This isn’t working. There is a better way to do things.”

When you start to get ahold of that, it opens up all these different possibilities. We don’t have to act in a way that’s taking advantage of one another. We don’t have to act in a way that’s violence toward one another. Life can be more than it is right now.

"Always hoped that I'd be an apostle; knew that I would make it if I tried.  Then when we've retired we can write the Gospels, so they'll still talk about us when we've died. " Almost 45 years later, those words till conjure up certain images.

Sorry; the stereo is going as I type.

The message of Jesus is easily encapsulated in the basileia tou theou, a phrase I refuse to translate because all the translations mislead into "kingdom" and "empire" and "God" in ways we're trained to listen for and understand, and I want to wear away all those meanings and plant the seed in fresh ground.  New wine in new wineskins, and all that.  Besides, I like the echoes of "basilica" there; it's appropriate, in its own way.  It's easily encapsulated there, but it's not easily conveyed there.    Which is fine; it shouldn't be easily conveyed.  You have to study the words of Jesus to understand it; and you have to study the deeds, to.

Which is not to say Jesus should matter more than the things he said.  Even God doesn't earn that distinction.  That's the creation of an idol; a figure of stone or wood or even feathers, an object of human creation, a golden calf.  We don't need that.

I Was Through With Easter….

But then I thought; “What the hell?” Just decided I’d recover this and repost it. Granted it’s a bit dated, but….

I’m The Easter bunny and Easter eggs aren’t “sacred truth.” It’s adoption of pagan Eostre rituals. They have nothing to with Jesus. And “Easter Sunday” wasn’t designated as anything. March 31 was. What would Jesus say to Mike if he stood before him to say this hateful blasphemy? pic.twitter.com/DCFcug5Suo

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) March 30, 2024

Well, no; not really:

The English term, according to the Ven. Bede (De temporum ratione, I, v), relates to Estre, a Teutonic goddess of the rising light of day and spring, which deity, however, is otherwise unknown, even in the Edda (Simrock, Mythol., 362); Anglo-Saxon, eâster, eâstron; Old High German, ôstra, ôstrara, ôstrarûn; German, Ostern.

Yes, it’s an English word.  No, there was no Teutonic god/goddess by that name. So there were no “pagan rituals” connected to them. Most such information is based on what Biblical scholars call “bullgeschicte.”

New Testament scholars have noted that since The DaVinci Code became a cultural phenomenon, there’s been a surge of conspiratorial claims about Jesus, the early church, and the influence of Pagan mystery religions. Authors such as Craig Evans and Bart Ehrman have written with bewilderment at the revival of “mythicist” theories of Jesus and “nineteenth-century philosophical hokum” that was long ago dismissed by serious scholars who read Greek and Hebrew.

All religious traditions change over time. However, to tell people of a different religion that they don’t know what their religious rituals actually mean is ipso facto not a historical argument but a sectarian one. The claim that Christians unknowingly practice a Pagan mystery religion has a long history combining sectarian claims with goofy pseudo-scholarship. It was Protestant Reformers, in fact, who first accused their Catholic rivals of adulterating Christianity with Paganism.

However, it was during the French Revolution that the “mythicist” claims first surfaced. Constantin Francois Volney, in his 1791 essay “Ruins of Empire,” claimed that all religions are derived from sun worship and that “Christ” is cognate with the Hindu “Krishna.” Charles Francois-Dupuis built on this idea in The Origins of All Religions (1795) and introduced discussion of Babylonian religion, including the resurrected god Tammuz. 

Nobody really knows where the Easter Bunny and Easter Eggs came from. Probably just the celebration of spring or, especially in Europe and Russia, the end of Lent and return of eggs to the menu ( remember Shrove Tuesday and the end of eggs from the larder until Easter?). The Bunny? Well, bunnies and springtime are logical fits. 

I’m at least pretty damned sure it doesn’t predate Christianity.

And Easter Sunday just happens to be on March 31 this year. March 31 has been “Transgender Visibility Day” for a decade now.

Also, until Passover comes up in late April I don’t know why you all are talking about our Easter anyway. The Last Supper was literally a Passover Seder. https://t.co/ZVixVcMagm

— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) March 30, 2024

Yeah, about that: welcome to the computus paschalis.

The connection between the Jewish Passover and the Christian feast of Easter is real and ideal. Real, since Christ died on the first Jewish Easter Day; ideal, like the relation between type and reality, because Christ's death and Resurrection had its figures and types in the Old Law, particularly in the paschal lamb, which was eaten towards evening of the 14th of Nisan. In fact, the Jewish feast was taken over into the Christian Easter celebration; the liturgy (Exsultet) sings of the passing of Israel through the Red Sea, the paschal lamb, the column of fire, etc. Apart, however, from the Jewish feast, the Christians would have celebrated the anniversary of the death and the Resurrection of Christ. But for such a feast it was necessary to know the exact calendar date of Christ's death. To know this day was very simple for the Jews; it was the day after the 14th of the first month, the 15th of Nisan of their calendar. But in other countries of the vast Roman Empire there were other systems of chronology. The Romans from 45 B.C. had used the reformed Julian calendar; there were also the Egyptian and the Syro-Macedonian calendar. The foundation of the Jewish calendar was the lunar year of 354 days, whilst the other systems depended on the solar year. In consequence the first days of the Jewish months and years did not coincide with any fixed days of the Roman solar year. Every fourth year of the Jewish system had an intercalary month. Since this month was inserted, not according to some scientific method or some definite rule, but arbitrarily, by command of the Sanhedrin, a distant Jewish date can never with certainty be transposed into the corresponding Julian or Gregorian date (Ideler, Chronologie, I, 570 sq.). The connection between the Jewish and the Christian Pasch explains the movable character of this feast. Easter has no fixed date, like Christmas, because the 15th of Nisan of the Semitic calendar was shifting from date to date on the Julian calendar. Since Christ, the true Paschal Lamb, had been slain on the very day when the Jews, in celebration of their Passover, immolated the figurative lamb, the Jewish Christians in the Orient followed the Jewish method, and commemorated the death of Christ on the 15th of Nisan and His Resurrection on the 17th of Nisan, no matter on what day of the week they fell. For this observance they claimed the authority of St. John and St. Philip. 

In the rest of the empire another consideration predominated. Every Sunday of the year was a commemoration of the Resurrection of Christ, which had occurred on a Sunday. Because the Sunday after 14 Nisan was the historical day of the Resurrection, at Rome this Sunday became the Christian feast of Easter. Easter was celebrated in Rome and Alexandria on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, and the Roman Church claimed for this observance the authority of Sts. Peter and Paul. The spring equinox in Rome fell on 25 March; in Alexandria on 21 March. At Antioch Easter was kept on the Sunday after the Jewish Passover. (See EASTER CONTROVERSY.) In Gaul a number of bishops, wishing to escape the difficulties of the paschal computation, seem to have assigned Easter to a fixed date of the Roman calendar, celebrating the death of Christ on 25 March, His Resurrection on 27 March (Marinus Dumiensis in P.L., LXXII, 47-51), since already in the third century 25 March was considered the day of the Crucifixion (Computus Pseudocyprianus, ed. Lersch, Chronologie, II, 61). This practice was of short duration. Many calendars in the Middle Ages contain these same dates (25 March, 27 March) for purely historical, not liturgical, reasons (Grotenfend, Zeitrechnung, II, 46, 60, 72, 106, 110, etc.). The Montanists in Asia Minor kept Easter on the Sunday after 6 April (Schmid, Osterfestberechnung in der abendlandischen Kirche). The First Council of Nicaea (325) decreed that the Roman practice should be observed throughout the Church. But even at Rome the Easter term was changed repeatedly. Those who continued to keep Easter with the Jews were called Quartodecimans (14 Nisan) and were excluded from the Church. The computus paschalis, the method of determining the date of Easter and the dependent feasts, was of old considered so important that Durandus (Rit. div. off., 8, c.i.) declares a priest unworthy of the name who does not know the computus paschalis. The movable character of Easter (22 March to 25 April) gives rise to inconveniences, especially in modern times. For decades scientists and other people have worked in vain for a simplification of the computus, assigning Easter to the first Sunday in April or to the Sunday nearest the 7th of April. Some even wish to put every Sunday to a certain date of the month, e.g. beginning with New Year's always on a Sunday, etc. [See L. Günther, "Zeitschrift Weltall" (1903); Sandhage and P. Dueren in "Pastor bonus" (Trier, 1906); C. Tondini, "L'Italia e la questione del Calendario" (Florence, 1905).]

Aren’t you sorry you asked? You didn’t? Well, you shouldn’t have.

(And I’m still uncertain about the advent of the Seder. Hebrew worship was temple based until 70 C.E., when the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. It may well be the Passover ritual was observed in homes, but dince

Palm Sunday 2022

My mind is clearer now
At last, all too well, I can see
Where we all soon will be.

If you strip away,
the myth from the man
you can see where
we all soon will be.

Jesus!  You've started to believe
the things they say of you!
You really do believe,
This talk of God is true!

And all the good you've done
Will soon get swept away
You've begun to matter more
than the things you say!

Holy Week begins again.  Time to dust off the original recording of "Jesus Christ Superstar" and start playing it loudly when no one else is at home (why inflict my memories on my family?).  That's the music for Holy Week at Chez Advents:  "Jesus Christ Superstar" (original record recording, please, scratches, pops, and all.  Ian Gillan is the ONLY Jesus allowed to sing the role, IMHO.) and Bach's Easter Oratorio.  On Easter, of course.  Holy Week should be conducted with the meditation that "All your followers are blind!  Too much heaven on their minds!"  But this time around I hear the words of Judas anew.  What would it mean for Jesus to matter more than the things he said?

It's a Paul v. the Gospels question, but not the simplistic question simplistic critics of Paul think is so fatal to Pauline studies and the Pauline letters.   What Jesus did matters more to Paul than the things he said because Paul only quotes Jesus saying some of the words of institution (as we call them now) of the eucharisto (as he called it then).  It's the gospels that give us the parables and the statements about Peter ("Rock") and the miracles.  Paul only has the resurrection to rely on; but it's enough for him.

So, first:  which should matter more?  The resurrection; or the sayings of Jesus?  Well, if you go with the resurrection, then it seems that is paramount, because that is now seen as the salvific act by which sinful humanity is spared the depredations of damnation.  But if you go with what Jesus said, then the focus on the resurrection (and so salvation) is the wrong place to put the emphasis, as it tends to let you off the hook for what you do, so long as you believe the right things about the resurrection on any given Sunday morning.

Do my prejudices show yet?

It really is the dividing point of Christianity.  Easter is the most important date on the Christian calendar for the Orthodox Church.  Fortunately for the Protestant churches Easter is always on a Sunday; it isn't the moveable feast that Christmas is (this will be a problem again this year).  But in secular Christianity, Christmas is the big holiday.  Easter is relegated to hats and clothes (not so much any longer, but once.  I'm thinking that was more American aberration than not, but, no matter.) and colored eggs and chocolate bunnies.  Even churches have Easter egg hunts on Sunday after the celebration of the Resurrection; and we jammed Passion Sunday into Palm Sunday because otherwise nobody would be in church to remember the Passion story (be honest; how many people do you know attend Good Friday services?  If done right, they are seriously depressing.  If done wrong, they aren't worth the bother.  I only remember Maundy Thursday service in my Presbyterian childhood; an evening communion service, but nothing else until Sunday morning, and lots of cheery sunrise services around town.  Get up early and have the rest of the day to yourself.  Yes, I am cynical; why do you ask?).  Easter is just the other Sunday when you should be in church (well, Christmas Eve is almost never on Sunday, and when it is, do you go in the morning, or in the evening?  Never both, amirite?).

Besides, the eggs and chocolate are for the kids.  I mean, you can get a box of Godiva with affecting scenes of Spring on the outside, but chocolate bunnies are definitely not for a palate craving high-dollar chocolates.

So, which really matters more?  To the "are you saved?" crowd, it's the Resurrection, whether they realize it or not.  The whole question of faith comes down to "letting Jesus into your heart", and that means accepting the sacrifice on the cross which paid in God's blood for your sin (Anselm's satisfaction theory, but there are so many variations the distinctions begin to blur unless you are really, really interested in it.  Don't even  get me started on TULIP.  Please, just don't.)  But that's the problem with salvation in Christianity:  it's used to divide the sheep from the goats, and to make sure you are among the sheep.

An idea which would appall Jean Cauvin, by the way.  Which is kinda funny.

Anyway, as I've noted before:

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! 

Which is as good a way as any to get me around to this meditation on Psalm 73 by Martin Buber, courtesy (long ago now) of Pastor Dan:

The good, says the Psalmist, is ‘to draw near to God’. He does not say that those near to God are good. But he does call the bad ‘those who are far from God’. In the language of modern thought that means that there are men who have no share in existence, but there are no men who possess existence. Existence cannot be possessed, but only shared in. One does not rest in the lap of existence, but one draws near to it. ‘Nearness’ is nothing but such a drawing and coming near continually and as long as the human person lives.

Of course "drawing near to God" is, in salvific terms, being "saved."  Well, in certain salvation theories; and there's the rub.  How do you draw nearer to God by drawing away from other people, or by drawing a circle round those inside the blessed, and those outside (the damned)?  Is what Jesus said at all relevant to what Jesus did, to who Jesus was?  We have to be aware, too, that to "draw near to the Go[o]d" is to invoke Plato.  Buber is a Jewish philosopher, but who among us is not a closet Platonist?  Is what Buber says and what we mean by "drawing near to God" the same thing? (Hint:  the Psalmist meant through the covenant with Abraham and the law of Moses. Quite a different reading from modern Christianity.) Is the Psalm as Buber reads it relevant at all?

Can we possess the salvation of the Cross, the blessings of the resurrection?  Or can we only share in them?  Paul never hoards them for only those who appreciate the gift; he throws it wildly, like seed.  He scatters it to anyone who wants to listen.

This idea Judas expresses, what Jesus did v. what Jesus said, comes up all the time.  Returning to the past (this is a retread of an old post, if you hadn't guessed by now), in an interview Pastor Dan said this:

You mention this in passing: The matter of praying for enemies, including violent ones. To what extent does that make sense, and do you feel conflicted by the issue?

I don’t feel conflicted by it, but then I’m a conflicted Christian. I don’t expect it to make much sense to someone who isn’t. From the Christian perspective, we always have to come back to the perspective that Jesus died for us all. He died for his enemies as much – if not more – than his friends.

And not just for the good people.

He's trying hard there to save the Anselmian "atonement" theory of the crucifixion.  I'm not so sure anymore Jesus did die for me; or for his, or my, enemies.  I no longer see the crucifixion as salvific in that sense. I'm more Pauline:  I see it as the prove of Jesus' faith, although here we get into problems of the Trinity and Christology.  Christ was truly God and truly Man, and which got crucified?  Moltmann says both; he says we worship a crucified God.  That's a paradox I can live with, and want to hold onto. 

Because I agree with Pastor Dan on this:

Today you tweeted: “Reminder: this week we remember a man tortured to death as a potential threat to the security state.” I think I know what you mean here, but if you   could tell us a little more about where you’re going with that.

The Romans were literally an occupying force in the state of Israel; it was a military occupation. The way Jesus’ enemies got the Romans to execute him was to say, “This guy wants to lead a rebellion against your occupation.”

And the Romans take the bait. If you think about what happens in that scene with Pontius Pilate: Pilate isn’t even convinced that Jesus is the threat he’s made out to be. But, he’s not going to take any chances, so he goes ahead, and kills him.

Because Jesus is a nobody. Pilate pays no price for executing just some other guy who’s getting wise about our presence in Palestine. He’s not even a military threat – but he might possibly be one. And the response is, “Torture him, kill him. Be done with it.”

Now, understanding that story, whose side do you think we’re supposed to be on? I don’t think you can really hear that story, and take it in, and not think that you’re supposed to be on Jesus’s side. And the consequence of that is you have to reject that kind of state-sponsored violence against powerless people.

One of the points is, This government is repressive and dysfunctional. And Jesus comes in way to say, both to the oppressed and the oppressors: “This isn’t working. There is a better way to do things.”

When you start to get ahold of that, it opens up all these different possibilities. We don’t have to act in a way that’s taking advantage of one another. We don’t have to act in a way that’s violence toward one another. Life can be more than it is right now.

"Always hoped that I'd be an apostle; knew that I would make it if I tried.  Then when we've retired we can write the Gospels, so they'll still talk about us when we've died. " Almost 50 years later, those words till conjure up certain images.

The message of Jesus is easily encapsulated in the basileia tou theou, a phrase I refuse to translate because all the translations mislead into "kingdom" and "empire" and "God" in ways we're trained to listen for and understand, and I want to wear away all those meanings and plant the seed in fresh ground.  New wine in new wineskins, and all that.  Besides, I like the echoes of "basilica" there; it's appropriate, in its own way.  It's easily encapsulated there, but it's not easily conveyed there.    Which is fine; it shouldn't be easily conveyed.  You have to study the words of Jesus to understand it; and you have to study the deeds, to.

Which is not to say Jesus should matter more than the things he said.  Even God doesn't earn that distinction.  That's the creation of an idol; a figure of stone or wood or even feathers, an object of human creation, a golden calf.  We don't need that.

We just need to make the next week "Not-About-Us."  If we can do that much, we'll have done a lot. Salvation is not the point.  Taking care of each other is.  Making the first last and the last first, constantly racing to the bottom to be last of all and servant of all:  that would be the "change of heart," the metanoia, that would change the world. No metaphysics required.

To Be Honest...

Face the Nation showcased opinions from voters on Biden's first 100 days. Here's a sampling. pic.twitter.com/nJGzC630kB

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 2, 2021

I watch "Meet The Press" every Sunday morning, and I barely pay attention to what Chuck Todd says. The vaunted "bipartisanship" that supposedly a hallmark of American governance (it isn't), is a Beltway pundits obsession (and the party out of power knows it). 

Oddly, though, bipartisanship is more important when the GOP is out of power than when it's in, at least according to the pundits. Mitch McConnell was never a "genius" of the Senate (LBJ would have picked his teeth with McConnell), he just had the majority. That's all you need; everything else is eyewash. I'm not a fan of Sens. Sinema or Manchin, but neither of them is Joe Lieberman. The closest McConnell got to a Lieberman was John McCain, and that's the only reason we still have Obamacare. McCain died, and McConnell had free reign.  

But the only people paying attention to "bipartisanship" or who said what on Sunday morning, are the people in the Beltway or the people obsessed with what happens in the Beltway.

I just watched this exchange and Chuck Todd didn't express any skepticism about Portman's claims that Republicans want to negotiate in good faith or that the Biden White House flip-flopped overnight https://t.co/wGpf7c1c06

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 2, 2021

Eh, I'll express it for Todd. Portman is peddling a convenient (and undoubtedly false) narrative here. Anyone paying attention knows that. If you don't know it, you aren't paying attention. If you aren't paying attention, Portman is a tree falling in the forest, and you aren't there to hear it. And most of these Sunday morning shows? Nobody's paying attention. If the networks could come up with anything that would draw more eyeballs on Sunday morning (NFL games starting at 8 a.m., for example), they'd run it in a heartbeat. They run these shows because it's more prestigious than running hour long promos for Ginsu knives. Barely more prestigious, anyway.

did the Republican Party write this? https://t.co/tTPkHv3fQi

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 2, 2021

Yeah, probably. But if Rupar hadn't tweeted it, I wouldn't even know it was there. This is not going to be on the front page of the NYT tomorrow morning, or even on the Op-Ed page of WaPo. CNN isn't going to run with it every hour on the hour (FoxNews will, but...meh.) Again: trees falling in forests when no one is around to listen, and who cares what squirrels hear?

John Dickerson of CBS grills WH Chief of Staff Ron Klain about whether Biden will propose any spending cuts. Klain notes all the good stuff that govt has done since Biden took office. Dickerson replies by saying "I didn't hear an answer on spending cuts, but we're gonna move on." pic.twitter.com/OgdaCYYeGW

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 2, 2021

And that, for better or worse, is the adversarial style of news interviewing that happens regularly on American TeeVee. Sure, the Today Show might have focussed on a Biden proposal that could put a cupcake before every American, and follow it with 45 seconds on decorating cupcakes; but this is Sunday morning TeeVee. The Administration flack talks up what the Administration is doing, the "journalist" acts skeptical. and the whole thing runs on wheels. ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?! If not, I suggest turning off the TeeVee. It's Sunday morning. Spend time with your family; go get brunch. Read a book.

Watching talking heads giving canned responses to predictable questions that ruffle no one's feelings in a recitation designed not to make any news whatsoever is no way to go through life, son.

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.