Monthly Archives: May 2011

Authenticity and post-modern Christianity–but don’t expect me to get tattoos

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Last week, I posted a link to an article that quoted Bishop Greg Rickel of the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia, in which he likened the church in the twenty-first century to a base camp–not an end point on a journey, but a staging area. It’s an image I like because it captures what I’ve been encountering in Madison. People come to church for all sorts of reasons; we may see them for only a single service, perhaps a year or two if we’re lucky, then they are off on the next stage of their journey. Often their temporary stay is dictated by other realities–school or job change–but often it is because of life changes. And the latter is particularly new. Wade Clark Roof and other sociologists of religion saw such trends in American religion in the 90s–people participating in organized religion for a few years and then withdrawing.

Rickel has a great deal to say in another interview about what it’s like to be bishop in post-Christian America (i.e., the Pacific Northwest) after serving parishes in the South and Southwest. He also has interesting things to say about the importance of authenticity, good holy discourse and conversation, and good music. The interview is here.

Among the things he has to say about young adults:

I sense the younger generations looking for a fun place, yes, energy, good conversation, deep reflection about serious issues, but also a place where diversity of thought is honored and where they learn the life skills to keep that greater conversation going in their lives. In the midst of all of that they know the power of mystery, and don’t necessarily want a place of answers, but more a place of reflection, meditation, silence. True engagement, instead of the veneer of much of our religion, would be the more subtle but short way of saying it.

Bishop Rickel blogs here.

If authenticity is what matters, check out this profile of Nadia Bolz-Weber.

Bolz-Weber said her church is “anti-excellence and pro-participation.”

They sing the hymns a cappella rather than rely on a choir, organist or band. They divvy up the readings. They create their own artwork.

“We don’t do anything really well,” she said, “but we do it together.”

Bolz-Weber blogs here.

The Venerable Bede 735

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Bede was one of the great figures of Anglo-Saxon Christianity. He entered the great monastery at the age of 7 and writes later that he spent the rest of his life there and “devoted myself entirely to the study of Scriptures.” He compiled Patristic commentary on scripture and provided his own interpretation of that commentary, many other works, but most importantly, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. This work is the basis for much of what we know about Christianity on the island of Britain between the arrival of Augustine in 597 and 731. His work details the conversion of the Angles and Saxons to Christianity as well as the conflict between the Christian culture imported from Rome and that which had developed independently in Ireland and Britain over the previous centuries, symbolized by the different dating of Easter. This was resolved at the Synod of Whitby in 664.

He provides vivid portraits of many of the important figures of Anglo-Saxon history, and of many of the leaders of Christianity in that time, both men and women.

At the end of a brief autobiographical summary that concludes the Ecclesiastical History, Bede prays:

I pray you, noble Jesu, that as You have graciously granted me joyfully to imbibe the words of Your knowledge, so You will also of Your bounty grant me to come at length to Yourself, the Fount of all wisdom, and to dwell in Your presence for ever. (from the Penguin edition)

War and Violence–Random Connections thanks to the Internet

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A couple of days ago, Andrew Sullivan posted this as his “quote for the day:”

Most other creatures engage in violence, and some insects and animals with elaborate social structures reflect those systems in their modes of fighting and aggression. But humans are unique in their creation of an institution of war that is designed to organize violence, define its purposes, declare its onset, ratify its conclusion and establish its rules. War, like literature, is a distinctively human product,” – Drew Gilpin Faust (pdf), from the annual Jefferson Lecture in DC.

Further down in my Google Reader feed was this from The Guardian (written by D. H. Lawrence in 1914).


Rapture, continued

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As is fairly common among those whose predictions of the end of the world don’t come true, Harold Camping now says the Apocalypse will arrive on October 21.

I’ve been somewhat bemused, and also perplexed by the coverage of this event in the press. Perhaps part of it is due to the sheer audacity of the marketing campaign. So audacious, in fact, that other religious leaders have taken note of it and used it to chide denominational efforts at advertising.

But I think that’s missing the point. As someone who spent a good bit of time researching apocalyptic movements in Christian history, and even teaching a course on “The Millennium” back in 1999, what strikes me about all of this is how very different Camping’s predictions and his movement, if that’s what it is, has played out in this new media and internet age.

In the first place, most apocalyptic movements have relied on the sheer charisma of the founder and leader. That doesn’t seem to be the case, here. Instead, what seems to have drawn wider attention is the marketing savvy and the ability to make significant media buys. The second thing of note is that much of the publicity was driven, not by true believers, but by those who were pursuing a story. And for most of them, the take was hardly sincere.

The same was true on the internet and facebook. What struck me was the sheer quantity of material making fun of the true believers. It was generated and quickly distributed, and yes, I participated in that distribution as well. Some of those who produced and distributed the ridicule were secularists; others, like me, were Christians of one variety or another. Most of us had been scarred in some way over the years by apocalyptic beliefs and our ridicule was an attempt to demonstrate that such beliefs no longer held power over us. In fact, I was reminded by the B. Kliban cartoon with the caption, “The callous sophisticates laughed at Judy’s tiny head.”

There were also those who tried to put Camping’s predictions, and those who followed him into perspective, and when the rapture didn’t come, they reached backed to Leon Festinger.

The stories about the disappointed followers of Camping were poignant. And yes, to read about someone who spent $140,000 to publicize it is depressing. The tendency is to discount such beliefs as crazy, and decry the media preoccupation with them. But it seems to me there is something more. And Paul Roberts may have his finger on it:

I am left with the conclusion that unless Protestants are able to come up with some kind of global system of validation – or, its converse, dissociation – then the widespread image of Christianity they are going to have to work with in their mission will be a random collection of absurd and less-than-absurd beliefs about what “Christianity” actually is about. Even if one Christian is able to make a coherent argument commending their faith to another person (either by teaching or practice), who is to say if that really is what Christianity is, or whether it’s about – say – a rapture which didn’t happen on 21st May 2011 at 6pm local time.

What bothers me is precisely that. A single person, who by virtue of his access to media, is able to generate a media frenzy, in some respects shapes the popular understanding of Christianity. Most thinking Christians, find such ideas silly, and respond with humor and derision, often using material produced by “cultured despisers” of religion.

My reading of apocalyptic movements in history leads me to conclude that most adherents were sincere and devout. They weren’t necessarily being misled or duped, as stories on the day after want to imply. Whatever complex of motives led them to accept the notion that the world was going to come to an end, whether in 1535 or 1842, or on May 21, 2011, blaming it on a charlatan leader might give them an excuse, but didn’t answer the fundamental question. And to claim that all of them are crazy lets all of us off the hook.

In the end, it is a small story. Unlike previous examples in the History of Christianity–the Anabaptist Kingdom of Muenster, or even David Koresh–this prediction did very little harm. It’s not even clear how many people were taken in by Camping’s predictions. True, there was considerable money involved, but compared to other Televangelists, $100 million is small potatoes.

The Future of Christianity, Atheism, and the Origins of Civilization

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I’ve been on vacation for the past few days, getting caught up on my reading and sleeping. A number of things that caught my eye on the internet have me reflecting on my work, the work of the church, and the nature of religion.

Bishop Greg Rickel of the Diocese of Olympia (Washington) parallels much of my thinking about the future of the church:

… churches do not yet know how to measure what this means. “What denominational metrics people are asking—how many people are in church on Sunday, for example—may not be the right measure for today. The measures that contemporary churches need may be more intuitive and more spiritual in nature.”

Rickel points to a small church in his diocese that is located along the Columbia River. The population of the area is declining, and membership growth is not a realistic goal. Never­theless, the congregation is a dynamic and important part of the community, because it is a community and service center. Rickel likens it to a base camp—a place along the journey where people stop to receive nourishment, training, basic supplies and encouragement.

“We’ve only been paying attention,” Rickel said, “to the people who stay. But maybe that’s not the purpose [of the base camp]. Maybe we’ve been treating base camps as permanent residences.”

In order to operate as base camps, Rickel said, congregations need not give up their identity or cease offering a challenging “rule for living.” In fact, he said, young adults are eager for such a challenge. But churches need to be able to witness to the gospel when they have only a few chances to reach any one person.

The article by Amy Frykholm is insightful and challenging. She details the cultural changes taking place, highlighting the work of sociologists like Robert Wuthnow and Wade Clark Roof, as well as pastors who are experiencing these changes in their ministry. At the same time, she reminds us all about the importance of community, and the central NT idea of membership.

Then, thanks to  Counterlight’s Peculiars, I read this thoughtful post from an atheist who attends church regularly:

So, I remain a non-believer in the pew. I don’t make a point of it, because after all I’m choosing to be there. I’m sure most of the folks in church don’t know or notice. Those that do, may think I’m simply “earlier on the journey” than others. (I think some people think I’m Jewish, based on the occasional question. This is a frequent assumption because I’m dark and strong-featured.)

Instead, I tend to think that I’ve gone much further. I’ve gone past being religious, through my religion-bashing phase and to some extent am post-religious. Now I can find the common ground with my socially progressive instincts and faith groups who articulate it on the ground.

Besides the music is great.

I find this perspective hopeful, much more so than that of the New Atheists or even this.

There was also this article from the National Geographic yesterday. Based on excavations in Turkey, Klaus Schmidt concludes:

The construction of a massive temple by a group of foragers is evidence that organized religion could have come before the rise of agriculture and other aspects of civilization. It suggests that the human impulse to gather for sacred rituals arose as humans shifted from seeing themselves as part of the natural world to seeking mastery over it. When foragers began settling down in villages, they unavoidably created a divide between the human realm—a fixed huddle of homes with hundreds of inhabitants—and the dangerous land beyond the campfire, populated by lethal beasts.

While he is open to changing his interpretation of the data, Schmidt concludes: “I think what we are learning is that civilization is a product of the human mind.”

More on Hawking and Science and Religion

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N.T. Wright v. Hawking: In the Washingon Post. Wright points out that the view of heaven Hawking rejects is neither biblical nor is it particularly Christian. Wright calls his view “low-grade and sub-biblical.”

From an interview with Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the director of the European Organization for Nuclear Research and oversees the vast CERN laboratories in Switzerland.

We separate knowledge from belief. Particle physics is asking the question of how did things develop? Religion or philosophy ask about why things develop. But the boundary between the two is very interesting. I call it the interface of knowledge. People start asking questions like “if there was a Big Bang, why was it there?” For us physicists, time begins with the Big Bang. But the question remains whether anything existed before that moment. And was there something even before the thing that was before the Big Bang? Those are questions where knowledge becomes exhausted and belief starts to become important.

And:

But the more we investigate the early universe, the more people are trying to connect science to philosophy. That is a good thing. Since we are struggling with the limits of knowledge, maybe philosophy or theology struggle also with our research. I think it is important that we open a constructive dialogue.

Divers Diseases: Or why I don’t lament the passing of the KJV

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As this past Sunday was the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Good Shepherd Sunday, we read, as we do every year, Psalm 23. At the 10:00 service, the choir sang a setting of it. At 8:00, we read the BCP version. It stuck in my craw, as it did for most of those in the congregation, our average age being well over 50. We wanted to recite the version we had memorized: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…”

This is the 400th anniversary of the KJV, something I have already mentioned more than once on this blog, and an anniversary deserving of attention. There’s a great site here, with profound essays by the likes of Robert Alter. I agree with those who praise the beauty of the translation, the power of the words. But the Bible is also meant to be understood. And I, for one, am grateful for modern translations that bring the language and ideas of 2000 or 3000 years ago to life for people in the 21st century.

For all of the power and beauty of the KJV, what I remember most as a child is listening to people trying to read it out loud and make sense of it for themselves and convey that meaning to a congregation. More often than not, it came across as a foreign language. The words I remember best after forty years are hearing farmers struggle to read Paul to a congregation. I puzzled then, and I’m sure everyone else did, over Paul’s list of afflictions that included “divers diseases.” I wondered what they were, and how he acquired them by diving into the Mediterranean.

The KJV, for all of its beauty is as alien a language to the twenty-first century, as Latin was to the people of England in the 16th.

Stephen Hawking says heaven is a fairy tale–why is anyone surprised?

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Perhaps the only thing more surprising than his rejection of heaven is that it continues to get press. More interesting is why someone who is obviously brilliant lacks the imagination to explore the human quest for meaning and purpose.

Hawking:

“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark,”

Rabbi Brad Hirschfield’s response in Huffington Post seems to emphasize that it is impolite for someone to denigrate another’s beliefs; although he also makes the distinction between knowledge and belief.

Mark Vernon reports on a rather more interesting exchange between Rowan Williams and A.C. Grayling. The atheist and the ABC agreed on a great deal in their debate:

  • – that an engagement with life begins with wonder;
  • – that there is a natural law which reveals a minimal amount required for our flourishing;
  • – that happiness is not a feeling but has to do with entering deeply into the relationships that surround us;
  • – that the passions need educating, not least passions like anger;
  • – that the stoic aim of becoming attuned with life is key – even or especially when it demands of us a noble response to suffering.
  • Grayling was even content to use a word that comes naturally to Williams, spirituality, when spirituality has to do with the remarkable sense that we owe something of ourselves to life because of all life has given us.

But there were differences. Apparently someone asked about love:

Williams was at last on territory he would have chosen. Religion is not like obeying a code of conduct that governs the relationships between a high god and subservient human beings, he explained. Rather, it is about coming to see yourself in a radically fresh way, as a result of seeing yourself as made in the image of God. We are all alienated from this truth, but can be brought back to it, he continued, explaining he’d witnessed as much just the other day in a prison, when a man who had committed terrible crimes had come to a moment of repentance and had been surprised at seeing ‘me as me’ for the first time.

Here’s Vernon’s account of Grayling’s response:

Grayling responded that the ancient injunction to know thyself is certainly vital, and that caring for even the most violent of our fellows in prisons is a profoundly hopeful mark of the humanity of our civilisation. Absolutely. But that didn’t quite seem to capture the hope of being drawn by love back to love which came through in Williams’ answer.

Are you ready for the Rapture?

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Killing the Buddha just might be the best way to follow this week’s Rapturemania. It’s a great site overall and their coverage on Harold Camping is great.

KtB editor Nathan Schneider has an essay elsewhere. In it, he admits to his own youthful apocalyptic fervor, including ritual listening to Harold Camping’s radio show. He has been following Camping’s movement and has this to say:

Some of my encounters with the 2012 crowd, however, have actually made me more tolerant of apocalyptic date-setting. While reporting on colonies of American expatriates in Costa Rica, I met 2012 adherents who dared to live quite impressive lives off the grid, growing their own food and pioneering new kinds of sustainable living. The prospect of an impending end can paradoxically motivate people to work toward a better future.

Ted Cox reports on his visit to the offices of Camping’s Family Radio and interviews Tom Evans. Money quote:

What will he do if he wakes up May 22? Grab coffee? Come in to work?

“No, it’s far more serious than that,” he replies. “I’ve said if you boil everything down it’s really trusting the Bible. If you can’t trust the Bible, then you got nothing. There’s no truth.”

I used to tell my students that of all Christian doctrines, the one for which their was incontrovertible proof of its falsehood was the belief that Jesus Christ was coming back soon. A close second is all of those people over the centuries who have given a certain date for Jesus’ return. They have all been proven false. Still, the apocalypse lures us in.

On a lighter note:

Moral advice for those who expect to be raptured:

And if you’ve got nothing planned for the day after:

The sheep know his voice–A homily for the Fourth Sunday of Easter

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May 15, 2011

I’m sure that most of you have figured out by now that I am fascinated by the changing scene of religion in America. I have been for many years but the transition from the Christ-haunted South, as Flannery O’Connor put it, and Madison, where Grace Church is practically neighbors with the Freedom from Religion Foundation, has given me much to reflect on, intellectually and pastorally. We live in an increasingly secular world, where, in spite of the prominence of Christian rhetoric in the political sphere, religious language and religious institutions, a religious world-view, is on the wane. More people identify themselves as non-religious, and many of those who still claim religious affiliation, are less and less connected to communities of faith. And then I read about the study that was published in the last couple of days that claimed to prove that to be human is to be religious, that is to say, that human beings, everywhere and always, have had religious quests.

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