Monthly Archives: July 2012

Is the problem with American Christianity its love affair with the suburbs?

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Amid all the debate over the decline of the mainline and realignment in American Christianity, its worth pausing a moment and pondering Fred Clark’s question:

The suburbanization of American Christianity has had a huge impact on institutional and denominational structures. Automobile-shaped development has produced an automobile-shaped ecclesiology. The car has abolished the possibility of the parish. And that, in turn, has helped to redefine “neighbor” as a matter of preference more than of proximity — as optional rather than obligatory. That redefinition is rather significant, since “Who is my neighbor?” is kind of an important question for Christians.

On secularism, establishment, and the Olympic opening ceremonies

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I didn’t watch them. I was at the theater with friends but my twitter feed was full of comments from Americans and Brits about what they saw and didn’t see. One of the most poignant moments of the entire ceremony was the ballet set to “Abide With Me” in memory of “those who are not here.” NBC cut to an interview with Michael Phelps.

I wondered what that says about the US and Great Britain, about how an established church, even if relatively unimportant, helps to shape the self-understanding of a people. In addition to the “Abide With Me” sequence, the opening ceremonies began with Blake’s “Jerusalem.” The Dean of Durham comments:

Instead, Boyle was true to Blake’s text, which is his Christian vision of a just and caring society. But it has to be formed and helped to flourish with the native gifts and characteristics that make us what we are.  This nuanced awareness is, I think, an aspect of the spirituality of our islands that we cherish.  It’s embedded in the way we do liturgy and theology. In its eloquence and simplicity, that moment carried great power.

Of “Abide with me” he writes:

The other moment where faith broke through was in the invitation to remember ‘those who are not here’.  After the spectacle and the celebration, what heralded the arrival of the athletes was not a grand rhetorical climax but the silencing of the crowd, an act of recollection, the words of a prayer.  For yes, unbelievably, we had all of ‘Abide with me’ sung quietly while a simple ballet on the theme of being lost and found was performed on the stage.  It was a clever choice because of its Cup Final resonances; and yet once again, it was subverted in a way that restored meaning to a great hymn and personalised it.  ‘Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes / Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies’: who would have thought we would hear such words charged with Christian hope and expectation at an Olympic opening ceremony?  For me it was among the most moving aspects of the whole event.

I doubt anything of the sort could be produced in the US. We lack a lingua france of liturgy and theology. It’s not just that there would be protests from the separation of church and state people. There would also be conflict over who would get to shape and define whatever religious expression was being made. And the secularists who are completely tone-deaf about religion would probably cut to an interview with Michael Phelps.

He concludes:

There is more to ‘spirituality’ than when it surfaces and becomes explicit.  It has an intuitive side that doesn’t get expressed in words but is still alive in most people’s experience of life.  Perhaps in the joy and exuberance of last night, something more about life and about God was hinted at.  Perhaps some may have experienced it as a kind of liturgy.  Perhaps, even, the sight of thousands of people of every age, background and ethnicity throwing themselves into this genuinely democratic celebration offered a glimpse of Jerusalem and of the kingdom of heaven itself.

Read it all here.

The “Abide with me” sequence is available here.

Whatever the meaning of this for the British, it seems to me to make clear the barrenness of religion’s role in American culture.

 

Abundant Bread–A Sermon for Proper 12, Year B

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July 29, 2012

The feeding of the five thousand. It is one of the very few miracle stories that appears in all four gospels. As is almost always the case with John, the way the story is told here helps us understand better and more deeply that gospel writer’s unique perspective on Jesus and what he wants us, his readers to understand and experience. Continue reading →

A Homily for the Feast of St. James the Apostle

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Something I wrote six years ago, while serving at St. James, Greenville:

For us, celebrating the feast day of St. James is an occasion for a party, a festive celebration, a good time. But the fact that we are named St. James Episcopal Church, that St. James the Apostle is our patron saint, probably doesn’t mean a great deal to us. I doubt many of us pray to James for guidance or help in times of trouble; so far as I know, no one has named their son James, or daughter Jamie, because of the connection with St. James—although I will tell you, the name Jacob is the Greek name for James. In fact, our only connection with St. James may be that it provided a group from St. James with an excuse to take a trip to Spain a year ago June.

That’s not the way it worked with saints in the past. Christians perceived a direct relationship between themselves and their patron saint. Their patron saint was their go-to guy, the person in heaven who would listen more attentively to their prayers, and intervene more readily on their behalf with the almighty. In order to make sure that would happen, people cultivated the relationship with the saint on earth, offering special devotions, painting images or designing chapels in churches, perhaps keeping a logo, like a scallop shell, near by to remind oneself constantly of the saint’s presence and concern.

Because the saints were often regarded as benefactors, as patrons, even as friends or family members, pious Christians tended to develop elaborate legends about the saints’ lives. These were collected, told, and handed down over the years. In the case of biblical saints, like figures from the New Testament, the apostles or other people mentioned, often the barest mention of a name was enough material from which to weave a rich tapestry of story.

In the case of James, we have more biblical evidence than for many of the other apostles or early followers of Jesus. He was the brother of John; sons of Zebedee. They were fishermen, but perhaps a little wealthier than the norm, for there is mention that their father had servants. James and John were brash, impetuous, among the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples. After the crucifixion and resurrection, they became leaders of the early Christian community. James was the second martyr mentioned in the book of Acts. His death took place fairly early, perhaps around 42 ad.

That outline provided the basis for other legends. One of the most prominent was that James traveled to Spain and preached the gospel there before returning to Jerusalem and facing martyrdom. Later, the legend arose that his body was miraculously transported by angels to Campostela, where it became the focus of the most important pilgrimage in the Middle Ages. There is a dark side to St. James. When the Christian kingdoms of northern Spain began their reconquest of the peninsula, St. James was their battle cry. There were media reports that when Spanish troops were sent to Iraq, they sewed St. James’ crosses on their uniforms.

Pious legend aside, in today’s gospel we are reminded of both sides of James, his brashness which led Jesus to call him and his brother John “sons of thunder.” But here Jesus turns aside the very human, and very political request of the two brothers, and predicts their martyrdom. Today’s gospel already reveals Matthew putting spin on the story of James. Matthew says it was his mother, Salome, who asked Jesus to put them at his left and right hand, when he came into his glory. In Mark, the earliest gospel, James and John make the request themselves.

Either way, it provides an occasion for Jesus to teach them, and us about discipleship, about what it means to follow Jesus: “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” It is a lesson Jesus taught his disciples dramatically at the last supper, when he washed the feet of his disciples. It is a lesson James no doubt learned in the years leading up to his martyrdom. It is also a lesson we need to learn.

Heroism in our society is a much overblown idea. We live surrounded by superheros; now Hollywood is even giving us movies about superhero girlfriends. They can leap tall buildings at a single bounce, and you don’t want to get in a lover’s quarrel with them. In a way, the saints are Christian superheros, certainly that’s often been the way they’ve been understood and relied on in the Christian tradition—got a problem? Call on a saint!

But today’s gospel tells us that the saints are not superheros; what sets them apart is not their miraculous power. Rather, what makes them saints is their faith, and their discipleship, their service to others. To see the saints, to see St. James, as a model of how we might live in the world, serving and loving Christ, and our neighbors, is what devotion to the saints is all about.

Bad Religious Art–It’s not just to laugh at

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The 11 most Unintentionally Hilarious Religious Paintings are here. One of the painters represented on the list is Jon McNaughton. Among his most famous paintings is this:

David Morgan, Professor of Religion at Duke, comments on the significance McNaughton’s vision of America:

It is easy for art critics to scowl at McNaughton’s pictures as preachy, partisan, and cheesy. Their solemnity and their illustrational literalism tempt many observers to dismiss them as propaganda or kitsch. And Wake Up America! certainly seems more political cheerleading than artistic vision. But simply scorning the work misses the opportunity to understand something powerful moving through many religious sub-cultures in the United States today. These groups do not distinguish between religion and politics the way that many commentators and cultural analysts would prefer. For McNaughton and his admirers, as well as many more, there is nothing at all absurd about Jesus holding the Constitution as a sacred artifact, as evidence of his authorial intent.

Yet intent is complex. Nothing is as unambiguous as the artist would like. Reading images does not eliminate the problem of uncontrolled interpretation. Despite McNaughton’s meticulous symbolism and labeling, viewers have seen the seated Caucasian figure in The Forgotten Man as lamenting only the white unemployed. The looming absence of blacks in the picture—Obama stands alone in a crowd of white faces—is striking. Seen in the light of Skousen’s outré defense of slave owners in his revisions of American history, the contrast is more than striking. McNaughton objects that “there is no racial meaning or undertone” to the painting.

The time when kings go out to battle: Lectionary reflections for Proper 12, Year B

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This week’s readings.

A prompt from this week’s working preacher podcast has me thinking about II Samuel 11:1 “In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle…” It was true for centuries, for millennia, that military campaigns were begun in the spring when the weather improved. A time when we think of new life, the earth’s bounty and beauty manifesting itself, the glory of God’s creation evident in colorful flowers and blossoming trees, when gardeners plant seeds in anticipation of a wonderful harvest, was also a time of destruction and death. It was the time when kings went out to battle.

But David did not go out to battle; he did not do what kings did. He stayed at home and sent his generals to wage war. And while they waged their war, he did something else kings and other powerful men often do, he committed an act of sexual violence on a woman. She was powerless and defenseless, a victim of a king’s power and his lust.

In an earlier piece, I pointed out the text’s ambivalence toward monarchy. There’s no ambivalence here. The story is told rather matter-of-factly. We see him arranging his rape of Bathsheba and attempting to arrange a cover-up by bringing Uriah back home to sleep with his wife. We also see David arranging Uriah’s battlefield death although we don’t see the death itself, nor the prophet Nathan’s condemnation of David’s actions (all that comes in next week’s reading).

In a way, the presence of this story reminds us again of David’s humanity and venality. In spite of being chosen by God, he was a deeply flawed man in an institution that was also deeply flawed.

In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle… One of the critiques of monarchy in the biblical tradition is its exploitation of the people and land that it rules. The land’s wealth was dedicated to the lavish lifestyle of the court. Its people were conscripted into the army or into the service of the crown.

We live in a very different world but some things remain remarkably consistent. The US spends an exorbitant amount on its military and a pittance on programs that alleviate poverty. All the talk about cutting government spending focuses on those tiny programs rather than on the defense budget. Wealth is amassed in the hands of a few. It’s said that a few members of the Walton family possess more wealth than 40% of the American populace combined. Justice is rarely meted out equally to rich and poor.

The prophetic word that came to David, the prophetic words spoken in later generations by Amos and Isaiah demanding monarchs and the aristocracy to heed the needs of the poor, the widow and orphan, still fall on deaf ears. The president doesn’t go out in the spring to fight battles (he wages electoral campaigns) but he does command drone attacks on populations thousands of miles away.

A defense of Enlightenment Religion–and a plea for its recovery in the present

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The Enlightenment comes in for a good bit of criticism these days from religious circles, both left and right, from fundamentalists and postmodernists. Susan Nieman mounts a robust defense of Enlightenment religion:

The Enlightenment denied piety to make room for reverence. If piety is a matter of fear and trembling, reverence is a matter of awe and wonder. There is very little written on the concept of reverence, and no wonder: reverence itself is virtually ineffable. It’s what gives rise to the feeling expressed by Wittgenstein: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Reverence is what you feel when you feel overpowered, struck dumb by the realization that some things are beyond human grasp. Why should human language be able to contain it?

And:

I’ve been arguing for a worldview in which reason and reverence are not at odds but in tandem. They work together like Kant’s moral law and starry heavens – in order to be decent, we must keep one eye on each. In order to be decent: not because religion is the foundation of morality, though it can be a way of expressing it, but because reverence involves gratitude for Creation and awareness of our dependence on it.

There are obvious reasons why we need reverence for Creation. One of the few hopeful things coming out of red state – that is, Republican-leaning – America is a movement of alliances between environmentalist groups and those Christian churches that regard human beings as nature’s stewards. I could list some other things that reverence would be good for, but the very making of such a list would be paradoxical and self-defeating. Reverence cannot be defended on instrumental grounds. Even though it’s good for us, that can’t be the reason to feel it.

It’s long, but deserves a careful read.

Some more perspectives on “the decline of the mainline”

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From Martin Marty. He finds the fact of the vigorous response by Episcopalians worthy of note.

Jill Gill has this to say about the future of liberal religion.

Evangelicals have watched the debate and offer their own perspective. One might think they would be gloating, but they have noticed declining numbers in their own denominations. Eric Metaxas has this to say. Metaxas points to a more substantive piece by Timothy George.

And finally, a robust defense of progressive Christianity directed at secular progressives, by James Rohrer.

A couple of links to reflections on Aurora

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What can one say? What more can one do than pray?

From Christopher Smith:

But for now, there is only lament, as this tragedy is us. We have sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind. Now is not the time for strategizing why this happened or how we can fix the social evils in which this tragedy had its roots, but only for grieving this tragedy and crying out to God.

From James Martin, SJ:

Jesus asks us to love our enemies, not to murder them; to pray for them, not to take vengeance; and he commends the peacemakers among us, not those advocating for more and more and more weapons.

Was Jesus naïve?  I wonder about that.  I often marvel how some Christians can say that in one breath, and proclaim him as the Son of God in the next.  Apparently, some believe that the Second Person of the Trinity didn’t know what he was talking about.  But Jesus lived in a violent time himself, under the heel of Roman rule in an occupied land, when human life was seen as cheap.  Jesus witnessed violence and was himself the victim of violence—the most famous person to suffer the death penalty.  It was not only divine inspiration but also human experience that led him to say: Blessed are the peacemakers.

Why am I saying this now?  Not because I want to score political points.  But because this week’s shootings horrified me, and reminded me of the need for religious people who stand for life, and for churches who stand for life, to stand for life at all times.