This lecture is part three in a series for Harvard Divinity School. Marcus opens with a brief prayer from St. Agustin “O God from whom to be turned is to fall, to whom to be turned is to rise, and in whom to stand is to abide forever. Grant us in all our duties thy health, in all our perplexities thy guidance, in all our dangers thy protection, and in all our sorrows thy peace.”
Then he follows up with a joke in which he explains about a Church that has introduced having four kinds of services on Sunday morning. The first is for Christians that have newly found the church, the second is for worshipers who have been with the church for a long time and are basically happy, a third is for worshipers that feel they might be losing their faith, and the fourth is for those that feel they have been wounded by their Christian upbringing and would like to gather for lamentation. The names of these four services being ‘finders, keepers, losers, weepers.’
From Convention to Intention
This title seeks to name a major and continuing development within mainline denominations over the past forty years, We are moving from a conventional form of Christianity to an intentional form of Christianity. This means moving from convention to intention as the motive for being Christian. Until about the 50s-60s it was expected that most people were part of a Church, Marcus recalls growing up in the Midwest and most kids would have belonged to a church and known their denomination. This was good for mainline Christianity in that it offered a socially acceptable way to be Christian and you weren’t asked to do anything too weird. At the end of the 1960s this expectation in popular culture started breaking down. This means that people who became Christians for conventional reasons will at some future point die out and the only people left in mainline denominations will be those who joined them with intention. Another meaning of from convention to intention is moving from a form of Christianity that is accommodated to convention and culture to a form of Christianity that challenges cultural convention. Historically Christianity has conformed to and endorsed the dominating culture with which it co-existed starting with the Roman empire. When cultural convention accepted slavery, Christians accepted slavery. When cultural convention accepted segregation, Christians accepted segregation. The same has been true of patriarchal, heteronormative, and uncritically patriotic. One might call this the cultural captivity of the Church, this is changing.
The Way Forward: Churches of the Emerging Paradigm
What this change from conventional to intentional might look like at the congregational level. Congregations will be and are communities of transformation it follows then that Christians who intentionally join the Church are intrinsically interested in transformation.
Communities of Transformation
Communities of adult Christian theological reeducation, much of the theological teachings of the last two generations have become unpersuasive in our time. If the Church is to develop persuasive teachings in our time adults need to be reeducated about that. There is also a need for education of adults coming into the Church for the first time. In some parts of the country the 20 and 30 somethings have basically grown up outside of the church. We can no longer assume that adults have grown up with the Bible stories in Sunday school especially in Oregon where Marcus has taught.
One of the most important topics that will require education or reeducation is on the meaning of the word God. In common culture God refers to a supernatural, human like being, who relates to the world through intervention. This God is the target of the best selling atheist critiques of religion. For those folks that have difficulty believing in this supernatural theism version of the word God to realize that there is another, very different understanding of the word God in that God is the encompassing spirit within whom we live and move. This understanding equally biblical is not vulnerable to the atheist critique in the same way.
Reeducation about the Bible will also be important. Yes, the content is important but equally the origins, authority and interpretation and meaning of stories will be important. Conflicts about the bible are some of the most heated topics in North America today. Those conflicts arise about the interpretation, origins and authority. One of the problems with Progressive Protestantism is that we are very clear about what we don’t believe but not very clear about what we do affirm. As a result conservatives have a near monopoly on traditional Christian language.
Common understandings of Jesus focus on his death as necessary retribution for our sins instead of focusing on his life and his message. Reeducation about Jesus can make him a compelling and persuasive figure.
We need reeducation about prayer. Richard Rohr contemporary Franciscan monk and priest once said “the church that does not teach it’s people how to pray has virtually lost its reason for existence.
The last main topic that Marcus has identified that we will need reeducation about is the Christian life itself. What is it about?
How will we accomplish this reeducation?
Adult classes are great but reading groups are also a valuable way to do it. Reading groups do not require expert leadership, you simply need someone who knows how to facilitate discussion without dominating it but you don’t need a theologically trained expert to lead a reading group. You need commitment from participants to actually read. People will feel more confident to disagree with an author that isn’t actually in the room where as if someone is speaking and teaching people may not ask as many questions and challenge them as much. Video series can also be good forms of reeducation. Marcus has heard some excitement around “Living the Questions.”
Another aspect of Christianity that will need to be relearned will be what Marcus calls ‘formation.’ This is basically a process of re-socialization from our usually western cultural values to Christian values. We might have spiritual journey groups to help in this kind of reeducation.
These would be communities of practice. Worship would be included under practice. What is the purpose of practice? Do we do it because that’s what God expects of us or do we do it because it’s opening us up to God and centering us more deeply in God? Practice is about forming us. Teaching us how to practice, perhaps teaching us a daily discipline and what that might look like. Probably the single most important individual practice is prayer. Prayer meaning to pay attention to our relationship with God. Worship as practice is of God but it is really for us. The purpose of worship is to draw us out of ourselves and it opens us up. This directive should be used to guide choices about music and other pieces of worship. This might reduce our use of the spoken word, it might be one of the least effective ways of opening us up. Marcus discusses how listening to fresh words each Sunday might not be the best way for people to lose themselves in the service. Listening with one’s head is not usually an effective path to transformation. Another purpose of worship is Christian formation. Formation through hearing the words of scripture, formation through the sermon, formation through participating in the liturgy. Lastly the purpose of worship is subversive in that it is not praising the rulers of this world but God the supreme ruler. Instead of Christianity legitimizing the rulers of this world we choose not to praise those lords at all.
Communities of Participation In God’s Passion for the World
This is the political dimension of the life of a local congregation. Kingdom of God is not only central to the message of Jesus but it is a political metaphor in the first century and that’s because kingdom was the most prevalent form of political and economic organization at the time. As the lords prayer puts it, the Kingdom of God is for the earth. Participating in God’s passion is to ask, what is the God of the bible passionate about? The answer to this question is, the world. The world being the world of creation as well as the world structured by humans in terms of economic justice and peace. What would this passion for the Kingdom of God look like at the level of a congregation, it means they would become communities of consciousness raising. Consciousness raising is partly about education but also about systems and how they impact the lives of people. It might be safe to say that in the United States today one of the greatest sources of suffering is oppressive economic systems. The United States is a very difficult place to be in the economically bottom 40% . The U.S. is a very individualistic society and economics are generally seen as results of individual’s actions not as parts of a system and this is a place where we can do some consciousness raising. It is also important to raise consciousness around war, non-violence and peace. Roughly 80% of Americans religiously affiliate as Christian which equates to roughly 240 million which is more than any other country in the world. We might do well to raise consciousness about basic Christian ideals about war which are pacifism or Just War Theory which absolutely prohibits starting a war, a war may only be one of self defense. Eighty four percent of American Evangelical Christians favored preemptive warfare against Iraq. For Marcus this represents a massive failure of Christian education in that some of the Christians that might characterize themselves as some of the most devout Christians had never heard of Just War Theory. Beyond consciousness raising, these transforming communities need to become active in the world for compassion, justice and non-violence.
Concluding Comments
Marcus has described what in some ways is his ideal congregation, but there are congregations like this. It might not make sense to do all of these things or it might not be helpful at all for some congregations to try this. Some congregations may not survive simply because of demographics in the area weather that be declining or aging population or some other factor. For congregations that do have a future Marcus believes this is the way forward. We are called to be communities of participation in God’s passion and God”s passion is actually very simple, it’s two fold. First, God’s passion is that we center more deeply in God, not because God is the ultimate narcissist, but because this is the path of human liberation, this is the path of reconnection to what is. The second part of God’s passion is that we change the world. “For God so loved the world”