a theology of contamination
September 20, 2005
We're privileged to have Richard Giles, author of Re-pitching the Tent, doing a course at the Centre as I write. For those of us in the URC, buildings are a real issue. They soak up huge amounts of time, energy and resources. Most importantly, membership in the URC has declined by 51% in the last 30 years, while the number of church buildings has declined by only 16%. In other words, we've got fewer than half the people supporting nearly the same work. Add the complications of increasing maintenance charges because of age, increased standing costs as utility costs rise, increased expectations and the requirements to conform with ever-burgeoning legislation and it is small wonder that buildings generate frantic activity just to stand still! They throw us into "survival mode" in ways that few other aspects of church life do.
Richard pointed out something very interesting this morning. He is an Anglican priest (presently Dean of Philadelphia Cathedral but keen to return to his native shores at every opportunity!) and he started out with a slide of the Jewish temple, with its courts at varying distances away from the Holy of Holies. He then put up a slide of a typical parish church, with the knave acting like the court of the Gentiles or the court of Israel, the choir acting as the priests (all robed etc) and then the altar - the Holy of Holies. His argument is that we reproduce the temple in our church buildings. And he's right!
What struck me even more forcibly is that the traditional seating plan in churches, where we fill up (from the back) and gaze forwards to the action spot (where God is) is based on a theology of holiness and contamination. God is holy. That means people must keep their distance. The holier we are, the greater proximity we are allowed to the "God spot"! For all the difficulties of worshipping in the round, it struck me as vitally important that we do so. It says something - that we are a community, gathered around God. We have equal access to God. It is a necessary corrective to a theology of contamination, expressed weekly in "performance", whereby we gather at a "safe" distance from God.
model of the church
September 15, 2005
This is how I scored on models of the church (thanks, stuart). A servant model. I'm intrigued by the mystical communion high score. Pleased and not surprised that church as institution is not exactly right up there at the top …
You scored as Servant Model. Your model of the church is Servant. The mission of the church is to serve others, to challenge unjust structures, and to live the preferential option for the poor. This model could be complemented by other models that focus more on the unique person of Jesus Christ.
What is your model of the church? [Dulles] |
church life is also mission
September 15, 2005
I'm writing this in Cleveland, Ohio, where 4 of us from the URC are visiting the United Churches of Christ to consult on their God is Still Speaking, initiative. It's quite something! This relatively small church has done market research which shows that many people are extremely angry with the Church. They are alienated from the institutional church, rather than from God. They feel there isn't a place for them. This includes lesbians, gays and transgengered people, but also thinking people, divorcees and others whom the church feels unable to welcome. They've mounted a nation-wide sophisticated advertising campaign that extends a welcome to everyone, without suggesting they need to become "like us". The God is still speaking theme is to say that God hasn't pronounced the last word on subjects the church often appears to regard as closed. The inclusion of gay people is an obvious area. The point is that if a subject is closed, then so are the doors to the people it affects.
In one sense, it seems an innocuous enough campaign. After all, don't we all tend to say "Everyone is welcome here"? Yet people experience a different reality. As a result of the campaign, the UCC has had hundreds of thousands of people contacting them to find their nearest UCC church. The attitude is "If church is really like that, I want to be part of it!" The response has been astonishing and overwhelming. They've had independent churches wanting to affiliate to the UCC because of the campaign. The streets here are lined with banners with the campaign strap lines and the UCC logo.
My concern was that this was yet another instance of a church engaged in self-promotion. It clearly isn't! They've found a way of being unapologetically evangelical not only about the gospel but also about church (without confusing the two inappropriately) because the message of welcome is heard as Good News.
One reason for the campaign's success is that the campaign is edgy, irreverent and playful. Its message is designed with the target audience in mind, rather than the church itself. And it genuinely communicates! Have a look at stillspeaking.com and play the bouncer ad on the title page. We've heard and seen testimonies about how the simple message of genuine love, acceptance and welcome has revolutionised people's lives. It's stopped suicides. It's given hope and purpose. And it's enabled people to relate to God in Jesus Christ in new and real ways.
We were talking about the way in which we as the URC and other UK churches still have to resolve the sexuality issue. Ron Buford, the mover behind the campaign, said something that I've not heard in the various church debates on the subject and that made a deep impression. He said, "We are a covenant church. Baptism is a covenant. It promises lifelong incorporation into the body of Christ and acceptance. When we exclude people whom we've baptised, we break covenant. We say, 'Sorry. We didn't mean that this was a lifelong covenant!' Then we break covenant with God and that is desperately serious!"
Another comment that really grabbed me as true of so much of church life: "If the 1950s ever return, let me tell you: we're ready for it!" Isn't it depressingly true that we're stuck in models of the past that are passe and will never do for us now what they did in their time? Let's bring that emerging church to birth … quickly!
when is evangelism (in)appropriate?
September 7, 2005
I received the daily email bulletin from ekklesia. One of the articles on Hurricane Katrina is entitled, "Don't use aid to proselytize, Christians urged". The head of the Christian Aid agency co-ordinating relief efforts criticises Christians using aid to win vulnerable people over to their religious convictions as "morally questionable". I think he's absolutely right! When people are suffering as they are, aid is a wonderfully Christian response. It is the equivalent of not walking by on the other side of the road when other human beings are suffering. It says, without words, "We are moved by compassion! What is happening to you is appalling! We want to help!"
That has its own evangelistic dimension. True compassion of that sort is sacramental. If we believe what we say about compassion mirroring the heart of God, then we must trust that people who encounter love and compassion in action encounter God. That is what is needed in this instant. It is Good News concretely in the face of the bad news that governs their lives.
Of course, Christians do not have the monopoly on compassion! Another article is headed, "Axis of evil offers to come to America's rescue" and details offers of help from the Cuban president, Fidel Castro. That must be pretty galling for the American religious Right! Yet we need reminding that all acts of compassion and love are ultimately Godly, whether coming from people of faith or not. The Kingdom, after all, is bigger than the Church (however much we'd like it to be otherwise) and its values and priorities are shared in many ways by extraordinarily different groups. We need to learn to see these other groups as co-workers for the Kingdom, even when they have nothing to do with it and theoretically oppose it. God's presence is found in strange places, as the hearers of the parable of the Good Samaritan found out!
But why the ban on using aid to proselytise? Because that is neither Christian nor evangelistic! The distinction between "proselytise" and "evangelise" is crucial. To proselytise is to seek to persuade someone to embrace my religious convictions - to think and believe and live in the same way as I do. To evangelise is to tell people the Good News of Jesus Christ and invite them to find the same Life as I have in being a follower. That is not the same thing! The former views the other person as a potential convert - a target, or statistic. More importantly, proselytisation is fundamentally about cloning, so that I see the other as a potential "someone like me". Evangelisation sees them as a fellow human being and assumes some sort of relationship between us that is not based on their potential "convertibility".
We need to recognise how deep the unconscious drive is in us to make a success of the Church. Because we express our faith in this context as we do, Church and discipleship are pretty well interchangeable. The trouble is, we lose sight of the crucial difference - just as many of the Christian missionaries were unable to disentangle discipleship of Jesus Christ from white, western, imperial culture! Until we can disentangle the two for ourselves, we will tend to proselytise rather than evangelise.
This is not to say that we shouldn't be desperately keen for those in dire need to receive not only bread but the Bread of Life! Yet what we should be offering beyond aid alone is our prayers and offers of friendship. We are sacraments of God's grace and love in Jesus Christ, far more eloquently than our words. We need to offer ourselves - not our religious beliefs - because in so doing we are offering Christ. And we need to celebrate the Jesus whom we meet in communist Cubans, as well. Because Jesus is there too.
a postmodern, neo-orthodox welseyan
August 31, 2005
Well, I just took the quiz to find out what my theology's like (thanks for the tip, homileo) and discovered that I'm clearly postmodern, alienated from the institutional church, strongly neo-orthodox and pretty welseyan! Only an 18% reformed evangelical. So what am I doing with myself? Working for the United Reformed Church! Actually, I'd say my spirituality rather than my theology is wesleyan/catholic/not reformed. My theology is pretty much neo-orthodox, postmodern reformed (aren't labels fun???? NOT!). Actually, the most satisfactory label I've ever really been prepared to wear is a South African one - radical evangelical. These are people who believe in the vital importance of a personal relationship with God through Christ, and who are pretty well thorough-going liberation theologians. Here are my results:
You scored as Emergent/Postmodern. You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don't think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this.
What's your theological worldview? |
read this and be very, very afraid …
August 24, 2005
Go and look at this page, called The American Taliban. It's a page of quotes from prominent Americans. A number of them are church leaders. Others are politicians, serving in the Bush Administration.
Take James Watt, Secretary for the Interior. He says, "We don't have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand." Way to go, James! So the Church is released from its mandate under the 5th Mark of Mission to preserve the environment!
How about George Bush snr: "I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." One neation, George? Not if you can help it! And which God? Not mine!
But some of the really chilling stuff is about an appropriate Christian response to terrorism. Now I've always bought into the notion that, if women ran the world - particularly mothers - we'd probably have no war. And of course, if they were all Christian mothers, well, that would clinch it! Ann Coulter, a prominent Christian mother who is an attorney, a syndicated columnist and author who would like to run the world, has shown me the error of my ways:
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."
"Not all Muslims may be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims."
"Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity, as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of 'kill everyone who doesn't smell bad and doesn't answer to the name Mohammed'"
So is Tony planning to bar all these people from entering Britain too because of preaching racial hatred? And will rightwing foreign Christians also face deportation? Or is it only if you happen to be Muslim?
rock & redemption
August 24, 2005
Some of the most suggestive and creative theology is to be found outside religious texts. It's certainly where some of the most insightful and surprisingly rich reflections can be found. Those of us whose professional tools include the Bible and the tradition need to recognise that our theological imaginations are shaped and limited by these tools. That isn't to say anything bad or critical - it is to acknowledge reality. We look through a lens which has been polished by the medium in which we work. Musicians look through a different lens. Theirs is the lens of lyrics, the symbol systems of musical traditions, rhythms, sound, cadence and rhyme. And it colours their theology. That's why find the theology in certain songs to be far more exciting and creative than much of the very worthy stuff I read in theological text books. It's not usually the content so much as the vehicle. There are startling things to be discovered.I reckon few do it better than the (not-very-holy) trinity of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Bruce Springsteen. That's why I'm running a course at the Windermere Centre on Rock & Redemption (21-24 November). It's an opportunity to do some very serious theological exploration - but also to listen to some good music on the way. I'm not doing it alone.I'll do 3 sessions on Cohen's music. It will be a straightforward case of using songs as an entry into theological areas. So we will look at brokenness & grace ("Anthem"), sex & sacramentality ("Hallelujah") and kingdom & eschatology ("Democracy"). Peter Noble, Moderator of the URC Wales Synod, is looking at Springsteen as a way of exploring the gospel and evangelism. He will look at Bruce's treatment of the American Dream (see my post "The Boss & Gethsemane") as an example of how to understand the gospel and evangelism. He will look at the construction of a redemption narrative which first of all exposes and confronts the present "bad news" prophetically, moves through the evocation of an alternative reality of promise (Hope & Dreams?) and then to a summons to discipleship. It yields an understanding of gospel and evangelism that is prophetic and passionate but not pietistic. It is radically communal rather than individualistic, yet utterly self-involving.Lance Stone, former lecturer at Westminster College, Cambridge, and soon-to-be minister of Emmanuel URC, Cambridge, is looking at Dylan's music as providing an interesting window in the nature and function of the Bible in preaching and faith. Taking some of Brueggemann's insights into post modern, postliberal views of the Bible, Lance sees the open-endedness of Dylan's lyrics and their ever-retranslatable quality as an important parallel to understanding the Bible's function. Because the songs never allow closure, their meaning can never be frozen buit is always able to open new vistas in a different time and place.So if you want to do some serious theology, or if you like the music, or the Lake District, you can't go far wrong. If all three of those are your "thing", you can't fail. Meatloaf was right when he said that "Two out of three ain't bad"), but I reckon any one thing on its own will be a good enough reason to be here! So download the Booking Form and get registered while there are still spaces …