Preaching and Local Theology

In a posting back in September 2012 entitled, "All Theology is Local," I suggested that our geographical and social locales play a role in how we understand God.  Different cultures also play a powerful role in our perception of the divine, as does the language we speak.  As a rule, preachers and local churches, however, devote little thought to the particular nature of their local theology and its spirituality.  The truth is, most preachers most of the time call on a mixture of personal experience, the Bible, personal theology, and pop culture to shape their preaching.  Some will draw on literature or the arts from time to time.  And preachers will more-or-less naturally draw on local images and stories for their sermons, especially if they have been in the same locale for a longer period of time.

There is less evidence of preachers consciously reflecting with the church they serve on the ways in which they experience God in their setting including their natural environment and local culture.  In Lewis County, New York, for example, many people continue to reside here because of its proximity to the northern wilderness.  Many hunt and/or fish.  Others are hikers or ride horses or engage in other outdoors activities.  Many live in the forest as a conscious choice, and in all of this there is often enough a spiritual component to their decision to live in or near the wilderness.  It is quite possible to speak of a "north country spirituality," which spirituality should inform the content of preaching in north country churches and from time to time be addressed directly.

In many locales, there would be a combination of local theologies and spiritualities, such as a farm country spirituality that combines with a Great Plains theology or a hillbilly theology.  An urban theology could well also encompass black theology or hispanic spirituality perhaps in tandem with a North Atlantic costal theology.  The larger point here is that we always experience God through our culture, local history, and natural environment and that fact should be incorporated into local preaching in a conscious way.  Amen.

Chaos & Creation: the Bible

In a guest opinion piece entitled, "Recent Gallup Poll On American's View of Bible Reveals Utter Chaos Regarding Nature and Authority of Scripture," John MacArthur reflects on the relationship of modern American culture to the Bible based on the findings of a recent Gallup poll (here).  As one can guess from the title of the piece, he finds little good in that relationship.  One can sense the anguish and alarm he feels concerning the way postmodern society treats scripture, at the debasing relativism to which the Bible is subjected.  The reader also senses MacArthur's alienation from our increasingly non-dualistic culture, which seems to him to have lost its spiritual center. Postmodern Americans including the majority of American Christians, that is, think that the Bible is open to interpretations from different perspectives.  In MacArthur's understanding, these Christians have replaced the authority of the scriptures with "the authority of self."

Early in the piece, he writes, "Clearly, the prevailing belief in our culture is that while the Bible may be the inspired Word of God, it doesn't mean what it says."  From a liberal/progressive perspective, this is a useful observation that helps clarify our view of the scriptures as being both authoritative and open to interpretation—or, again, both inspired and fallible.  At the heart of it all, lies the basic question of how we experience the divine, which leads us to our understanding of the incarnation as not so much as a doctrine as a matter of God's Presence in our lives.  We are touched by that Presence in different ways including through scripture, emotion, in nature, in relationships, in the fellowship of the church, and paradigmatically in the person of Christ to name a few.  In all cases including Christ and the Bible, God speaks to us within the framework of our humanity.  God is present with us incarnationally.

That is to say, God participates with us in our humanity and in the guise of the Spirit finds multiple ways to touch our lives and bend the arc of our habitually hostile fallibility in the direction of the Kingdom.  God, as best as we can make any sense of this, inspires us from within the human experience.  That is the whole point of our trust in God in Christ: Jesus was clearly human and shared the limitations of physical existence that all of us share.  The Bible, which speaks of God out of many generations of experience with the divine, as clearly exhibits the limitations of any human document.  Both in spite of and because of his humanity, Christ grabbed our attention.  So it is with the Bible.

Returning to the idea that, "...prevailing belief in our culture is that while the Bible may be the inspired Word of God, it doesn't mean what it says," the point that must be made is that the authors of the Bible did mean what they wrote.  They wrote, however, in a very different context than the one we live in today.  We are constrained to understand as best we can that context so that we can have some sense of the original intent of the authors.  The process of discovering that intent, however, requires a specialist training and even then is a tricky, murky exercise at best.  Thus, we do best to also read the Bible seeking to hear contemporary meanings as well trusting that God does communicate with us in that search.

The real difference in all of this, of course, is that "modern" or "Newtonian" Christians believe in absolutes and "postmodern" Christians don't.  Moderns believe that words written in one language two thousand years ago retain their meaning today.  Postmoderns believe that words and their meanings are constantly shifting even today and all the more so when dealing with ancient writings like the Bible.  Moderns are convinced that Christ had to be perfect and the Bible infallible in order for God to speak meaningfully to us, and postmoderns are convinced that God can't possibly speak to us through perfection and infallibility because such things are outside the realm of the human experience.

Apparently, humanity is created in such a way that we need both those who lunge forward in the direction of new ways of thinking and doing and following the path God sets for us in Christ and those who hang back wanting to be sure that we're still on the path.  I guess I understand why the hangers back worry so much about the plungers ahead.  A lot is at stake.  But, that is exactly why we who rush in where angels won't feel we must rush on ahead.  The future is waiting!  And somewhere in it is the Kingdom.

PC(USA) in 20 Years - A Scenario

As reported in my  recent post, "Reconfiguring the Mainline?," there is a recent trend in the Presbyterian Church (USA) in which its traditional congregations are continuing to decline in numbers but it is adding an impressive number of affiliated new worshipping communities (NWCs).  Working from the numbers given there, we can assume that the PC(USA) might well continue to lose traditional congregations at a rate of 50-100 a year over the next twenty years, leaving it with perhaps some like 8,000 old-style churches by the year 2034.  Given historical trends, it might even be optimistic to guesstimate the denomination still having 8,000 churches in twenty years.

At the same time, we might suppose that the denomination continues to add NWCs at a rate of about 25 to 50 or so a year.  In order to maintain that rate, many more will have to be actually formed because we can safely assume that individual NWCs will come and go at a fairly fast rate, many of them lasting less than five years and not so many lasting a decade or more.  By 2034 according to this scenario there would be as many as 2,000 NWCs affiliated with the denomination.  That also may be too optimistic, but no one can really say with any certainty one way or the other.  In any event, it is possible that PC(USA) still will have 10,000 or so "congregations" in twenty years but in a new configuration that includes a good number of non-traditional NWCs.

One other thing to consider is that some of the NWCs may "evolve" toward a more traditional congregational structure if they survive their first few years—become, that is, hybrids of different sorts, partly unconventional and partly conventional.  It is also entirely possible that some existing churches will reinvent themselves in innovative ways that will make them hybrids as well.  So, by 2034, there could be three broad categories of Presbyterian churches, old-style, new-style, and hybrid.  the whole denomination could thus conceivably take on the dual aspects of being an innovative, fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants movement and a more stable institutional organization.

If something like this happens, how will it work?  Will presbyteries embrace the NWCs or will they ignore them?  Will the denomination have to redefine the office of teaching elder (clergy) to include individuals who have unconventional theological training but function has pastors in NWCs?  Who will get to vote in presbyteries and in General Assembly?  Will it matter?  How will theological education be structured and provided?  These are only a few of the institutional questions that will have to be faced if the NWC movement really does begin to take hold.

More generally, will the NWCs have become the wave of the future by 2034, or will they remain merely an auxiliary curiosity?  Or will they already be a distant memory, a might-have-been that never came to fruition?  My own sense is that the future of PC(USA) lies in its ability to transition from predominantly old-style congregations to encompassing a wide variety of innovative worshipping communities stimulating the denomination with new ideas, approaches, and styles.  The old-style churches will provide stability.  The new-style ones will give it life.  The hybrids will combine the best (and worst?) of the two in interesting and hopeful ways.  And the Spirit will continue to move.

We Have Found Life on Mars?

The science journal, Nature, website reports in an article entitled, "Microbial stowaways to Mars identified," that the Mars rover Curiosity carried with it "Dozens of microbial species," which may contaminate samples that it collects.  This is not certain because scientists are not yet sure that the microbes can survive on Mars let alone the ride there through space.  The thing is that, according to investigators, they apparently did survive attempts to sterilize them before the rover left Earth.  The article states, "Planetary scientists worry that hitchhiking microbes could, in principle, contaminate Mars soil, or possibly taint rock samples collected as part of future missions — hence providing false signs of life on the red planet."

One has the feeling of, "Here we go again."  Virtually every time explorers or colonists here on Earth land on a new island or continent, they take with them other species that came along for the ride.  This includes infectious diseases that can wipe out indigenous populations.  So, perhaps we are at it again, assuming that the hostile environments we are crossing and discovering allow our microbial stowaways to survive the trip.  And wouldn't it be at least ironic if there wasn't any life on Mars until we put it there?  One reason we invest so much effort and resources to go to Mars is to discover new, alien life, but just maybe what we will discover is us.  At least, as the article points out, we will eventually discover whether or not life on Earth is hardy enough to survive interplanetary travel, and that in and of itself will be worth learning.

And if those microbes do survive the trip and are able to live on Mars, what we may be witnessing is the beginning of what could be the greatest engineering project in human history, the terraforming of Mars.  Eventually, we are going to leave Earth and learn to live in space, which means taking life on Earth with us to the stars.  This sounds like science fiction, but maybe the very beginnings of our migration into the universe are already happening.  Or not.  But the possibility is intriguing.

Reconfiguring the Mainline?

According to a Christian Post news posting entitled, "PCUSA Decline in Churches, Members Continued in 2013," Presbyterian Church (USA) denominational statistics continue to look grim. The generations long decline of mainline Presbyterianism seems to be continuing unabated.  A second look, however, hints that things may not be quite as dire as the numbers suggest and that something very interesting could be happening.  The article notes that the denomination lost some 224 churches of which148 left PC(USA) and the remaining 76 were dissolved.  It also notes, however, that some 200 "new worshipping communities" (NWCs) have been formed in the last two years under the denomination's 1001 Worshipping Communities initiative.  These communities and those participating in them were not counted in the official statistics for 2013.

If we do a little guesstimating of our own, it seems at least possible, maybe likely, that a transformation of sorts is taking place.  Setting aside the churches that left for other pastures, the actual loss of congregations to decline was only 76, which loss seems to be more than offset by the rate of growth of NWCs certainly in numbers of members as well as congregations.  What may be happening is that PC(USA) is trading in small, dying organized (old-fashioned) churches for innovative, experimental (new-fangled) communities that are more about creativity than Book of Order propriety.  Maybe.  Or maybe not.  The 1001 initiative could be a flash in the pan, a trendy fad of the moment.  It may, on the other hand, mark a new direction for at least part of the the Presbyterian Church, transforming it from an institution back into a movement. The bottom line is that whether or not something of a reconfiguration of PC(USA) churches is taking place this is the sort of thing that needs to happen—must happen.  And it looks like there is the potential for it actually happening.

No Way Out But Democracy

Ongoing events in Thailand point to one incontrovertible fact concerning modern societies around the world: the best way, often the only way, to achieve a measure of social peace and justice in any given nation is through a democratic political process.  This is proving to be true in the nations of northern Africa and western Asia, however painful the process itself is.  In the United States, the influence of tea party movement is apparently receding because it is losing its power at the ballot box.  However one might view the tea party's agenda, it has been important in getting past its influence to give that movement all of the voice it could muster in the public arena.  Whenever a military takeover silences popular voices, it only postpones the democratic resolution of political divisions; winners at the ballot box must be allowed to rule, so long as the rights of the losers to keep talking and keep trying to turn things in their direction is protected.

It has become commonplace to quote Winston Churchill's famous observation in 1947 that,"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."  The fact that his epigram is commonplace, however, does not make it wrong.  Democracy is a sloppy way to do things.  It is always open to manipulation and corruption.  The return of big-money politics in the U.S. is but one example of how apparently fragile the process can be at times.  Even so, it remains the one way we have to ensure long-term political and social stability however chaotic it can seem at times.  Whether it was Abraham Lincoln or someone else who first voiced the thought, it does remain true that politicians can fool us all some times and fool some of us all the time, but they are hard-pressed to fool all of us all the time.

Each time the military intervenes in Thailand, the nation is denied the chance to work out its differences in the only way that will ultimately resolve them—open public debate leading to free and fair democratic elections.  Here is one more epigram: you can't win if you aren't willing to lose.  As in all competitive sports, so in politics losing is in fact an important part of winning.  Losing is a teacher.  It is a test.  It is a foundation, usually indispensable, to eventually coming out on top.  Until the yellow shirts in Thailand learn this lesson, they cannot win however often they are able to frustrate the will of the majority.  Winning by forcing the other team off the playing field is not winning.  Amen.

The Meanings of Biblical Authority

In a Religious News Service (NRS) posting entitled, "Conservative United Methodists say split over sexuality is ‘irreconcilable’," the author makes passing reference to the fact that one of the issues being debated between among Methodists is "the authority of Scripture."  The fundamental issue, of course, is the place of the LGBT community in the denomination, but the nature and message of the Bible is certainly intimately involved.  That is not incorrect, but we need to be precise in the nature of the debate.  Mainline progressives will generally acknowledge that the Bible is authoritative, but they also will insist that the issue is that the Bible can be read in a variety of ways from a variety of perspectives.

Thus, for progressives the fact that a wing of the church reads certain passages in the Bible as supporting the idea that homosexuality in all of its forms is a sin does not bind us to read them in that same way.  Read in historical context, they are open to interpretation, and we choose not to interpret them in a way that contradicts the God in Christ revealed otherwise in scripture.  The point is that the one side generally holds that there is only one way to interpret the Bible while the other believes that the Bible is open to a variety of interpretations.  It is for both, however, authoritative.  As seems to be almost invariably the case, both sides in this sad, sad debate can utter the same words while meaning very different things by them.

Historically Reliable?

As reported in the Washington Post (here) and elsewhere online, Mr. Steve Green has developed a high school course for the study of the Bible, which will be tested next school year at a high school in Oklahoma.  In an editorial entitled, "Is the Hobby Lobby Bible elective objective?" commentator Stephen Prothero raises two objections to the curriculum.  First, he argues, it betrays a Christian bias; it is not secular and objective.  Second, in various, subtle ways the authors uncritically promote the idea that the Bible provides reliable historical data.  He particularly points to a summary box in the text that reads, “We can conclude that the Bible, especially when viewed alongside other historical information, is a reliable historical source.”

Understanding the point Prothero is making, still one can argue that the assertion in the summary box is a correct one if properly understood.  The condition that the Bible is a reliable historical source when viewed along other historical information is crucial depending on how we understand the meaning of "other historical information."  If it includes the mountains of research and commentary devoted to the Bible by reputable biblical scholars then I would have to agree that the Bible, read critically, is indeed a reliable historical sources.  This does not mean that every event asserted in its text happened as described in its pages.  It does mean that the text of the Bible opens important doors for our understanding of the past.  It beautifully describes an ancient cosmology.  It hints at the emergence of monotheism from polytheism.  It describes among other things political developments in Western Asia over many centuries.  It provides insights into the person of Jesus and of Paul as well as data useful for understanding the emergence of the Jesus Movement in the first century AD (or CE, take your pick).

One has to read the text critically, consult other sources, and immerse oneself in the relevant scholarly literature.  And one has to be circumspect in claiming what information is available through careful readings of the text.  Still, given these conditions, the Bible is a reliable historical source—recognizing that some biblical texts are more reliable than others.

Before I returned to pastoral ministry, I devoted 16 years to the study of church history in Thailand.  I have spent a good deal of time with Protestant missionary sources.  There are scholars who refuse to use those sources for the study of Thai history generally "because they are biased."  My response is, "Yes, of course, they are biased.  But they also contain a wealth of information on subjects other than Protestantism in Thailand if one read them critically and knowledgeably."  The bias is generally clear, indeed so obviously apparent that it is not that difficult to sift it out just as if one were panning for gold.

By the same token the biblical texts are important sources for the study of the ancient world.  Yes, the authors of the curriculum mean something different by the phrase "reliable historical source," but they are still right that it is reliable—even if for the wrong reason.

Bliss Point & Worship

As far back as the post-World War II years, food researchers have experimented with what is now called the "bliss point." Stated simply, the bliss point is that point where a consumer is most happy with a product.  In the food industry, it is the point at which a particular food item is most desirable in terms of taste—assuming cost is not an issue.  For an insightful, fascinating, if trouble article on the concept of the bliss point and its relationship to junk food, see the New York Times article by Michael Moss entitled, "The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food."

The consequence of mountains of data accumulated in the study of the bliss point of a wide variety of foods is that the food industry has learned how much salt, sugar, and fat in combination with each other to inject into foods to make them attractive to consumers.  Look no further for a primary cause of the obesity epidemic sweeping the nation.  We're human.  We like salt, sugar, and fat.  So we eat foods that optimize these ingredients, the key word being "optimize".  Too much of them in a given food is as undesirable as too little.

I suspect that we could very easily apply the concept of the bliss point (which turns out to be a range rather an a single point) to Christian worship.  A key pillar of the megachurch movement is the lively, upbeat tempo of megachurch worship, which often is conducted by virtually professional musicians, choreographers, and planners.  People are less and less willing to go to worship just because it is worship.  They seek stimulation.  They want a certain level of entertainment, although we never use the word with worship.  They want a return on their investment in time and effort.  Most churchgoers these days consume worship, and if that truly is the case then the concept of a liturgical bliss point is one worth considering.

On the one hand, apply the concept of a bliss point to worship sounds theologically crude, wrong somehow.  Worship should not be about entertainment.  Seeking to discover its "bliss point" feels sacrilegious, irreverent, or whatever other word we might apply.  On the other hand, if we are going to reach audiences in a consumer oriented capitalist culture we had better consider what it is that attracts them.  The answer in the food industry is, "Bliss attracts them."  What then about worship?  Is bliss also what worshippers are seeking on a Sunday morning?  It seems very likely that the answer is, "Yes."

More Opportunities, More Distractions

It has become commonplace to observe that life today, even in a small town like Lowville, NY, is different in various ways from the way it was even two or three decades ago.  It is faster paced, more connected to the "outside" world, and brimming with opportunities and distractions.  We are constantly on the move, and the direction of society at large seems to be toward multitasking, a society where being engaged, engaged, and engaged is what is most highly valued.  One can almost feel the internal pressures that come as a part of modern living.

All of this is having a major negative impact on the place that people allow faith to have in their lives.  Faith, at heart, is about slowing down, listening, and to an extent disengaging.  It offers and invites us to live in a different reality from that of our hurry up, engaged, multi-tasking, do, do, do world.  We sit hunched over life, but faith calls on us to loosen up and to even get up and gently walk away for a bit from the hurry and get-it-done lifestyle we live.

Our interconnected world offers us more opportunities to discover such things as meditation, but we are so distracted by "reality" that we feel we don't take the time for those things.  More opportunities, but less time.  The paradox in it all is that giving a bit of our lives over to the things of faith actually does not rob us of time but allows us to live a little less frenetically, which means that we have more quality time not less.

The challenge we face in the early 21st century, then, is to "take time to be holy."  That challenge is an age-old one, but today it is filled with greater opportunities than ever yet frustrated by more distractions than ever.  We live, in sum, in a tense and distracted age, which age keeps us from embracing the spiritual opportunities more available to us than ever.