The Ark was built by amateurs, the Titanic was built by professionals

A commentator on one of the finance websites I frequent lambasted Wall Street, saying that Noah's Ark was built by amateurs, the Titanic by the pros. Wall Street has had many spectacular failures the last two years.

The established Church needs to take notice. Among many other things, Christmas is about a babe in a manger, of apparently questionable birth, come to shake up established religion. The representatives of that religion had failed to serve the true spiritual needs of the people they served. In fact, they had come to collaborate with the Roman Empire.

The established churches of our time are failing to serve both Christians and non-Christians. The Evangelicals have said that the mainline churches are becoming stale. Their liturgy is boring. They have failed to evangelize.

Frankly, though, what the Evangelicals offer is worse: unthinking adherence to flawed doctrine, empty pop music whose message can be boiled down to "Jesus is my boyfriend", homophobia, warmongering, cultural imperialism, lack of concern for the greater world. The mainline churches are also guilty of some of these things.

Bishop John Spong of the Episcopal Church in the US contends that Christianity must change or die. In his view, Christianity must move away from literalism and superstition, or it will fail to serve people. I disagree. Evangelical and fundamentalist Christians show us that a) people need to believe in high myth and b) some people are just fucking crazy.

It is true, though, that Christianity must change or humanity will die. It is only now that Evangelicals are realizing the climate change will destroy the ability of millions of humans to live on this planet. It is only now that they are realizing that genocide is a crime against God and humankind. It is only now that they are realizing that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people have the same rights as ... oh, wait. The Evangelical conservatives are too late. Their efforts will probably be too little as well. They, like the mainline churches, need to shape up. Or die.

We progressive Christians have in many ways ceded the power of the Christian story to the interpretations of the fundamentalists. We have failed to show the world that we take the Bible seriously, not literally. We have failed to spread the faith. We have failed in vision, organization, teaching and marketing.

Going forward, progressive Christians need to engage with the established Church (meaning both mainline and Evangelical churches) and with the wider world. We need to articulate a non-exclusive theology that describes the mystery of God and is digestible and attractive to ordinary people. We need to articulate and execute a theology that upholds human rights because they are God's rights. If the Religious Right's message goes unchallenged, we all lose.

Many religious 'professionals' have failed in their duties. Pray that the 'amateurs' will step in. And Happy Holidays!

Evangelism and Brian McLaren

This is in reference to Brian McLaren's words, quoted in this post, where he says emergent Christians like him aren't out to "shoehorn" other people out of their religions, if they're happy with them. He says that Jesus was out more to bring about God's reign on earth, than on getting people into heaven. One commenter called him a "wise man."

More conservative Evangelicals will likely disagree. At its worst, Evangelical Christianity ignores the needs of the world so long as people are saved. I've argued that this model of Christianity reproduces structures of oppression by forcing people to give up their own cultures. Of course, not all elements of non-Christian cultures are worth keeping; I find the Chinese highly superstitious, for example. But not all elements of the Christian culture that stems from Evangelicals raised or influenced by the West is worth adopting, either.

And so, McLaren offers us a new model. I believe that the Emergent movement considers themselves Evangelical. To be sure, they are pretty loosely organized - congregational polity, I believe. (In fact, I once read of an Emergent speaker who said that the institutional church did not matter, that the institution was not connected to the way of the Cross; having been raised Evangelical, I agree, but not all my Catholic or mainline brethren, especially Anglicans, agree).

What is the terminal value of Christianity? Why should one bother being a Christian? After all, your Sunday mornings are booked. You're generally encouraged to tithe. Some churches frown on drinking and gambling. Many frown on various forms of sexuality. All of them frown on illicit drugs, if that's your thing. Why bother?

The narrow interpretation of eternal life, that all the unsaved will perish and all the saved will be with God, is one reason given, but I don't like it. People who turn away from the church because of its sins (e.g. crusades, colonialism, not protecting the Jews during WWII, not doing enough to protect various other oppressed groups, etc) are either in danger of damnation, or face certain damnation (depending on who you ask). I don't feel like serving a God like that.

The other way is less clear. Do Christianity, in the world. Treat the poor and oppressed as your equals, because what you do to them, you do to Jesus. This strain of Christianity is less certain than the first. Many people like certainty. And certainty has been used to great effect as a marketing tool by conservative Evangelicals.

But certainty can also blind you. For example, some Christians are certain that homosexuality is a sin, and the Bible does contain clear statements that condemn at least some forms of homosexuality. But these Christians are blinded to the presence of God within the LGBT community, whether they are Christian or not.

Those Christians who are neutral or affirming have to face the fact that the Bible says what it says. We might interpret the Bible as the work of human hands, interpreted through human eyes and prejudices (e.g., the author of Leviticus was certainly a man). But that path is less certain.

Brian McLaren clearly has faith in God. I think that those who come to true faith lose the need to have everything else written in black and white.

A new model of evangelism?

Picked up from Madpriest's blog.
(June 10, 2007)--The chairman of the liberal Christian group Sojourners says he believes that "Jesus coming was not primarily about getting people into heaven."

The Rev. Brian McLaren says he believes that Jesus came "to proclaim the Kingdom of God, which is God's will being done on Earth."

McLaren says that's why congregations in the "emergent church" movement focus more on social action than trying to convert people to Christianity.

McLaren says that if people are "happy being Muslim, or Buddhist or Jewish or atheist," he doesn't think it's right to try to "shoe-horn them out of their religion" into Christianity.