Years ago, while working a summer office temp job, I met a guy who had just graduated from a mainline theological school (this was before I had even thought of going to one myself). We hit it off immediately.
But we disagreed (amicably) on certain theological matters. He had been taught, for instance, that the main mission of the church was to address the injustices implicit in the outward structures of society – in short, the Social Gospel.
Partly because I was a child of the 60s, I wasn’t buying it. I had learned to question the reliability of such “worldly” solutions and instead sought to delve into the soul in search of life’s deeper meanings.
My prior search, defined mostly by the urgencies of the counterculture, had led to its inevitable dead-end. In its aftermath, I began exploring other avenues of enlightenment. I became interested in psychology and philosophy; then, finally, biblical Christianity.
Discovering the latter was quite a shock. Prior to this, Christianity had always struck me as rather tame, and society driven. I falsely assumed it accurately reflected the thinking of the “country club” set in the church of my youth, those who would sit and listen to nice-sounding words indistinguishable from the latest op-ed in the New York Times. Such people seemed nice enough, but maybe not so spiritually deep.
In reading the Bible for the first time with a truly receptive mind, I was stunned at its profound insight into the most far-reaching aspects of human existence. All I had thought important and earnestly pursued during the 60s – peace, love, and justice – were all there. But in a different key.
Scripture held a clarity and sobriety that had been missing from my erstwhile spiritual search. As it turns out, I had been looking for love in all the wrong places. The seriousness with which Scripture explored the human condition, warts and all, spoke to me. It didn’t avoid the ugly stuff. It named it all. And offered a path forward.
In my experience, church life had seemed to lack this. It was as if the people I encountered there had “one foot on the platform and the other on the train.” Which is to say, they seemed to dabble in Christian theology but appeared far more comfortable with society and its feigning protocols.
It was as if we were all “playing church,” as one colleague put it. Which is to say, the church displayed all the outward signs of faith and dutifully “tipped its hat” to all manner of godly things, yet it all seemed a bit shallow somehow.
Various people I’ve known who belong to Alcoholics Anonymous tell me they prefer their “meetings” to church services because in AA they’re allowed to openly admit their failings. To be real.
In the church, it seems we’re required to pretend we all have our acts together – as if any of us really does.
Assured that we’re just fine the way we are, we then go about trying to fix everyone else. Such “good works” can make us feel virtuous, if self-satisfied, but such outward-directed efforts can also camouflage deep, unacknowledged spiritual hunger.
Plus, not to put too fine a point on it, it’s not always obvious we’re actually helping those we intend to “fix.” Do we always know, for instance, what’s truly best for another person? Is our life experience the same? Do we possess some sort of omniscience in deciding another’s needs? And must the objects of our largesse necessarily welcome our plan for their lives, however well-intended? Do “do-gooders,” in short, always do good? The phrase “physician, heal thyself” readily comes to mind.
This is not to say that we Christians are relieved of the responsibility to care for others, to seek “peace, love, and justice.” Rather, it all comes down to how we do it and why.
When I was in active ministry, I believed my sole purpose was to help people grow as Christians and to think theologically. How they then applied their faith to social, political, and cultural matters was entirely up to them. It was not my job, in other words, to lead a crusade, but to equip the saints for the work of the kingdom. Only they were in the unique position of discerning God’s will for their lives, of following the dictates of their own faith-formed hearts and consciences.
For the truth of the matter is that reasonable and faithful people can and do disagree about how best to apply Jesus’ mandate to love God and neighbor. Your mileage may vary.
After reading my last post on the Social Gospel and its relationship to the mainline church (https://climbingthewalls.org/discomforting-the-comfortable/), a friend expressed equal discomfort with the politicking in much of the evangelical church as well.
My sense is that the mainline and evangelical churches, despite their apparent differences, are actually flip sides of the same Pelagian coin. Meaning that they both tend to place far too much confidence in the human ability to perfect self and world. In so doing, they either have forgotten or, more likely, have rejected the Christian doctrine of Original Sin, which compromises necessarily even the best of human effort.
Worse still, both “sides” tend to pursue these grand idealistic schemes employing secular solutions. however hidden. While mainline churches mimic secular “high” culture, evangelical churches ape secular “low” culture. What unites them is the secular part.
Thomas Sowell, in his book, Conquests and Cultures: An International History, writes this: “Often the higher classes among the conquered people have adopted the language and the ways of the conqueror, in order to gain a share in the wealth and power of the new order, while the masses (lacking such tempting opportunities) have clung to the native language and the old ways.”
Might this same concept apply to both mainline and evangelical churches as well? Is it possible, for instance, that secular “high” culture, with its top-tier, academically driven, trendy, pseudo-radicalism, has so infiltrated the mainline churches that its membership has intuitively chosen to go with the winner’s perceived glamour and sophistication, rather than some down-market, NASCAR version of Christianity? After all, to whom would you rather listen? An urbane, articulate Yale Divinity School professor or some narrowminded schlub from a Southern Bible college?
Of course, this entirely class-based dichotomy is, in reality, a false choice. On a multiple-choice exam, in other words, the right answer wouldn’t be either A or B, but “none of the above.”
Complicating matters, at least in my experience, many if not most of my mainline colleagues have a fairly limited knowledge of the political and cultural matters about which they routinely pontificate. They are so sincerely persuaded of the Good News of the gospel (a good thing) that they filter out its incipient challenges and difficulties (a bad thing).
They are so focused on what should be, they naively overlook the actual human condition and its innate struggles. They underplay the proverbial “dark night of the soul,” and they all but ignore the shadowy forces in the world, which, this side of heaven, contend with God’s ironclad assurance of a future perfection.
In theological terms, this might be referred to as an “over-realized eschatology,” which falsely assumes that the Cross has fully overcome the yawning gap between heaven and earth – as opposed to the more traditional understanding that its fullest realization is yet to come.
Thus, instead of focusing on the basics – sin, evil, forgiveness, grace, redemption, salvation, etc. – mainliners labor for a heaven on earth schema born of secular “liberation” movements, Critical Theory, Marxian economics, and hyper-partisan politics.
These strike me as “first world” boutique issues that, when presented in upper middle class mainline churches, fit comfortably within predigested “high” culture assumptions, offering just a touch of frisson, or “edginess,” that flatters with both faux relevancy and feigned virtue, while requiring little or nothing from the nodding listener. Sherry and cheese to follow.
If this sounds cynical, it is. Yet it’s born of an acute awareness of humanity’s need for the church, for it to be the ark in the midst of a raging cultural storm, for it to reclaim its roots, to be that shining light upon the hill.