The Lord is
my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
--Psalm 27:1 NRSV
--Psalm 27:1 NRSV
I was raised with one understanding of
Christianity, a conservative Evangelical view.
To be Christian meant “to be saved” from Hell and to have eternal life
in heaven. I was “saved” by the death of
Jesus Christ on the cross. Jesus died
for my sins and everyone’s sins, because God was above all just. The penalty for our sins (which meant
individual actions contrary to God’s will) was death. God loved us, so God’s son Jesus was sent to
die in our place. This was a free gift
of God, but I had to accept Jesus Christ as my “personal savior” to escape Hell Any form of so-called Christianity that did
not teach the faith this way was not “true” Christianity. Needless to say, any other religion was also “false.” Our job as “true Christians” was to convince
others they were wrong, so they wouldn’t go to Hell.
Along my faith journey, much has changed in my
understanding of Christianity. The biggest
change of all, probably, is my understanding that the Evangelical Christianity
I was raised in is largely a modern invention having been created in the last
several centuries. A Christianity
concerned chiefly with individuals and their individual choices leading to an
eternity in heaven was not the primary concern found in scripture.
I came to this broader understanding of Christianity
through being a religion major in college, attending seminary and spending
several years in a New Testament Ph.D. program before I turned to local church
ministry. A common refrain among clergy
is that this broader understanding of Christianity is taught in most
non-evangelical seminaries but never makes it to church pews. I believe the Evangelical worldview is deeply
embedded in American Protestant Christianity, and most clergy value job
security over doing the difficult work of teaching and leading their
congregations to consider a different way.
Also, tools for Christian education from a non-evangelical perspective
have largely ceased to exist—Bible study guides, Sunday School literature, and
individual devotional guides have largely become the province of Evangelical
Christianity alone.
As a minister to congregations who are theologically
middle of the road to progressive, I have struggled to find resources for
church members who essentially have a reactionary faith. By reactionary faith, I mean they know what
they do not believe (Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christianity), but they are
hard pressed to articulate their faith in terms of what they do believe. It turns out, there are a multitude of ways
to articulate Christianity in terms that are not the same words as the Religious
Right, but unfortunately, you have to work hard to discover them.
This week, I am going to
share ideas from one resource for Christians looking to articulate their faith
in new ways: Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their meaning
and Power—and How They can Be Restored by Marcus Borg. This is one of Borg’s books at a
popular, rather than academic, audience.
It’s accessible and I think it’s solid, unlike much of Borg’s more
scholarly work.
Borg would summarily be declared a heretic by
Evangelicals, and truth be told, I’m not a fan of much of his academic
writings. Borg, who died in 2015, was a
part of The Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars active in the early nineties who
sought to discover the “Jesus of history” rather than the “Christ of faith.” The problems with this effort are too many to
list here, but I’d simply say it is fraught with logical inconsistencies and a
general lack of self-awareness. I wouldn’t
recommend any of Borg’s stuff on the so-called “historical Jesus” (e.g. Jesus:
Uncovering the Life, Teachings and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary)
Yet, later in Borg’s career, he became a popular
writer and speaker who did a very good job of articulating a form of Christianity
that I believe is more faithful to scripture and Christian tradition than most
of what is preached and taught in American Protestant churches today (e.g. The
Heart of Christianity and Speaking Christian). In these later works, I read a pastoral
sensitivity and desire to redeem Christianity from its current American form
rather than merely deconstructing it.
In Speaking Christian, Borg notes the
crisis in contemporary American Christianity and says its causes are two-fold. The first cause is illiteracy, or a lack of
knowledge about basic symbols, language and scripture. The second cause is a form of literalism that
distorts Christianity by narrowing down the possible understandings to a select
few. The result is an exclusive faith
focused on individuals getting eternity in heaven rather than a communal faith
focused on transformation of the world here and now. The former version, the version taught by
Evangelical Christianity, is being rejected by younger generations at a
dramatic rate, and because those younger generations do not know there are
alternative forms of Christianity to choose from, they are thus rejecting Christianity
altogether.
An example of the alternatives Borg describes
comes in his chapter on “salvation.”
Borg notes that “salvation” expressed as only eternity in heaven comes
with a negative flip side, the majority of humanity spending eternity in Hell. Even in churches that downplay this side of “salvation,”
many who are taught it experience anxiety, fear and in some cases spiritual
abuse due to feeling responsible for getting “saved” and making sure their
loved ones are “saved” too. This limited
view of “salvation” is being roundly rejected, and I would argue rightly so.
Instead, Borg argues we should look to scripture
where “salvation” is primarily described not in heavenly terms but in down-to-earth
and here-and-now terms. Borg lists the
following dominant understandings of “salvation” in the Bible.
- Salvation as liberation from bondage—the “primal narrative” of Israel is the Exodus, the freeing of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, bondage that took economic, political and religious forms (e.g. Exodus 13:2, Hosea 13:4);
- Salvation as return from exile—the second greatest narrative of Israel is the return from Babylonian exile, the prophets described God, the savior, as loving, present on their journey and providing freedom from fear (e.g. Isaiah 43:1-4, 45:17);
- Salvation as rescue from peril—the Psalms especially speak of God rescuing Israel from immediate threats to livelihood (e.g. Psalm 27:1, 65:5);
- Salvation as deliverance and transformation—the New Testament occasionally is concerned with afterlife but much more commonly describes “salvation” as the movement from death to life, blindness to seeing, infirmity to well-being, and fear to trust—all in this present life (e.g. Matthew 23:16, Romans 6:3-11, John 3:1-10, Luke 12:22-31, 1 peter 1:7);
- Salvation as justice and peace—throughout scripture God’s “salvation” in this life takes the form of justice for the oppressed, as well as peace, more than the absence of violence but the world operating according to God’s intentions (e.g. Isaiah 2:3-4, Micah 4:2-3, Luke 19:41-42.
Unfortunately,
holding to these broader and immediate understandings of “salvation” will result
in any who accept them being branded ‘liberal” or “politically correct.” I would argue, however, that taking back the
word “salvation” from the Religious Right is actually a more conservative position,
if one understands “conservative” as meaning faithful to tradition and
scripture. Of course there is the very
real danger of Christians reading contemporary movements into ancient
traditions and texts, but I feel the greater danger is a Christianity that is
largely irrelevant to the social, political, economic and environmental crises
of our day. Worse still is an exclusive
Christianity unconcerned with the problems of real people that contributes to
today’s problems of oppression and injustice.
The
choice between the Christianity of the Religious Right and no Christianity at
all is a false choice. The well of
Christian tradition and scripture is deep and offers room for many different
perspectives that have everything to do with the problems we struggle with as
individuals and societies.
Grace
and Peace,
Chase
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