Thoughts About the So-Called Religious Left

I've done my best to limit my consumption of the impeachment hearings this week.  They are historical events happening live, and in no way do I wish to diminish their importance, but I just know that for my own mental and spiritual health, I can only take so much.  I'm a news junkie, and often you can find me with my nose buried in my phone scrolling through the latest headlines.  Yet, I have realized I'm also sensitive to the negativity and hyper partisanship of our times.  I tend to soak it up like a sponge, and there is a spiritual cost to carrying a sack of outrage through one's days.  

I believe Christians must be involved in the political process of our culture, but I think how we go about it matters more than anything.  I think the "how" is especially important for progressive/liberal Christians, because it is so easy to remain in a state of reaction to the Religious Right without offering anything positive in return.  Furthermore, because we who are Christian and liberal/progressive can too easily in our determination to not repeat the sins of the Religious Right simply disregard how our faith impacts our politics altogether.  So as not to be perceived as connected with hatemongers like Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Jr. and so on we cede the entire religious dimension of politics to them as if our own progressive faith has nothing to offer.

The Religious Right has its roots in the 1970's with Jerry Falwell's so-called Moral Majority and was followed in the 80's and 90's by the Christian Coalition of Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson.  Since I was old enough to be aware of such things, I've always assumed the hypocrisy and blatant hunger for power would result in the failure of this movement.  Surely, I thought, so many well-meaning Christians would see the error of their ways and abandon such a hypocritical and power hungry movement.  So far, I've been proven wrong.

Although all churches, left, right and center, are declining in numbers, the steepest decline of all has been among liberal/progressive Protestant churches.  This past September, an article ran in The Atlantic about the secularization of America over the last three decades.  The result of the Religious Right's efforts has been for liberal/progressive young people to abandon organized religion altogether.  In other words, for younger Americans (and maybe older Americans too) to be progressive is to be secular (or at least unaffiliated with organized religion).  I've always thought that the sins of the Religious Right would drive progressive-leaning Christians to churches like ours, but they have left their conservative evangelical churches and never gone back to any church at all (at least not yet).

So what's a Progressive Christian to do about being involved with politics?  Is the only answer to leave your faith at the door when you volunteer to help a progressive political campaign?

A common tactic I've seen repeated again and again in my lifetime is to attempt to create a "Religious Left" to counter the Religious Right.  I confess to being cynical about such efforts.  I've watched such movements come and go over the years.  Jim Wallis from Sojourners led such a movement with his book "God's Politics" during the George W. Bush years.  After that came Red Letter Christians, so named because they claimed to be following the words of Jesus (which are printed in red in the King James Bibles of fundamentalists) rather than a right-wing ideology.  The most recent incarnation seems to be one called Vote Common Good.

I found out about Vote Common Good by listening to an episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour where one of its founders, Doug Padgitt was interviewed.  I've met Padgitt and respect him.  He led workshops at one of our Missouri Mid-South Conference UCC meetings a few years back.  I have some of his books on change in the church, and unlike most stuff in that category of books, I actually like his stuff.  Yet, this new thing sounds to me like something that has already been tried and found wanting.  Though Padgit, like the other efforts before his own, claims, I think sincerely, that their goal is to move beyond the right-left dichotomy, I just don't see anybody budging on the Religious Right side of the equation.  If someone picks candidates based on their beliefs that abortion under all circumstances is murder and anything other than conservative gender roles and sexuality is a threat to civilization, then they don't seem likely to care much about the common good.

I don't have an answer to progressives leaving organized religion, and I don't think anyone else does either.  Yet, in the face of such a shift in culture, I maintain that the life and teachings of Jesus Christ profoundly shape my progressive politics.  I believe loving God and loving my neighbor means working for the common good of everyone, especially those who are disenfranchised from sharing power and wealth like ethnic minorities, women, LGBTQ people and so many others.  I'm up for working with anyone who shares those goals whether or not they share my religious beliefs.  Most of all, I believe one can be Christian and progressive without having to choose between them.  

At heart, despite the cynicism I may espouse, I am really an optimist and an idealist.  I believe progressive Christianity isn't dying but rather God is transforming it into something we have not seen before.  We may experience pain and grief as the ways of doing church we have known die and become things of the past, but God always creates new life.

At the top of this post, I inserted a picture from the great cathedral, the Hagia Sophia, in Istanbul, Turkey.  The great mural inside shows Christ in the garb of a Roman Emperor with the earthly emperor and empress to ether side of him.  In this picture, there is no daylight between the government and Christ.  That cathedral today is a museum, and on my sabbatical I saw the ruins of cathedrals, churches and monasteries from one end of Europe to the other.  The tension over Christianity's relationship with power has existed since the beginning of the religion.  During his ministry, Paul told the readers of his Letter to the Romans to obey earthly authorities, but half a century later, the book of Revelation calls Rome the Whore of Babylon.  A few centuries later, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, but a millennium later reformers would question the equation of church and state.  Throughout Christian history, God has always transformed the church and raised up voices who challenged the church's lust for earthly power bringing new life into a hypocritical religion.  God always raises up people to be prophets who reject Christ being made into the image of an earthly ruler.  If the past is any guide, God will do the same in our future.  The question for us in the uncertain present is do we have enough faith in God and one another to stick it out until that future occurs?

  

Grace and Peace,

Chase

Thoughts About the Sudden and Unpredictable Nature of Falling Acorns (and Tragedies)

I want to give you fair warning that you need a hard hat to enter my church's building because of all the falling acorns.  As I drive around the Brookside are of KC this time of year, the tremendous racket of falling acorns hitting the roof of my car feels like I"m taking enemy fire.  While I write these words at my office computer my thoughts keep getting interrupted by the loud echo of acorns falling on the roof of our chapel right next to my office.  As I walk out to my car (with its many acorn dents looking as if I've been in a hailstorm) each day this week, I've reflected on this dangerous method of the beautiful oak trees continuing the propagation of their species.  

This barrage of acorns is just nature's way of keeping life going.  Each fall, the acorns drop so that new trees can be born, squirrels will have nuts to eat and we will enjoy the shade of these trees another year.  Seasons come and seasons go but life goes on.  Yet, I couldn't help but wonder, "Does life have to drop miniature bombs on my head, my car and my church building?"  Life goes on, but life contains incidents that feel like an acorn to an uncovered head striking out of the blue.  Conflict with loved ones, lost jobs, deaths of people we care for, psychological struggles, rejections, medical crises, broken friendships, failed marriages, traumas of various kinds, grief in all its forms can fall upon us without warning as the universe and nature continue their courses indifferent to who gets hit by an acorn and who gets hit by a crisis that shakes them to their core.

Ruins of the temple of Apollo in Corinth, Greece.

This summer on my sabbatical I visited the ruins of the city of Corinth, which once rivaled Athens in size and importance.  It stands at a crossroads between northern and southern Greece on an isthmus with ports on the Aegean Sea to the east and the Gulf of Corinth which leads to the Mediterranean Sea on the west.  In the first century Common Era, the apostle Paul came to this city to found a church.  He worked for over eighteen months as a tentmaker, probably catering to sailors and visitors to the cities great athletic tournament, the Isthmian Games.  The church he founded was wracked with conflict over leadership, sexual behavior, food offered to idols, religious practice, economic class divisions and more.  We have two letters from Paul that survive and are in the New Testament canon, but Paul mentions there were more.  What other controversies existed in that early church remain lost in time.  From what we can know, the church in Corinth was far from a Utopian community.  Paul must have wondered if all his effort to keep it going was worth the trouble.

In the second letter to the church, Paul responds to critics who argue Paul is not an impressive spiritual leader.  They apparently mock the way Paul speaks, the way he looks and the many trials and troubles he finds himself in.  Surely a spiritual person would look, sound and act more successful?  Paul responds with a sarcastic list of all his "failures": imprisonment, beatings, lashings, stonings, shipwrecks, being lost at sea, constantly on the move, facing danger from all sorts of enemies, nights  without sleep, hunger, thirst, and lots of stress over the churches he founded.  Paul declares that others may boast in their strengths, but he will only boast in his weaknesses, so that he can declare how powerful Christ is to work through a weak person like himself.

Paul knew a thing or two about acorns of unexpected pain seemingly falling from the sky.

Yet, in Paul's letter to this community of first generation Christians who had so much trouble getting along with one another, the apostle writes one of the most famous passages of poetry ever written.  Most likely you've heard it only recited at a wedding.  It begins, "Love is patient.  Love is kind. . . "  It appears in the 13th chapter of Paul's first letters to the Corinthian church.  

As someone who officiates weddings pretty regularly, I must confess that the Bible doesn't have a lot of passages appropriate for modern weddings and the egalitarian love we celebrate between two people who have freely chosen to marry one another.  Most of the discussions of marriage and married relationships in the Bible describe the marriages of their day which were more business arrangement between families than romantic love between two people.  When I meet with couples before the wedding, I give them a list of scripture passages to look over, but 9 times out of 10 they pick 1 Corinthians 13.  I go with it, but between you and me I cringe a bit.  Paul's ode to love was written not about a couple getting along (although one certainly could apply it to any relationship) but a community of believers fighting like cats and dogs.  

Paul is describing what love looks like after spending several chapters discussing the disputes in the Corinthian church.  Women in the church were dressing and behaving in worship the way priestesses did in pagan temples, rich church members were showing up early to church potlucks and eating all the food while their laborers and slaves who had to work late showed up to find nothing to eat, some members had spiritual gifts (glossolalia or speaking in tongues) and claimed those without them were inferior and so on.  In answer to all these divisions, Paul uses the metaphor of the body to describe how we all  are part of the "body of Christ" and all are necessary for the well-being of the whole

Clay and plaster models of body parts left as offerings to the god of healing, Asclepios, in the museum at Corinth, Greece.

In the modern museum at the ruins of Corinth, there are clay and plaster models of body parts which were purchased by travelers visiting the temple of Asclepios, the god of healing.  It's likely Paul saw them as he carried out his day job and began to think of the local Christian community as different but necessary parts of one body.

Paul goes further and says as members of one body, the body of Christ, we are to treat each other with love.  Paul's point is that nothing good or worthwhile can happen in the life of a Christian if they do not have love.  Even the most noble acts are merely a "clanging gong" and "accomplish nothing" if the person carrying them out doesn't have love.  

If I feel like I can get away with it in a wedding ceremony, I tell the couple and the gathered congregation that 1 Corinthians 13 wasn't written for a wedding when people are celebrating and getting along.  Instead, it was written when people were bitterly fighting.  The words of this passage are most needed when we forget what love looks like and act out of something other than love.  So I urge the couple and the congregation to return to these words of scripture when they have forgotten what love looks like.

When an acorn of grief and pain falls onto our heads out of nowhere and we are shaken to our core, we need reminding what love looks like.  The cliche "hurt people hurt people" is true.  When we hurt, we are more likely to lash out at others, especially those closest to us.  We bottle up our anger only to explode in inappropriate situations.  Stuck in our own pain, we seek easy but unhealthy ways to numb our pain through alcohol, drugs, sex, food or any number of things that keep us from feeling, much less doing anything to improve our situations.  The good news is that with God's help we don't have to make the pain worse, we can choose love.  

We can begin by loving ourselves enough to refuse to pile contempt on our own heads.  We can love both ourselves and those around us by taking the difficult but courageous steps to seek help from a counselor, therapist or minister.  When our faith in God is weakest, we can choose to devote ourselves to serving others.  The best way I know to find God when God seems absent is through giving myself to help others' needs.  God usually shows up when love is shared between hurting people trying to help one another.

Acorns fall.  Pain happens.  Love abides.  ". . . and the greatest of these is love."

Grace and Peace,

Chase