re: #133 b.d. (Witch Hunt!!)

What is the future of the Christian faith in the US?

We already know that the giant Dallas Baptist church lead by Jeffress has sold its soul to Donald and now that the news that the guys down the street at the Southwest Baptist Seminary were lead by a bunch of criminal sleazebags what happens now?

If I were a newbie who happened to pick up a bible and was inspired by the words of Christ then where the hell should I go?

I’d suggest your nearest Episcopalian parish, especially in larger cities. We remain, fighting the good fight. There are others but that’s the one I know. Even our “conservatives” aren’t welcomed by the Fundies and the others twisting the Word to fit their desire for secular power.

But there is more to it. If they want to believe, then in their faith perhaps the community they should be looking for isn’t a church because it really may well be time for the Church, as such, to die for the sake of Christ Jesus.

Below is a facebook message sent by Diana Butler Bass. It was sent in an email as text to me by my priest so I do not have a direct link.

I’m thinking about something today — hear me out.
More than forty years ago, mainline Protestantism began its decline. During
the time of greatest loss, scholars and critics assigned blame: that liberal
clergy, out of step with their congregations, pushed political agendas
around the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam that drove people away.
Politics made people leave.
This became conventional wisdom. Most people believed it. Many still believe
it. And denominations seemed to believe it. And we started to act as if that
was truth. “Don’t upset people,” leaders said, “it is their church. Be a
pastor. That’s your job.” As a result, we slowly turned inward. By the
1990s, one of the few conversations we could hold in the mainline — a
conversation that did not cause extreme dissension, but that we wanted to
engage — was about the decline and how to pull congregations out of cycles
of loss. In other words, we mostly wanted to talk about ourselves.
What if there is a different way of understanding all this?
Yes, there was a huge membership decline in the 1970s and 1980s (with its
fallout continuing even today). That decline, unlike anything our ancestors
had experienced, was a traumatic experience. We couldn’t figure it out. We
felt rejected, hurt, confused, and, perhaps, even abused by being ignored in
the media, by losing privilege, and by decreasing finances.
So, we looked around. What caused the trauma? We wanted to go back and
correct the mistake. To avoid the trauma. Politics. All those smart books
said so. So, that’s the problem. We must avoid that. We will do anything to
avoid that. We will comfort and assure people that we will never do it
again. We will never again make them think about race or international
policy and we’ll dance at the edges of human rights and be as cautious as we
possibly can in order not to drive more people away. Because, God help us,
we can’t afford to drive anyone else away.
Thus, we stopped talking about the world. Instead, we talked about us. Big
fights over worship styles and re-structuring. About hymn books and moving
pews. Feminism and LGBTQ rights came knocking on our doors, and they were
like the persistent woman in the parable. We didn’t really raise those
issues as much as respond to them. And, even then, we kept trying to figure
out how not to lose numbers. Because trauma.
But I’ve begun to think that we are a community suffering from four decades
of unresolved trauma. Avoiding what one thinks as the originating source of
trauma is not a way of healing. What if we don’t know what initiated the
loss? All we have (and I’m not kidding here) are educated guesses. Maybe
about a century from now, a really smart historian will figure it out. But
all we have an opinions, some more informed than others, about what started
it all. Whatever doesn’t really matter. Because that isn’t the real trauma.
The trauma was the loss. And all the resulting grief.
We’re talking a lot about spiritual wounds (thank you, great authors and
teachers for raising these issues!). And how churches wound people. Maybe,
just maybe, the church is wounding people because the church is deeply
wounded. Busy, always busy, to blame something or someone for the pain,
unable to face the reality of the thing: We are dying. Not because of
politics, not because of the spiritual-but-not-religious, not because of
technology, or goofy baby boomers or hopeless millennials. But because
things are born, and grow, and do their work, and die.
Because.
Just because.
Shouldn’t we be blowing our wad now? Instead of hoarding an uncertain future, huddling in fear in our church board meetings and talking about
ourselves at every single denominational event, isn’t it time to be free?
Free to preach the good news of peace. Free to preach real liberty to the
captives. Free to say stuff like no Christian should ever vote for a
candidate who is a moral vacuum and endangers the safety of the entire
planet. Free NOT to hedge our bets. Free. To spend down the retirement
savings, to give all that money to the poor, to invite everyone to the
banquet? Isn’t it time to say what is truly on our hearts, speak our
theological truths, and let ourselves freaking loose in the world?
The way beyond trauma is not cowering in the presence of the abuser. The way
beyond trauma is living your life as fully and freely and passionately and
with as much love and joy and gratitude that it is possible to find. To be
your truest self. In the world.
And what if that is the church that people have been waiting for? What if?
The one in the world. Not afraid of the world and its conflicts and issues
and pain. The one with the world.

I wonder if we in the established churches aren’t like a cancer
patient with some odd version that can’t be cured but won’t put us
down till we’re 99% of the way to being ready to die. So perhaps she
has the right idea. Perhaps we should have the most glorious wake
possible and spend down what we have saying to both the secular and to
the false prophets what the Lord commands us to say. To do it joyfully
and without malice. To be able to say out loud when they are shocked,
“Did I fucking stutter?” like in that glorious cartoon. To raise the goblet
and say - eat & drink & find life because the sun is shining and the kingdom
is here & now if only you dare to live it. To tell people that living for another world
when this world needs us and our hands and our love much more is a
terrible sin; to help, heal & love is what is right and good and walk in a way that
really is repentance.

I am reminded of when, seeing the world collapsing into squalor and
seeing a religious structure that either was too strict (the ascetics
of the desert) or too relaxed in many ways (uninterested in
challenging the rich, the powerful & so on. I’m reminded of the tale
that Gregory the Great met some enslaved singers from Northern Europe
and named their peoples the Angles because they sounded like angels to
him - yet he wasn’t going to bother ending slavery much less even
freeing them, sending missionaries to England instead.) Benedict
instead took what was then a middle way and wrote his rule to support
that. For a very long time it was the basis of many peoples real
christian ways of living in community.

And there will be a handful left after us. The proverbial faithful
remnant toiling away in the vineyard waiting for those who hear,
ponder, remember and come looking for a community that builds in the
here and now for a long term rather than the false hope of short term
gains in the afterlife. The church is dead. Long live the church?