Exvangelicals.

I have noticed a class of Christians that we have come to call the "exvangelicals."  The word refers to people who have left evangelical churches for various reasons.  Often they experienced some kind of abuse or rejection.  Sometimes they simply realized that what their church taught did not reflect the Jesus of the gospels, or their own views. 

Exvangelicals have been around for a while.  They featured prominently in the Emerging Church movement around the turn of the century, and they had an instrumental role in setting up the Wild Goose Festival, which Susan and I enthusiastically attend every year.  I've met a lot of them.  In the beginning these folks sought to rediscover Jesus and the Church, and emerge free from corrupted versions of both.  Sometimes they even came to see things that we in the mainline Protestant churches have known and done for decades, like social justice, and we welcomed their participation.

But lately it seems to me that many exvangelicals do not just want a better, more faithful and authentic understanding of Christianity.  Instead, they either reject Christian faith altogether or seem to feel they need to reconstruct it for themselves along new and different lines.  In other words, they abandon orthodox Christianity and try to invent some new kind of spirituality that may or may not have anything to do with Jesus.

I think they took the version of Christianity they were being fed in evangelicalism as somehow the whole thing.  So when they left their former churches they assumed they were leaving Christianity.  Hence, they may toss out much of basic Christian doctrine and even the Bible.

While I understand their motivation, I also feel that maybe it exhibits a certain immaturity, like when a person bitten by a dog as a child therefore resolves to fear all dogs forever.  Or someone uses their bad experience with one person of a certain demographic category to be always suspicious of everyone in that category.  As if their experience of a toxic evangelical church justifies their belief that all Christians, all churches, and Christianity itself need to be radically changed or done away with.

Sometimes people carelessly toss into a dumpster something that, when cleaned up, polished, and restored to its original form, holds immeasurable value.  To reject something because of what it looks like to me at the moment is the hight of arrogance.  People have pulled amazing and precious things out of trash bins or found them in garage sales.

In any case, I certainly hope that people leaving evangelicalism -- or any presentation of Christianity that they find wanting -- will look anew at the deeper, broader, higher, and older strains of Christianity, many of which conventional churches of all stripes tend to ignore.  We have a rich mystical tradition, for instance.  And even our core creeds and doctrines are not the oppressive documents they often get presented as, but powerful statements to guide practice and transcendence.  Finally, there are expressions of authentic Christianity from other times and other parts of the world that counter a lot of the toxicity that has come to predominate in the West.  I have found that the Eastern Church offers a deep well of spirituality in a different key that is often quite refreshing.  It's time people knew about all this.

So if your church is disappointing you or even worse, please don't let that lead you to reject Christianity altogether.  You may choose to go deeper to find and follow a very different Jesus Christ, the real One, who remains present and alive in you and the world.

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Constantine.

The Protestants I know almost universally revile the Roman Emperor Constantine.  He legalized and then endorsed and sponsored Christianity in the 4th century, ending centuries of persecution.  This wedding between Church and State continued well into the 20th century and still persists today in some places. 

I find a general agreement that the deal between the Church and the Empire, however and for whatever reason it was reached, did immense damage.  I understand the arguments, and largely agree.  A lot of Church-people complain that the Church got corrupted and basically became a lapdog for the State.  The Church became complicit in all kinds of atrocities, from the Crusades to the Inquisition, from slavery to countless wars, to colonialism.  Secular people see it differently.  They say religion corrupted the State and used it to enforce its morality, stamp out other religions, and prosecute sectarian wars.  I get it.  

The Eastern Church has a different view of this, generally, and see Constantine as a saint.  His establishment of Christianity took a lot of pressure off the Church so that survival was no longer an issue, enabling it to focus on developing its theology, spirituality, and mission.  But in the West, we often view this alliance between Church and State as a catastrophe from which the Church never recovered.  I think a lot of this illegitimately reads our contemporary sensibilities into the ancient past. 

I have often expressed criticism of the wedding between Church and State myself.  But I also wonder, frankly, if we wouldn't make the same deal were it offered to us today.

If the US government started actively reflecting and expressing in policy the stated values and goals of Progressive Protestantism, how much would we complain?  If the President regularly consulted with William Barber, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Brian McLaren, and Barbara Brown Taylor, would we object?  What if they poured a load of money into our churches and service agencies?  What if they even offered to assume the financial responsibility for paying our ministers?  Or wanted to use the military to free people from fascist dictators around the world?     

Hey, I remember how excited we were when an African-American, Progressive Protestant member of a UCC congregation got elected President.  Wouldn't we be ecstatic and overjoyed if most elected officials agreed and voted with us?  Are we going to say no to that?

Certainly, some of us would be nervous if this went too far, because we know the history and we have read Kierkegaard and understand the dangers of "Christendom".  But in the 4th century?  Were they going to pass up a deal that looked like the coming of the Kingdom of God?  I mean, the government that had been literally banning and even killing Christians for centuries, now does a 180 and offers to be their sponsors, patrons, and protectors?  I'm sure it seemed like a divine miracle!  

If this happened to us we would surely find ourselves tempted to think of all the good we could do with State power at our disposal!!  Think of the people we could lift out of poverty, and the sick to whom we could provide health care, the oppressed we could liberate, and the minorities we could empower!  We could make diversity, equity, and inclusion the law of the land!  Imagine a woke world, joining hands and joyfully singing together, "For everyone born, a place at the table"! 

And churches would fill up again because people would want to join the successful, powerful Progressive Protestant church near them. 

I hope you get the point that we don't have much cause to place ourselves over the Christians who accepted Constantine's offer in the 4th century.  We too want political power and influence.  We too want government to reflect our values.  We get access to some of this by living in a democracy.  Obviously, the Church in Constantine's time did not have that option, so they chose the deal that Constantine offered them.  It may have been unwise and ultimately disastrous, but I seriously doubt if we would act any differently.

Finally, I certainly do not make any argument for a restoration of Christendom, which strikes me as insane, anachronistic, and suicidal to the Church at this historical moment.  The Church finds itself in a freer and more creative and missionally productive place when separated from the State.  

Christendom/establishment also rendered the Church a lot weaker in many ways.  We saw an atrophy in our missional capacity that left us fairly paralyzed when the State finally took the separation seriously in the 1960's and stopped propping up Christianity in places like schools.  We had lost the tools to do our own evangelization, having left that to others, allowing the State to do it in its own self-serving way.  We have not recovered.

Neither do I hold that we have to forego seeking any political or economic influence.  We live in a democracy (at least for now), and we have a responsibility to live and express our faith in the world, which includes voting and lobbying for people and policies that reflect what Jesus teaches about the Reign of God.  Just remember that power corrupts, and if we do exercise any political clout or influence, to do it gently and with a lot of humility and circumspection.

All I want to do in this essay is buy a little slack for the Church and the decisions they made in the 4th century, and encourage some humility and self-awareness about our own approaches. 

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Authenticity and the Sacraments.

On my book shelf I have, in a clear plastic square box, a dirty baseball.  On the baseball appears a date scrawled in ballpoint pen: "4/26/08."  On that date, my son, playing for his High School team, hit that ball for his first home-run.  I saw this happen; the game took place in Perth Amboy.  He gave me the ball.

Thus this particular baseball, otherwise no different from millions of other baseballs, became unique in its connection to a particular event on a particular date at a particular place.  It is not the same as an ordinary baseball.  And the fact that my son died thirteen years later, makes this particular ball even more significant to me.  It makes me sadly reflect on how things might have gone differently.

This mythic power of the particular flows through the sport of baseball.  At every MLB game, a person called an "authenticator" sits in the front row.  Whenever something happens of any significance, the authenticator takes the object -- usually a ball or a bat -- and marks it, setting it aside, distinguishing it from every other similar object.  Thus we can verify that this particular ball was a player's first major league hit, or hundredth home-run, or unassisted triple play.

The Church has from the beginning found the power and significance in particular objects and sites connecting us to Jesus and his followers.  We call the objects "relics," and, although it got out of hand for a while, I wonder about the Reformation's wisdom in purging this aspect of the faith altogether.  For we do experience special holiness in some places and surrounding some things.  The world is not flat but textured.  When I visited places like the Holy Land and Iona this became apparent.  Special things and places transport and connect us.  They transcend and unify time.  They ground us in a common life and tradition reassuring us that someone didn't just make up this thing out of their imagination yesterday as an expression of their own ego.  It has lasted and will last.  It has been prayed and thought over for generations.  We can depend on it and participate in that stream ourselves.

We have a faith rooted in the Incarnation.  It keeps us from dissolving into a gnostic fog where everything is neutral and meaningless, a blank slate onto which the Empire might impose its preferred meaning by force.  God does not remain a mere amorphous idea; God literally becomes flesh and dwells among us (John 1:14) in Jesus Christ.  I don't have much regard for attempts to nail down the details of the "historical Jesus;" but the fact that he existed in history as an actual human being remains absolutely essential.  

The closest we have to an authentic record of what Jesus said and did appears in the New Testament.  The New Testament itself acquires holiness from its unique and authoritative witness to him, as well as from the history of its use by faithful communities for nearly two millennia.  The text, even with all its variants (which themselves testify to authenticity) constitutes and shapes the faith of those who follow him in every age, ie. the Church.  I would no more advocate changing or fixing, adding to or subtracting from those words than I would intentionally scrub the dirt off my son's baseball, or scribble something else onto it, or relegate it to a garage sale, or substitute a newer, "better" ball for it. 

A couple of years ago I attended a worship service at a Presbyterian church on a day when they celebrated the Sacrament of Baptism.  When the time for this sacred ritual arrived, with the proud parents standing by, and the minister, holding the baby, begins to enact this ancient ceremony by pouring water on the baby's head three times and reciting the words of the Lord Jesus from Matthew 28, connecting us and this child to Jesus and all his followers of every race, gender, nation, and language, over whom these very words were solemnly recited, century after century... and she didn't.  She made up her own words, apparently.  I don't even remember them.  Does it matter?    

Now, I know the arguments.  I have heard them all my career.  "Don't be so superstitious."  "Don't be so literal."  "It's not about the words, it's about the faith of the people."  "It's not a magical incantation."  "Isn't it better if I express myself than repeat some old words no one understands?"  "The historical Jesus didn't say those words anyway."  "Calling God 'father' props up the patriarchy."  "I don't want to be reminded of what a jerk my father was."  And so on.  All of which sounds very Protestant and Modern, enlightened and progressive, liberated and relevant, forward thinking and trying to appeal to the young.

But instead of connecting this child to Jesus and immersing them in Jesus' life by doing what he says to do, changing the words of this ceremony really makes it all about... the minister.  To use a Buddhist image, it focused on the finger and forgot the moon to which the finger supposedly points.  The child, rather than getting immersed in the Name of God, rather than sharing in the blessed continuity of a sacred tradition, rather than participating in an act of humility and obedience which embodies and exemplifies a life of trust and faith, simply got dunked in the same ego-centric, DIY, "have it your way," consumer-driven, inauthentic/counterfeit/fake/flat/disenchanted experience that will characterize their existence everywhere else in this world.  Instead of Jesus' words, we heard one person's arbitrary preference.  When a minister blithely decides to ditch the words of Jesus and substitute "better" words of their own composition, it is an act of egocentricity and control.  The minister thus functions as a tool of an Empire that wants more than anything to separate us from the Creator, and coax us to have things our way instead.      

In other words, fascism: one person rules and claims authority over others.  "We will not do this Jesus' way, we will do it my better way."  The authenticity is determined not by the witness to a particular event, not by humble obedience to a transcendent other, or even a venerable tradition, but gets dictated by the one who grabs the authority.  Empire imposes its regime, negating the particular, reframing things and places according to however it perceives its needs at the moment.  When you replace Jesus' words with your own you affirm that you, not Jesus, are Lord.  You claim the authority.  Like Caesar.  The steadfast lifting up of the authentic and the particular which Empire does not define or control thus becomes an act of resistance against Empire.               

If I ever end up leaving the Presbyterian Church it will be because of this kind of thing.  Joni Mitchell sang about how we're paving paradise to put up a parking lot, referring exactly to this destruction, so endemic to Modernity, of the authentic for the sake of the... what?  Convenient?  Profitable?  Popular?  Useful?  Comfortable?  Marketable?  Gratifying?  Ideologically correct?  Relevant?  "Perfect"?  Whatever the Empire decides has value.  The same attitude destroys mountains to get at and extract the coal under them.  The same attitude inflicts vivisection, euthanasia, slavery, and torture on the living entities.  The same attitude says we "destroyed the village in order to save it."  It epitomizes the nihilistic entropy of Modernity to reduce everything to what appeals to my desire, my fears, my ego, my quest for money, fame, and power.  "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone?"

(I hesitate even to add that inventing your own baptismal formula explicitly violates Book of Order W-3.0407 mandating the use of Jesus' words at all baptisms.  Because of course in the opinion of some this makes me a heartless and backward-thinking legalistic rules-nazi who just doesn't get what people want today.  It reminds me of that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where Indy has to choose from among a table full of cups the authentic one of Jesus.  The villain chooses a pretty, gaudy, jewel-encrusted chalice he prefers because it suits his idea of the Son of God... and promptly dissolves into dust.  Indy chooses the battered and worn one that looks like it might have been used by a Judean peasant.  I hope to always care more about what Jesus wants than what people today want.)

And all this goes as well for the Words of Institution at the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper.  We have a bit more leeway here because the New Testament has several different versions, but they all share Jesus breaking the bread and saying "This is my Body," and sharing the wine with "This is my blood."  This speaking and acting, with the surrounding prayers and the congregational context, sets this particular bread and this particular cup of wine (or juice) apart, changing them and those who share in them into a sacrament of Jesus' living Presence.  They become different from ordinary bread, different even from what they started as.  Again, the words matter.  In conjunction with specific actions, they do the work of authenticating particular objects and lifting them up as mediators of the Creator's grace.  

I do not oppose change.  In fact, I have always enthusiastically advocated for changes that would free the Church of excrescences, adulterations, and deletions resulting from its centuries of suffocating entanglement with Empire.  The Church needs to recover its deepest identity as a witness to and agent of the liberation we find at the core of Scripture, beginning with the Exodus, and finally revealed in Jesus Christ.  Hence, we Presbyterians hold to the motto semper reformanda, affirming that the Creator is always reforming the Church according to the Word, Jesus Christ.  Change therefore does not mean the arbitrary or random adoption of this or that fad or trend.  Still less does it mean expressing our personal preference, or that of some leader.  Legitimate change moves us closer to Jesus Christ, it moves us along in our evolution from being dominated by ego, to having our Essence emerge within us.  In real change we become not what our ego wants, but what our Creator wants, and has already installed within us.

Change needs to lead us closer to an authentic connection to Jesus, and further away from Empire's agenda of flattening and relativizing the world so as to impose loyalty to itself as the main thing.  The hegemony and domination of Empire over us starts with and gets expressed as the hegemony and domination of ego within us.  But the rule of the Creator within and among us has to start with this humble wonder and gratitude over the One who becomes flesh to dwell among us, whose living Presence remains mediated through the words of Scripture, and the places and artifacts that are particularly charged, and indeed, all creation. 

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