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The Struggle Over
What It Means to be a Christian Today
Finding
My Way Back to Church ... and Getting Kicked Out
By ROBERT JENSEN
This past year, after decades of steadfastly
avoiding churches of all kinds, I returned to church. Ironically,
and completely by coincidence, I returned to a Presbyterian church,
the denomination in which I was raised and to which I swore --
in both senses of the term -- I would never return. But return
I have, prodigally perhaps, depending on one's position on various
doctrinal issues, which we will get to tonight in due time.
I don't want to be overly dramatic, but my early experience with
church had been life-threatening: I was bored, nearly to death.
For me, growing up in a middle-of-the-road Protestant church
in the Midwest, religion seemed a bland and banal approach to
life -- literature, politics, and philosophy seemed far more
fruitful paths to explore. As I have confessed to my pastor,
in my entire life I have cheated on only one test -- the exam
to pass confirmation class so I could fulfill that requirement
imposed by my parents and be done with the whole enterprise.
For that sin, I have neither sought nor been granted absolution.
So, my friends and family were somewhat startled with I joined
-- of my own free will, being of sound mind and body -- St. Andrew's
Presbyterian Church in Austin, TX. Some friends gravely warned
me to be careful getting mixed up with "the God crowd,"
as one put it. Well, it turns out that this decision has gotten
me in a bit of trouble, though not in the ways my skeptical friends
could have predicted.
Because I do not hold conventional views about the nature of
the divine, there's been some debate about whether or not I am
a "real" Christian, a controversy I did not expect
when I stood before that congregation in December 2005. Whether
I will be allowed to remain a member of St. Andrew's is currently
a subject of deliberation by various bodies within the denomination,
another controversy that took me by surprise.
Whatever my regrets about the way in which this whole affair
has gone forward, I am glad that the issues raised by my membership
are being discussed. I think this question of what it means to
be Christian is vital not just to the faithful but to the fate
of the entire planet. The direction in which Christianity --
the dominant religion of the empire, the contemporary United
States -- heads in the coming decade is crucial to the future
of everyone. The United States, the most affluent and powerful
country in the history of the world, has an unparalleled capacity
to destroy the world through advanced weapons and/or its economic
policies. About three-quarters of the U.S. public identifies
as Christian, and increasingly in the United States people's
religious beliefs are a factor in the political process. Clearly,
the struggle over the future of Christianity matters, everywhere
and to everyone.
Still, the question remains: Why would a doubter and skeptic
like me join a church? There are many reasons, but at the core
of my decision is a simple motivation:
I came back to church because I am afraid.
Let me be clear: I'm not afraid of what is going to happen to
me when I die. I assume that when my bodily functions cease in
this material world, I will start the process of becoming food
for other living things as I go back to the soil, one more chunk
of matter returning to a more elemental state to play its role
in creation. About this, I'm not only at peace but quite happy.
I'm glad to do my part. For me, "dust to dust" is a
comforting thought. If it turns out that I have a soul that is
going to shuffle on from this earthly coil to another realm,
that's okay, too. But, whatever the case, I'm not fretting about
it. We should keep in mind the insight from the Buddhist teacher
Chögyam Trungpa: "Hope and fear cannot alter the seasons."
My life, like everyone's, has its seasons, and my hopes and fears
will not change "what lies in the great beyond," as
my favorite songwriter puts it. So, I tend to focus on this world,
where there's a fair amount of work to be done this season.
My fear attaches not to theological questions but to very material
concerns: I believe the human species is on the verge of making
life as we know it impossible. That is, I think we humans are
living unsustainably, in ways that may well have dramatic consequences
in the not-so-distant future. I fear not the apocalypse as it
is imagined by end-time Christians -- a dramatic finish with
the saved being lifted up and the damned left with a heap of
trouble -- but rather a steady erosion of the conditions that
make possible a minimally decent human existence in the context
of respect for other forms of life.
I'm also afraid because most of the organic institutions that
could help people confront the political, economic, cultural,
and ecological crises we face have been destroyed, undermined,
or co-opted by a sophisticated system of domination achieved
through the unholy alliance of a powerful state and predatory
corporate capitalism. The dominant political parties are impediments
to progressive change; unions have been gutted and marginalized;
and universities serve mostly as comfortable shelters for timid
intellectuals working in duck-and-cover mode. The institutions
in which people traditionally have come together to learn about
the world and organize to change it have mostly checked out --
except for, possibly, the church.
Whatever one thinks about theology, church is a place where people
go to think about essential questions: What does it mean to be
human? What are our obligations to other people and the non-human
world? How do we create meaning in a world that appears to be
playing a cosmic joke on us -- a world that gives us consciousness,
the capacity for complex thought, and language with which to
express those thoughts, but then denies us any obvious answer
to the question, "Who am I and how do I fit into the bigger
picture?"
I think about those questions a lot. I ponder them in the abstract,
and I struggle with the very concrete implications of them in
a world saturated in so much suffering. I am always looking for
help in that pondering and struggling, which is what led me to
a new church in my old denomination. The folks at St. Andrew's
were pondering and struggling in similar fashion, a place where
the minister was not only allowing but actually encouraging people
not to accept meaning dictated by others but to create it themselves.
In short, I found a community in which I could be part of this
crucial struggle over the direction of Christianity.
Am I
an atheist?
I joined St. Andrew's not only because it's a liberal church
in terms of the political leanings of the majority of the congregation,
but because its pastor, Jim Rigby, and many members are engaged
a fundamental rethinking of theology in the modern age. After
a couple of years of being a regular visitor to the church for
political events, I decided to ask about joining, though I still
rejected traditional conceptions of God, Jesus, and the Holy
Spirit. When I wrote about that decision in an article published
in the Houston Chronicle and circulated on the internet,
I described myself as "a Christian, sort of. A secular Christian.
A Christian atheist, perhaps. But, in a deep sense, I would argue,
a real Christian."
My use of the term "atheist" clearly pushed many people's
buttons and appears to have led to the challenge to my membership
and, more generally, to St. Andrew's theology. So, let's start
with why I chose that term.
After talking to people about what I believe, they quickly realize
I'm not a dogmatic atheist, the kind who takes pleasure in ridiculing
religion or faith. We've all met such folks, whom we might call
them fundamentalist atheists. I enjoy their company about as
much as I enjoy the company of fundamentalists of other stripes.
So, people ask me, why don't I call myself an agnostic or a seeker
or a doubter or something that conveys more openness? Am I really
so sure God doesn't exist in the traditional form? How can I
be so sure?
I can't be sure, of course. It's impossible to prove the non-existence
of God. In that sense, I'm an agnostic, just as I'm an agnostic
on the question of whether or not my life is controlled by tiny
magic elves who live in my desk drawer at work. I can't prove
that I'm not under the influence of those alleged elves, and
hence I can't really be an atheist on the question. But what
really counts is not what I can or can't prove, but how I live.
Do I go about my day as if elves are running the show? Do I sneak
a peak into my drawer now and then to try to catch them plotting?
Do I ever offer prayers to the elves to which I think they will
respond? No, I don't. In philosophical terms, I'm agnostic on
the question. In practical terms, I live like an atheist, on
the assumption they don't exist.
In that sense, most people in this culture, no matter what their
stated beliefs about God, live like atheists. Most of us accept
the results of the Enlightenment and the application of the scientific
method. We assume that actions in the world are governed by laws
of physics that scientists have begun to identify, however incompletely.
Whatever our views on the power of prayer, most of us also seek
medical help when we are sick and trust in some worldly system
of healing -- whether Western medicine or alternative traditions
-- that is rooted in accumulated experience and/or scientific
experimentation.
An important footnote: This atheism-in-practice that guides the
lives of most of us shouldn't be taken as a boast that we really
have a clue about how the world works, where we come from, or
what happens when we die. About most of these matters, I'm fundamentally
ignorant -- just like all of you. It's healthy to remember that
for all that modern science has revealed about the way the world
works, we are far more ignorant than we are knowledgeable, a
point being made in compelling fashion these days by Wes Jackson,
Wendell Berry, and others in the sustainable agriculture and
ecological movements. Human beings are very clever, and we tend
to mistake cleverness for wisdom and deep understanding. That
confusion has given us the ozone hole, global warming, soil erosion,
groundwater depletion, toxic waste contamination, the dead zone
in the Gulf, and other ecological crises too long to list here.
And those are just the ways we've messed up the non-human world.
Add in war, poverty, rape, racism, and other human crises too
long to list here and, well, you get the point. It might be amusing
to hear people talk about how smart people are, if it weren't
so distressing.
It seems to me that we all -- secular and religious alike --
need a lot more humility, and the recognition of that simple
fact is part of what led me to church. The older I get, the more
I'm aware of the scope of what I don't know, and the more scared
I am of the people who claim great confidence in human knowledge,
be it about science or religion.
This point is important because many people who have criticized
my writing about this subject have accused me of being arrogant
and disrespectful, of confronting traditional Christians in a
fashion that seems insulting. Nothing could be further from the
truth. After spending a lot of my life looking down on religious
people as intellectually confused and emotionally weak, in recent
years I had to come to terms with my own ignorance and recognize
that I could learn and grow from being part of a congregation.
When I went before the members of St. Andrew's to ask to be accepted
into the church, I did so acutely aware that I was letting go
of some of my own sense of certainty and security, trusting that
in this particular community I could ask my questions without
pretending I had answers.
The
personal is theological
I could stop there, and I suspect many would accept that explanation
of my reasons for joining. It's a nice, neat explanation. I like
it. I think it makes me look smart but not cocky, thoughtful
and self-confident. Yes, I like this explanation quite a bit.
But it's incomplete, for there was another fear behind my decision
to join, one much more personal. It's tempting to ignore this
other motivation, in part because we live in a culture in which
we all understand the acronym "TMI" -- too much information.
We've all been in some situation in which inappropriate personal
revelations have made us uncomfortable. But I can't honestly
tell this story without talking a bit more about myself, with
what I hope will be "NTMI" -- not too much information.
This is the story of another kind of fear I carry.
In the past year I have begun confronting some unresolved issues
from my childhood involving abuse. The details are not relevant
here, but I will say that it's not a fun process. Those of you
who have struggled with such things know what I mean, and I'm
sure others can understand. I'll stick to my pledge of not too
much information, but to leave out this part of the story would
be to ignore another important motivation that leads people to
church: The need for acceptance and love in community when we
are scared and lonely and weak and alone. And, of course, at
some point we all are scared and lonely and weak and alone.
When struggling with any difficult problem in our lives, we tend
to rely on those closest to us. If we are lucky, as I am, we
have a supportive and loving partner. We may have good friends,
as I am lucky to have. We may have the resources to hire a competent
therapist when a problem goes beyond our friends' ability to
help. But what we need in addition to all that is a community
in which we can just be. It need not be a church, but a church
is one place where people seek that. In my experience, we humans
tend to want to have a place where we know we can go without
worrying about whether our hair looks good that day, a place
we can find validation and connection without having to prove
that we deserve it that moment. Church is not the only place
that can happen, and there's no guarantee it will happen in church;
despite Christ's admonition against self-serving judgment of
others, such judgment happens all too often in Christian churches
and, no doubt, other churches. But whatever our failures, church
is one place we seek out such acceptance.
I didn't have a conscious understanding of that when I joined
St. Andrew's, but I think I had an intuitive sense that I needed
such a place and that St. Andrew's was such a place for me. In
our patriarchal culture, this need can be particularly difficult
for us men to acknowledge, out of a fear it will be read as a
sign of weakness. But is there anyone who doesn't feel that need
at times? And, if we turn away from this need that we feel, what
are the consequences? What part of ourselves do we bury to ignore
that need?
So,
am I a Christian?
After I joined St. Andrew's and wrote about my reasons, a complaint
was filed with Mission Presbytery in central and south Texas,
the first level of the bureaucracy of the Presbyterian Church
USA, to which St. Andrew's belongs. In June 2006, the delegates
to the Presbytery heard a report from its Committee on Ministry
recommending that St. Andrew's be instructed on appropriate standards
for accepting members and that I be removed from the active membership
roll. The Presbytery delegates voted 156-114 to accept that recommendation,
but they also allowed me to remain a member while St. Andrew's
appeals the decision in the Synod of the Sun, the next level
of bureaucracy.
The meeting at which these matters were debated was, frankly,
a bit surreal. After the presentation of the Committee's report,
Rigby cogently defended not only the decision to accept me into
the church but the theology of St. Andrew's. I sat quietly listening
to others debate the state of my alleged soul, without a chance
to respond. Some delegates were clear that they thought I was
no kind of Christian no way, and the sooner I was dispatched
the better. Many were conflicted; one person used the image of
Christianity as a circle, saying that so long as people could
put one toe in the circle -- no matter what doubts they might
have -- that was enough for membership. To her, I passed the
one-toe test. Another person said that she was convinced that
I had already been born again. By the end of it, even I was
a bit confused.
Before the meeting, Presbytery officials had told Rigby that
I would not be allowed to speak at the meeting. My assumption
is that those who wanted to bounce me didn't want to risk letting
the delegates see a real human being talk about his struggles
with the complexity of the issue -- better to keep me as a symbol
of heresy, on the assumption that delegates would have an easier
time voting against heresy in the abstract than voting against
an actual heretic who looks like them and may even have some
of the same questions as they do. But because so many people
had been asking me for more specifics about what I believed,
I did write a statement that was made available to delegates.
This is what I said in that document:
"On God: I believe God is a name we give to the mystery
of the world that is beyond our capacity to understand. I believe
that the energy of the universe is ordered by forces I cannot
comprehend.
On Jesus: I believe Christ offered a way into that mystery that
still has meaning today.
On the Holy Ghost: There are moments in my life when I feel
a connection to other people and to Creation that rides a spirit
which flows through me yet is beyond me.
I believe that Holy Spirit can only be nurtured in real community,
where people make commitments to each other. I have found that
community in St. Andrew's. I have tried to open myself up to
our pastor's teaching, to the members of the congregation, and
to the church's work in the world."
That approach to the notion of God not only contests Biblical
literalism but also challenges the conception of God for many
Christians who would not see themselves as fundamentalists. For
me, the key is whether we say (1) God is a mystery, or
(2) God is mystery.
The difference between those two formulations is important. The
first, with the indefinite article, implies that God is an entity,
force, or being with some shape, but that his/her/its contours
are beyond our capacity to fully chart. The thing that God is,
is in the end a mystery to us. But God is, something.
The second suggests that God is simply the name we give to that
which is beyond our capacity to understand. God is another name
for mystery -- for the vast, unexplainable mystery of the world
around us and inside us.
I prefer the second, as I suspect do a fair number of theologically
moderate and liberal Christians who might not share all my politics
but have a similar sense about this question. I also suspect
a lot of those folks don't speak openly about their views, out
of concern that it will create tension within a church or family.
Part of the reason for the intensity of the reaction to my essay,
I think, is simply that I said out loud what a lot of Christians
think but rarely discuss.
So, am I a Christian? Am I a real Christian? I give up.
But I'm sure someone will figure this out and get back to me.
We are
all afraid of something
As I listened to the discussion on the floor of the Presbytery
meeting, one question kept coming to my mind: What are these
folks afraid of? The question was genuine. I thought it then
-- and I ask it now -- not as a taunt or a subtle insult but
because I really wanted to know, and I still want to know.
There seemed to me to be two different kinds of fear on the floor
that day. One was easy to identify -- the fear of some that this
divisive issue would tear apart people of common faith. Many
people who spoke wanted to find a resolution that would allow
St. Andrew's to follow its own path -- honoring the denomination's
democratic tradition of local control and the larger Protestant
notion of a "priesthood of all believers" -- without
endangering the unity and work of the larger church. That's also
easy to understand; people who had given part of their life to
an institution that they believe does good work in the world
would naturally want to see it continue that work.
The unstated fear that I sensed in the room came from the people
who wanted me banished. Here, it was not the explicit words they
spoke but the underlying hostility I felt from some of them.
They seemed angry with me, as if I had committed a grave offense
against them or against Scripture, maybe even against God. I
sat there somewhat stunned, struggling with how people committed
to a faith tradition that routinely invokes the phrase "God
is love" could seem so unloving toward someone (me) for
speaking honestly about my spiritual journey, toward a pastor
(Rigby) who has given so much of himself to building a vibrant
and loving church, and toward a congregation (St. Andrew's) full
of so many socially responsible and theologically engaged members.
I can hypothesize that those who were so angry at me were afraid
either that (1) my understanding of God was reasonable and, therefore,
a threat to the understanding with which they had grown comfortable,
or (2) an open acceptance of church members with a similar theology
would undermine their control and power in the denomination.
I suspect that for some of the people who were angriest not only
with me but with Rigby and St. Andrew's, those explanations might
be sound. But those explanations also seem too easy to me. Because
I have a hard time getting those folks to talk to me about these
issues, my hypotheses is based more on speculation than evidence.
Not surprisingly, it's difficult for any of us to talk about
our fears. I have spoken about mine because I think it's only
fair to be open if one asks others to do the same. If I really
want to know what fears motivate those on the other side of this
issue, I have an obligation to look inside myself and, to the
best of my ability, report on what I have seen.
I've tried to do that in this talk. Because of the theological
and political positions I have taken, many Christians are going
to see me not as a brother in faith but as a threat to that faith.
If in the end those people decide that I don't even have one
toe inside the circle, I can accept that. But it seems to me
that such a conclusion can't be reached until we share our fears
in a space we enter not as combatants squaring off in a fight,
but rather as people recognizing our mutual need. A place like
a church where God -- however we imagine the concept -- is truly
love.
For that work, I know that St. Andrew's doors are open.
Christ
said it was hard, and he was right
The statement about
my beliefs that I submitted for the Mission Presbytery meeting
ended with these words:
"Abe Osheroff, a friend of mine who just turned 90 years
old, told me recently that he had come to see that in his life
he had no destination, just a direction -- toward ever-greater
love and ever-expanding justice.
I believe that when we are truly open to the wonder of Creation,
that direction becomes clear. I am trying to walk a path in that
direction. I find that it is hard, as Jesus said it would be.
In Matthew 7:12-14, he said, 'Enter by the narrow gate; for the
gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and
those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the
way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.'
I believe that is true."
The older I get, the less I know and the less certain I am about
what I believe. But I'm pretty sure about that one point -- being
human is hard sometimes, maybe most of the time, maybe all of
the time. We are cursed with the capacity for critical self-reflection
and a linguistic ability that allows us to express much -- but
never quite enough -- of what we feel. That's why we need poetry
and art and music, to try to close that gap between what we feel
and what we can rationally explain. But, in the end, it's a gap
that can never be bridged completely. Maybe that's why we need
religion. I'm not sure. I'm still chewing on that one.
But here's what I'm reasonably sure about: If the powers that
be -- or, perhaps more accurately, the powers that wanna-be powerful
-- are to decide that I am insufficiently Christian to be a Presbyterian,
and if they remove me from the membership roll of St. Andrew's,
I'm confident I will still be a member of St. Andrew's in some
form, in some fashion. I say that not out of arrogance, not because
I believe I have any special value to the pastor and congregation.
My confidence about that isn't based on what I know.
I trust in that out of faith.
The
Doxology, redux
Because my theme has been our limits -- recognizing those things
that we can't know and that leave us in a state of perpetual
confusion -- I want to end with a simple story about that kind
of confusion, about my experience of the singing of the Doxology
in the St. Andrew's service.
I don't remember much about the rituals of the church I attended
as a child, but I do remember the Doxology. The version we sang
was different than the one St. Andrew's uses. Both start with
the same line: "Praise God, from whom all blessings flow."
Because St. Andrew's is committed to not using patriarchal language,
a policy I wholeheartedly endorse, in our service it continues:
Praise God, all creatures here below;
God does create, redeem, sustain.
All creatures, praise God's holy name.
That's a lovely version. But in the church of my childhood, those
lines were:
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
I like the St. Andrew's version better; I think gender-neutral
language is important in a world where women still are so often
denied their full humanity. But I also find that the old version
still resonates for me. So, when I'm at St. Andrew's, I sing
along with the first line, and then I silently sing the old version
to myself. I find it comforting, for reasons that are not entirely
clear to me. I have mostly negative memories of that church,
and my politics are in line with the St. Andrew's version. I
don't understand why I can't just recalibrate to this new version.
But something in me still wants to hear those words from my childhood.
I don't have to sing them out loud -- for now, it works for me
just to stand there, in a community where I feel loved, and repeat
to myself words that bring me comfort. Maybe someday I'll find
myself singing the new version; maybe those words will find their
way into me. But for now, I am praising Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost.
I asked my pastor about this, and Rigby said it was okay. That's
what I like about St. Andrew's -- it's okay to struggle, to be
uncertain, to doubt, to search. In short, St. Andrew's Presbyterian
is a church in which it's okay to be a human being.
Am I a Christian? I don't know. But I'm pretty sure I'm a human
being.
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