A response to a cartoon

Let's consider the cartoon below. It is apparently being circulated by Christian pastors and others who may be trying to make a point about declines in church membership and active participation and engagement. But from my universalist perspective there may be a counter-argument to be made here and a reasonable explanation as to why someone might find this cartoon offensive. 

Let me say right now that I believe in joining and engaging with whatever religious or spiritual organization that you feel comfortable with after you have gone through time for discernment with God, taken some time with it, and your membership and participation have been determined to bless and benefit everyone in the circle. This is about faith, belief, and doctrine, to be sure, but it is also about how we view long-term commitment.

With commitment in mind, then, I want to lay out a few controversial points that I think the pastors and others passing this cartoon along will disagree with. Uniting oneself with a congregation or community will not work if you or that community come to the point of considering membership in a transactional way. If either side in this is thinking about some kind of exchange taking place, or in terms of a sale being made or a client-therapist-buyer-seller-sinner-preacher relationship being established, in order for things to progress then at some point someone will become dissatisfied and the relationship will suffer or end. We live in a world governed largely by competition, transactions, sales, profits and losses. Those in power often maintain their positions by encouraging dependency. People seeking the solace and strengthening that faith and faith communities can provide are often seeking an alternative to the harsh and cold world and the means of coping with and overcoming the violence that has been done to them in that world. We, all of us, need solidarity, not capitalist ethics and relationship dependencies in the pews.

Tithing has its roots in our communal religious and spiritual traditions and has come down to us as a form of fasting and as a form of generosity or charity ("solidarity lite"). But there are legitimate questions here about a proper Biblical approach to fasting in the first place. Is it Biblical to require the poor and the oppressed---the Lazaruses of our present day---to fast and to give? Is their life not already a story of fasting, faith and generosity? Yes, there are the accounts of the poor widow's offering and Christ's observations in the moment (Mark 12:41–44, Luke 21:1–4), but here I think the accent is on Christ condemning the wealthy and the powerful and not arguing that the poor must be squeezed.

We know that "people with means...are substantial givers. Middle-class Americans donate a little less. But the lower-income population surprises by giving more than the middle—and in some measures even more than the top. (As a percentage of available income, that is. In absolute dollars, those in higher income groups give much, much more money.)" The lower-income folks have an expansive definition of tithing, and one that I think is essentially correct, at least in terms of social practices. Someone may cover the mom in line at the supermarket who comes up short, or put up money for a son-in-law's tires so that he can look for work, or help someone make their rent. In my experience the people who are so generous do not often think of wat they are doing as charity, though they may not know the word "solidarity" or what it fully means or implies. Still, they model the concepts of solidarity by giving without the expectation of getting back and by giving in order to strengthen the social fabric that wraps around them as well. Instead of being transactional and talking about tithing, then, we should think about how we teach and model solidarity and where we find it in Scripture. The Bible is full of lessons on solidarity. The three that come readily to my mind are Hebrews 11, Acts 4: 32-5:11, and Christ's resurrection. Once solidarity is institutionalized and is communicated as an expectation and lived out daily, and once transactionalism is overcome,  the tithing and sacrifices will likely come.     

Well, it may be said, the folks in that cartoon are white and middle-class and seem to be squared away. I want to ask fellow Christians to seriously engage with the work of Marcus Borg and take up the project of doing economic analysis from a Christian perspective. The people in the pews may not be doing as well as fellow parishioners think they are. We live in a society that makes talk about things that matter and the struggles that we're going through uncomfortable and humiliating. Either people never talk about these hard truths of theirs or they abandon boundaries and go on as if theirs are the only and the most important problems and as if what they are suffering through is not the outcome of systemic inequities. So, in addition to not being transactional, engaging in solidarity, and doing economic analysis we also need to develop and teach healthy boundaries before we get deep into pushing church membership and tithing on folks. 

I'm coming from a place here of thinking about joining and fully engaging with a religious or spiritual community in terms of relationships---a marriage, say. You know that if you get married thinking "Well, we can always get divorced if things don't work out" then your marriage will likely not work out. The same holds true when you consider joining a religious community. You had better go into your marriage knowing your partner's faults and shortcomings, and both of you need to bend and be vulnerable to the other. Something similar happens in religious communities. Your heart will break and be broken and both you and your community will need to be flexible and take the long view. You know that if you get married but still keep up with old partners or go around looking at others as potential partners then you're not being fully faithful to the person you promised faithfulness to. Something like this applies to you joining a religious community as well; it's either a monogamous relationship or it won't last. It's okay if you can't do that now, "dating" is fine. You know that if you get married and you're not sharing the household tasks and paying the bills together and budgeting together then your marriage won't last. Most divorces start with fights over money. Again, there is a corollary with joining a religious community: plan, work, struggle and share the burdens to make it work, even if it means smaller communities made up of the blessed poor that God so loves. You don't want to marry someone who talks only about themselves, who is struggling with alcoholism or drug abuse, who is always deep in drama, who can't manage basic living skills without trouble, who can't handle their own power or work with someone else's in rational ways or who abuses their power and your trust. You also don't want to join a religious community where people with such issues proliferate and hold the keys to heaven and hell. And if you have been through a bad marriage or two you're probably not in a hurry to jump into another marriage. The same is true of joining religious communities; let God speak to you and study on how to bring that into focus, be rational about it, take your time.

Patrick Weaver Ministries grasps much of this in ways that I don't yet. See what they have to say about some of this.

For most of us, I think, the good traits and the most difficult problems that we bring to marriages and other relationships will be much the same as what we bring to any organization or effort we engage in, religious and spiritual communities included. Most of us have to work very hard to deconstruct what is negative in us and this is a lifetime project for many more of us than want to admit it. The capitalist society that we live in makes us unnaturally competitive and unable to find balance and cooperative paths to power. Churches may look at these conditions as sinful, or they may honor this with a gospel of prosperity, but neither approach finds the needed understanding. Our practical challenge is to make deconstructing ourselves and rebuilding ourselves a radical and social act of partaking with one another in the divine nature, or theosis (See Psalm 81/82, 2nd Peter 1:4. See 1 Thessalonians 5:17 and Matthew 25: 37-40 as aids). Is your religious community a place for rebuilding and healing?  

By this point I have probably lost the preachers and many readers. I'm going on too long and this is abstract. I do want to close with an additional point.

Many of the preachers who are circulating this cartoon and others like it claim in their sermons that they are swimming against the tide and say that they are risking their livelihoods and freedom by their strong teaching. I think that they are swimming very much with the tide by not taking on those in power who bring us a bit of hell (employers, banks, the prison-industrial complex, healthcare run for profit are examples), exaggerating their counter-cultural stance, and preaching an eternal hell because it is one way of preserving order in a society that jumps from crisis to crisis. Where is their attack on the systemic evils that oppress the people in the pews? 

On the other hand, there are some pretty brave Christians out there who really are challenging the oppressive powers and are paying a price for doing that and aren't posing as being counter-cultural. A committee of Mennonites led a peaceful demonstration calling for a ceasefire in Palestine/Israel last week and about 150 people were arrested at that demonstration. Where is the church in talking accurately and with love and solidarity about Palestine and supporting those who were arrested? Fellow believers cry out for justice but we're not listening. Where is the church in supporting  the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II and Repairers of the Breach when Bishop Barber says, "On March 2, our moral movement will be in Washington D.C. and at 30 statehouses across the country, launching a period of mass mobilization to the polls of the nation’s 85 million poor and low wealth voters leading up to the election in November. If mobilized around an agenda to address and end poverty and low wages, there is not a state where–if just 10 to 20 percent of poor and low-wage voters who did not vote in the last national election come to the polls this time around–they would not be able to swing the election and elect leaders who would vote for living wages, health care and voting rights."?

The church is not just for those who have seen God’s goodness by Pastor Jerrell Williams

The Salem-Keizer, Oregon community is blessed to have Pastor Jerrell Williams leading Salem's Mennonite Church. We have posted at least two articles by him in the recent past. These have come from Anabaptist World. In a recent article in Anabaptist World Pastor Williams says the following:

Disappointment with God is a reality we need to recognize. As the church testifies to God’s faithfulness, we have to remember that not everyone has experienced God as faithful.

We have to be prepared to walk with those who feel God has not been faithful to them. As a pastor, I have had the honor to accompany those who are struggling and doubting as well as those who are solidly sure of their faith.

I have sat with people as they have asked me why God wasn’t there for them or for their friends or their families. Though I am tempted to interject my own experiences and ideas, there is nothing I can say that dulls the pain.

At this point we are left with a reminder that so much of modern atheism---at least in my circles---is founded on disappointments and suffering, and it should be fully understandable to people of faith that this occurs and gains momentum and forms of expression. There is also an atheism that develops from the capitalist reality that we all live in. How does anyone manage to maintain faith when every activity is weighed for what it produces and its cost? A competitive and hierarchical system, gendered and racialized and exploitative in its fundamentals, is bound to produce atheism. Pastor Williams does not take these questions up directly, but they are there in the background.      

So Pastor Williams is taking up a large slice of our human condition in a short article. Where does he go with this? The entire article can be read here.

JUSTICE AND INCLUSION: FROM ISAIAH’S PEN TO OUR EYES AND EARS---An insightful essay by Russell Arben Fox

Russell Arben Fox has a particularly insightful article out taking up some aspects of his reading of the Hebrew Bible and his reading of the Book of Isaiah. At one point in his essay Fox says

The Book of Isaiah has, of course, been heavily proof-texted and read selectively by Christians for centuries. No other set of Hebrew poetic and prophetic texts that made their way into the canonical Old Testament have had as massive an impact on how Christians, from ancient to modern times, articulated the faith which the recorded statements of Jesus and the accounts and letters of his early followers inspired. It’s not just that Jesus himself is shown in the Christian Gospels to be quoting from or referencing Isaiah more than any other older text besides the Psalms; it’s that Christianity’s entire cultural and theological approach to and interpretation of Jesus’ message and meaning comes through a heavily Isaian lens–the language of Handel’s Messiah being just the most obvious example. (And with the commemoration of the Messiah’s birth just a couple of days away, this seems like a good time to revisit the text.)

Separating myself as a reader from that inheritance was no easy feat, and I can’t say I was entirely successful. Thanks to Alter’s translation, however, a couple of key ideas were made profoundly clear to me. First, that from its beginning, the book of Isaiah–far more than those associated with any of the other Hebrew prophets–is a text that presents calls to social justice on the same level as its condemnations of the cultic failures and ritual sins of Israel. Isaiah 1:14-17 sets the theme for the entire text, with its explicit condemnation of those who hypocritically attend outwardly to religious duties but ignore the needs of those who are part of that same religious community.

I want to recommend this short essay particularly to my Christian friends who spend much time in the Hebrew Bible and challenge them to read this carefully.

Catch up with the essay here.

Freeing God to be God--Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler

There are so many opportunities available to honor Dr. King today that I hesitate to lift up a particular one or to put forward anything that might compete with others. But I think that I did find one short essay that has something to say to many of my good friends. It it called Freeing God to be God and was written by Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler, an ordained miniter in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ. Rev. Hagler currently serves as the Senior Minister of Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, DC. He helped lead the fight against payday lenders there, and he helped co-found the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA). He is also Director and Chief Visionary of Faith Strategies, LLC, a collective of clergy manifesting progressive perspectives on human and civil rights in the public arena.

Part of Rev. Hagler's essay contains the following. The entire essay can be found here.

During the pandemic, and under Trumpism, a racial split emerged in the evangelical movement as white evangelicals largely supported the policies of Trump; many of those policies clearly racist, and communities of-color, in general, were horrified at the antics of Trump and the lack of criticism from white evangelicals against those policies and antics of the Trump administration. Racial and ideological cracks were revealed where one perspective supported a political/religious orthodoxy and the status-quo, right or wrong, leaving of-color evangelicals horrified and surprised by the racist theological and ideological gap! The white evangelical community went as far as creating a religious litmus test over not wearing a mask during a pandemic, while Blacks and people of-color were disproportionally infected and died from the virus. This revealed at least two separate theologies. There is the theology of the political status-quo, governments, flag-waving, that believe that political leaders are the appointees of God, that slaves should be obedient to their masters, women are kept silent, and statements of American exceptionalism abound. On the other hand, people of-color continued to look to God for freedom, dignity, protection from the hatred and racism of the society, and to maintain hope and a sense of worth amid a hard and unwelcoming world. At least two Gods were revealed, two theologies, two ideologies, and at least two experiences that heard and perceived God in very different ways.

Baptism

Today is a day when many churches will perform baptisms. Lately there have been some new disputes in some mainstream churches about the meaning of baptism and whether or not a person who has not been baptized may receive Communion. There are also long-standing disagreements over whether infant baptism is valid or not, when and under what conditions an adult might be baptized, and how baptisms should be done. I have so many other questions about religion and theology that I don't think much about these particular matters. I suppose that if you're convinced that you should be baptized as an adult and you feel that the Spirit is moving inside of you to do that then you should find a church that will accept you and that you can live commit to and do that. If your church is praying the version of the Nicene Creed that says "We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins" and you got baptized as an infant and you want to be baptized again your are going to have a struggle.

Here is something that I picked up from the Appalachian Americans Facebook page that was written by Ms. Birdi Stephens. She's a good writer and I look forward to reading her posts. This particular post gpoes right to the heart of the matter.

Ms. Stephens writes:

This was my paternal grandpa being baptized in the creek on a Sunday afternoon in the hills of Eastern Kentucky. He was 96 years old then. He was the only grandparent I ever knew, and I spent countless hours with him as he recounted the adventures of his long life. On this particular Sunday afternoon, word had spread throughout the community that my grandpa was going to be baptized, and more than 200 people lined the creekbank that warm day to celebrate with him. I still carry the memory of that day in my heart.

About Temptation And Testimony

A friend of mine in West Virginia recently offered up the following testimony:

So i noticed something today about temptation. On days that i dont really get into prayer, or just read some of the bible basically just so i can say i read for the day, and also when i stay to myself and don't really interact with people, ive found that im more susceptible to sin and temptation. Today ive prayed throughout the day, also prayed for others, witnessed to people and just prayed with others and brought the name of Jesus to peoples attention, ive realized that temptation wasnt as strong. When we witness and step out in Jesus name, thats where we get our strength. People want to pray as a last resort, but we need to put our relationship with God first. Im preaching to myself as well. Our Lord is a good Father. This year i have gained so much wisdom and knowledge through his Holy spirit, and the word of God. i still have a long way to go, for instance there are times i feel i havent learned anything and thats when the Lord will minister to me, and showing me that ive learned more than what i think i have. I wanna stay plyable, and always ready to learn more about our Savior. I know sometimes people get tired of me talking about Jesus and sometimes they might think im acting high and mighty which isnt my intentions. I just want others to know his goodness, and his mercy and grace. Also want others to know him the way i am coming to know him. I love yall i pray this helps someone in Jesus name.

This is real talk, and its sincere and comes from a place of great struggle and growth.

Now, no one should confuse me with being any kind of spiritual person or any kind of counsellor, but I want to offer up a few points in reaction to this testimony.

It's a true story that if you're trying to do any kind of internal work, including the work of repentance and salvation, that you're going to face incredible difficulties if you try to do it alone. Even monks most often do their work in preparation to reenter the world or do their work in communities. Our brother has his finger on the pulse here.

I get what our brother is saying about prayer coming first, not last, and I will offer that we need to somehow find the balance between prayer and good works and then turn each into the other. What I mean is that prayer could or should be a good work or deed and that the work that we do with others to uplift them can or should be prayers. Doing something prayerfully is a step towards that, but why don't we push it more often and go further?

In the book Raising Lazarus there is an especially moving and real scene in which someone is trying to help someone living in a homeless camp in West Virginia who has a substance abuse disorder problem and has a badly infected feet and is about to get rousted by the police. The person washing the houseless person's feet and trying to assist them was so involved in that work that it became a prayer, I think. The line separating our best desires that lead to justice and peace and wholeness, on the one hand, and holiness, liberation, and salvation on the other are more fluid than we think.

Most Christians will pray for a person and for easing or a solution to whatever difficulties that person is facing at a particular moment. Perhaps we get this wrong. It may be more meaningful and helpful to pray for the person, take the basic affirmative actions with them to help them get their life together, try to see that person in the contexts of their history and their family's histories, try to meet their basic needs without enabling their difficulties and disempowering them, make this about values and prayer and action, and build movements to make life for all of us easier.

It sometimes feels to me as if the "thoughts and prayers" messages we send out and praying for specific solutions to what we think are root problems is either manipulative or sentimental. We don't intend this to be so, but in the United States we have a Christianity that often holds to manipulation and sentimentality even as the churches empty out.  

Our brother speaks for so many of us when he says "i still have a long way to go, for instance there are times i feel i havent learned anything and thats when the Lord will minister to me, and showing me that ive learned more than what i think i have." I think that about every person who is open to salvation feels this. When someone says this out loud the common response from many believers is to tell the person to pray for wisdom and strength. I think that that's good advice as far as it goes, but someone should be offering an embrace and assuring people who are seeking something in spirituality or religion that they're better and smarter and more creative than they probably think they are and encourage people to start with the small things. The theologian Richard Rohr suggests that people learn to love a common object or being---a rock or a tree or a pet, for instance---before they try to love God.

We live in a world where love is distorted. We're told to love God, but our ideas of love come from Hollywood or are sentimental and so it is no mystery why people feel that they are failing to love and to know God. We're not going to fit God into anything, much less into our ideas of love that come from corporations and romance novels. We're told to think of God as Father, but so many people have never known a real loving father, or they never had a functional family and cannot grasp what God as Father really means. We set impossible goals for ourselves and one another and we crash. Most of us need to start with the small things and build from there.

The familiar point that God is love goes over most of our heads, and its an arguable formulation anyway, but there are enough good people around who testify that they found total love and acceptance and forgiveness in God and their testimony is mostly beyond question. Two points come to me from this. First, that we should not be quick to tell people who live different lives than we do that God doesn't love them, or that God may love them but certainly hates whatever sins we think they're committing. Be ready to accept the testimony of others and watch over time how that testimony plays out. Second, love has hidden and personal qualities---its intimate by definition---so we have to look for ways to publicly acknowledge God's love and God's working within us and amongst us. For me this means understanding social justice as the public evidence of God and God's love. I hope that you agree with me on this.

I think that one of the biggest walls we face when we want to find God's "goodness, and his mercy and grace" and share this with others is generational trauma. We pray and study with the thought that our relationship with Jesus Christ is only personal in the first place. But I want to offer up that our salvation depends on so much else. We come to our moments of prayer and good works as human beings with family and social histories and these have to be addressed, and especially so when these are the flashpoints for our pain.

Our brother's testimony above stands by itself, and nothing that I'm saying is intended to be critical. He's teaching us something. Every voice matters. Please listen up.

Native American/Indigenous Spirituality From The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston

It has been a while since we posted anything from Native American/Indigenous Episcopalian priest The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston but his theology is never far from what this blog is about.

"The length of night is not measured by hours, but by the worry we carry with us into the darkness. For a burdened heart the minutes move more slowly than memory. The visual world recedes and we are left like watchmen to keep our lonely vigil high on the solemn walls of our fear. When you face a long night of your soul let go of time and kindle again the flame of hope entrusted to you by the Spirit. It never fails to burn bright. You are a keeper of that flame, a citizen of light only passing through the shadows on your way home.--1/6/23

"Please, Spirit, give me the energy I need to do what you would have me do. There are times when my intentions run ahead of my abilities. I bite off more than I can chew. I spread myself too thin. I become tired and things begin to slip. When that happens, I pray you will do a small intervention: breathe your strength and common sense into me and let me take up my mission with a renewed passion."---1/4/23

"Our song will go on, long after our voices are still. The sound of our joy will be carried on the wind, scattered through the forests, rising as high as the mountains, sparkling beneath the sun. Those of innocent heart and hopeful dreams will hear it. The poor and the lonely will hear it and find the promise they have been seeking. The faithful and the courageous will draw our sound in like a deep breath, so life-giving and eternal will be our song of praise."---1/3/23

Five Reminders For A Better 2023

This comes from Jonathan Buttry in Holston. Tennessee. Brother Buttry is an active teacher and leader in the Primitive Baptist Universalist community. I have relied on them to help me understand a few weighty religious or spiritual concepts over the past couple of years. I think that there is some real wisdom here.

5 reminders for a better 2023

1. "Honor your father and mother" should never mean accepting their manipulation, abuse, or toxic interactions or behavior.

2. Being a "person of faith" should never mean that seeking professional therapy is a sign of weakness.

3. "Taking up your cross" should never mean denying your needs, desires, or individuality.

4. Being a "Godly woman" should never mean assuming a posture of inferiority, submission and appeasement to men, to tolerate domination and abuse.

5. The "fear of the Lord" should never mean living in a state of anxiety and uncertainty about being unconditionally worthy of acceptance and love.

A sound that I do just love

 

I don't know who these fellows are, but I do know that they're somewhere in

 Central  Appalachia and that they have a sound that I just love. The song is "Rank

 Strangers," originally done by the Stanley Brothers.

Caleb Taylor: The Translation Trap: LGBTQ+ Rights Vs. The Christian Right's Bible

Caleb Taylor has written the following in an article that takes on the Christian Right and how the Bible is (mis)interpreted regarding LGBTQIA+ people. The article approaches the thorny matter of Biblical translation and how God's calling and revelations are heard and acting upon. Taylor's essay is short and to the point in the sense that it poses questions and states the socialist case well. Christians who take issue with his points are welcome to p[ost their disagreements in the comments section below.

Caleb Taylor writes:

One of the biggest debates in Christian churches today has to do with full acceptance of LGBTQ+ people in the pews and the pulpits. Not only are denominations poised to split over the treatment and ordination of LGBTQ+ people, there’s even a documentary called 1946: The Mistranslation that Shifted Culture arguing that the English word “homosexual” should not be in the Bible at all. The film made it into Indie Wire’s “DOC NYC 2022: 10 Must-See Films at America’s Biggest Documentary Festival” and has garnered a fair amount of publicity. [Watch the trailer here.]

The argument goes that in 1946 the team working on the Revised Standard Version (RSV) mistranslated the Greek words malakos and arsenokoitēs as “homosexuals.” Malakos typically means something like “soft” and was, at times, used euphemistically. Arsenokoitēs is trickier because it occurs so infrequently with such little context that it is very difficult to pin down its meaning. Still, the translation in the RSV (specifically in regard to 1 Corinthians 6:9) was passed on to most biblical translations produced in the following years.

Those working on the RSV, however, were not the creators of anti-homosexual bias. Criminalization of homosexual sexual activity goes back to at least the 1500’s as the Human Dignity Trust succinctly depicts. And, that is just in English law. Sodomy Acts criminalizing homosexuality were well established long before the 1946 RSV translation. Moreover, “sodomy,” the word from which the Acts derive their name, comes from the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which alludes to sexual abuse but has been used by traditionalists to condemn homosexuality. Thus, even if the word “homosexuality” did not appear in English translations of the Bible before 1946, the powerful did not need it to oppress LGBTQ+ people.

Translation is important, but using the correct words will not fix the “problem.” Nor will correcting a few words deter the will of the powerful who benefit from the suppression of LGBTQ+ people. There is the text, and then there are the communities that utilize the text. The group gives meaning to the text, and as long as the power structure of the group is built for suppression, it doesn’t matter what the original writers meant. Dismantling the power structure must take priority; otherwise, we’re doomed to the fate the Anabaptists suffered during the Reformation.

Please read the entire article here.

Some things to laugh about and some things to think about

 

"In life everything is a matter of finding balance."

Think about it, smile about it, pray on it, pass it on or leave it on the shelf...

(Some of my friends will get this, some won't.)

 

Beau of the Fifth Column

 Let's talk about Trump, Evangelicals, and numbers....

Let's talk about the Klamath River running free....

Let's talk about explaining Twitter to the working class....

Preachers, Priests, Ministers, And Pastors---Part Two

Please read Part One here.

Now, what is giving rise to this rant of mine?

There are always several things happening at once. Some of those old-time preachers who I listen to are laying it on pretty thick when it comes to liberals, abortion rights, and some people who they’re not naming who are supposedly rewriting or ignoring the Bible. This got heavier to carry around election time. I continue to be quite moved as I watch the services at Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina and listen to Bishop William J. Barber, Jr., and Rev. Shyrl Hinnant Uzzell who are there. My heart sometimes aches because I can’t find a church near where I live that is anything like that.

Also, I recently read the book Raising Lazarus by Beth Macy and I remain caught up with some of the examples that she gave of people, many of them struggling with their own substance abuse recovery issues and getting almost no help from the institutional church, giving deep help to people with substance abuse issues, and sometimes having to do so in violation of the law. I’m questioning my own and other’s Christianity in light of our lack of faith in the resurrection of others from dope sickness and death right now, today. Are we really called to let hundreds of thousands of people die from substance abuse and deaths of despair?

But another one of the drivers on this rant is something that happened in church recently. There is a passing-through, filling-in minister there who seems to push pretty hard on fundraising. That doesn’t bother me so much, but I wonder how other folks hear this. Part of that congregation is doing okay, and the church bank accounts are full to overflowing, but some of the folks in the pews must be struggling like I am, or harder. The church is in a nice part of town. It does a little to assist people in the community but you don’t see many people in the church stepping up on anything controversial. Large numbers of Christians in the United States will do great charitable work, but we’re collectively resistant to taking on the people and conditions that make charity the necessary band-aid that it is.

They say that Sunday mornings are the most segregated times in the United States because people of color go to their churches and whites go to their churches. I have attended a few integrated churches over the years, but very few. These were Roman Catholic and Pentecostal Holiness churches. And since that saying about Sunday mornings became popular, masses of people have left or remained outside of the churches, adding another dimension to our discussion. I take the point that we’re dealing with forms of segregation, but this has many dimensions to it. People of color walk into white space and know if they’re welcome or not pretty quickly. No one has to say anything; it’s just there, and it’s real. Something like that can happen with working-class or poor people entering middle-class or wealthy church space; you feel that you’re walking into something that will not be yours, and that's real. I’ve seen Roman Catholic churches that didn't have this class differentiation built in, but those are exceptions. Sermons often tell us what that space holds. They describe in words what we sense in our hearts or heads.

It's tragic and a sin against God and ourselves that we have this segregation. I say “against ourselves” because we are missing some marks here by not trusting and loving one another in the images given to us by God. There are theologies specific to the experiences of working-class people and people of color that will overwhelm you, fill your heart and be a blessing to you, give you the reassurance that you need if you will open yourself to them. But you can’t very well open yourself to them if you can’t find the right church or if the experiences of working-class people and people of color or LGBTQIA+ people are marginalized.

The readings for the one recent Sunday that brought this to me were 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13 and Luke 21:5-19. There is a lot there to take up a long sermon: “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat,” Jesus’s prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, deep social and political chaos and how believers process those, and repression and society falling apart and how believers deal with those in faith all come up as major themes and all of them have implications that affect how we live and structure our faith. But what we got was another fundraising pitch.

Segregation, churches accommodating to the system, the lack of prophetic action in the church, and the lack of social analysis in the churches are real scandals. But the common conservative complaints are about other things instead.

I remember several years ago on Easter Sunday hearing a minister at this church say that Jesus was dancing on the cross. And on one Christmas Eve a minister there gave a reassuring sermon that told us that all was well. Went I got in my car to head home I heard the news that there had been a massacre of Christians in Africa. The first sermon sets the conservative’s hair on fire. It has no basis in Scripture and could do some damage. It's a terrible image, I think. Perhaps the real harm being done with this kind of talk is that it takes away from the political nature of Christ’s crucifixion. He was not the first or last to die on the cross, and his death (and, in a deep sense, his resurrection) unites him (and should unite all believers) with everyone who has ever been persecuted and every person who has been on a death row and who has been executed. The second sermon was neither prophetic or analytical, and we need both badly. Let’s tell the truth: very little in the world is well, but people of faith are also people of resurrection and can make positive change.

Polemics around this are steps backward. I don't want any part of competitive tensions and criticism. The ways forward are through prayer, calling on the presence of the Holy Spirit, organizing, and (I think) eventually restructuring our relationships and our institutions. The minister doing the fundraising pitches is working within a system, and that system is driven by money and money exists now in order to ration things and maintain exploitation. We need to see that bigger picture.

I’m not aware of any Christian rewriting the Bible, as the conservatives claim. I did recently read a book by a fellow who pastors a large faith community and who wants us to put our Bibles away and find new revelations. It took me awhile to come to this, but I decided that his arguments are conservative but are dressed up to sound radical and counter-cultural. Throwing out the Bible would spark a huge conflict with no predictable end. The Bible guides us through the sorrows, struggles, and victories in this life and gives us a plans for collective salvation (liberation). Marx had it right. Religion “is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” And because that is true the Bible and religion are needed, and the visions of liberation that have been contained within the Bible, and often hidden from the people, must be brought into the light.

The accusation of rewriting the Bible may be aimed at churches and church leaders who are gay-friendly or who are trying to build diverse and inclusive churches. I imagine that this is usually the case, and it is unfair and inaccurate. There is a certain amount of privilege and hypocrisy involved if I’m right. Don’t go calling my hogs home if yours are still in the woods. People often take the Bible and its teachings to heart and put it in terms they can understand and teach with and that can be a beautiful and saving. I was once in a Bible study about Genesis 32:22-32 that turned into good discussions about pro wrestling, hip replacement surgery, and barbecuing and I’m an certain that most everyone present came away with a better sense of the text. Here is another great example:

 God's Highway--The Stanley Brothers

I’m highlighting a few problems here that I see: the conservatism of so many of the preachers, pastors, ministers, and priests; our collective failure to fully appreciate and lift up the theologians and Spirit-filled people we have among the poor and in the working-class; the tendencies that Christians have to compete with one another rather than to serve the people by joining serving the people to serving God in prophetic ways that demand justice; the racial and class divisions that hold us prisoner; the fundraising that replaces prophetic witness; the weaknesses of liberal reassurances; and the false claims by conservatives and liberals. I don’t mind politicization in the pulpits and pews as a matter of principle, but if that’s going to happen then we need the correct politics and neither reactionary conservatism that supports the empire or weak liberalism make the grade. But, really, why can’t we put the drive into a politics of the Kingdom of God and that is in the first place about Biblical and ethical social justice?

That isn’t impossible, though it is extremely difficult. My faith journey is enlivened by what I see taking place at Greenleaf Christian Church, previously mentioned, and how the worship, preaching, and service there find the right balance between feeding the soul and heart and speaking to the head and mind. I have not heard anyone argue against what Bishop Barber and Rev. Shyrl Hinnant Uzzell are doing at Greenleaf. Perhaps those who oppose them think that ignoring them is prudent or the way of containing what is occurring at Greenleaf and through the Poor Peoples Campaign. My belief is that large numbers of the working-class faithful and large numbers of those who are outside of the church will both catch the holy fire if the hearing the preaching and see the resurrection taking place there. I'm impressed by what I read of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the Catholic Worker movement, the Jubilee Baptist Church in Chapel Hill and some others are attempting. The question is not what’s going wrong or right with these efforts, but why your community doesn’t have churches like these.

People will fuss over our shepherds who are supposed to help us to be fruitful and multiply the numbers of the faithful. Jeremiah 23:1-6 comes to mind, and that stern first warning gives the conservatives an argument. But keep reading. Pretty soon the connection is made between the shepherds and social justice and liberation.

Let’s take this to the grassroots and go a step back to the people who have a testimony and who believe in their hearts that they are saved and another step back to believers who have a different approach.

The struggle and victory salvation stories that I most often hear sound something like this:

I was raised going to church and was saved as a child at a revival. The man that preached that night was a fiery Pentecostal preacher who preached hell, repentance, and salvation. I felt the conviction of the Spirit and went to the altar that night. That preacher said, “If you leave this world without Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior you will split hell wide open!" Those words from God's went straight to my heart. I thank God to this day that I had enough knowledge to know that I needed this man Jesus in my life.

Many tragic events pushed me very far from Jesus for many years, however. Through the years I have failed God. I have left Him more times than I wish to confess. I spent most my teenage life drinking, doing drugs and sleeping around. I let go of my first love for a life of being a slave to sin. A life of trouble, fear, uncertainty, dread, heartbreak. I was the lowest of sinners...you name it... I was quite the PARTIER and very promiscuous. I ran and ran from God, and at times the guilt was unbearable.

After moving around and countless failed relationships I returned back to my roots with my two children. I worked with a wonderful Christian woman who loved me unconditionally with no condemnation. She was a constant witness for Jesus. And one evening she took me to a Christian church for a women’s Bible study and as I drove out from the parking lot I was so overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit that I pulled off the road and I immediately began sobbing. These were cleansing tears. I asked God to forgive my sins, confessed I wanted Him to be Lord of my life, and joyfully proclaimed that I believed Jesus Christ was God's son who died on the cross for my sin, was buried and raised back to life then ascended and has gone on to Heaven to prepare an eternal home for me.

I lifted up my eyes from the filth I had found myself in and I knew that He was there with His arms open wide ready to hold me, protect me, heal me, love me. I can never repay Him for all He’s done for me. Even attempting to do that would be futile. I just want to spend the rest of my life doing whatever He has me to do. I’m on fire to spread my love of Jesus to others. He has used me, and He is still using me, for most of all just trying to spread His Love and Good News on a daily basis to a hurting world around me. So many people need to hear that hell is still burning, heaven is still waiting, salvation is still available and Jesus is still the same.

You can’t doubt the sincerity here or the strength of conviction. These are reasonable responses social conditions that individuals have limited control over. Jesus is being humanized to extent that He becomes a companion and presence in the lives of people who testify and confess their salvation in this way.

I can argue about hell and hellfire because I’m a universalist, but I won’t argue that the people who testify in this way are wrong when they say that they have experienced something of hell in their lives. Hell and heaven so often become stand-ins for what we experience in our lives. I remember attending a Black church on Maryland’s Eastern Shore many years ago and hearing a woman who had left her community there and had gone to Philadelphia and returned testifying for a very long time and talking about her precarious mental state. The transition and disorientation of her move had been too much of her and she was finding her cure in her community and church. Consider how masses of Black people who had migrated from the Black Belt South to Chicago were so receptive to the early mystical teachings of what became the Nation of Islam. From the standpoint of having made it to Chicago their lives in the segregated and violent South often seemed like hell on earth. Every substance abuser whose life is saved is another Lazarus, and most know that. It's not at all far out, I think, that people will feel God's presence by a river or in the woods or with their children or ageing older ones and know something of heaven from those encounters.

Now, not every Christian has the experience of being saved in a dramatic moment or period in their lives, but they are no less Christian for that. My experience as been that many rural and working-class people, and especially people in the coal fields and what gets called the “Rust Belt,” don’t feel that the well-reasoned and intellectual discourse in a middle-class church is for us or open to us while n economically a politically better-off segment will only hear a logical exposition. There is nothing wrong with well-reasoned and intellectual discourse, working out one’s doubts over time, and being one over by argument over a long stretch of time.

Our ideas of heaven and hell can be more sentimental, and more exclusive and vindictive, than they are Scriptural. I have friends who call this out whenever they hear it, and I have friends who respond with Bible verses laying out the exact opposites of sentimentality, exclusivity, and vindictiveness. The good side of this is that its helpful that whenever someone says something about the nature of qualities of God based on Scripture that they then provide chapter and verse showing the opposite as well. We need to use this kind of reasoning. But most of us are sentimental about heaven for the reasons that our lives have been hard and we want to be with those who loved and protected us and who have now passed on. My advice is that you not stick a pin in people's sentimental balloons unless you are committed to going through life with them and working with them every day to show them something better.

My sentimental idea of heaven now is something like a chain of undisturbed green mountains and valleys as far as I can see, a clean Tug Fork River full of fish, animals around living in peace, a Bluetick coonhound with me, the spirits of Del McCoury and Ralph Stanley and Yara Allen with me, and all of my family members and ancestors and friends and those I sinned against and who sinned against me together and happy and praising God. My less sentimental heaven is a democratic socialism that works, service to one another, constant daily efforts to build justice between people and between people and the environment and animals.

When people ask me if I’m saved or not, or if I have accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and God and Savior, I usually have two responses. One I took from a Wooden Pulpit Podcast done by the Primitive Baptist Universalists (look up "Holston--A Primitive Baptist Universalist Church" on Facebook). Someone on the podcast made the point that the common idea is that we pray for salvation, but it is closer to the truth to say that we pray because we have been saved. Think on that, and if you can see the truth in that then think about if you ever heard that in church. My other response builds on what I heard for years in Orthodox churches. I have been saved through baptism, I am being saved by faith and works, and with God’s grace I will be saved. This is not the absolute certainty of the people whose testimony is given above, and it isn’t prolonged middle-class doubts being resolved through intellectual engagement. Neither of these is fully sufficient because my answers focus on me and salvation is a collective experience. There is a spectrum of valid responses to questions about our salvation, and we shouldn’t let others pressure us into being in a particular camp.

 

Help and spirituality for you today

You're in there somewhere!