Here Lies the Church

So the theme in our Sunday School/Discussion Group/Still figuring it out the last few weeks has revolved around the idea that Christianity has been losing relevancy in the last few decades. The thing is, I think that the "mainstream church" has been losing relevancy for much longer. In fact, like many others, I would say that the church has been losing relevancy since Constantine made it a state religion. What followed, I would argue, has been for the most part a series of church manifestations which have served more to maintain power in the hands of some and to keep others oppressed.

The thing about Christianity is that it has been fundamentally incompatible with the pursuit of power since its foundations. To make it work as a tool for personal or social gain, it has to be subverted to the point of unrecognizability. For almost 2000 years, the populace at large was unaware of this, as most were too illiterate to read scripture for themselves, and those who did question what the state/church was telling them were persecuted by an institution whose founders were themselves the victims of persecution.

During the 20th century, a lot of things happened. A lot of thinking type fellows describe what happened during the past hundred years as a movement from the modern world to the postmodern world. Describing postmodernism would take forever, since it is not fully defined itself, but there are a lot of ideas that have come out of postmodern thinkers and writers that presented a deep threat to church elites. The main threat was the idea that absolute truth was in the eye of the beholder. In otherwords, what is actually the real truth about anything cannot be known with 100 percent certainty. Fundamentalists have been dismissing this idea as immoral for the better part of fifty years. What hasn't been done as much is to ask why such an idea would threaten the church. I think the biggest problem for many within the church is that they are in danger of losing the power to tell others what is right and wrong, true and untrue, without some kind of perspective or reason. When people question you, it is hard to control them. You have to engage with them on equal ground.

So we updated our rituals and made things look like the culture at large, but continued to tell people the same thing once they got in the doors. Obviously it hasn't worked. The answers the church is used to giving people do not answer the life questions they are asking. People want meaning in there lives, to know how they can love and be loved, and we tell them to accept Jesus Christ as their savior.

Things are changing, however. There are a lot of thinking and feeling Christians out there engaging in ancient ways. By ancient ways what I mean is that there were certain ideals and ways of engaging with people the Jesus discussed in the Bible exemplified that, on their own merit, drew people to him to the point of accepting persecution. Heaven wasn't a goal, it was a state of mind for these people. They adopted the attitude of Christ, as much as they could, and it became their way. Before there was a Bible, or church doctrine, or 5 steps to being a Christian.

My friend Kevin asked us if we (the church) were hibernating or awakening, and I think the question is complex. The church as it had been is dying. It just is, and it's time to accept that. I don't think the church will always be a dominant religious or political force forever. But I do think people will start to re-engage with the character of Christ. There are a lot of people struggling through the questions of faith, but with a desire to have the kind of love in action that they see in Christ, and it is beautiful. Christianity has always done best as a voice in the wilderness, offering an alternative to a system of dominance and subserviance in the form of mutual servanthood in love.

I have been in hibernation long enough. I've put my spirituality aside to get myself back together, but I'm waking up now. The Church proper may be increasingly irrelevant, but I think the spirit and character of Christ is as relevant as ever. It is a difficult way, with little in the way of obvious rewards, but it should be obvious that the way of success by any means is killing us as a society. We need different ways, and there is something in what was once called "The Way" that seems to present an awful lot of good ideas.

I will point out that I've breezed through an awful lot of material here, so this discussion is far from being properly contextualized. Hopefully I'll be discussing these things more in depth over time, but for now I just hope you'll join the conversation, regardless of your own viewpoint.

~Phil