Diana Butler Bass: July 2009 Archives

People often ask me why I don't blog more often in the crucible of the news cycle when an issue is "hot."  My friends and editors are always trying to get me to speed up--as I tend to be slow with my words.  Last week, for example, I was quiet as the war of words escalated between partisans in the Professor Gates/Cambridge police affair.  President Obama did, of course, jump in the fray with his poorly chosen assessment that the Cambridge police behaved "stupidly," only to apologize a couple of days later and invite the wronged parties to the White House for beer

President Obama's actions underscore my reticence to enter the blog-fray in heated battle.  By inclination and academic training, I'm a historian.  Historians believe that the more time we have to understand a situation, the better.   When seeing the picture of Professor Gates hauled away in handcuffs from his own house, I was shocked.  But I also suspected that something had happened of which I was unaware.  As a commentator, I had a sense of my own limitations.  Better, I thought, to let the picture speak for itself.  And better to hold back before starting to call someone names like "racist" or "bigot" or "idiot" or "rogue cop" or whatever.  The escalation is even more shocking than the original event--culminating yesterday with Glenn Beck calling President Obama a racist!

If nothing else, the events leading up to today's Beer Summit at the White House have underscored the importance of slow words.  Although progressive Christians are known for activism, liberal and progressive Protestantism also is marked by a commitment to intellectual analysis.  As a group, we are often painfully slow at decision-making--sometimes to the point of institutional paralysis.  But we are so slow because we believe that the world is a complex place that defies black-and-white (no pun intended) characterizations.  In particular, morality and ethics are often shades of grey, a shadowy realm of mixed human motives and less-than-perfect choices.  In my religious tradition, moving slowly is a spiritual practice--one that accounts for careful and thoughtful engagement with important ideas and events.

The progressive emphasis on thoughtful analysis is more than a matter of taste or the privilege of educated elites.  It is drawn from--what is arguably the most important of all liberal Christian sacred texts--the New Testament Letter of James.   This week's shouting match is well-described in this ancient paragraph:

For all of us make many mistakes . . . The tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits.  How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!  And the tongue is a fire.  The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell . . . No one can tame the tongue--a restless evil, full of deadly poison (James 3: 2-8).

The letter's author goes on to say that the tongue is corrected only by "works done with gentleness born of wisdom," by those who "make peace."  Quick and uninformed judgment must be restrained by a quest for wisdom.

Here, at Progressive Revival, Paul Raushenbush and I are trying to create a blog space that reflects the deepest virtues and values of mainline Protestant traditions--a way of being in the world that believes to hold back the tongue--even for a moment--creates the space for understanding, opens new possibilities, and allows us to glimpse God's reign.  Consideration, discernment, and thoughtfulness should never be an excuse to avoid action; rather, they should frame the way we act.  We're not in a contest for speed; we're on a journey toward wisdom. 

In the midst of the fray, I humbly invite spiritual progressives into a "slow word" movement.  Like the "slow food" movement that argues food must be savored to be healthy, so care-filled words also need to be digested in order to be wise, to act justly, and to make peace.  Slow words are a spiritual practice, one much needed in a world of junk politics and faux news events.  Slowing down, guarding our words, might reintroduce a measure of reality into our lives. In order to change the world, we must first learn to bridle the tongue.

Three news stories in recent days point to significant change in the landscape of North American religion.  For decades now, the conventional wisdom about church growth has been that only conservative churches--those that take the Bible literally and embrace conservative politics--could grow.  But it appears that conventional wisdom is being seriously questioned.

Take a look at these stories:

1.     The Southern Baptist Convention--the largest and most conservative Protestant denomination in the USA--records a continued decline in baptisms and an increasingly aging membership.  The oft-reported number of 18 million members has declined in the last decade to just over 16 million.  And, according to journalist Christine Wicker (see her book, The Fall of Evangelical Nation), the internal number of active members may well be around 5 million people.

2.     The Anglican Church of North America, the umbrella group for conservative Episcopalians who have left their denomination over women's ordination and full inclusion of gay and lesbian persons, has long claimed over 100,000 members.  Recently, they admitted that only 69,000 persons in 650 churches in the USA and Canada have joined their association. There are 2.2 million Episcopalians in the United States and approximately 1 million in Canada.  Thus, the conservative group--the one that has garnered so much media attention in recent years is a very small percentage of the entire North American Anglican membership--some 2% of the total.  And with their rigid opposition to women's ordination, it is hard to imagine that this group will find much appeal with young North Americans. 

3.     President Jimmy Carter last week publicly explained why he renounced his life-long affiliation with the Southern Baptists in an opinion piece appearing in The Age.  He denounced the Convention's leaders statement that women are inferior to men (created "second") and responsible for original sin as inherently discriminatory and that Southern Baptist views on gender were contrary to both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the teachings of Jesus. 

Taken singly, the stories might seem anecdotal.  But there are many other examples as well--the decline of Roman Catholicism among all demographic groups except new immigrant communities, the acceptance of LGBT inclusion among young evangelicals--and added together they are snapshots of what quantitative surveys have been pointing out for a couple of years--that membership decline isn't only the struggle of liberal churches.  As Jon Meacham wrote earlier this year in a Newsweek cover story, many conservative Christian groups aren't really doing very well, either.  The old accusation--and theological threat used by conservatives against mainline denominations--that the denominations have failed because they are too liberal--is now being proved false by both qualitative journalists and quantitative researchers.  Almost all Christian institutions are experiencing slowing growth and/or membership declines.  The only growing Christian churches in North America are "non-denominational," and those congregations are difficult to classify theologically because they are so diverse.

What is causing the erosion of Christianity in North America?  Most North Americans look at Christianity--especially as embodied in religious institutions--and find it wanting.  I suspect that Christianity is in decline because it appears both hypocritical and boring.  Although young North Americans express deep longings for a loving, just, and peaceful world, they don't find an equal passion for transforming society in meaningful ways in most congregations.  And, sadly, many churches simply lack the imagination and passion that many spiritual people are searching for.  Folks aren't looking for answers nearly as much as they are trying to clarify their questions and are hungry for accepting communities in which to ask them.

If you think about it, mainline liberal churches embody a theological vision of God's reign that resonates with contemporary hopes for social transformation.  But they often lack passion, acting on God's dream for the world in business-as-usual ways.  Conservative churches are chock-full of passion.  But they are often passionate about all the wrong stuff--like excluding people and supporting the military-and-economic status quo that is destroying the planet.  

Perhaps North American Christians are smarter than anyone suspects--that we are looking for congregations, communities and denominations that put the pieces together--passionate, imaginative, open, justice-seeking, inclusive, and loving gatherings of faith that actually live, as Jimmy Carter put it, "the teachings of Jesus Christ."  If progressive faith communities can be both--transformative and passionate--we may be better poised to reach a new generation than the "decline" bellyaching of recent decades suggests.  With the waning of conservative churches, it may well be the historical moment for the rest of us to step up the the spiritual plate.  

For the last month, I've been in Australia and only occasionally heard news from the United States.  I haven't minded too much missing arguments over health care and the Supreme Court confirmation hearings.  But I have fretted about missing the General Convention of the Episcopal Church--my own denomination's triennium meeting now happening in Anaheim.

I know that sounds a little crazy.  After all, what kind of church geek would be jonesing for a denominational meeting while looking out her hotel window at the Sydney Opera House? 

But this meeting was particularly important for Episcopalians.  Six years ago, in 2003, my church confirmed the election of Gene Robinson as the first openly gay bishop in the worldwide Anglican Communion.  That meeting made international news and led to a painful theological backlash from conservative Anglicans and some churches in Africa and South America.  Three years later, in 2006, the Episcopal Church passed a resolution of "restraint" at the convention, committing itself to conversation and no further ordinations of bishops whose "manner of life" (i.e., they were gay or lesbian persons) was offensive to other Anglicans.  This, too, made news as conservative Anglicans launched a political and legal assault to divide the Episcopal Church and drive a wedge between American Episcopalians and the larger body of Anglicans around the world.

And now, in 2009, six years have passed.  Episcopalians have done a lot of talking, some serious crying, much worrying, and have tried to honor the wide diversity of Anglicans around the world.  We didn't ordain any more gay or lesbian clergy as bishops.  We practiced restraint.  We listened.  We tried to be nice.  We prayed.  Yesterday, the Convention meeting in Anaheim summed up what Episcopalians have learned in that process.

By a 2-1 margin, Episcopalians agreed "that through our own listening the General Convention has come to recognize that the baptized membership of The Episcopal Church includes same-sex couples living in lifelong committed relationships characterized by fidelity, monogamy, mutual affection and respect, careful, honest communication, and the holy love which enables those in such relationships to see in each other the image of God."  And the Episcopal General Convention equally has come to understand "that God has called and may call such individuals, to any ordained ministry in The Episcopal Church."  In plain English, the Episcopal Church has now formally recognized the lived reality of faithful same-sex Christian couples in our community and that the Holy Spirit may call persons in such relationships to Christian ministry--even the ministry of bishop. 

This affirmation doesn't demand that anyone do anything or anyone be forced to believe something they find offensive.  Indeed, in the resolution, the church stated that Christians are not of a unified mind and that Christians "of good conscience" may disagree in regards to these concerns.  But the resolution also does two important things:  1) it recognizes that many, many Episcopalians are perfectly comfortable and open to being part of a diverse spiritual community that includes gay and lesbian brothers and sisters; and 2) that local dioceses may chose their bishops by discerning the best candidate for ministry without restriction placed on sexual identity. 

Some may argue that the Episcopal Church has broken faith.  No, Episcopalians are struggling to be faithful and to live justly as our society widens its understanding of human relationships and marriage.  The attempt to do so is not somehow "secular" or untraditional.  Rather, adapting to local cultures is an important part of being Anglican. 

Around 600, Pope Gregory the Great saw a group of blond-haired children in a slave market and was told they were "Angli," or "Angles," from Britain.  Gregory replied, "Not Angles, but Angels" and dispatched missionaries to the British Isles.  He instructed the missionaries to work within the context of the culture they encountered in order to preach the gospel and spread the church.  These first missionaries accommodated their message to many of the spiritual practices they found in pagan England.  It is deeply Anglican to believe that God works within human cultures, in all their variety.  As recently as 1988, when African Anglican bishops asked that the church permit polygamy as a Christian practice, western Episcopalians and Anglicans approved the tradition of multiple wives as an appropriate expression of faith in some cultural contexts. 

The same Anglicans who have been mad about Gene Robinson for six years will continue to be angry.  The same Anglicans who have threatened schism will continue to threaten.  Maybe Anglicans in the rest of the world won't understand.  Some people will see this as unbiblical.  But, trying to figure out faith in particular cultural contexts is Anglican tradition.  For 1400 years, Anglicans have believed weaving together the message of Jesus with human culture and experience is the best way to embody the love of God and neighbor.  We don't always do that perfectly, but we are trying.  After all, we're Anglicans not Angels.