Stories of Faith
The major thrust of the following article is that traditional Christian
religion
has largely become boring for believers. This characterization
oversimplifies
the gist of a thoughtful essay, but to make a point...
Why is traditional Christian faith "boring." Why it is boring when it is ?
It isn't always boring, it can be very important and meaningful in one's
life.
What, then, is boring about it ?
Here is my theory : It is because of a limited set of stories. Granted,
the
sheer number of stories in the Bible is vast. The trouble is that in the
course
of a lifetime, actually long before one reaches solid middle age, just
about
everyone has heard all of the major stories , usually dozens of times,
and a good representation of the minor stories, also multiple times.
This is not a commentary on the truth value of these stories. Personally
I think that most are either historically true, or, at a minimum, contain
vital truths in a mythic context. The point is simply that these stories
are repeated indefinitely and, for many people --probably most people--
they become less and less vital and engaging.
Here is where the value of an ecumenical perspective is important.
To use this example, suppose that you add stories about the life
of Buddha to the collection of stories that a faith regards as expressing
genuine spiritual truths ? Or stories from ancient Mesopotamia that
provide precursors to many OT stories ? Or some ( by no means all )
of the stories which early Christians knew but that did not make it
into the NT ? Like the Acts of Thecla, or maybe the Shepard of Hermes.
This is not to say that adding such stories will be easy ; quite the
opposite.
It may be very difficult. But this does assume careful selection such that
any added stories are congruent with the traditional Christian message.
They don't have to agree with each and every particular, since that
would be impossible, but they need to "fit" into the broader picture,
to reinforce critical lessons or values
In the case of Buddha, for instance, keep in mind that during the
Middle Ages the life of Gautama was known in the West and
understood to be that of a Christian saint, there are that many
correspondences of value and outlook. Buddha, to medieval
Christians was known as Jehosaphat, if you'd like
to look it up, generally paired with the name Barlaam.
This suggestion is made with awareness that the Unitarians, and
some others, already do this. But I don't think they do it very well,
and they may do it poorly because, for the religious Left, stories
must be supportive of a non-spiritual ideology. We can call this
ideology "secular humanism," which is OK as a shorthand but which
is too much of a stereotype for anything like scholarly accuracy.
But as an easy way to refer to the phenomenon..........
Now the point is that the purpose of adding good, relevant, inspirational
stories should be strong desire to let the stories speak for themselves
and to seek new levels of meaning in them as they might relate to our
convictions and values. That would be a very different matter.
Then you would have a situation is which stories of faith would be much
more numerous than is now the case, more varied in nature, and present a
whole
range of challenges. The effect would be like adding a whole Testament
to the Bible, or, at a minimum, a new Apocrypha.
Not everyone would agree on how far to take this. For myself, I am a
maximalist about it. This doesn't mean that there should be a 'million'
new stories, but certainly well into the hundreds and maybe somewhat more.
After all, the spiritual literature of the world is enormous in scope and
most people are unaware of just how vast this is. But even a minimalist
view could effect major changes, like just adding Thecla and, say,
some Mesopotamian sagas.
In either case, the entire "story dimension" of faith would undergo
a profound transformation --for the better.
Would there be problems ? I think so. But what is the price in
terms of problems in perpetuating the status quo ? Seems to me
if is far better to make the transition. To take this leap of faith.
So that faith can be renewed.
Billy
=======================================
mm Ministry Matters
Church for the Unaffiliated
* By _James K. Wellman, Jr. _
(http://www.ministrymatters.com/all/article/author/james_k_wellman_jr)
* Posted on October 17th, 2012
The American religious landscape is experiencing some fundamental changes.
The _recent Pew Report_
(http://www.pewforum.org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx) highlights
findings that question many of the assumptions that
previous religious leaders and scholars have had about the American people.
Pew points out that the rate of the unaffiliated is rising, and for those
under thirty, it reaches to a third of this younger generation. And even
more telling is that this group, who claim no religious affiliation, often
remain believers in God and spiritual in various ways, but they are not
seeking a religion; they are happy with what they have.
This upends scholarship of the 1980’s and 1990’s, in which the younger
generation was portrayed as “seekers”, and many growing churches were called
“seeker-friendly.” What if today, no one is seeking? And even more
pointedly, what if people are not buying what churches and other religions are
trying to sell? And how will religious leaders deal with the fact that there
are fewer potential members even interested in religion?
Has something fundamentally changed in how Americans do faith? Is there a
shift in American religion?
In Mark Chaves’s American Religion: Contemporary Trends (Princeton 2011),
Chaves highlights the continuities of American religion but it is the
discontinuities that stand out. Chaves, like the Pew Report, shows that in 1957
only three percent of Americans would mark “no religion” in surveys, today,
17 percent make the claim. More to the point, in 1924, 91 percent of
Americans agreed that Christianity was the only true religion, and today only
41
percent make the same claim. Even more striking is that today three
quarters of Americans say that another religion (besides their own) can offer
a
true way to God. So, while a third of Americans are born again, nearly one
in five claim no religion, and the majority accepts a pluralist vision of
religion in America. Today, to not believe is a live option. And when one
does believe, there is much less certainty that one’s belief is the only one
or the right one.
We truly live in an open religious market; where in many regions of the
country there is no expectation of religious affiliation, of attending and
becoming members in religious institutions. In my own region, the Pacific
Northwest, there is, in fact, a kind of reverse pressure: Why would you attend
church or synagogue? And if you do there is little prestige or status
related to it, in fact, to some degree one must defend being religious and
being
committed to a religious organization. Most youth sports and academic
programs now regularly schedule practices and events on Sunday mornings.
So where does that leave religious leaders in the country? In light of my
research on American religion and my recent book on Rob Bell and a New
American Christianity, I have three observations:
1. You Can't Be Boring
Religious leaders have very little tradition in families and communities to
bank on for potential membership. In a sense, a religious leader must
produce a religious product that creates a world and a story that can energize
a community toward a goal and purpose that people would not normally seek.
This makes the task of the religious leaders incredibly demanding and
daunting. There has to be a very good reason to go to church or synagogue. The
quality of what is offered must be at least as good and as engaging as what
other secular and sometimes other spiritual products might be offering.
Some find this too hard.
But in the case of Rob Bell, who created the Mars Hill Church in 1999, Bell
took it for granted that no one would come to church unless he made it so
engaging and so relevant to their lives that there was no other place that
they would rather be. In a period of a year and a half, he went from a
1,000 in attendance to 10,000 coming to three services on Sundays. Bell put on
a show, the energy was contagious and people wanted to come. So, instead of
complaining about how no one is faithful, Bell embraced it and created a
compelling presentation and message that people sought out.
2. Go Beyond Liberal and Conservative
The old culture wars between conservatives and liberals are not only dead
but boring. Because of the saturation of higher education, conservatives who
claim a literal belief in scripture, and that the Bible is somehow a kind
of history book and or a science text book simply holds little water for
more and more people. And this is particularly true for those in the younger
generation; an inerrant Bible is no longer plausible. Nonetheless, the
moral codes and values of many conservative churches still do make sense; many
find faithfulness and a strong family life important. But even here,
younger evangelicals are more accepting of their gay peers. At the same time,
the
boilerplate liberalism that claims that religion is always and only about
social justice, gay rights, and marriage equality, simply falls flat.
Liberal religionists who claim that miracles don’t happen and that God no
longer
speaks to them, is equally as narrow in its own way.
What I found in Bell is a kind transcending of these hard boundaries and
one-dimensional universes. Bell holds up a vision of family values,
faithfulness, and even moral purity that was attractive; but what he thought
really
mattered was what Christians did with the gospel both in compassionate
service to the poor and marginalized and in care for one another. For him,
dogmas and claims of inerrancy turned the “flesh of the gospel back into
words," when the gospel and the preacher’s task is to “turn the word into
flesh.”
But Bell was no liberal avatar or cold rationalist. Bell believes that
God is bigger than our labels and concepts that construct for him. God can
heal; God can speak; God’s love will win in the end. And finally, for Bell,
and this I found this to be his greatest gift, a style biblical preaching
can make the Word of God en-fleshed for its hearers. For Bell, the story of
scripture comes alive in his preaching in ways that moved his church to love
one another, to spend millions on AIDS prevention and building thousands
of wells for water in Africa.
3. Earn People's Attention
Here is the message: No longer is there a safety net for religious leaders.
Success will not given to them on a platter. They must make their religion
matter. They must make it engaging. They must make it plausible. They must
earn their congregations. And perhaps this is a good thing.
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
