Mary and I just returned from clergy conference at which internationally known church historian (and Episcopalian) Diana Butler Bass presented an inspiring and startling analysis of the state of Christianity in the post modern world. Her new book is entitled Christianity after Religion. In it she notes that despite declining numbers over the last five decades of people going to church among mainline denominations, that the vast majority of North Americans still say when surveyed that they consider themselves “religious and spiritual” whether they are going to church or not. Despite the spin of the news media, Atheism has not grown one iota during the past thirty years.
But in her analysis she found that people are no longer attracted to a church of rigid dogma and belief, churches run by varying degrees of hierarchy, of rules and regulations…churches in which order is paramount. This is the church that was filled to the brim just after World War II perhaps because people needed a rigid order in the face of the most chaotic and violent century in human history. In the fifties 90% of the membership of the Episcopal Church were born into the Episcopal Church; now, that figure has reversed, only 10% of Episcopalians are cradle Episcopalians. So over the past fifty years we have become much more diverse; we ordain women as priests and bishops. The church has participated in the civil rights movement; lived through the Vietnam debacle; revised the way we worship; much has changed in the latter part of this century that has shaped the church towards a new paradigm.
That is because the believer has changed, the ones who say they are spiritual and religious, the ones who say that so-called organized religion just doesn’t speak to them any more, and by organized, I’m speaking of the aforementioned paradigm, the one in which dogma and ‘right belief’ comes first, bolstered by a hierarchical ordered structure in which one comes to church to have church performed for them… structure being more important than our participation in it… Dr. Bass is not so much making a value judgement as to this paradigm, but is noting that this paradigm is dying and dying fast. The Episcopal Church she notes, and believes passionately, is poised to embrace the spirituality of the post modern believer.
The post modern person of faith doesn’t care for a rigid belief system; the post modern generations (X and Y and Millenneals) want first and foremost invitation, welcome, and connection….and they want relevancy and purpose; they want to question the doctrines of the old paradigm; they want mystery, beauty, and discovery; they want to make a difference in the world around them…belief then becomes in its own time, and belief must be believable…I tell newcomers all the time that though we say the ancient creeds and Eucharistic formulas, there is always room for speculation and discovery….If we at All Saints had a conversation about what we believed, I think we would see a church with a vast diversity of theology…That is a healthy thing. The Roman Church is fighting tooth and nail this inevitable shift. Pope Benedict himself has said that the Roman Church must become smaller, with a more precise and authoritative theology…He is succeeding.
Dr. Bass argues as an historian that we, our culture, which includes the church, is in the midst of a new awakening which actually began in the early sixties, slowed by the religious and political influence of the so-called Christian right, they too arguing for a narrow and rigid dogmatic faith…but faith now is finding its life more in orthopraxis than in orthodoxy….that is, finding life in “right practice” more-so than in “right belief.” Don’t get me wrong, believing is essential, but we must recognize that belief is formed and re-formed by the practice and experience of the faith community…belief (also in the Greek translated as “trust”) comes as we mature in the faith…as we participate in God’s very “changefulness”….the created order forever in transformation…forever awakening to the new…the exciting thing that is next….May we embrace such a life with integrity and grace, so that we may experience this life in Christ more deeply than ever before.
