Micah Bales asked a deep question. He suggests that the wealth in property we've inherited is hindering our work for social justice. He talks provocatively (as a spiritual challenge, he clarifies) about "burning the meetinghouse." He asks, "What would happen if we put the movement of the Spirit ahead of property management?"
As I passed churches the other day I asked myself, "If there are so many churches in America, why does America look so unlike the Kingdom of God?" Why are we strangers to our neighbors? Why do we have homeless poor among us? Why do sweatshops produce the majority of our goods? Why do we have the greatest per-capita incarceration rate in the world? Why are we choking the earth with fossil fuels?"
Many non-Christians lay the sins of our nation and even the world at the feet of the church. After all, a 77 percent of us self-identify as Christians (in 2009). So why is it that the Christian faith, the self-avowed enemy of greed, has allowed this world to happen?
I think that our churches have been slowly converted by the logic of the market, a logic which Paul called "the world." Jesus called his disciples to disregard the economy, and later, in the midst of the Roman empire, the Acts church built centers of economic and spiritual wholeness that offered a concrete alternative to the mandatory emperor-worshipping cult which was physically represented by Caesar's head on the golden coin: the money system. There was a prophetic imagination alive in the Acts church.
Churches have great power to build alternative communities that embody another way of thinking, one that is rooted in love and relationships. As Bill McKibben puts it, "Among the institutions of our society, only the communities of faith can still posit some reason for human existence other than the constant accumulation of stuff." But these communities have been eroded by forces that are far bigger than us. Have we lost our rooting?
In fact, many American churches have accepted much of the logic of industrial capitalism even while our faith calls us into love. Our economic system treats people and places like things, as interchangeable and, ultimately, disposable. Has this cancerous logic entered our own thinking in some ways? Who do we consider important and who do we consider riff-raff?
As I drove, I thought about the fact that the very physical locations of churches testify to a different past. Churches are distributed through every conceivable neighborhood, reminders of a time when community churches were places people broke bread together, shared economic hardship and expressed faith together. Almost all of our old churches have kitchens, and there's a reason for that. Kitchens create the food for the table, and the table is where the church gathers to break bread.
Today, locations are no longer supposed to matter. We live in a telecommuting, globalized world, where specialized jobs ask us to move from the communities of our birth. We don't hesitate: cell phones, Skype and Facebook help us maintain an illusion of community from remote. We keep up with friends halfway across the country better than we do with our neighbors. I myself have put down deep roots in four communities: Indianapolis, Bloomington, Chicago and Washington, D.C. I feel like I have scars on my heart from each transplant.
But the real problem of distance is that we can do very little to help our friends and family so far away. We cannot bring them medicine when they're sick, share meals and community each evening, babysit their children, or take them into our homes when they are evicted. These acts of mercy are the practical mechanics of the Gospel. You can't build the Kingdom of God's economy from remote.
Our churches with their empty kitchens look like shells now. Or maybe they look like kindling, as my brother and friend Micah points out. They look like pieces of firewood, and it's a cold night where we could use a fire.
Have we stood aside while we gutted the earth for her fossil fuels and outsourced industrial slavery to developing nations?
A new generation rises up to ask, "Why?" Millenials instinctively understand the urgency of our historical moment. Yet, my generation understands least of all the importance of places. And why would we? Our schools and jobs don't teach us this.
We see the unused kitchens in our churches and we wonder what purpose they ever served.
Let's not burn our churches. Let's light the hearth-fires of hospitality and invite strangers in to warm themselves.
But what else in this world that can stand against the tides of history and technology other than the church? Many Anabaptists certainly have held their ground, and many churches have kept pockets of our prophetic economic imagination alive with holy cooperatives, homeless shelters, mutual aid, jobs ministries and gleaning networks.
Let's show my generation why places matter. People like The Simple Way offer me hope that we can root our communities in sustainable practices that can reduce global demand for industrial slave labor. Local grassroots organizers like Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light are greening churches and building a movement to confront climate change. WWF's Sacred Earth project is helping green Tibetan monasteries (6,000 of them!). Interfaith Worker Justice is organizing faith-labor partnerships, and Sojourners and Wild Goose are inquiring about justice nationally. By Their Strange Fruit is asking hard questions about now we treat our neighbors. Give Us Names is working on displacement in Colombia, and Occupy Our Homes is asking why government-funded banks displace people from their homes without negotiation or warning instead of offering them opportunities to refinance.
Personally, I founded the Quixote Center's Crabgrass Christians Initiative, building a network of churches which will buy food directly from local farmers, using the Eucharist as a lens to re-think food and community. Our program seeks to re-kindle the kitchen fires in our churches, and create strong, healthy communities that can nourish us through this recession.
Who's doing work for social justice and environmental sustainability in your area? Can your church partner with them?
I could lift up more people and organizations, but you get the idea. All these projects are pieces of the solution to this mess. If we each begin a piece of Gospel labor that is nearest to us, and remain faithful, we'll see fruit in 10 years. I pray that it will not be too late.
Amen.
Follow Jeremy John on Twitter: www.twitter.com/glassdimlyfaith
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How does one deny the existence of 1 Timothy 3:1-7, when considering the rapid daily occurrences of unusually violent incidents in places not usually associated with these types of incidents? Strange, unusually harsh weather phenomenon, an obvious collapse of moral values, etc. Are these all-mere coincidences bolstered by one’s desire to overly emphasize Bible relevancy?
Some would allege that these occurrences although unusually harsh, more frequent in numbers, of longer duration, isn't new, and that incidents of violence have always been on the increase because of the ability of perpetrators to move from place to place at will thereby avoiding the attention of law enforcement authorities and the possibility of treatment.
When a nation can justify lambasting the Name of God in a public arena called the media in the name of free speech, everything is on the verge of moral collapse. Comedians, pop singers, and others notables will one day realize that God is.
A church is really the people in a community and not richly oranmented buidings. Unfortunately, we see churches assembling money to purchase and maintain large edifices for He who found a stable as a proper place to be born.
"Here is the church. Here is the steeple. Open the door and see all the people."
The church is not a building; it is the people.
The people make the church what it is.
Jesus said "For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them." (Matthew 18:30)
What is interesting about this is that the Quran teaches us to honor Jesus equally to Muhammad, peace be upon them. Muslims can know his presence when they discuss the teachings of Jesus together. Sufis often feel very deep connections to both Jesus and Mary, peace be upon them. So if Muslims sit in a mosque to hear a khutba on Jesus, it is a type of church.
On Little Mosque on the Prairie, the Muslims worshiped in a Christian Church.
Hindus also often worship Jesus, with images of him on their altars. In that sense, the altar where a Hindu family gathers and prays to Jesus is a church.
May we continue to love God who is too big to fit in one religion.
A Blessed Ramadan to all creation.
The "church" is not only a building but more importantly, a community of believers wherever they are at a given time. As a believer, anyone can do God's will, feed the hungry and homless,speak out on injustice etc. all for the glory of God.
Rather than keep your "good work" behind a edifice, being part of the community at large is the best way to serve and show God's love for a needy world. PEACE
Duh.
First, what does the church have to do with social justice? How are they promoting social justice? By opposing equality? By dogmatically promoting discrimination on the basis of gender, race, sexuality, belief, etc?
Even if it was a net good, how much money goes into just sustaining the organization itself?
From my understanding, many churches spend 40-60% of their budgets on personnel and 20-30% on facility costs (which includes, but is not limited to, the building).
That leaves 10-30% for... well... the "cause". A certain porton of that cause involves getting people to believe fairy tales: Virgin Birth, Talking Snake, Faith Healing, etc.
What portion actually affects positive social change (ie. feeding starving kids, taking care of the sick and frail, and training/encouraging people to do the same, etc.) is relatively small when compared to the cost of "doing business" as a church.
American Church, listen to Jesus: Sell your brick and mortar buildings. Give the money to the poor you are trying to "reach". Or maybe just let the community use your buildings from Monday to Saturday... when they sit air conditioned and empty, waiting for the next weekend's offering... er... worship service.
I don't necessarily view religious teachings as historically true, but as spiritual stories they point to many truths. And contemplating on spiritual stories can polish the heart and make it more compassionate, more loving, more generous. It doesn't really matter if Mary was virgin. It matters that the son of Mary, Jesus Christ, is a teacher of the heart for every Christian.
Basically, everything about Jesus is summed up in one word. "Love".
Have hope. Its not as bad as it may seem.
Experience Life among the Ordinary and read more at
http://lifeamongtheordinary.blogspot.com/2012/06/thomas-jeffersons-personal-pursuit-of_17.html
So I agree with Thomas Jefferson. I actually prefer Gnostic Gospels and also the Gospels of the Essenes.
It's heartening that there *are* people, probably at least a few in every church, who see the false promises of power, prestige, and possessions, and who actively work to establish the Kingdom on earth. Although they are few in number, remember that Jesus said that the road is narrow that leads to life. They have always been working in the church, and they always will be. Their successes may be measured at the level of individuals and families and don't show up in statistics, but I've come to realize that that's all we can realistically hope for and the only thing that we can truly control.