Over-sized mansions, super-sized French fries, and sport utility vehicles. These are the marks of contemporary America, and we're proud of them. After all, these are the tangible products of the "American dream," a concept that promotes ingenuity and hard work as the means to financial abundance. We are a people who believe in certain unalienable rights--life, liberty, and the pursuit of opulence. Wouldn't questioning the validity of such things be, well, un-American?
Actually, a new generation of American faithful is questioning whether such things are inconsistent with the Christian Gospel. The way of Jesus, they say, is focused on others rather than self, on generosity not wealth. While the American dream exalts personal promotion, the Christian Gospel emphasizes downward mobility. We become the greatest when we become the least.
Proponents of this paradigm highlight Jesus' teaching that it is nearly impossible for the rich to enter God's kingdom (Mark 10:25), and that a poor person is in a better position to receive the Gospel (Luke 6:24-25). Jesus did, after all, make clear that God and money are at odds, and we much choose which we'll serve (Matthew 6:24). Such may be a shocking revelation for some American Christians trying to clinch both.
A prominent voice leading this charge is David Platt, a Southern Baptist minister who became "the youngest megachurch pastor in America" at age 26. His new job bred in him uneasiness in light of what he sees as the New Testament message, and inspired his New York Times bestselling book, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream.
Jesus, he says, was a "mini-church pastor" who made following him difficult. He turned people away with exhortations to eat his flesh and drink his blood (John 6:53) and hate your family (Luke 14:26). Christ was laser-focused on the poor and oppressed, and often had harsh words for the wealthy. Christians who think like Platt emphasize Jesus' exhortation to the rich, young ruler to give up his wealth and follow him (Matthew 19:16-22). As they see it, Jesus doesn't just upset the rich, young ruler; it upset rich Americans.
But this radical Jesus isn't the Lord preached in many pulpits today, is it? Our Americanized Jesus seems to be okay with massive building budgets, suburban estates, and personal wealth, even in the face of global poverty, suffering, disease and hunger. The average church today spends more money on personnel and utilities than missions or benevolence. Our silence on this discrepancy indicates that we believe the Son of Man is cool with the set-up.
[Related: View Chris Seay's Q Talk on "Consumerism."]
"When we gather in our church building to sing and lift up our hands in worship, we may not actually be worshiping the Jesus of the Bible," Platt writes. "Instead, we may be worshiping ourselves."
Platt's arguments aren't new. Ron Sider's book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity released decades ago and is now in its fifth edition. The new monastic movement, led by figures like Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hargrove, has also gained momentum in recent years. What's significant about Platt's perspective is that it is coming from a solidly conservative voice in the evangelical mainstream and has released in the midst of a financial crisis that's spurring a recalibration of economic norms.
"Platt's arguments are old, but they emerge at a postexcess moment, when attitudes toward material life are up for grabs. His book has struck a chord. His renunciation tome is selling like hotcakes. Reviews are warm," writes David Brooks of The New York Times. "Leaders at places like the Southern Baptist Convention are calling on citizens to surrender the American dream."
But that leaves cultural observers with a significant question: Will this "radical" Christianity have any real effect on the American Church?
It seems doubtful to me. Despite the squeeze placed on many church budgets and personal incomes by the recession, I don't see hordes of believers selling their possessions, moving to the developing world, or throwing off aspirations of affluence. I haven't. And I can't name a single megachurch pastor anywhere who has sold his or her church property and given the money to the poor. The distinctly American Gospel that tolerates luxury in the face of suffering doesn't seem to be fading at any measurable rate, despite the efforts of the Platts, Siders, and Claibornes.
David Brooks agrees: "I doubt that we're about to see a surge of iPod shakers. Americans will not renounce the moral materialism at the core of their national identity."
The strength of wealth's allure is now painfully apparent, but it is also disheartening. I often wonder what judgment Christians in 50 or 500 years will lay upon us when they survey our lifestyles through the prism of the New Testament. Will they look on us with bewilderment and disdain or will they sympathize with the dream we call "American?"
Only time will tell, but I for one hope that in time these revolutionary perspectives on faith will penetrate the ranks of the Christian elite as we consider together what it means to follow Jesus. Perhaps laying our homes, bank accounts, and SUVs at the feet of Christ for his glory and the sake of others is less radical and more reasonable than we realize.
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Have you read any of the works mentioned above, and if so, did you find them convincing? Do you see a move toward this "radical" type of Christianity in your life and faith community?
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Jonathan Merritt is a faith and culture writer and author of Green Like God: Unlocking the Divine Plan for Our Planet. This piece first appeared on QIdeas.org.
Follow Jonathan Merritt on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jonathanmerritt
Charles Howard: Peter Gomes: A Sermonic Life
Good postcolonial reading of NT check out Jesus and the Spiral of Violence by Richard Horsley. Authentic Christianity calls for a counter culture to the present culture. As in Exodus ethical living not only includes "morals" but also calls for an economic system that does not imitate the world. In the Gospels, Jesus sets up networks of common table fellowship and sharing as a counter to the Roman Empire.
Once we begin to think of our faith in terms of largeness instead of largess or in terms of measurable success or significant achievements or community stature or statistically significant gains or business models or congregational models or appropriate budget processes or cash flow direction or generally accepted accounting practices or independent audits or administrative requirements or managerial transparency or proper leadership roles and boundaries or membership trends or effective organizational structures - at that point, we have become the money changers - we have lost our faith and deserve to be driven away for we are neither living nor sharing the Good News.
“Doing” our faith has to be seen as a radical, counter-cultural, defiant way of living. By its very nature, our faith is not supposed to be institutionalized and not measured by largeness, cultural pervasiveness, or authoritarianism. Our faith is supposed to be personal and divinely humane. Our faithful doing is to be delivered person-to-person and face-to-face and not by an invisible faceless remote committee or collective.
RECLAIMING CHURCH
http://dmergent.org/2010/06/03/reclaiming-church/
Hopefully, and much sooner than 500 years from now, the world population will breath a collective sigh of relief that these hell-bent, apocalypse-crazy, money-laundering cults are no longer in existence.
Once we begin to think of our faith in terms of largeness instead of largess or in terms of measurable success or significant achievements or community stature or statistically significant gains or business models or congregational models or appropriate budget processes or cash flow direction or generally accepted accounting practices or independent audits or administrative requirements or managerial transparency or proper leadership roles and boundaries or membership trends or effective organizational structures - at that point, we have become the money changers - we have lost our faith and deserve to be driven away for we are neither living nor sharing the Good News.
“Doing” our faith has to be seen as a radical, counter-cultural, defiant way of living. By its very nature, our faith is not supposed to be institutionalized and not measured by largeness, cultural pervasiveness, or authoritarianism. Our faith is supposed to be personal and divinely humane. Our faithful doing is to be delivered person-to-person, face-to-face, one-to-one.
RECLAIMING CHURCH by Doug Sloan
http://dmergent.org/2010/06/03/reclaiming-church/
I saw the same parallel between radical Christianity and radical Islam and can say as an atheist that I can barely tell them apart.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-merritt/will-radical-christianity_b_719982.html
It is the content of you heart that matters ... Not the contents of your home.
organized religion has always been 90% about man - as in mostly a social institution
the mega churches are 65% about a going concern, hawking prosperity gospel wares on Sunday and dropping 100's K on Christmas paegants. They are really 95% about money and man.
The real radicals on the christian right a prime grade A whackadoos itching for a theocracy in this country and getting stiffies over the impending rapture.
I was raised pretty upper-middle class. My wife and I live in a modest little house. We laugh at McMansions and Hummers. No one ever got rich buying that garbage.
Average square footage in a house in America, according to the latest census numbers is 2,438 square feet.
For food serving size growth, check out the documentary "Super Size Me."
More useful would have been a profile of how American worship got disconnected from God--if it has. I'm not sure either way, but that's the article I'm looking for.
"We who are disciples of Christ claim that our purpose on earth is to lay up treasures in heaven. But our actions often belie our words. Many Christians build for themselves fine houses, lay out splendid gardens, construct bathhouses and buy fields. It is small wonder, then, that many pagans refuse to believe what we say. "If their eyes are set on mansions in heaven," they ask, "why are they building mansions on earth? If they put their words into practice, they would give away their riches and live in simple huts." So these pagans conclude that we do not sincerely believe in the religion we profess; and as a result they refuse to take this religion seriously. You may say that the words of Christ on these matters are too hard for you to follow; and that while your spirit is willing, your flesh is weak. My answer is that the judgment of the pagans about you is more accurate than your judgment of yourself. When the pagans accuse us of hypocrisy, many of us should plead guilty."