"For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord ...but share with me in the sufferings for the gospel according to the power of God, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began." --2 Timothy 1:7-10 (NKJV)
I suppose there really are some Christians out there who resonate with and build their vocational lives around responding to, fending off or otherwise getting caught up in dealing with the question of the so-called "death of liberal Christianity." I, however, am not one of them. That is not to say that I don't get that the church is in trouble. Of course I do, and of course it is.
What else is the church but "in trouble" when commentators such as Ross Douthat in his recent New York Times piece, "Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?" describe the struggles of those in mainline denominations to build a more inclusive communion as attempting to "adapt itself to contemporary liberal values," for the sake of its own survival, rather than as an expression of the Gospel made real in our own day? What else is the church but "in trouble" when the passé perspective of Bishop John Shelby Spong can be trotted out as an impetus for progressive leaders to fight for LGBTQ equality or the creation of multifaith community, rather than claiming these as prophetic movements of the Spirit within and among the people of God?
Of course Douthat would respond that it is exactly because liberal Christians have dropped the ball on making an essential connection between their justice work and the deeper spiritual and doctrinal mandates of the faith that is the problem. And to a certain extent I believe he has a point. Liberal Christians do need to put aside whatever spirit of fear it is that prevents them from in every and all instance proclaiming that their justice work is nothing less than what the mandates of Christian faith require. Liberal Christians need be unafraid to make the confession of a belief in the saving power and presence of Jesus Christ the foundation for their action in the world. And then liberal Christians need to roll up their sleeves for the harder work of not only mining the resources of Scripture and tradition to support such proclamations, but they need to do so in a way that real folks, struggling in real congregations, in the real world can understand, embrace and act upon.
All of this is true, and yet to frame this mandate in terms of a quest to save liberal Christianity is not just wrong. It is the antithesis of a Gospel message. Teaching and preaching the love and justice seeking and making Gospel of Jesus Christ does not have anything to do with a quest to ensure the survival of institutional bodies and ecclesiastical groupings, be they liberal or conservative, left-wing or right, evangelical or progressive. Living and preaching, teaching and engaging the Gospel of Jesus Christ is only and always about making a wider way for God's beloved creation to be able to live and know itself as exactly that. Whenever the church is able, by God's grace, to succeed in bringing this message to vital and purposeful life then its continuation is worth fighting for and celebrating. But when it does not I have to wonder if its demise is more blessing than curse.
Paul Brandeis Raushenbush: Ask Pastor Paul: How Can I Be a Lesbian and Stay in My Church?
Brandon G. Withrow: Enough with Co-opting Jesus for Every Political Agenda
Mike Lux: Jesus vs. the Christians
I came to the Church for RELIGION--not preaching or teaching or opportunities for volunteer work or community organizing or social justice programs or moral guidance or garbage about the “meaning of life.” I came for metaphysics, mysticism, religious/aesthetic experience, and contact with the supernatural through liturgy and the sacraments—that is, RELIGION. Yup.
Most people aren’t interested in religion, so of course they aren’t going to bother with church. If they want to do good there are ample opportunities in the secular world for social service, political action and projects aimed at making the world a better place. Churches have nothing of value to offer in this regard. The only thing they have to offer that the secular world doesn’t provide is RELIGION—metaphysics, mysticism, liturgy, ceremonies and rituals—churchiness. I personally have no interest in doing good: I’m interested in religion.
I love churchiness, but it’s a special taste. Some people like it; most don’t. But churches can’t appeal to those who don’t because they have nothing else of value to offer. The whole business of churches is churchiness. However that being the case they need to give us what WE, the religious, want. Religion is for the religious: give me incense or give me death! Woof, yah!
“Liberal” churches are losing members NOT because they’ve accepted a liberal moral agenda (which which I agree) but because they’ve repudiated supernaturalism, the metaphysics of Christianity, and reconstituted liturgy as a teaching experience—a mechanism for manipulating and bullying people.
Give us mysticism, the supernatural, religious experience, dammit!
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/what-is-liberal-christianity/
Liberal Christianity to me is about embracing the experiences of the people around us on their terms, Christian or not, and trusting in God to resolve understanding between you. Its at times risky because it can take you outside a safe haven, but the rewards are much greater both for you and the people you come into contact with.
Its especially important now with the high level of organisation of those forces rallying against Christian precepts.
But ultimately people have different approaches and expressions of their faith, and I also believe their validity to the human experience and their bond with God's truth, will determine their survival.
I think Christianity has a role to play in society much as the vested non religious interests like the corporate, consumerist world would resist their "right" to have free rein of our moral destiny. It needs to both embrace human endeavour and provide its own moral light on any perceived moral failure.
It is in the monetarist corporate agenda to resist this because they rely on inequality to maximise profit.
Its not an easy path but its a necessary one for churches. Failure to do so calls into question a whole raft of spiritually inappropriate modes of sexual expression, tacitly accepted by the church for the purpose of keeping open the spiritual path to redemption and access to the faith community.
That's not to say the dogma should change, just the extent to which the community should bend to allow God's love to flow through to them. Its a challenge to both communities. A big one.
@ Pole, Corporate salvation failed miserably in ancient Israel, just as Pope/Mary graven image worship does as well.
There is only one type of "Christ follower", read Foxes book of Martyrs** to recognize them.
**http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22400/22400-h/22400-h.htm
It's all bunk, every word. The religion is about control, nothing more.
Religion's job is to make sense of life. For most of Western Civilization, the church defined what "sense" meant. No more. One writer has described our condition as a matter of "vertigo." The shift from looking up to looking around (from rationalism to empiricism) makes us dizzy.
Some liberal Christians (such as Ralph Waldo Emerson) have been dealing with that intellectually since before the American Civil War. True, the majority of church goers have not been paying attention. Perhaps the time has come when they finally do. If so, the foundations for a a religion of immanence rather than of transcendence (or better transcendent immanence, as author Mark C Taylor puts it in AFTER GOD) are under construction. Ask and you shall receive.
For me, this is exactly what happened with the church's failure to prevent slavery, colonialism and now with monetarism.
Of course if you don't have a corporate profile, you don't have the clout to deliver a powerful unified moral message, so you need to allow free rein to the more adventurous expression of faith like the Jesuits, protestantism, atheist humanism itself even, to kick the corporate behemoth back into gear.
They don’t take time to understand Christianity, just as they’re unclear on the constitution, law ( by which I mean the theory of what actually constitutes crime), economics, and science and so on
The monstrous pseudo-liberal and pseudo-religious hybrids results in neither party being happy and is destroying constitutional democracy and all reasoned and reasonable things.
Cut them off!
Do what the first amendment intends and stop the vested and 'Funded' right
(they haven't a clue how to behave in civilised society anyway, not a clue)!
If one wants to follow ‘Their’ Christianity then do so, don’t impose it because too many find it an unwelcome intrusion, the Danbury Baptists certainly did, and their ‘enemy’ was practically a twin.