Sabbatical Journal 6

Combining my stays at Christ in the Desert and Ghost Ranch, I will have been in the same general locale for almost 8 days come Saturday. It is nice to settle for a while, especially when it comes to setting up and taking down camp. Packing everything up on a motorcycle is not the same as throwing things in the trunk. Every item must be folded and situated just so to get it all into the hard cases on my bike.

That said, I’ll be ready to start moving again when Saturday arrives. As much as I’m enjoying Ghost Ranch, and even though I’m not exactly sure what it is I’m looking for, I feel certain that I won’t find it here. If anything, this has felt like a respite from the searching. I might well have felt differently had I spent nearly a week at Christ in the Desert, but Ghost Ranch has a certain church camp/retreat familiarity to it, something I know well. I just spent a lovely lunch chatting with a retired couple from Florida. But he’s an elder in his church and we ending up talking about issues in his presbytery.

As to what it is I’m looking for, I’ve been thinking a lot about that. As best I can figure, there are a number of parts to it. One thing is simple energy. I’m just beginning to realize how burnt out I’d become. Even sermon writing, one of the things I most enjoy, had become difficult, largely duty and chore. Perhaps the varied perspectives of travel to unfamiliar places will help with that. Maybe that’s why I’m ready to move again.

Another thing I think I’m looking for is something a bit more than simple energy. It is a sense of spiritual energy or vitality. It’s the old, “Where is God in all this?” question. God seems to get lost in the routines, the day to day busyness, the meetings, the things that have to get done. Many people probably do not expect spiritual energy to be found within their work, so my experience is probably typical for lots of folks. But for over 20 years, I have found ordained, professional ministry to be spiritually life-giving. Not every moment of it, but on balance. Is that something that can be found on the road?

A thought just occurred to me as I write. My own loss of spiritual energy has largely coincided with the increasingly polarized political climate in our country. At the same time, the congregation I currently serve is populated largely by liberal or progressive Christians. And while that might seem to be a better “fit” for me than my previous congregations, I sometimes wonder.

My previous congregations were more of a mixed bag politically. We were not unified by our political leanings, and so we had to find our unity in following Jesus. This could have a down side if the only things we could agree on were vapid acts of charity or nice worship services. But at times it had a real up side. We didn’t really operate with any assumptions that our actions and stances would be liberal or conservative, and sometimes that allowed people who didn’t agree with each other politically to work together in good faith to figure out what God wanted of us. 

I wonder if congregations that are fairly monolithic politically, whether liberal or conservative, lose something in the process. They may avoid internal squabbles about current hot-button political or social issues, but might we mistake our politics for our faith at some point. Surely that is not a ticket to spiritual energy and vitality. And are there any answers for this out here on the road? 

Sabbatical Journal 5

I am not much familiar with chanting, as in Gregorian Chant. I do recall when recordings of monks chanting became popular for a bit some years back, and so I have heard it, but it isn’t something I typically listen to. I’ve was immersed in it for nearly two days at the monastery, however, and I have a new appreciation for it.

That is not to say it is likely to replace the Indie music that populates my playlist. My appreciation is for its use as a foundation for worship and prayer. If you’re not familiar, this sort of music uses a somewhat different sort of musical notation and it utilizes no harmonies. Those of us who were guest at the monastery were invited to participate in the chanting, but were also reminded that the purpose was to sing in one voice. No voice should be heard over any other, and the monks had much training in this. (In other words, sing quietly so we didn’t mess it up.)

There were some hymns that were sung along with with a Kyrie, Sanctus, and so on. But by far most of the singing chanted psalms and a few other scripture passages. For the psalms, the singing went back and forth from side to side. The left side sang two lines then the right side until the piece was complete. It was in the moments when I was on the non-singing side that I got the fullest sense of the “one voice” concept. Listening and not singing myself, I could hear the absolutely beautiful, pure sound of a single voice made up of many monks and a few of the guests. It was stunning to behold.

I think it was Dietrich Bonhoeffer who once wrote that all congregational singing should be in unison. He was not speaking of the chanting but of good old hymns like “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” Still, my recollection is that he was arguing for something similar to what the monks were seeking, a single voice lifted in worship to God.

I don’t recall the nuances of his argument so I won’t guess at them here. And I don’t know that I would never want to hear harmonies when we sing at church. But I do think that the singing of harmonies easily moves from worship to performance, and performance tends to be more about us, which only reinforces backwards notions of worship already so prevalent. (Think of the popular notion that worship is supposed to “feed” the worshiper.)

I suspect that the monks have much to teach us about worship. But we live in such different worlds and cultures, I wonder if they can be translated to where we can understand.

Sabbatical Journal 4

The monastery had a sleep late Saturday with morning vigil starting at 5:00 a.m. rather than 4:00. After a full 24 hours of the rhythms of life here, I can see the appeal, though I don’t think I would want to do it permanently. It would be nice to come for a week of so, to spend an extended time cut off from internet and news, living largely in silence, life completely ordered around chanted prayers, psalms, and worship, with work in the morning and time for meditation or reflection in the afternoon.

This afternoon I decided to go for a walk. I thought I might go back up the road to where I had seen the bighorn sheep the day before. My path from the guesthouse took me by the parking lot where I discovered my motorcycle had a nearly flat tire. My walk interrupted, it took me more than an hour to find the leak and repair it. But besides the aggravation and a lost hour and a half, I was able to continue my walk and slip back into he rhythms of the monastery.

But that aggravating interruption was a reminder that I had only borrowed the monastery’s rhythms for a bit. I must leave for Ghost Ranch in the morning, something that cannot be done without a functioning tire. Unlike the permanent residents here, I, like most other people, am captive to other rhythms. Even on a a sabbatical, a time of extended rest, I have places to go and appointments to keep. And when the sabbatical is ended, it will be even more so. My vocation as pastor may mitigate the rhythms of the modern world a bit (I’m not altogether certain that is true.), but I am not so different from many others, caught up in rhythms we did not really choose for ourselves.

That is not to say that we don’t have a hand in shaping these rhythms that we’ve appropriately named the “rat race.” But the rhythms that enslave many of us are hard to avoid. Our jobs, our schooling, children’s extracurricular activities, and more demand much of us. Our appetites and desires are shaped by sophisticated advertising, entertainment, and popular culture. It takes a great deal of willpower not to get deeply enmeshed in rhythms that are not healthy for us physically or spiritually.

Hence the appeal of a place like this, a community that lives by an entirely different set of rhythms, life giving ones rather than the life draining ones many of us know. But most of us cannot become Benedictine monks, and I suspect that few of us would choose to if we could. But perhaps we can learn from their different set of rhythms.

///////////////

I wonder if my experience with the bighorn might be helpful for me on this. Actually I’m thinking of that and one other encounter. Reflecting on the bighorn reminded me of another animal surprise that happened the day before. I was sitting in my campground with darkness fast approaching when a hummingbird flew right up to me, stopping about 18 inches from my chest and hovering there. (The hummingbirds I’ve noticed out west are slightly larger than those I’m familiar with and have no coloring I’ve observed other than black and white.)

I don’t think a hummingbird would mistake me for a flower, so I have no idea what it was doing there, fluttering just inches away. I had done nothing intentional to attract this visitor who had simply shown up, unannounced. I had not even been looking at or for birds. I had just been sitting there, enjoying the heat of the day give way to the chill of the high desert.

With neither hummingbird nor bighorn had I in any way summoned the creature’s presence. Both had presented themselves to me, completely unexpected. But in both cases, I had put myself in the position for their visitation. I had become still and simply been available in the one case. In the other, I had ventured into the wilderness for retreat. Neither action guaranteed anything remarkable, but my I would not have met my visitors otherwise.

The rhythms of the world most of us live in offer scant opportunities for sudden appearances of bighorns or hummingbirds. Or God? I mentioned previously that God had seemed for me even more elusive of late. And while different rhythms are no guarantee that God will suddenly cross my path or hover just in front of me, I wonder to what degree the rhythms of my daily living make such encounters extremely unlikely.

Sabbatical Journal 3

I drove to the Monastery of Christ in the Desert today. It was a fairly short trip from the Albuquerque area and a lovely relaxing drive, except for the last thirteen miles. That’s the length of the winding, sometimes gravel, sometimes clay, often rutted “road” that provides the only access to the highway. It is something of an adventure simply reaching the place, and no small amount of work on a motorcycle.

The riding was striking in its beauty, however, and at times the aroma of the sagebrush was almost overwhelming. The area is rugged, high desert with a strip of lushness surrounding the Chama River flowing just left of the road. As I neared the monastery, stark cliffs jutted up to my left, and multicolored mountains were in the distance. It is just the sort of landscape that drew Georgia O’Keefe to the area.

As beautiful as it was, it was also very hot, and the relatively low speed allowed by the road meant that my motorcycle’s air conditioning (the wind) was not functioning terribly well. I was very excited see mile marker 12 appear, meaning I was almost there. But then a bighorn sheep crossed my path.

I’ve never seen one in the wild before. I’ve been places they inhabit, but they’ve not showed themselves. As I reached the place he had crossed the road, I saw that she was standing not too far away. (I’m unsure of whether it was a ewe or an immature male.) So I found a place where I could stop and park the bike. By the time I got off and removed my helmet, she had moved but then re-emerged onto the road just ahead and stopped.

I got out my camera phone and slowly moved toward her. She looked at me intently be didn’t move. I had always thought of these as furtive, reclusive creatures, but there she was, just watching me as I approached.

When I got close enough for a good picture, I decided to take a shot lest she decided she’d had enough of me. Just as I was taking the pictures, I noticed the car coming toward me from the direction of the monastery. She noticed, too, and proceeded to dart off with a rather flashy display of white rump rear hooves thrown into the air.

The moment gone, I got back on my bike, crested the hill and arrived at the monastery’s guest house where I unloaded my gear. After resting up a bit and reading some of the information and reflections in “A Guest Compendium” that I found in the room, I ventured out for a quick look around. I walked just a short distance back up that road, taking a few pictures of the grandeur all around, from the staggering vistas to the blooming cacti. And I wondered about my short stay here. Would I find any of the peace or spiritual renewal some of the writers in the compendium spoke so eloquently of experiencing on their visits.

I’ve been feeling more than a little burned out of late, and that has had a significant impact on my spiritual life. God has seemed more and more elusive of late. As I walked back toward the guest house, I found myself thinking of that bighorn as a metaphor for God’s elusiveness. On previous trips out west, I’ve wanted very badly to see one, but never had. And now, when it was the furthest thing from my mind, one walked out and stood in the road in front of me.

I’m not entirely sure what to do with this metaphor. It only struck me a few moments ago. But perhaps it will be a helpful one as I enter into the Benedictine rhythms for the next two days.

Sabbatical Journal 2

Before I left on my road trip/sabbatical, a wonderful member of the church I serve said to me that he hoped I found whatever I was looking for. I confess that I was caught just a little off guard by his words because I had not really thought of my trip in those terms. Perhaps I should.

When the idea of this trip first struck me, it wasn’t in the form of a search or quest. It was simply an intriguing possibility. It likely emerged from recollections of an unfinished motorcycle trip nearly forty year previous, a trip that visited much of the country but didn’t make California or the Southwest thanks to an unfortunate encounter with a logging truck in Oregon. And that previous trip didn’t really have any grand purpose. It just seemed like a good idea at the time.

Of course such a trip has some obvious pluses. It is something I know that I enjoy doing. It would provide a big disconnect from my usual life. It would also provide amply opportunity for thinking, pondering, reflecting, and such, not unlike an extended retreat. And then there is the fact that almost every encounter with people on the trip will be with strangers. What surprising encounter of Christ in the other might await?

Still, despite many good points to be made for a trip such as this, there was no real object of the trip. Other than the plan to hit a lot of national parks and include a couple of stops at some communities of intentional, spiritual practice, the trip wasn’t framed in such a way that I could know if I had found what I was looking for. 

I’m not sure if that is a good of a bad thing. One could make a case for the sort of aimless wandering that only realizes its destination after having arrived there. Less a search and more a serendipity I suppose.

At the same time, the lack of any clear goals could be a laziness on my part, or perhaps a fear of failure should I not reach some stated goal, clearly not to have found what I was looking for. And as there was always an assumed spiritual element to the trip, a vague hope of drawing closer to God, failure on that count could be more than a little disturbing.

So what am I looking for? I don’t know that I am much clearer than when that church member raised the issue for me, although I have made a few observations. I’ve barely begun, but things have clearly leaned too heavily toward the doing side without sufficient being. I wanted to get there and then experience things. It’s given the trip a busy feel so far, and I definitely need to find a better balance. Perhaps a lack of clear spiritual goals makes it easy to default to busyness.

I have a two day stay at a monastery followed by a week long art workshop and stay at Ghost Ranch, a Presbyterian conference center northwest of Santa Fe. (I’m not very artistic so this should be interesting.) Perhaps this will help with the balance I mentioned earlier and even give me some clearer spiritual focus.

After that time, will I know what I’m looking for? Dare I say that I need to find God or faith or spirituality in some way? If I did, what would that say about my current state? But I’m glad the church member said what he did.

Sabbatical Journal 1

Internet access has been spotty so I’ll be uploading these as the opportunity presents itself.

My first two Sundays on my motorcycle road trip/sabbatical presented remarkable contrasts. The second was spent in Big Bend National Park, the first place on my list of sabbatical destinations. The previous Sunday had been part of the preliminary phase a stop along the way as I headed toward the American Southwest and California, the parts of the country I’ve never seen on a motorcycle.

Falls Church, VA to Big Bend, TX is a long drive, so I stopped and visited relatives in the Carolinas as I began, and then headed for Austin and short stay with my daughter, son-in-law, and grandson. From there, the road trip/sabbatical would begin in earnest.

Even when I was younger, I could never have made the drive to Austin straight through, and now that I’m old, I decided on a three day drive rather than two. (My days of 600 mile days in the saddle are long behind me.) As I prepared to depart the Carolinas, I picked a couple of stops that broke the journey into rough thirds. The first happened to be Montgomery, AL. 

When I texted my wife that I was stopping in Montgomery, she sent back an article about the National Memorial for Peace and Justice there, noting that it was supposed to be really good. I’d seen news coverage when it first opened, at least on the Lynching Memorial part. The Memorial has a nearby adjacent museum as well, but with a 400 mile drive that day, I decided to take in just the Lynching Memorial.

Growing up in the South, I never heard much about lynchings. I supposed them to be vigilante sort of things that were aberrations from the norm, the kind of thing that I sometimes saw in an old Western movie. But lynchings of African Americans in the South (and in more than a few spots outside it) were not aberrant, vigilante actions. They were part of the Jim Crow culture instituted after the Civil war, a culture determined to keep blacks subservient. 

Along with segregation, poll taxes, and other officially sanctioned tactics, lynchings were an important, unofficially sanctioned tactic. Often these were not clandestine, in-the-dark-of-night events. Some lynchings were attended by thousands of spectators. Local police would provide crowd control, and white parents would pose their children for photos next to the lifeless body. (Lynching victims were often beaten and burned along with being hung.)

The memorial has separate, suspended metal blocks, each representing a county with the victims’ names (if known) and dates of the lynchings. The numbers were appalling, and they played out as one might expect, with counties in the Deep South and other areas where the economy had been largely slave dependent having the larger numbers of lynchings. (St. Claire County in Illinois was a top offender however, with 40 lynchings.)

Far from vigilante aberrations, lynchings were a terror campaign designed to keep blacks fearful and, therefore, in their place. Mass migrations of African Americans to the North was about much more than better opportunity there. These were literally refugees fleeing terrorism. It’s no wonder that southern leaders kept lynchings out of the history books and schools I attended in North and South Carolina.

The memorial had many plaques along the walls that told the tale of one particular lynching. This one caught my eye. “Elizabeth Lawrence was lynched in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1933 for reprimanding white children who threw rocks at her.” When I think about this sort of horror happening with the large scale acceptance and support of the white population, it makes me terrible pessimistic about the state of the human condition. Many times I’ve heard people ask how it was that so many Germans stood by as Hitler imprisoned and then killed millions of Jews with good answers hard to come by. The scale and the official government sanction of the Holocaust are very different, but the public acceptance, nonchalance, a participation in lynchings strike me as very much the same thing.

I suppose that this is why there are Holocaust deniers and why the South has never really owned up to its treatment of people of color. To do so is to admit to something appalling about ourselves and the society we constructed. It is much more appealing to construct fictions about the Civil War as a noble fight for states rights and to forget things such as lynchings for which no heroic or palatable narrative can be constructed.

And that brings me back around to the remarkable contrast between my first and second Sundays on the road. On the first Sunday I witnessed the appalling, horrifying depths to which humans can sink. Not just a few, deranged humans, but the vast majority, perhaps all of them. But on the second Sunday, I witnessed the untold grandeur of Creation, something the pictures I took at Big Bend don’t come close to capturing. And I wonder if I’m not experiencing the very contrast provided by the first two Creation stories in the biblical book of Genesis.

The first story, known to many merely by its seven-day formula, depicts God at work creating the world. Humans are not actors in this story. They are to have a special role of caring for this creation, but in the story itself, they never speak. They are one among many wonders God makes, all of them deemed “good” by their Creator.

But the Hebrews who pulled together what we call the Old Testament using various writings, stories, and myths available to them, knew that this opening story could not be the only one. It required a darker partner, because they, too, knew of this terrible contrast between God’s grand Creation and humanity’s capacity for appalling behavior and unwillingness to own up to such behavior.

In terms of composition, the so-called Adam and Eve story is much older than the seven-day story, but am I glad those ancient Hebrews chose the order they did. At least we get to start with grandeur. But the dark turn will not wait. Because modern people so seldom understand the use and purpose of myth, we miss the terrible pathos of the second story and the hard questions that it raises. Has human behavior irrevocably damaged Creation? And what of humanity’s relationship to its Creator as well as to one another? Contrary to popular thought, the ancient writings in the first eleven chapters of Genesis are not unsophisticated, scientifically bad attempts to explain “what happened.” Rather they are very sophisticated religious thought that makes use of story and myth to grapple with the terrible questions that arise when facing the sort of terrible contrast I experienced on two, successive Sundays. 

The answers that Israel’s theologians give tend not to fit neatly into the sort of religious formulas that many modern Christians seem to like. But through the course of these stories there continues to arise a hope that God will not abandon humanity to its terrible capacities. Hope keeps rearing its head, a theme that continues in the New Testament. 

A regular feature of this hope is that it demands we are honest about our own complicity in creating the appalling stories that continue to be written. Hope does not come by explaining them away, excusing them, or denying them. It requires something often deemed unpopular and old fashioned, confession and repentance. Oh, how we resist that, as my own Southern story so well attests. But God keeps intruding and offering chance for hope. Or so I hope.

Sermon video: Trusting in Hope

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon video: Freed and Led by the Spirit

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Trusting in Hope

Romans 5:1-5

Trusting in Hope

James Sledge                                                                                       June 16, 2019

“Tim, will you please stop sabotaging this meeting with hope?!” That’s the opening line from an article I read on the Presbyterians Today Blog. Tim is a pastor who’s been brought in to help revitalize a church after twenty years of decline. His diagnosis is that the church has become captive to the functional and needs to recapture the spiritual.

Here’s how the blog post defines functional. “It’s a secular style of operating that slowly pushes a deep awareness and embrace of God’s presence and guidance away as we try to do things decently and in order. Functionality cares more about how the church functions than about how well it leads us to deeper experiences and encounters with God.” [1]

Of course it is a lot easier to be functional than spiritual. The world runs on the functional, and our culture, our schooling, and most of our work experience trains us to be functional. Inevitably, it creeps into the church, and many of you have experienced it. You’ve been to a committee meeting that has a prayer at the beginning and perhaps another at the end, but the meeting itself happens with absolutely no awareness of the Spirit or that God is present.

Pastor Tim ran into something like that at the Finance Committee meeting. The blog post was short on details, but they’re easy enough to imagine. The committee member said something like, “There isn’t enough money in the budget for that.” And the Pastor Tim said something like, “If this is what God is calling us to do, then God will provide a way.”

It was probably not the first time for such an exchange, but this time, the committee member had had enough. And he yelled, “Tim, will you please stop sabotaging this meeting with hope?!” before walking out on the meeting.

What an odd idea, sabotaging with hope. When I think about sabotage in organizations, I usually think of people trying to shut down hope. People get excited about a new idea and began to hope that it might help the organization, but then the naysayers come out. They begin to point out all the risks and all the things that could go wrong. They work to undermine hope and excitement. But this finance committee member accuses the pastor of sabotaging things with hope. Who knew that hope could cause so much trouble?

Sabbatical Doubting

This is my last full week of work before beginning a sabbatical that will run until Labor Day. The ability to take a sabbatical after seven years was built into my call as pastor at the church I serve. I've been its pastor for a bit over seven years now, but that timing coincides with significant changes our congregation's leadership has planned.

We are nearing the end of a several year's long process that we have labeled "Renew," and this summer marks a time of transition from and old, heavy-on-the administrative-side committee structure to a new structure that is more focused on ministry. Summer is when the new teams will come up with priorities and implementation plans for the program year that begins in September. And I will be gone for much of that time.

All this is context for my recent church newsletter article which I've copied below.

Sisters and brothers in Christ,

As summer approaches, I find myself feeling a little uneasy. I’m not quite certain how to describe it. Neither worry nor concern nor trepidation seems quite right, but it’s something like that. My upcoming motorcycle sabbatical might seem a likely culprit, but I think not. I am truly looking forward to the trip, and I worry less about riding the highways of the American Southwest than I do the freeways of DC.

Another potential source of uneasiness is our Renew process. This summer will be an important time as the new Mercy, Worship, Justice, Spiritual Growth, Community Building, and Ministry Support teams begin to set priorities. The will develop focus and plans to help live into our mandate: Gathering those who fear they are not enough, so we may experience grace, wholeness, and renewal as God’s beloved. And I will be absent for much of that process.

I’d be lying if I said I had no anxieties about this. But Renew has been a collaborative project of the Session. I have certainly had input, but I’ve not been the primary leader. Elders have done the leading and the planning, and I have little reason to worry that the process will falter without my presence.

That said, I do think that my uneasiness is related to the Renew process. It’s not about the capabilities and commitment of our elders, our deacons, or our dedicated staff. The Renew process is in as capable a set of hands as any congregation could ever hope. Still, my uneasiness remains, and I wonder if this isn’t a faith issue.

Our missional mandate speaks of gathering people “…so that we may experience grace, wholeness, and renewal…” Appropriately it does not say “…so that we may provide grace, wholeness, and renewal…” These are not ours to give. They are gifts from God. No amount of capability and dedication on our part can bring about the transformation at the heart of Renew. It is dependent on God, on Jesus’ call, and on the movement of the Spirit, none of which is under our control.

Will we, along with those we gather in with us, experience grace, wholeness, and renewal as God’s beloved? And why wouldn’t we? Shouldn’t God be the most reliable part of this process, even more sure than the capabilities of elders, deacons and staff?

I see two different faith issues here. One is about making room for the Spirit. It is easy to get so focused on the things I need to do, the things we as a congregation must do, that God nearly gets shoved out of the picture. Many times I have caught myself functioning as though God was not present, that it is all dependent on us. If we do not work to stay connected to Jesus’ call, to the guidance and empowerment of the Spirit, we may find ourselves attempting to do, on our own, what only God can do.

But there is a more fundamental faith issue. Is God reliable? The Session has listened very carefully, spent much time in prayer and discernment, and has clearly heard Jesus calling us to our new missional mandate. But that mandate asks us to step out on faith, to risk that God will provide what is needed. Will God provide? I sometimes have my doubts, and perhaps that’s the heart of my uneasiness.

I have known people who say their faith is without doubt. I do not trust such people, and many great Christian thinkers would seem to agree with me. Paul Tillich once said, “Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith… Sometimes I think it is my mission to bring faith to the faithless, and doubt to the faithful.” John Calvin said, “…we cannot imagine any certainty that is not tinged with doubt, or any assurance that is not assailed by some anxiety.” And my favorite is from Frederick Buechner, “Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”

I hope my sabbatical allows me to do a lot of wrestling with doubts this summer. Perhaps the continuing Renew rollout will provide opportunities for you to do a little wrestling of your own.

May the summer bless you with fruitful doubting,

Sermon video: Jesus Shaped Community

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Freed and Led by the Spirit

Romans 8:14-17; John 14:8-17, 25-26

Freed and Led by the Spirit

James Sledge                                                                           June 9, 2019 – Pentecost

When I entered seminary at age 35, it took me a semester to adjust to the huge amount of reading. A lot of it was simply something to get through, but some had a profound impact on me. I vividly remember reading Resident Aliens. This seminal, 1989 work by Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon of Duke Divinity School explored what it means to be Christian in rapidly changing world. Let me read just a bit of the books provocative opening.

Somewhere between 1960 and 1980, an old, inadequately conceived world ended, and a fresh, new world began. We do not mean to be overly dramatic. Although there are many who have not yet heard the news, it is nevertheless true. A tired old world has ended, and an exciting new one is awaiting recognition…

When and how did we change? Although it may sound trivial, one of us is tempted to date the shift sometime on a Sunday evening in 1963. Then, in Greenville, South Carolina, in defiance of the state’s time-honored blue laws, the Fox Theater opened on Sunday. Seven of us—regular attenders of the Methodist Youth Fellowship at Buncombe Street Church—made a pact to enter the front door of the church, be seen, then quietly slip out the back door and join John Wayne at the Fox.

That evening has come to represent a watershed in the history of Christendom, South Carolina style. On that night, Greenville, South Carolina—the last pocket of resistance to secularity in the Western world—served notice it would no longer be a prop for the church. There would be no more free rides. The Fox Theater went head to head with the church over who would provide the world view for the young. That night in 1963, the Fox Theater won the opening skirmish.^[1]

As Christendom faded, church more and more became optional. A numerical decline set in that continues to this day. It seems that many were at church only because it was required or expected. Realizing this was no longer so, people left. So were they ever really followers of Jesus? And what about the church congregations that nurtured such believers?

What does it mean to be Christian, to be church? There was a time, not so many years ago, when people spoke of Presbyterians as “the Republican party at prayer.” That referred to a very different Republican party, one with strong liberal and progressive wings. Regardless, such a label describes an identity rooted less in following Jesus and more in an easy, comfortable compatibility with mainstream, middle-class America.

At the height of Christendom, American-style, people were assumed to be Christian, and Christianity was often a generalized belief in Jesus mixed with morality, citizenship, and patriotism. “American Civil Religion,” as it has been called, was a necessarily vague faith that claimed Jesus and belief in God without too many details or particulars, permitting it to be compatible with a culture that subjugated women and people of color, while it happily blessed patriotism, capitalism, consumerism, and war.

But now, thanks to a changed world that no longer subsidizes and props up the church, we’ve been freed from the constraints of that old civil religion and its Faustian bargain with culture. We have been given the opportunity to discover who we are on our own, no longer wedded to a culture that expects us to water down and domesticate the gospel.

Such freedom has proved disorienting, and many would love to go back. I’ve lost track of all the times retired colleagues told me how glad they are not to be serving a church nowadays. No doubt, things were easier, but I don’t want to go back. I want us to figure out what it means to be Jesus’ church. Not an American church, not a white, middle-class church, but a church that follows Jesus and calls all manner of people to the new life he brings.