christianity: the inside job

Aug 24th, 2010

“The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.” Matt. 22:8b-10

Some Christians actively seek conversions. They do this because of a clear mandate in heir theology to find the lost in order that they may accept Jesus to avoid hell when God judges them. It is an act of compassion to save people from eternal torment. The reason that they go to church is rooted in an old-time Puritan fear of God’s wrath that ties their entire theological system together. They fear God and fear for the eternal status of the souls of other people. The community they share with others is part of the reason why they go to church, but the theological impact gives the community its identity.

Other Christians go to church just for the social part. It is a way of meeting people of the community. In wealthier churches it is a place to “be seen” by others in a way that shows off one’s piety. True they may go to hear a word of hope, maybe even go for a little bible or book study, but they do not go out of a motivation of fear, but primarily of social connectedness.

In both of these frameworks for going to church there is a set of social conventions, symbols, and behaviors that one must learn to decode before feeling fully connected. The color of skin of congregants is a code. The attire of people is a code. The religious language used is a code. The geographic location of the church, the shape of the church building, and many more are all codes that are tacitly at work in the structure of the community.

An outsider has a lot of mental and physical work to do in order to decode all of this stuff even before he or she sets foot in the door or meets someone from the congregation. An outsider has to weigh the equation of cost and reward to see what kinds of social, psychological, and physical costs are needed to gain certain rewards such as a one way ticket to heaven or being rooted in a community. In either case, one will have to pay costs in social and psychological capital to participate fully and feel welcome in the community. This is true for joining people in any organization or relationship. Becoming part of a new community or set of relationships requires self-limitation and new habits. In short, it requires that one change and conform to the new situation to some degree.

Yet if the decoding process does not work, the equation of cost and reward cannot be calculated without extra effort. Here’s an example. Let’s say you are invited to a party by a college friend. When you get to the party you are introduced to everyone and they ask you where you work, if you have kids, etc. After the pleasantries you learn that all of your friend’s friends are co-workers. They begin talking about work. Names of people who are not there fly with ease, jokes that have no context for you get loud laughs, acronyms seem to be coming out of a machine gun. While your friend tries to translate for you and while you chime in with a commonality once in a while, you are basically an observer, not a participant. You didn’t know the social codes of the group. How do you feel? Welcome, an outsider, or is it worth your time to invest the cost it would take to learn the codes and participate with this group of people you still don’t know very well?

Outsiders of the church often know less about the social codes than people on the inside. Worse, people on the inside often may not have enough fluency in their own social codes to explain what they mean and why they are important. In other instances outsiders may know more about the religion than the people on the inside! This sort of self-reinforcing social and religious illiteracy makes it a very hard prospect for people to feel the need to join the group since no one seems to know why it is there in the first place.

While many might disparage Joel Osteen for his light and fluffy messages of self-worth and consumer-friendly pop psychology masquerading as theology, he speaks the same language and shares the same codes with most people. Why? Because most people live in a world dominated by self-help and consumer-friendly pop psychology! You don’t feel like an outsider with his pearly whites staring at you as if to echo Stuart Smalley saying, “I’m good enough, smart enough, and gosh darnit people like me!”

To the growing population of religiously unaffiliated believers in God, most of the religion we offer is encased in codes that are hard to figure out with little help offered to help people understand them much less participate in using them. Neither fear of hell or a weekly coffee hour after a “nice” sermon are going to fit the bill. So people outside the church, and many people inside to be sure, will feel like that out of place dinner guest. Far better to go to the bar with some old friends and maybe meet a new friend or two where the only real codes are eat, drink, and be merry. Who knows, you might even get lucky at the end of the night without God anywhere near to threaten you with eternal torment.

Posted in: Letters to Churches, Religion, Society.

america the racist

Aug 13th, 2010

by Drew Tatusko.

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Growing up in the 1980's outside of Washington, DC I was inside of racial conflict resolution discussions at my junior high school. The racial tensions between the rich white suburbs and the poor black urban areas were palpable. Often the racial tension was thick and nasty – even when not a word was spoken.

DC101 is a modern rock station that launched the career of Howard Stern. His replacement, "The Greaseman," was also part of the "shock jock" genre. In January of 1985, shortly after Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday was declared a federal holiday, The Greaseman said: "Why don't we plug four more and get the whole week off?" He was suspended and later made a donation to Howard University. He was not fired. In 1999, working for a different company, he got into another mess following the death of William Byrd who was killed after white supremacists dragged him behind a truck. That year Lauryn Hill was nominated for 10 Grammy awards and was rumored to have said that her music was for black people. The Greaseman said: "and they wonder why we drag them behind trucks." This all but ended his career.

One would think that such blatant racism would be discarded from public discourse as a poison that infects our society. When doctors see an infection it is their sworn oath to heal the person infected. It has always been my belief that the media, especially news media, existed to protect the public trust and cleanse discourse as a forum to challenge the political and social powers that form the policies to bind our social fabric together. Yet Don Imus called the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy headed ho's," Rush Limbaugh has a jingle for "Barack the Magic Negro," not just Glenn Beck but a host of others are in the habit of calling African Americans and other people of color racists, signs from Sarah Palin and TEA Party rallies are littered with racial epithets, and even the left tends to remind us that Mr. Obama is in fact "a black man." One side wants to assure us that there is no racism and white people are at liberty to tell black jokes at will since we have a President of color, people on he left are ready to throw a pity party for the poor black man in the oval office.

When Laura Schlessinger made her insidious "black jokes" over the air as if Mr. Obama's skin color gave her permission to use the word n****r repeatedly, the issue seemed to reach a new clarity. While pundits will tell us over and over again that since we now have a "black man" in the Oval Office the age of racism is over, this view of reality has had the reverse effect. Such reasoning has given racist discourse permission and legitimacy for the public to express. Because the discourse is suddenly more permissible, racists are more out in the open with media outlets to offer megaphones for their vile rants. Those protectors of the public trust are now the players in a ratings game that legitimates the shocking and grotesque in order for ratings to increase. Rather than protecting the public trust, the media erodes it and distorts reality in poisonous ways. Rather than heal the sickness in the arena of public discourse, the media acts as a civil parent with a bad case of Munchausen Byproxy, making us sicker so they can "heal" us later with politicians and talking head pundit "experts" in tow.

The reality is that the presence of Mr. Obama has paradoxically legitimated racism as a normative form of public discourse. In the process his presence is like a hunter pushing deer out of the brush. What are being pushed out are taboo and marginal political and racist voices. Media outlets like Fox News and MSNBC are giving this racist social sickness a vector to go airborne and infect a public mostly uneducated in the reality behind the issues.

Consumerism conditions Americans to be irrational from a very young age. Media is perhaps the most extensive cultural object Americans consume on a daily basis. When our greatest object of consumption is a vector for poisonous and toxic discourse, we in our very psycho-social fabric contract the disease that often appears as a salve. Before Obama overt racism was largely taboo and an unacceptable form of public discourse. His presence has shined a light on the deeper racism in the American public which is now a full-blown social infection that Americans willfully consume daily. Consuming things that make us sick is fundamentally irrational. What better object to prey on the irrational than a full-blown racist social discourse.

The "black jokes" that are more commonplace through the media are the reality of the new racist America, not the exception to the rule. So don't laugh. Don't ignore. Don't pass off another "black joke" as an unfortunate incident. Ask the speaker of the so-called joke this question: "Just what the hell do you mean by that?" Maybe then awareness can take root again. If you say nothing in the presence of racism, you aid and abet its existence and give it one more reason to be legitimate. So pick a side.

Posted in: Politics, Society.

the birth of the zombie preacher?

Aug 6th, 2010

by Drew Tatusko.

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A couple of weeks ago via Twitter, I put out the question, "If I were to offer myself to speak to people in an education setting other than the college classroom, what would I have to offer? What would my niche be?" With so many writers, speakers, etc. the market is flooded with a lot of redundant material. We can even categorize them in a very limited set of species:

How is the church changing?
How can I be the best person I can be?
What is effective leadership?
How to fight for the faith with solid biblical teaching?
Multicultural/feminist discussions and training.

Of course there are others, but these seems to crop up repeatedly through the calendar year from different theological perspectives with different presenters associated with them. What has bothered me is that very few, if any, of these gatherings and so forth allow for a blind review of proposals. Presenters are chosen by organizing committees through invitation. Having a book published is a good thing. Being a church leader/pastor with a book is better. The trifecta is to have a book and be a pastor of a mega church. Finally, in some emergent circles, if you have planted a church or a Christian community that has been around for more than a few months or so, people take notice. I have neither a book nor am I in an office of leadership in a church big enough to get any invitations.

I use myself as only an example here. I don't want you to think I am whining or complaining. I have presented at academic conferences and have had papers published. I have presented at other non-refereed conferences as well. So I am not saying that I just want to be "part of the in crowd." What I am addressing is something in the system that places limits on the voices outside of the sphere of having "something to sell" by focusing on a select group of religious and cultural insiders.

So, knowing that I can't change this system (and I understand what it is, and why it is so) I went into marketing mode. Every marketing strategy needs a gimmick, a hook; and a brand that is unique, holds attention persistently, and symbolizes a product people will enjoy consuming. My question was really a fun exploration of this kind of branding for my voice and presence in the Kingdom of God. What does a suburban white dude in Central PA in an economically depressed blue-collar area have that can be a brand? So laughed at the idea of THE ZOMBIE PREACHER*. You know, because zombies need Jesus too! After some laughs I buried it. Until I listened to a piece I recorded for The HCXIANITY Podcast about 6 weeks ago that I am editing with 3 others to get online soon (the one I'm referring to is not yet published if you are keeping score). In that podcast I said something like this:

A dead Jesus is one that people can control, prop up, and move about like a puppet for their own purposes. A dead Jesus does not change people, but allows them to live in the delusion that they are correct and on the right path. A dead Jesus cannot challenge institutions and relationships that cause suffering, alienation, and shame. It is the people in positions of power on the inside of the political and religious structures that killed Jesus, not the barbarians and sinners on the outside. For it is these people on the outside that experienced the fruits of the Kingdom of God first hand in the presence and power of an Incarnate God in Jesus Christ. If we begin our theology from the perspective that God is ultimately unknowable and God's love is richly mysterious, it is not a God we can control and we do not get a Jesus we can kill. In the process of raising a dead Jesus from the tomb into our lives we can transform the spiritually dead zombies sitting in the pews who wonder why they are still there and those who left a while ago into a richer and deeper communion.

The walking dead in the church. As with my previous post on mourning in the midst of change, there are a lot of people who are spiritually dead and church is not a place where they can find peace and new life. The walking dead: ZOMBIES!!!

In the playground of open source ideas, I have been testing and playing until one sticks. A couple have already stuck (here and here). Maybe this one will as well. It's what I have been talking about with a branding, but a branding that has substance. So much branding in our economy is anotehr cute way of saying "lying" to sell shit as if buying a book will feed the spiritually parched and hungry (It can, to be sure, but not as a permanent source). Are there resources in the Christian tradition to satiate the Spiritual Zombies in the church, to satiate their deep seated hunger for new life, to unyoke their burdens, to meet their suffering with compassion, to heal their sickness? Oh yes there are. Reclaiming these traditions in a pluralistic society is the first step. ZOMBIE PREACHER LIVES!!!

What do you think? Does the ZOMBIE PREACHER live?

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* I think ZOMBIE needs to be in all caps all the time, because you know, they're ZOMBIES!!!

Posted in: Life, Religion, Society, Theology.

we cannot change unless we mourn

Jul 27th, 2010

by Drew Tatusko.

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Suffering occurs when your ideas about how things ought to be don't match how they really are. Brad Warner, Hardcore Zen (p. 58).

http://www.imow.org/exhibitions/past?id=21#slide7

To change we must die, and if we die we must mourn.

In many of our discussions surrounding the church today, the big buzzword is change. From Brian McLaren's and Phyllis Tickle discussing new forms of ecclesiology and faith that are emerging, Harvey Cox discussing the Future of Faith, or various conferences and discussion talking about the changing landscape of faith and belief, it is clear that the idea that Christianity is undergoing some kind of transformation is loud and clear.

I have heard countless talks and discussions about "What we need to do" to "change" the church and have heard many people dismayed when such changes do not happen. There are calls to change now and do it quickly by some, while others resist such change defaulting to a more conservative position with respect to doing something different or becoming a different kind of church that we cannot yet truly define.

On a smaller level, individuals will express change in their own view of the world as they interact with a wider diversity of persons through social media and meet more people from different contexts at conferences and meetings all over the world. In all of the both gung-ho and downright depressing discussions about change, one element seems to be missing without which change is an ideal, a phantasm that won't truly take root. That element is death.

When we change, when our societies change, we become different people. When a 5 year old goes off to kindergarten, you should expect an accelerated change as your child develops within new peer groups and social structures. When an adolescent becomes an adult the physical and psychological transformation that occurs is awkward and downright painful at times. Getting married, moving from neighborhood to neighborhood, getting a new job, having children, experiencing the death of a loved one: all of these are moments of transition and change in life. It is natural to resist these changes and transformation because even when they are joyful times, they are tinged with at least a hint of sorrow. Those moments of change that are more negative are downright painful and in some cases are difficult to move beyond. Like a sailboat in irons, the one going through the change is stuck at sea only to be battered by the wind and waves.

Why is it that change is so painful and so aversive? I hear many who are more in favor of changing church systems and theology to meet the needs of new generations dismiss those who resist change because they are "afraid and need to get over it." Perhaps the real question is, "If you are afraid of change, what is it that you are afraid of?" The truth is that fear is an all too natural response to change. Change creates anxiety because one is caught between an unformed "now," a "past" that no longer truly exists, and a "future" that often looks like the edge of a cliff. Fear is natural because it is your self working often subconsciously to keep you alive.

The truth is that death and change are inextricable. Change means a death of something. In this case it means a death of who you once were, and of who your community once was in the process of becoming something different. Before change is even a remote possibility, we in the church who desire it have to be willing to die. We need to be willing to die to what we currently are in order to be something we are not. Moreover, it's a death that cannot happen overnight, but slowly, with a lot of anxiety, and with "birth pangs" as Jesus once remarked in Matthew 24. Death is a hard sell and there is little in the human condition that accepts death as an option.

What about those among us who have already encountered such spiritual and psychological death? There are many walking dead among us who sit in the pews as aliens who keep their lack of faith quiet. Rather than be ostracized from their religious community, they keep their lack of faith in it quiet. They are invisible and look just like everyone else who is having a good time at the potluck or the passing of the peace. But they are in the process of a transformation that their churches cannot hold and nurture.

The best thing we can do is allow ourselves to mourn the death of what we once were in order to be born again as the new creation that has been begging to come out and see the world as it is. Hanging on to ideals of what "ought" to be is like running into a busy highway. If we desire change, or if we already sense that we have changed, we must allow ourselves to die. And from dying we must give ourselves the time and care to mourn what we once were. If we do not do this, we risk the ghosts of our previous selves chasing us down whispering fear and shame in our minds. To change we must die, and if we die we must mourn.

Posted in: Letters to Churches, Life, Religion, Theology.

evangelical indulgences?: idolatry in reverse

Jul 26th, 2010

by Drew Tatusko.

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There is something of an urban legend about Martin Luther. It is said that he was tormented by the Devil who one night was badgering him to list all of his sins. Whenever Luther stopped, the Devil told him to keep going. From shame to rage, Luther flung his inkwell at the Devil, and the inkspot still lingers on the wall. True or not, this little vignette illustrates a key turn in theology from the Catholic powers at the time. Accounting for all of our sins is quite impossible and will only lead to shame and self-condemnation. Something like the sale of indulgences to raise funds as a trade off for forgiveness of this unending list was inherently evil to Luther. No wonder he would be angry at such pestering from the Devil.

The idea that forgiveness of sin comes not from out physical and mental output, but only from God was a statement that was not only a theological turn, but a strong political statement as well. The papacy no longer could wield the power it could by holding down the people with the fear of torture, death, and hell. The pope had no more say in the forgiveness of sins than your local town peasant. That kind of pronouncement has one judge and that is God.

Are we all that comfortable with this notion? It truly is a political statement that calls into question any vehicle of judgment on human behavior that we see in any social setting. Looked at in the right way, it means that judgment of sin has one source which is still a mysterious one – the Triune God as revealed preeminently in Christ. The message ought to be, don't worry as much about what you are screwing up as much as developing those areas in you life that lead to communion with God and with each other. However, in what I perceive to be the dominant strain of modern evangelicalism, this is not quite the case in practice.

In my discussion with many evangelicals the mere mention of doing good works gets a massive hammer of the bible to smash it to bits. It usually comes to this bit from Isaiah 64:6:

We have all become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.
We all fade like a leaf,
and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

Typically, as I have heard many times, the material around where I have bolded is excluded as if that one statement is so pure that it should govern the one thing that gets God's approval: God choosing you to be saved through a confession of "Christ is Lord" to make it effective. The problem here is that after we tidy up what makes God happy, and it is not us or what we do but only God in Christ, we are nonetheless expected to do all of the works of the Law in order to confirm our confession is true!

So what is going on here? It seems that something disingenuous is happening if the moral code of a religion says, "No works, but indeed, here is a list of works now that you have made your confession." Remember this was a sticky issue for Paul and he could not figure it out. For him the works of the Law were a source of condemnation. For Paul, God required perfect obedience. This was a "catch 22" since no one could be perfectly obedient (see Rom 3:20; 8:3; Gal 2:15-16; 2:21; 3:10-11; 3:21). The Law is there to, in effect, reveal that the place of the entire ontological status of the cosmos is utter contingency and dependence on God alone. It is this realization that prevents one from idolatry. The Law is there to prevent one from being anything more than utterly contingent and dependent on grace alone – the grace that recognizes human perfection to be impossible.

early church fathers and mothers Looking back to the who did assert the freedom of the will, this notion is clear. Utter dependence on God in the process of the free will operating is the foundation for the ethical life. It's something that Kierkegaard picks up as well. But it is not a dependence rooted in guilt and shame for not following the rules. It is a dependence that recognizes God is a mystery that inhabits us. The Triune God is a reality in which we participate by being selfless and compassionate in response to Jesus' self-emptying of his divinity to render the human will utterly dependent on God. The foundation of grace and freedom isn't shame or guilt, but self-emptying that the life of Christ to which the Spirit bears witness may live in us (Gal. 2:20).

The evangelical source of grace is "getting yourself right with God" through particular behaviors, or else. The earlier traditions of the faith stress the death of the self to become something different. The former is ego-centric. The latter de-centers the ego to be transformed "by the renewing of the mind" (Rom. 12:1). This does not mean to "do whatever you want" since the notion of self-emptying that the Spirit of Christ may live in you requires discipline. the outcome is the fruits of the Spirit as Paul notes in more than one place, but especially in Galatians 5:22-26 as contrasted with the works of "the flesh" listed just prior:

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another.

Perhaps this is the problem. Evangelicalism and traditions that are also rooted in pietism and holiness have had a tendency to focus so much Paul's works of the flesh as a means to get to the fruits of the Spirit. It seems that we have to kill off these behaviors as if Paul was giving a complete list in order for the fruits of the Spirit to work in us.

It's backwards! Just as Luther and Paul struggled with sin after sin before understanding the nature of grace, perhaps we need a re-boot to focus on how we can cultivate the fruits of the Spirit before we freak out and hurt people for the sake of condemning the works of the flesh. Perhaps these traditions simply have it all backwards and need to work towards cultivating the fruits of the Spirit rather than establishing extensive behavioral prohibitions that only focus people on the flesh. It's like idolatry in reverse, and while it looks good on paper to some, doesn't work on the ground where sin is simply inescapable.

Posted in: Religion, Theology.