I was in a long discussion today in our philosophy/ethics after-hours group, I call it “philo-after hours.”
We meet every other Friday for an hour or so of discussion. Actually it all started the week before when we met to discuss the reaction of some segments of our church to Margaret Miles who gave three highly stimulating, well thought out lectures in the Union PSCE Sprunt Lecture series.
Just so you know, Dr. Miles grew up in a highly conservative and fundamentalist Baptist tradition and is now a member of the Anglican Church. She is retired but has been Dean of the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley, CA, and a faculty member at Harvard. She is well read and the author of a number of historical books dealing with the role of women, religion and values in the early church and today.
Dr. Miles wrote a very insightful book that is completely historically founded, well worth reading regardless of where one stands on women and sexuality in the church. To reduce a book to a capsule, always an unfair thing to do, Dr. Miles discussed how up until the late middle ages, Christian art and image represented salvation in the female nursing breast, in particularly Mary’s. The breast (the only method of sustenance of children in that time) carried great import as a symbol of nurture and sustenance, not as a sexual object. For a number of ecclesiastical and societal reasons, the woman’s breast became secularized and turned into an object of erotic interest while the cross became a primary object of significance in Christian imagery.
While some highly opinionated writers in the Layman claim she proposes to substitute the female breast for the cross, this is a complete fabrication of her position. (She also was highly offended to be called a "radical feminist," something I assure you she is not.) She states because of the secularization of the breast and change of culture it is not possible to recover that original symbolic imagery (If you chose to comment I encourage you to be informed first and read her book, “A Complex Delight: The Secularization of the Breast, 1350-1750”). For this book she has been vilified to the extent some of her religious critics, if it were lawful, would be the first to light the bonfire at her burning as a heretic.
In the course of our philo discussion of Dr. Miles book and the negative reaction of the more conservative element of our church, evangelism came up. I had just finished two papers on the nature of the African Brazilian and Asian Christian churches, as well as the growth of Christianity in the slave culture and the mission movements in America in the 1800’s. One thing that stands out in a fair reading of the history of these situations of rapid church growth is the evangelical nature of those churches.
A couple of my colleagues were quite put-off by my mention of Evangelism. They were put-off because I used the “E-word” that carries so much baggage. When I used the word “evangelical” everyone stopped, and the reaction was as if I had farted in the church pew on Sunday morning during the Great Prayer, or as a Caucasian man, used the “N-word” at an NAACP meeting.
I was perplexed but really understood the reason. The word carries so much very negative baggage to some because it is associated, perhaps unfairly, with the mean-spirited part of our church that is usually conservative (not a crime) but so highly opinionated and intent on forcing their beliefs on others that they alienate all but the few who are swayed by their rhetoric. The reaction of my liberal friends to its symbolic meaning to them was ironic, wasn't it.
That discussion started up again this afternoon, leaving a couple of us a “little” inflamed because I maintained we need a more evangelical perspective. We never got past my use of the word "evangelical" to the substance of the discussion because it was so polarizing to some of us. This is my take on the issue.
It is a profoundly bad reading of the New Testament not to conclude our Church was charged from its first days with the task of evangelism of the Word. To deny, delimit or circumscribe its meaning, obligation and practice is ethically and morally flawed. The issue though really lies at the heart of the several problems with our mainline protestant denominations, particularly many in the Presbyterian Church, even the conservative branches.
For some reason, Presbyterians are not comfortable with the idea of evangelism, at least in current times. We go to church, worship, pray, give of our money and abilities but usually do it using the Presbyterian Hymnal (Blue or Red), the organ, a chancel choir and an orderly, emotionless worship service where we sit quietly in the pew listening to the minister’s sermon. You’ve all heard it, the “frozen chosen.” We serve vicariously by supporting some missionaries who tend to adopt our own frozen style in a foreign country, which is not very effective.
Well, we are frozen and most everyone who seeks warmth in the church is looking elsewhere and leaving if they are members. For practical purposes, evangelism is dead in the Presbyterian Church. We are too quick to say defensively, “Oh, we can’t evangelize to an empty stomach. We have to feed them first.”
Yes, we have an obligation to feed the hungry, help the helpless and the prisoner. Yes, they should “know we are Christians by our love.” But the bottom line is, we should be carrying the message of salvation to the world, including next door. We can do it as it is so successfully done in Africa, Asia and South America, an active mission movement that seeds new churches and educates new local pastors. It worked once in America, you know.
The so-called “Evangelical Church” and the Pentecostal Church worldwide is growing by leaps and bounds. In the South (Africa, South America, Asia) it is the primary theological force. Ask the question, “Why is this?”
I propose the reason is that these Southern churches have so greatly succeeded in evangelism is that they have connected the spiritual feeling and emotion of the worshipper to the theological message of transcendent, saving grace. It may be personal testimony of a pastor or layperson to God’s grace in action, it might be things we are very uncomfortable with: guitars and drums, popular melodies and new lyrics, video projectors. It might be vocalization by church members during the sermon, an “Amen!” or “Yes!” or even more, even new words for our traditional beliefs and creeds.
“Oh, but that is all just emotion," one might object, "there is not any rational change in belief, it is all just the emotional pressure of the crowd of witnesses. What about the Apostle’s Creed, or the Westminster Creed? Or the Bible, we have to read their translations very carefully to be sure they don't slip some weird word in into it. But they believe in ancestors... It isn't real Christianity.”
Put-off by the E-word or not, or by new words for our older tradition, I suggest we get used to it and co-opt the word ourselves in our practice of evangelism and stick to the essential tenets of Christian faith. We ought to learn the lessons in the Southern World Church. Particularly we need to understand the Southern Church has “invaded” America. If that invasion serves no other useful purpose than to renew our attention to the great ends of the church, it has done its job. I am in the minority as a Presbyterian, a very small minority.
I am a victim of my past. I butted heads with family members, associates, and many tears over the left and right wing politics and racism of the 60’s, we all ended up bloodied by it. I learned one thing in all that. People do change their minds, not everyone, but enough do. They don’t do it because we beat them with a club. That tends to force people into more dogmatic, refractory positions. Radicalizing does not work well. People change their minds because of personal experience and the freedom of choice to think and do so. But those are not our focus, our focus is the unchurched.
Evangelism is a big word, it means more than just preaching revivals and handing out tracts. It means living a good life and inviting other to follow.
It means taking uncomfortable (for liberals) stands on things like pornography, excessive and improperly used wealth, consumerism at the personal level.
But it also means actually being excited and joyful to be a Christian and having people see and know that fact. That means changing.
It may mean being uncomfortable personally (it will for me!) for the greater good, to change our worship service to bring back the youth and people who left or never stepped foot in our church because it puts them to sleep. It may mean experimenting with worship styles, not just doing it so we can say we did it, but so we are participating. We might even find out we enjoy it.
As I said, my problem is, I am a child of the 60’s and some old memories will not get out of my head. Eldridge Cleaver was a little too far over the top for most when he said if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem but Bob Dylan came close to what faces us today in the lyrics of Times they are a changin’:
“Your old road
is rapidly agin’,
please get out of the new one
if you can’t lend a hand.
I’ve given no recipes. I don’t have any yet, maybe you do. I hope I painted a picture of our evangelical obligation. Christ’s church lives it, so should we.
Peace and Grace
