On my facebook page, in the little spot where you identify your religion, like “Christian,” “Hindu,” the ever popular “Spiritual but not Religious,” I wrote “Religion is a construct.” You see, as I am about to complete my Divinity degree, in another week in fact, I find it a good time to take stock of who I am. And this is my clever way of saying, I don’t know. Facebook doesn’t have time to talk about your deep conception of God in a blurb. It just asks what your religious identity is… and asking about your God is not the same as asking about your religion. I feel a deep connection to God, but not necessarily to my religion, which is sort of Christian.
Like many others, I have uncertain feelings about Christianity. It is so ingrained in our culture that it may not be something we really even take time to consider; or… it is too radical to work into our daily life. In one sense, Christianity has shaped our society and we live it like no other secular culture does. In another sense, the Christian life can prove too much for some; it can be a life of hardship, mission, and suffering.
Christianity is at once mainstream and radical. Thus was born the interesting title for today’s reflection: Are you post-Christian? Like those who thought the election of an African-American President made us post-racist, I wonder about a Christian heritage in a culture that loves it and hates it, and is sometimes just plain embarrassed by it. I do not mean to equate Christianity with racism, but both are such a part of our fabric—they each mess with our identity, and each require a declaration and action on our part. I can say, “no I’m not a racist,” but still be a part of the oppression that is part of our society. Likewise, I can say, “I am not a Christian,” yet still I am reacting to it, participating in a culture one of my friends has named secular-Christian.
I get what he is saying. We run time off of the Christian calendar. So many of us invest energy in a Christmas that is not particularly religious at all. Our politicians swear oaths and are elected based on personal beliefs or religious practice. Christianity is grafted to a strange American tree, mixed with the seeds of Western philosophy and market capitalism, and some of the fruit produced is so weird. The morality fruit, the prejudice fruit, etc. There are public figures that talk and talk, about what a good Christian is, how she might vote, what should be done in the name of Christianity… And it is this cultural hegemony, this assumed way we should be Christian, that we have carried forward. Christianity is sometimes thrown in our face as a natural and essential facet of our American personality. Of course, some reject it outright, because it is presented as such a dominant force. Some people don’t want to have anything to do with Christians. It’s not even that they drive by, like the young man in our reading, where he just passes by the old building that is Christianity, no, some people don’t like Christianity because of the fact that it’s the big brother that bullies. Of course, I’m talking about many Unitarian Universalists, who can be at odds with the mainline Christian community, who would want to set themselves apart from ‘that religion’ as a whole. And, being naturally suspicious and sometimes really hurt by a mainline faith, they are very perceptive: Christianity is so familiar it seems to have control over parts of our lives as an embedded religion, something that we may not talk about much—which means perhaps we should be looking at it. If we are post-Christian, we could look back at the way the religion has spoiled God for us and heal.
Some things we don’t talk about are things we generally don’t like, things that are out there when we wish they weren’t. And I bet there’s something in Christianity each of us doesn’t like. Perhaps it’s evangelicals. No one wants to wear the dark suit, hold pamphlets and ring doorbells. And people don’t want to listen to it, at least not according to the research done by the writers of the book, “Unchristian, What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity.” But evangelists are a relic, an image from an earlier generation. Not just in the Unchristian book, but in much of the literature on the vision of the post-Christian church, fear of proselytizing Christians is outdated. There’s no need to be afraid of evangelicals. Now, we’ve got mega-churches, small discipleship groups like the latte lovers for Christ and praise bands, because now, the big church model is going down. That’s what they say. In fact, some point to the decline of Christianity as a functional part of society. We are all seekers of a sort and old forms of Christianity may not work. Charles Truehart, in an article from 1996, says: “No spires. No crosses, No robes. No clerical collars. No hard pews. No kneelers. No biblical gobbledygook. No prayerly rote. No fire. No brimstone. No pipe organs. No dreary eighteenth-century hymns. No forced solemnity. No Sunday finery. No collection plates… Centuries of European tradition and Christian habit are deliberately being abandoned, clearing the way for the new, contemporary forms of worship and belonging.” The post-Christian faith is one of wonder and belonging.
So now I will speak of the radical nature of Christianity. I have talked about the mainstreaming of this religion. I feel it’s too easy to make fun of it, though I have refrained from highlighting the many crazy people who have taken the lead in Christianity. Yes, there were people who gave us horror stories of violence and suffering in the name of Christianity, but they all seem so bound up in the post-Christian, post-modern confusion of our religion, constantly asking are we Christian enough, do we know God—and sometimes answering “I know god, follow me!” Well, Jesus was the original crazy. And we at the seminary are constantly asking ourselves about Him. The latest trend in the evolving Christian faith is to discover an original Christianity, where there probably weren’t collars or eighteenth-century hymns. There was just Jesus. And He was radical. He was often pissed off at people, though loved them at the same time. He ate and slept with the most disheartened and diseased, and he accepted his own death. And not only death as an inevitable part of life, but as an amazing transformation of it. Let’s be clear: none of these things we usually do. Most of them we would not want to do. That’s radical vs. mainstream. A lot of Christian preachers talk about this. Unfortunately, they set up a good-guy, bad-guy situation, where secular culture is evil and only Christianity offers the good. I’m not saying that. I’m saying that Jesus is a radical and we don’t tend to talk about our inherited Christianity the way Jesus did. We assume we are either Christian or not and go about functioning in a secular-Christian society, a norm or sorts. So, how do we break with the norm? How are we post-Christian?
In his beautiful book, Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman talks about the way to break this pattern in ourselves, in how we see Jesus and our religion anew:
“Living in a climate of deep insecurity, Jesus, faced with so narrow a margin of civil guarantees, had to find some other basis upon which to establish a sense of well-being. He knew that the goals of religion as he understood them could never be worked out within the then-established order. Deep from within that order he projected a dream, the logic of which would give to all the needful security. There would be room for all, and no man would be a threat to his brother.” (Jesus and the Disinherited, p. 35)
Christianity is fractured. It is broken into denominations, independents—too many to count in DC alone. As we mold our religion into this many shapes, have created a hundred different places to keep us apart? Where would Jesus even worship today? Would he be post-Christian?
I heard a mentor of mine on the radio recently talk about a needed paradigm shift for Christianity, as we might have experienced with Galileo’s discovery of the sun as center of our galaxy. He said that the all-important “beliefs” Christians lift up as the markers of the faith really should be renamed as “beloved.” Instead of belief—belove—used both as a noun and a verb. As you might commit to a person, you commit to this faith. Christianity may itself be all about committing to a person. I find this to be so relevant, because people leave the church and people are hurt by the church, but we can build church one relationship at a time.
I ask you to hold me in your prayers and keep me in dialogue when I say cleverly on my facebook page that my “Religion is a construct.” I think it’s healthy for me to graduate with more questions than answers. Through my time at Wesley—a liberal Methodist seminary—I have witnessed vast differences within Christianity. I met someone the other day who believes in reincarnation. Freaked me out—and I loved it! But I don’t know if I am a Christian. If you are a Christian, I would ask you a question that on the surface sounds very Baptist, which is how I was raised, but is asked now with a call for greater depth of our commitment to our faith. I ask, “How will you become a better Christian?” Probably not by falling into it as a default, because it is just what we do in our culture; neither by merely reacting to it. I admit I first was attracted to Unitarian Universalism in part because of how it let me NOT be a Christian, a difficult thing in Texas where I was raised.
We are a UU church that embraces Christianity even as it respects our individual searching, suggesting there can be a free religious border around Christianity. I hope we are not an exclusive Christian club. I hope we can approach our mainline Christian congregations without suspicion. As Howard Thurman wrote about Jesus, “He knew that the goals of religion as he understood them could never be worked out within the then-established order.” Don’t take for granted Christianity and the people who would speak for it. Just when you think you are about to become a Christian, just when like me you are about to graduate with a degree that gives you some authority in the church to speak for the church—that’s the time when you face your mainstream brothers and sisters without suspicion, because you’ve got questions for them. The worst pain in the world can be betrayal and we betray others by not being in spiritual relationship with them. And many people have just stopped going to church. Our society doesn’t really trust the Christian church, at least not in a healthy way. Some are slavish to it, others reactionary against it. We need to build the trust. Jesus broke rules of his faith, broke social custom, using His higher vision of being in relationship with others. We can live with intentional Christianity by asking questions that challenge the faith, that project a vision of what might just be outside our faith. We are post-Christian because the nature of Christianity might just be change and growth. And it might lead us to a non-Christian space. That’s what I love about this pulpit that I’ve heard nowhere else: no Christian church offers to help you search without an agenda, admitting that there are answers outside its own heaven. Break some rules like Jesus and who knows what Christianity could look like?