Not The Religious Type

Have We Turned the Bad Guys into the Good Guys?

PB, yesterday, asked me to clarify a passing comment I'd made that we'd changed the terms of what faith in Jesus over the last century or so--both abandoning how people thought about this before and then lobbying that these new ways of seeing things were in fact the only ways.  I commented that, line-drawing as this might seem (and I was lobbying against line-drawing), this view also misread what the Bible was driving at.

Brent, as well, like the thoughtful and dogged thinker that he is, kept pressing that we DO need to draw lines in terms of how we think about God, that that's a separate question from whether we broadcast those views or judge people who disagree with how those lines fall.  (He agrees that those things pose challenges.)  He especially presses that we need to do this with a certain sort of ultra-conservative Christian who uses his or her faith as a club to bludgeon people.

Interestingly, those two comments come together for me.  If I were to give a shorthand in answering PB's question, I'd do it this way.  In the last century or so, church leaders have--in fact if not in their intentions--made the Pharisees the good guys in the gospel story.  The Pharisees, you'll recall, were the folks who pressed to have Jesus killed and were the only people Jesus was consistently scathing towards.

This is the basis of my point that reclaiming being "religious" as a good thing is an ill-fated idea.  The Pharisees were the religious people of the gospels, and look how they turned out (and what Jesus thought about them).

But--or so it seems to me--a century or so of evangelical expansion started just great and then turned, all based on this issue.  Evangelicals started great as a force lobbying both for important, gospel-based social reform (evangelicals played a major role in the abolitionist movement, women's suffrage and the civil rights movement) as well as for insisting on the centrality of embracing and believing in Jesus and studying and obeying the Bible.  It's hard to argue with that legacy, and it's no surprise at all to me that this formula ultimately left the evangelicals as the big winners, growth-wise, by the second half of the 20th century. 

But the seeds of implosion were there as well.  The constant cultural battling that was central for those crucial benefits I've just mentioned, to my mind, hardened into a shell of its former self.  The reflexive instinct towards cultural battle caused many faith-filled churches--and ultimately a large chunk of the entire culture of faith-filled churches--to turn inward and endlessly battle for and teach "orthodoxy."  The emphasis that, in the end, what was most important was "right belief"--rather than faith, obedience to Jesus, and concrete acts of love--to my mind made for an aggressive emulation of the Pharisees rather than of Jesus or any of his subsequent interpreters (Paul, John and Peter, in particular).  Being "the guardian of orthodoxy" turns out to have a major downside. 

I do think this is central to the knee-jerk cultural battles that have become assumed as central by evangelicals (and, to emphasize, in my own strange way, I regard myself as an evangelical).  In my experience, it's on this point that the challenges that Otto so eloquently described in his post this week show themselves.  The "meat" of faith in Jesus has been twisted over the last century or so to be "a sort of Bible discussion that helps me understand the right way to think about 'x' cultural issue." 

To briefly (one hopes) work out what I'm sure is my own wound on this last point: Several times a year I end up in a discussion on this with someone who wants more of this "meat."  What always seems unarguable afterward to me is that, unless I'm missing it, by the assessment of the person I'm talking with at the time themselves (though it usually takes them awhile to see and concede this), we actually talk more about the Bible in the average sermon than was true in that biblically "meaty" church that they're yearning for.  We employ more scripture, talk about it in more depth and teach it in more settings (right now our executive pastor Brian Housman is offering our small groups month-long in-depth experiences of a biblical book; he's just finished his time with those of our Tuesday groups looking for this experience and will be working his way through to the other days that have a lot of groups).  

So what's the disconnect?  Usually, after we talk this through, it's this issue.  We don't use all that Bible time to empower sharper opinions about social issues or about right belief.  We exclusively use it to encourage action.  (In my most-recent discussion on this, a very hostile woman visiting us from a Bible church cursed me repeatedly for our lack of use of scripture.  I was a little dumbfounded.  In the sermon she'd just heard, I dealt with a full chapter of a difficult text, had painstakingly worked through it over maybe half the time of the sermon, and then had told vulnerable stories about my own faltering attempts to put this scripture into practice.  Where had I gone wrong, on her terms?  How much more "Bible" could she possibly have gotten in her Bible church than she'd gotten that morning?  "You didn't do it RIGHT!" was her basic shout back my direction.  "You didn't do it like any good Christian would!")

Now I'm sure I have blind spots on this, and those of you either currently or formerly in my church could, I'm sure, point them out to me in some very accurate detail.  But my larger point is that this really is a divide. 

Where has how we present biblical faith gone wrong in the last century?  To my mind it's that we've emulated the Pharisees and have prized, above all, being "right" about a million things--a given verse in the Bible, a social position.  We're putting tons of effort into teaching a reductionist view of "orthodoxy" rather than empowering and modeling living faith in a living God.

But, hey, I'm just one quirky voice.  What's your view?

Do We Need to Tell Other Churchgoers that They're Wrong?

Ten minutes to write a post!  Can it be done?  A new record?  Only if I swipe previously-existing material and don't digress!

But we all know that will be impossible, so just a word about this famous Globe article I mentioned in the previous post.  I mentioned in the comments section that I'd been extremely disappointed with my segment of the article when it actually came out.  It's a cliche to say "I was misquoted!", but man alive...  The reporter, desperate to stir controversy when I resolutely refused to give any, fabricated a fictitious, hostile atheist ad campaign and asked me what I thought about it.  I said the non-controversial, "Well, I guess I'd regard that as uncharitable."  He then took that quote and appended it as a comment on the innocuous "good without God" campaign that's actually running, which makes me sound like a lunatic (as there's no way this campaign could be regarded as uncharitable in the slightest).  He then added the phrase which I never said in any context, "and hopeless."  One local atheist emailed me after reading the article, not so much angry (he said some nice things about my other quotes), but just quizzical.  "Uncharitable?  How the hell could this be uncharitable?  And 'hopeless'?  What on earth could that mean related to this actual ad campaign?"  When the local atheist community is trying to think the best of me and help me rephrase, I know I've hit a rough patch.  I emailed the atheist author mentioned in the article to apologize and explain.

So, I got that off my chest and now have four minutes left.  So.

Here's an exchange from the thread two days ago.  (And thanks so much, Otto, for a fun and thoughtful article yesterday.)

  Jeff said...

As usual, Dave, I agree with 99% of what you've been saying. So I have a sense that I have a disagreement, probably not a disagreement, maybe a reframing, in one area. It's something I've been thinking a lot.

On one hand, I'm with you and Brent that in a sense, Christianity is not a religion, it is a rejection of religion in favor of Jesus. Sort of. But there are some problems in this direction

First off, that strikes me as somewhat arrogant in an interreligious dialogue. As if we start the whole thing off by redefining the terms. Like- "I suppose that I wil deign to speak to you about matters of faith, so far as you know that MY faith is so superior to yours that it doesn't even DESERVE that title 'religion'".

Second, it strikes me that it would also be important for us to consider that, since we are obviously and unavoidably religious people running religious organizations, how can we do this WELL?

For example, the question "how do we deal with the bad press we get from the loonies who use our faith?" is certainly not unique to Christianity. Or, how do we speak the message of our faith and encourage people toward experience in ways that are relevant to the culture around us?

I don't think you disagree with any of this. I think I'm agreeing with you, and putting some weight on the reality that this recontextualization will necessarily have an insitutional cast, and be subject to the same mistakes that all religious organizations are prone to.

  BMH said in reply to Jeff...

Good question, Jeff. It gets to part of what I was getting at when this whole defining love and religion thing started.

I am not sure you can do recontextualization well without also saying (or at least implying) that the vast majority of (at least American) Christians are just plain wrong about what they think it means to be a Christian. At some point, I think, you end up drawing those lines, even if you avoid talking about those lines explicitly.

I have very little problem with that, but that is perhaps why I am an academic and you and Dave are pastors :)

  Dave Schmelzer said in reply to BMH...

Ooh, I feel a post coming on, and I think we've got Otto set up for tomorrow with a guest post. But I'm still not sold. It seems to me the message to other church people is not "You're wrong," but "You're culturally-conditioned when you've just regarded yourself as 'right.'". That strikes me, yes, as a profoundly threatening message, but not quite the same, if I'm understanding you, as what you're saying.

I love Jeff (and, from what I can tell, Brent [BMH]) robustly in a man-love sort of way.  They rock.  But I differ here, I think.

I'm not sold we need to draw lines in a fundamental institutional critique.  I think, rather, the contribution we're making is to pitch that many takes on "Christianity" (not least the use of that word) are cultural rather than "true."  Contextualization, in the sense we were talking about, means that you present yourself in a particular context.  You'd do things differently in a different context.

So I have no beef with any form of faith in Jesus that's working anywhere.  Jeff later critiqued the emergent church movement.  I'd say I have no beef with the emergent church movement...so long as I don't have to be it.  If it's working, great.  House churches may be making a fundamental critique of institutional churches--more power to them.  I have no critique to make of either house churches or other institutional churches.  If it's working for them, great.

But what i think we are saying is that, in the world of the secular west, we've lost the ability to actually engage the world around us on the terms we've been using.  We've agreed to become marginalized, set into a subculture that exists, to a great extent, to throw rocks at the larger secular culture from behind our barricade.  I'm pitching that that's due both, yes, to a misreading of the biblical narrative that we've somehow made the standard reading in the last hundred years (a line-drawing, to be sure, but not one I have to "win" with anyone who likes the state of things as they are) and to treating cultural truths as absolute truths.

Okay, a little heady, but I'm THREE MINUTES OVERDUE.  (Still, pretty good.  Thirteen minutes!  You've gotta give it up for that.)

Thoughts?  (You can even feel free to take a whole thirteen minutes to compose your comment.  Knock yourself out.)

The Cure For Resignation and Cynicism / Otto Von Wachter

Here are three mini-stories/insights/ideas that I will attempt to weave into a coherent theme!  Hope you enjoy them.

Full-gospel church, now with 30% more Jesus!

I ran into an old acquaintance at the Vineyard in Cambridge when I was there for the Culture Center Summit. I asked her how life was going and whether she was involved at church. I thought to myself that, being in another city, if only I was at a cool church like this one then I would be really involved. She seemed kind of blah as I waited for her response, there was little enthusiasm there. She said something like "I'm not sure this is the right church for me". I forgot exactly her words, but basically she felt that the church was kind of shallow, didn't have much depth to it. She said, "I need something meatier, some place where they study and talk more about the Bible". On the one hand, I got what she meant, she felt she needed to go on to the next level in her learning of the Bible. But on the other hand I thought to myself "No, what you really need to do is to get out and DO something with your faith". I felt like I was struck by a flash of insight. I felt like I got something about the story of the rich young ruler in gospels, which Dave S. had mentioned in a blog post just a few days earlier (and I remember scratching my head and not quite getting the reference to it).

It seems to me that in a way, in our affluent society we are all a little like that rich young ruler, searching for significance, looking for the right guru or mentor to give us the answer to the meaning of life. I bet Jesus knew the heart of this man, and he knew that what would give meaning to his life and what would light him up would be to give away his possessions and to love the poor through the huge generosity of giving away his riches. But the rich young man wasn't in touch with his own need for being loving, and he didn't see the connection. He didn't see how all his possessions were actually isolating him, from God and from others. He probably walked away thinking "This guy isn't very deep, what kind of an answer is that?" What I got from my conversation with that acquaintance at church was how much I was the same as her, how I searched for the "right church" as a consumer, looking for a church that has all the right qualities so I could experience being fulfilled. I was looking for that church with authentic flavor, one with 30% more Jesus.

Playing on the court vs. yelling from the stands

I was thinking about something else I learned recently in a course I took called the Landmark Forum. The course leader made the analogy that we can think of life as a basketball game, and we have the choice of being "on the court" or "in the stands". Mostly we make this choice unconsciously.   Although we may not be aware of it, this choice of being on the court or in the stands correlates with our actions and even our speech. Thinking back to the blog conversation that touched on Rush Limbaugh, he strikes me as someone who, in the basketball game analogy, fits the role of sports commentator. He has a great understanding of the game, he might even be a genius. But he's not on the court, he's somewhere up in a box overlooking the game, isolated, actually having no effect on the game (because few people take him seriously other than his dedicated listeners who don't have very much power either). It strikes me that someone like Limbaugh actually takes himself "out of the game" by virtue of the role he takes on as a critic.

What if one of the main temptations we face in life, one of the main ways we sin or "miss the point" of life is by taking ourselves out of the game?  Maybe after being hurt out on the field, we decide (without consciously realizing it) that we're not going to play in the game anymore, and that it's easier instead to stay on the sidelines and shout from there.  Maybe this gives us some of the satisfaction of feeling being a part of the game without the risk of being hurt again.

A walk on part in the war or a lead role in a cage

There's this Pink Floyd song I love that I heard on the radio recently and also had an insight about its meaning.  If you're not a Pink Floyd fan, maybe skip the song interpretation or watch the YouTube video of "Wish You Were Here" first. My favorite line in the song is when the songwriter asks (presumably a friend) "Did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?" He asks it of a friend who thinks he has it all figured out, has all the right answers (he starts out the song saying "So you think you can tell heaven from hell?"). He thinks he knows the meaning of happiness (thinks he can tell "blue skies from pain"), but has surrounded himself with phony people (can he tell "a smile from a veil"?) He has become cynical and resigned. He has traded his true heroes for ghosts. He may know a lot about the problems in the world, but is not interested in fighting for the solution.  That's my interpretation of the song, and it fits with my point, so I'm going to go with it! 

Both idealism and realism lead to cynicism, even the cheeriest optimist is bound to become cynical in this world.  Interestingly, it seems to me that the only cure to cynicism and resignation is getting out and playing on the court.  I like how Pink Floyd says it, because playing the walk on part in the war may not be glamorous, it may not even seem that important. But maybe when all is said and done it's the more satisfying role. 

What if one of the main thrusts of Jesus is to challenge us to get out on the court, in the game, in the war?  Whether that means giving away your money to help the poor, or going out into the world to share the good news of the kingdom of God. What if it's less important what we believe about every detail of our religion, but that we put our convictions, our core beliefs, into practice? Loving, listening, being in relationship with others. Oh, and don't think that I'm preaching about this to you out of my enlightenment. I'm blown away by this idea myself as I'm writing this, I am confronted by it.  Even as I'm writing this, I feel I need to repent of all the "opinions" I have. 

What are your thoughts?  Are there are areas of life where you, like me, have taken yourself out of the game? Do you have a better interpretation of "Wish You Were Here", or perhaps another Pink Floyd song that may give us deep insights?

The Opportunity in Front of Us

This has been a fun stretch of posts and comments--all about definitions of things like "love," "religion" and "Christian." 

On the one hand, I'm sure this could seem nitpicky, but to me this is big stuff, primarily because of the opportunity I feel is in front of you and me.  I'm sure this will sound overstated...but...not finding a great, tempered way to phrase it, let me run it by you this way: The opportunity is to utterly recontextualize biblical faith.

"Contextualization," for those of you who prefer your words to be under seven syllables, loosely speaking is changing the way we think about or present something.  My pitch is that faithful church people for the last century or so have framed being a faithful church person in a certain set of ways that were largely different than the way those things were framed before.  And then they were so successful in that framing, in that contextualizing, that we sort of forgot that there were any other ways to think about following Jesus.  Those became the terms.

That's where, to my mind, a lot of what most people think about when they think of "religion," "love" or "Christian" came from.  And, to my thinking, those ways of thinking just aren't helping us much in the transition we're in now.

I got a call just now from a Boston Globe reporter.  They're running a story tomorrow on a massive advertising campaign that an atheist group is starting tomorrow in Boston (and it will apparently be rolled out to a city near you as well) that mirrors the atheist advertising campaign that's rolled through Europe and that Dan Littauer posted on here awhile back.  Was I outraged that these well-funded bullies were calling my faith superstition and saying that there was more evidence for belief in Santa Claus than God, etc.?  No, I said, it was a free country and, here in Boston, they'd be preaching to a pretty large choir. 

But, he said, surely someone with my beliefs would have to be outraged!  They were calling me and others like me idiots!  Yes, I said, I was tracking with that, but was this new?  Dawkins has been doing this for a few years, and I wasn't sure that line of thought was going to be a winner for them in the long run.  How many people want to be grow up obsessed that anyone who disagrees with them is, by definition, a fool that doesn't need to be actually known or engaged with to dismiss?  Seemed like sort of an unpleasant way to live.  The reporter effectively said that there were very few church people who talked like me, in his experience.

And why is that?  My take: Because you and I are recontextualizing biblical faith to a changing world.  Without those changes, I'd have to be outraged!  My religion was under attack! 

But what if the stakes Jesus actually cares about are different than we've envisioned them in recent years?  What if there's something far more powerful being offered us right in the heart of the Bible than we've understood or pursued, as people of faith in Jesus, for the last century or so?  What if we've been settling for far too little?

I think the entire world, the entire secular culture is wide open for a new experience of robustly biblical faith.  Because, in my view, that is where a rich life is to be found, and it seems to me that a rich life is one compelling sales point. 

But this will require some pretty vigorous recontextualizing.  Thanks for starting in on that process!  Here's to a lot more where that comes from!

Thoughts?

Are We--Dare I Ask--Christians?

So I got mixed traction on the "religion as demon" idea. 

If I can continue to push here, I think this idea is not a minor one in our discussion.  I do think that religion, as understood in broader, secular culture (and, again, arguably as Jesus described it) is very much something we should be suspect of and should be loathe to align ourselves with.  This will cause the occasional awkward or semantic conversation.  ("So you're a committed, really involved churchgoer but it's important to you to make clear that you're not 'religious'...  Okey-dokey."  As they roll their eyes.)  But to my mind this is not a frill; it's not word games; it's right at the heart of whatever it is we're hoping to offer to the world around us.

And, in the "in for a penny, in for a pound" spirit, I'm tempted to push for the whole she-bang and ask how much utility you find in the word "Christian" as a label you embrace.  If you've read my book, you'll know some of my thoughts on the matter, but I was very much helped by meeting "Muslims who follow Jesus" in the Middle East.  Their regarding of their Muslim background as an important part of their culture and heritage that they planned on identifying with for the rest of their lives on those terms--but which was separate from the "following Jesus" part was revolutionary for me.  One of my friends there talked of himself as a "Christian who followed Jesus"--his background and culture was Christian.  Which then freed me to realize I was a "secularist who followed Jesus"--I had no Christian background at all and had never identified with Christian culture in any way.

It was pointed out to me that "Christian" only comes up in the New Testament three times, two of which are epithets tossed the way of Jesus' people by their enemies.  And Jesus is not the God of the Christians while Allah is God of the Muslims and Hindus have lots of gods and so on.  Jesus' claim is to be the only universal God.  He's everybody's God--Buddhist, Confucian, Muslim, Christian, secular, and everyone else.  The developing sin of the Old Testament was regarding the God there as the God exclusively of the Jews. 

And "Christian" is, by definition, a bounded-set term.  It's something you either are or aren't.  It's a pool you jump into or you don't. 

That said, you could justly push back that I, who write this, pastor a church with the phrase "Christian Fellowship" in its name.  Touche.  But it's not that we haven't weighed that.  We decided to stick with it as we interviewed a sampling of secularists who'd encountered Jesus through us--would they prefer that we ditch the "Christian" designation?  No, they said.  While they didn't identify with it themselves, it helped them feel safe that we weren't being shifty.  In other words, they loved that we were centered-set.  But it made it safe for them to explore a centered-set faith if we pretended to be bounded-set up front.

And I realize that this conversation may differ radically from culture to culture.  In Ohio or Orange County, California or Texas or Oklahoma, there might just be no mileage at all to be gained by avoiding calling oneself a "Christian."  And even in Boston, periodically I do end up in a conversation with someone who asks me, "So are you a Christian?"  And I find myself saying, "Absolutely in the sense that I'm doing my best to follow Jesus.  But, strangely, I've always much more strongly identified with secular culture and I have no cultural background as a Christian. So in that sense I identify more with being a secularist."  And I pretty much never self-label as "Christian."

I realize I got minimal traction with my pushing against being "religious," so I may be asking a bit much here.  But, with full trepidation, let me ask...thoughts?

"Religion" as Description, "Religion" as Demon

So there you have the complexity of talking about love.  Initially we suggest it's more of a "you know it when you see it" thing and the clamor is "No, we need definition!"  So we try to define it and the clamor is, "Hey, you can't define something like love.  That spoils it!"  Perhaps just proving the complexity of the subject, especially when, as some of you suggested, maybe "love" is a synonym for God ("God is love") or for Jesus himself.  Which gives it the characteristics of a living, breathing thing (or maybe a "substance," as one of you suggested).  One thing we all seem to agree on: whatever they might think of themselves, the angry people with the signs are not being loving.

So what does this exchange suggest to me?  Let's have the same sort of conversation about something equally challenging to pin down: religion! 

Brian, in a comment last week, pressed that we need to do periodic definitions of what we mean by "religion" when we're all participating in a blog called "Not the Religious Type."  And, fair enough.

I realize, despite having written a book on the topic, which you'd think would mean I've given this some thought, I'm pushing for a non-standard definition.  So maybe I'm tempted to concede two different senses in which we might talk about religion. 

The reason I, a pastor of a church that talks about Jesus, feel comfortable nonetheless in calling myself  "not the religious type" is that I'm defining "religion" as, essentially, a demonic hoodwinking of a given person.  The religious people in the Bible were the Pharisees, under this way of looking at things.  They were the villains, not the heroes of the story.  There was nothing good to be said in the Bible about being religious.  Religion was a demon that swept through people, filled them with self-righteousness, encouraged them to demonize people with whom they differed, and angered God (and annoyed people).  It's 100% bad.  When Paul defines Jesus as having come to "break dividing walls," he's effectively saying that Jesus came to destroy that biggest, baddest demonic principality of all: religion. 

In this way of thinking, how people can help each other is to help each other avoid this worst of evils.  And the way to do that is to do what the non-religious people of the later New Testament did--connect powerfully with Jesus by way of his Holy Spirit, follow him wholeheartedly but with lots and lots of humility, and look to Jesus to give one's life meaning, power and direction.  This endeavor is never about fighting the awful people out there; it's about partnering with the living God towards what God is doing on earth--AS BEST AS ONE CAN.  Understanding that, of course, who on earth are any of us, really?  When we seem helpfully to be connecting with Jesus, we celebrate.  When we don't seem to be doing so well, we avoid beating ourselves up, but ask for prayer and advice and encouragement. 

There you have it: "Not the Religious Type" in the sense of having no interest in religious wars--culture wars or actual wars.  Those are what people under this evil demon's influence do (which perhaps answers our question about how to respond to the angry people with the offensive signs).

But some folks take umbrage at this take on "religion," regarding it as an unhelpful purloining of the term.  As I mentioned in my response to Brian a few posts back, this is how the atheist writer John Loftus responded in a joint radio interview we did a few months back.  It was his intention to pillory religious people for the evils of the world, and having me respond, "Oh, I couldn't agree with you more.  Those religious people ARE the cause of most of the world's problems!  I wrote a whole book on just that point." pissed him off.  

And Brian points out that using my preferred definition of "religion" when he talks with his secular friends just seems like word games and a dodge to them.  CLEARLY people like Brian and me are religious, whatever we might try to say.

So...sure.  If someone asks me, "Are you religious?" I can graciously say, I suppose, "If you mean do I go to church?  Yes I do."  So I suppose "religion" can just be something helpful definitionally.  But I think I'm on firm ground in saying it's not at all just word games to say that the New Testament aligns itself squarely against religion.  It really has nothing good to say about it, except perhaps in James' attempt to reclaim some meaning to "TRUE religion," implying that he hasn't seen many examples of that.  The perspective of the rest of it?  Religion is a terrible but almost irresistible demon, and most of the stakes of our lives boil down to not getting sucked into it.  So--this probably sounds smug and therefore religious--I'm too into the Bible to cop to being religious.

Thoughts?

Let's Define "Love", Shall We?

Abashed, as I so often am, by yet again having been shown to be wrong, I'm sold that we need a little definition of what we mean by love.  Are churches that shout hateful things towards groups with which they disagree actually "loving" them, as the churches in question would claim they are (they love them enough to warn them of their danger of hell)?  If not, what's our basis for saying this isn't love?

My initial foray that love usually feels like love to the recipient was blown up by examples of tough love (i.e., will love to an addict always "feel like love" to them at the time?).  As I responded at the time: touche.  

As one of you suggested, I'm wondering if we should start with 1 Corinthians 13.  if it's good enough for ten million weddings, maybe it's good enough for us.  What if love is: patient, kind, not jealous, not boastful or proud or rude (hello churches that shout hateful slogans at groups with which they differ?), not demanding to get its own way, not irritable, not keeping a record of when it was wronged, rejoicing in the truth, always hopeful and faith-filled and enduring.  

That strikes me as a love that exists outside of our own "convictions," a love that requires some actual relational connection with the objects of our love.  (For an intriguing real-world application of this idea, check out this editorial in my hometown paper last Friday about Rush Limbaugh's removal from a group trying to buy an NFL team.  If you're a rabid Limbaugh fan, skip it--it will just be vexing to you.  But if you can hang with the writer's point of view, I do think it might be a revealing test of our 1 Corinthians 13 definition of love here.)

  

In brief, I wonder if we're saying that actual love is irreducibly relational.  If the church that Brent mentioned had befriended the people they picketed--if they'd demonstrated any of the 1 Corinthians 13 traits--and had then warned them of their danger of hell, I wonder if we'd be more sympathetic, whatever our views on whether they're right or not.

Thoughts?  Are we getting closer?

Do We Need to Define What Love Is?

I've been super-intrigued by an exchange of comments that you may have missed between Brent Henderson and me in the "The Pietists, The Methodists and Stage 4 Faith" post.  (That's one of those posts, of which we have a few, which to me cry out "boring and academic!" but which, nonetheless, often end up with some of our more interesting stuff.) 

The heart of the post was pointing out the ways the two groups in question redefined orthodoxy--even the kind of orthodoxy that allegedly (as Richard clarified for us) involved rigorous study of the Bible--as being "whatever leads to love" rather than as "what conforms to some set of doctrines that we in this room define as 'orthodox.'"  That seemed sort of intriguing and on-target to me, so I threw it out. 

Brent, while not arguing the point, pressed for more definition.  I found myself pressing back.  And this went on for a beat or two between us.

It strikes me that there's some real meat in this exchange (not that either of us, if I'm reading Brent right, would say that we have "answers" to the perspectives we've pushed), so much so that I'd love your thoughts and help.

I'll reprint the exchange, but maybe I can summarize the question this way: If we're looking for a kind of faith which will in point of fact create love where before there was none, do we need to define what kind of love we're talking about up front?  Or would such a definition sort of spoil the whole idea?

Here's the exchange:

Brent said...

This is only loosely connected to the post, I guess, but though I like the idea of actual love leading to biblical faith, I sometimes run into the problem how 'actual love' is defined. Just a while ago, for instance, a church here in Gainesville demonstrated during the local gay pride parade with nasty signs and slogans and claimed they were doing it all in Biblical love for those sinful unsaved homosexuals. That it would in fact be unloving if they were to keep silent.

Seems like there has to be a definition of love in there somewhere, which, though perhaps not quite on the order of a creed or boundary-drawing orthodoxy, is still a definition, a way of drawing a line between what is and isn't Christian. Whadday think?

Reply October 13, 2009 at 02:59 PM

Dave S said in reply to Brent...

I'll bite! How about: "The objects of our love feel loved by us.". If nothing else, this would rule out the Gainesville gang.

Reply October 13, 2009 at 04:07 PM

Brent said...

I think that works most of the time. But I can imagine a retort: Jesus died for the Romans and pharisees, but few of them felt loved by his actions. Some even delighted in his degradation, yet he died for them as well.

So, that Gainesville crowd might say, we are doing this in love even if it is not received as love.

Reply October 13, 2009 at 05:39 PM

Dave Schmelzer said in reply to Brent...

So, okay, Jesus died for the Pharisees and Romans. But I'm remembering him saying as well that "he only came for those who are sick"--who felt a need for a doctor. For the rest, who regard themselves as well, he doesn't have much to offer. Technically, he died for all, even those who were uninterested. But he hung out with the tax collectors and sinners, who felt quite loved. The Roman CENTURIAN felt super-loved by him.

Reply October 13, 2009 at 06:58 PM

Brent said in reply to Dave Schmelzer...

Sure. I doubt we'd disagree very much on what is and isn't loving. And for me it's like a lot of things - I know it when I see it.

But then I get confronted with other Christians who seem to be doing horrible things out of 'love' for others or 'love' for God. In fact, one might say Christians have a pretty strong track record for doing that throughout history. So, what's the course of action then? It seems that, in some way (formal or informal), we indeed draw a line between the Christians that 'get it' and those that don't. We get, in other words, a kind of boundary-drawing orthodoxy.

I'm playing the devil's advocate here a bit, but just enough to say that I guess we can't completely get away from definitions and boundaries if we are going to be distinctive at all.

Reply October 13, 2009 at 10:41 PM

What are your thoughts?

Opinions and Why I'm (for the Most Part) Against Them

I've been reminded recently of the late, great cultural theorist, Neil Postman, whose seminal book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, sold a whopping 200,000 copies (not amazing for Dan Brown--unprecedented for an academic "cultural theorist") back in the 80s.

Postman had a bold point to make.  If I'm remembering, it was along the lines that any change in the means by which people can communicate actually changes human consciousness, for better or worse.  It's a mistake to regard every change as good "progress."  So a written alphabet changes people who previously had had only oral communication.  The printing press changed how people saw and related to the world.  Then the telegraph.  TV.  The internet.  We became fundamentally different as a species with each of these changes.

A particularly memorable part of his very memorable book was (paradoxically, I'll now say "if I'm remembering correctly") connected to his discussion of the telegraph.  With this change, settlers out in the vacant new territories of the west were connected not just with their own local news, but with news and gossip from back east.  Now they were being invited to form opinions about issues that they had no ability to personally influence, and this was a damaging thing.  It removed people from their own lives and relationships and put them into some kind of fantasy world of pure opinion. 

He was the first person I'd ever read (there have since been others) who strongly argued against reading a newspaper (not to mention the real abomination: watching TV news).  And this was his rationale.  Newspapers fill you will all sorts of things that you're encouraged to form an opinion about, but which you have no ability to actually influence. And it's in their interests to fan controversy--so that you'll buy the NEXT paper or make sure to watch the next broadcast.  And so you can be strung along with an endless series of pointless "controversies" that you'll invest yourself in to no end.  And you won't read, say, books, which can thoughtfully present a point of view.  You'll be tugged from real relationships and local issues of concern in which you can make a vast difference.  Hence, we are "Amusing Ourselves to Death."

Now I love newspapers--I've read two already this morning.  But what Postman and others like him have forced me to acknowledge is that I like them for their entertainment or distraction value.  I've had to give up the superior position that I like them because I, noble thinker that I am, like to "be informed," unlike those benighted non-newspaper readers. 

Postman--I believe he was an atheist--pointed me towards a few scriptural moments that I now saw in a new way.  Like where James talks about being slow to speak and quick to listen.  Maybe my eagerness to spout my opinion about whatever issue of the day struck my fancy was destructive in ways I hadn't noticed.  Or where Peter asks Jesus what's going to happen to John, and Jesus tells him it's none of his business.  Is Jesus refusing to give Peter information about which Peter could form an opinion?  ("That's outrageous!  Why should JOHN get THAT life when I--someone who's WAY more faithful than him--get a WORSE life?")

Now I have lots of opinions, many of which make their way into this blog (one of them forcing itself upon you at this very moment).  But I'm hoping I'm quicker to discount them and to withdraw from feeling the need to opine about trivia.  David Letterman's recent imbroglio--I have no opinion on the matter.

I bring this up because of the strong opinions reflected on my Facebook page, at the very least, about the Obama Nobel Peace Prize.  Here's my take (or, if you prefer, my opinion): we're all lemmings being inflamed into cataclysmically-strong opinions about mostly-trivial things by a media industry that, again, benefits by said inflaming.  Conservative or liberal media--they benefit so long as we're perpetually mad as hell.  

Now maybe I've picked a poor example.  You might have a persuasive case that, no, this prize will in fact materially affect how a substantial percentage of people on earth will experience their life this morning (or soon hereafter).  I don't see it, to be sure.  To my mind, the only appropriate response is mild curiosity and then getting on with one's day rather than an emotive response about why this is an outrage or completely justified.  And I do think it's safe to say that my opinion likely won't persuade the Nobel committee to revoke the award or Obama to decline it.

An analogy that comes to mind comes from my local sports radio.  Pro sports, you may have heard, are a big deal in Boston.  And so there's been a dominant local sports radio station.  Their business model is driven by endless discussion of whatever they can persuade you is controversial.  (I'm not complaining--I happily listen to this junk.)  So let's say the Red Sox have, say, traded a megastar like Manny Ramirez.  They had good cause--he was refusing to play, for instance, which most teams find to be a liability.  But he also had the kind of transcendent ability that is likely irreplaceable (or so it was thought at the time), so maybe the team should have tried a little harder with him.  Or gotten a better deal if they did decide to trade him.  It's an outrage!  What's your opinion!

Ten hours a day for two weeks.  I kid you not.

I long ago remarked to Grace that the only appropriate response to ANY of these controversies is the two-word: "We'll see."  If any of these controversies works out favorably (trading previous megastar Nomar Garciaparra for two nobodies led to the team's first World Series win in 86 years), we'll all love the decision.  If they work out poorly, we won't.  So...we'll see.  Our opinion is largely irrelevant, or only to be undertaken for entertainment purposes.

There are, of course, limits.  Our opinions about politicians do, in the end, have at least some relevance to our day-to-day lives in that we control about 1/100,000,000th of the votes in this country. 

But if our opinions about issues of the day aren't so much the issues, what are?  I'd pitch that our mission and our relationships have a lot to recommend them.  I have friends outraged by what they see as injustice and other friends, equally outraged, who are giving their lives to address the injustices they feel such passion about.  I do my best to stay on mission about the ultimate questions of this blog--how to invite people into an experience of living faith who might otherwise be left out of that offer.

Now I'll ask for plenty of opinions on this blog.  That's part of the fun of something like a blog.  That's even how conversations and relationships are often formed--I'll throw out my opinion and you throw out yours.

But in the end, most of my opinions are neither here nor there.  Except for my opinion about who's most to blame in that nasty Jon and Kate divorce and what's going to happen to those poor kids.

Thoughts?  (Or--better stated--opinions?)

The Pietists, the Methodists and Our Beloved Stage 4 Faith

I've mentioned a few times before that I'm a fan of university courses on tape, mostly theology or church history (church drone that I am), but branching out to (as at present) great American lit or political history or whatever.

All to say, among the courses I'm listening to at the moment is one called The Lives of Great Christians.  (If you're the sort of person who'd purchase such a thing, note that this company puts all of its courses on sale several times a year, where the price of a given course goes down by, like, 80%.  That's how I've bought each of the courses from these folks I've listened to.)  It's super-fun. 

I'm currently listening to a lecture on the Wesleys, following one on Luther.  And I'm struck by Prof. Cook's description of the intervening century.  He talks about how the Reformation was against creeds and liturgy and formalism.  But such things still crept quickly into the new churches that got started.  It wasn't long before the Anglicans had the 39 Articles. 

The response to that was, initially, the German Pietists and then, in their wake, the Methodists.  The big insight of the Pietists, according to Prof. Cook, was that the bottom line of biblical faith was love, not credal conformity.  "The greatest (virtue) is love."  "God is love."  And so on.  And so the fruits of love were what they were committed to engendering.

The Methodists, with their love of the Bible, reframed this value to: "methodical" study of the Bible that leads to love. 

It strikes me that this has much to say to those of us in the waning days of modernist evangelicalism, with its great love of study of the Bible but its equally great love of believing the right things.  I can't help but see a good deal of the Methodist commitment in what we talk about here--biblical faith that leads to actual love, as if that's how we can tell it's biblical faith.  I see echoes of that in our conversation about Love is an Orientation.  And I think this historic commitment meets a yearning in a lot of folks I meet, in churches and outside of them.  "if faith leads to actual, greater love, I'm in!  If it leads to narrow, boundary-drawing 'orthodoxy,' I'm not interested." 

So earlier this summer Mark P-H pushed us to consider if we, in the end, were Catholic.  But, heck, maybe we're early Methodists.  :) 

Thoughts?

Snap Judgments on Obama's Nobel Prize

 

Wow.

I say that in solidarity with my brothers and sisters on the internet in keeping with CNN.com's observation:

"As the news of Obama's win broke online, postings on social network sites Twitter and Facebook expressed surprise. Many started with the word: Wow."

I'm sure you all have thoughts about this stunning choice (for those of you away from a radio or computer or TV or friend right up until this point--Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize). 

I haven't read the punditry yet, but it's easy to anticipate the articles.  Let's write the op-ed pieces together right now, shall we?

Right-wing op ed:

"This proves that the wimpy rest of the world hates the Republican Party.  This is just a comment on Bush and has nothing to do with Obama at all--clearly, since he hasn't been in office much longer than the current pro baseball season.  It proves that Obama is a sketchy character, since all those enemies of America seem to like him so much.  And George W. Bush did more for the international cause of peace over the average coffee break than Obama will do during his entire administration--something strangely missed by an ungrateful world population dominated by leftist media.  And the last Nobel to go to a sitting president under similar circumstances was to Mikhail Gorbachev, who did indeed bring his superpower more in line with the rest of the world at the small cost of dismantling it into a banana republic run by mobsters.”

Left-wing op ed:

...Okay, this one is harder, because the choice is so surprising.  Maybe here we should chat for a moment about what the heck the Nobel committee was thinking.  And, as per the title of the post, by definition this is a "snap judgment"--to quote the column title of one online sports columnist who writes about NFL games within the hour after they've ended.

Here's more from CNN.com.

“The Nobel committee recognized Obama's efforts to solve complex global problems including working toward a world free of nuclear weapons.

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the committee said.  Jagland said the decision was "unanimous" and came with ease.

He rejected the notion that Obama had been recognized prematurely for his efforts and said the committee wanted to promote the president just it had Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 in his efforts to open up the Soviet Union.

"His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population," it said.”

So.

My take?  I suppose it goes along the lines of, “Well, why not?”  If the Nobel Committee wants to make this move as a hopeful gesture and encouragement towards a cooperative world working together to solve problems of common interest…is anyone against that idea?  (Don’t answer that.  Yes, many people in my beloved country are against that idea.)  If it’s flagging that nuclear disarmament is an item of particular interest…well, it would be lovely if neither my nor my children’s lives were cut short by a mushroom cloud followed by nuclear winter.  I’m thumbs up. 

So it seems like this is a vote for inspiring rhetoric and the hope of a cooperative future more than it is recognition for a life of unusual accomplishment towards world peace.  Here’s hoping our president merits it on the latter terms someday as well.  But if the Nobel gang is voting for the promise of a better future for us all, more power to them.

Your thoughts?

Return to the Sacramental View of Nature / Brent Henderson

Hi, everyone. I thought I’d follow through with the report I promised and let you know the talk I recently gave on ‘Can Theology and Science Make Peace in the Age of Darwin?’ went really well (despite a rough start with equipment difficulties) with about 60 or so people in attendance. Overall, people were very receptive, challenging me on some points, but mostly in a very seeker-oriented way. After the talk, I even retired to a local pub with a half dozen or so very thoughtful students and got my brain thoroughly picked!

The main point of my talk was to explore exactly why it is that Darwinian evolution seems to make us choose between believing in a purposeful world where science is bunk or a purposeless world in which science is correct. I argued that this has less to do with Darwin than it has to do with our modern worldview. For the past 500 years or so, we Westerners have tended to think of God as being wholly Other and outside of Creation, a view espoused by William of Ockham, the major Reformers, and reinforced by the Scientific Revolution and its strong drive toward natural explanation. Since then, we’ve tended to think of nature as a machine and God as the Designer. Now, that kind of God works well when we consider astronomy and physics and the fine-tuned mathematical laws that govern them, but when we encounter Darwin and his theory of natural selection, we run into a huge problem: natural selection is not law-governed and there’s no design to be found there. It rather depends upon chance events and random facts of history (things like food supply, environmental conditions, and (we now know) random errors in DNA replication). Because we’ve made God the Designer and because Darwinism has no inherent design, we are forced to make a choice between science and God.

But, I argued, there is another choice: we could change our modern mechanistic worldview and (at least partially) return to a more sacramental view of nature – the one Christians have held for most of history. In Augustine, St. Francis, and especially Aquinas one finds the thought that, though God transcends nature, creator and creation share a deep kind of unity through which God can be present in nature and nature can reflect God’s character. Aquinas expressed this through the neo-Platonic ‘Hierarchy of Being,’ a sort of pyramid with God at the top, humans just below, animals below them, etc. This was not a hierarchy of power or will, but a hierarchy of participation in God’s Being. The idea was that though God is infinite and ultimate Being, finite creates share in God’s Being as part of his creation.

This approach goes beyond design to make God an intimate part of everything that goes on in creation, including the seemingly random, undirected processes of evolution. Rather than being evidence for purposelessness, evolution can be said to reflect God’s gift of freedom to the universe to come into being on its own, much as he gives us the freedom to choose or reject him. It also reflects his continual creative nature as God works to make ‘all things new’ and bring into being a ‘new creation.’ In this way we can affirm that Darwinism is full of purpose while at the same time affirming science’s understanding of it. We might also continue to search for the locus of God’s activities in nature, but perhaps thinking of those actions as continual creative actions rather than distinct, fitful ones that break nature’s laws.

Another point of the talk was to point out that though this (quasi-)sacramental view of God and nature is very common in the theological literature, it has only just started trickling down into the public discussion through the popular writings of many Christians who are scientists like Francis Collins, Ken Miller, and others. The reactions these writers have elicited, with both Intelligent Design theorists like William Dembski and atheist biologists like PZ Myers condemning their efforts as foolish, tells me that they are striking just the right tone and that they’re having a real impact on the way people see the problem.

The talk will be online at some point on the Christian Study Center website (www.christianstudycenter.org), though I can’t when exactly. I really appreciated the comments and support many of you offered before the talk. You allowed me to hope that most of those in attendance would be thoughtful people interested in a real conversation on this topic, and that’s exactly what turned out to be the case. Thanks!

What's Your Take on the New Atheists?

Thanks for your feedback on the Frank Schaeffer post from Tuesday!  (And, in a little promo, Brent Henderson's follow-up from last week about how his talk went will run tomorrow.)

I learned some things!  As some of you picked up on, I was tweaking Mr. Schaeffer just a skosh for what I felt was a strong reaction to some fringe elements in Christendom.  I know some home schoolers, and they're not in any respect what he's describing.  If he's talking about them, he's screaming about a non-existent problem.  My kids are in the local public school, and that's been a great thing.  So I assumed what I'd kick off with the post was a comment on how only the extremes do any talking in our larger conversation about faith and secularism.

But what some of you were at pains to say was, no, by gosh, Schaeffer is right on!  These folks very much are out there and are every bit as scary as he describes!  They bring the name of Jesus into disrepute and, did I mention, they're scary!  So... live and learn.  Thanks for the update and for getting me out of my bubble.

One of you rightly mentioned that Mr. Schaeffer is not an atheist, but an Orthodox believer.  To my mind, that's true and not true, as I understand it.  I read his book, where he talks about happily joining the Orthodox church, so that seems to be very much true.  But my memory is that that didn't settle his questions of God entirely.  Rather it seemed a sane antidote to the insane fundamentalism of his upbringing.  And he is a popular figure among my atheist friends.

Brian Odom mentioned appreciating the new atheists for their challenge to Christendom, finding that challenge to be welcome and helpful.  I had two responses, which I'd love your thoughts on.  I find the new atheists (most prominently represented by Richard Dawkins [by far the heavy hitter], Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris [tied for second] and Daniel Dennett) both helpful in just the way Brian describes and a skosh annoying, which may just reflect my own issues.  Dawkins in particular I find to be serious and not serious in equal measure.  He's a serious commenter on religion, to my mind, in the same way (to risk controversy) as Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck are serious commenters on liberalism.  He's a provocateur and has succeeded brilliantly at that, and that's not the worst thing.

But he's a demagogue and his arguments are so scattershot that, to my mind, they don't qualify as "serious."  They're loud.  He has expertise in one field and is leveraging that to claim expertise in something completely different.  My impression is that, in his English academic setting, he only knows atheists and he reads about people of faith who seem like an inexplicable and horrifying threat, so he fulminates.  (His dismissal of religious experience, as I read it, is this: Science has now proven that it's very possible to hallucinate spontaneously.  When it's pointed out that millions, if not billions, of people now alive have hallucinated in just that way, his response is something along the lines of: You people are all freakin' crazy!  Which I think he believes, but it doesn't strike me as an actual argument, and it seems of a kind with a lot of the case he builds.)

Anyway, clearly I was living far too sequestered a life with my last post.  Maybe it's true here too.   What's your take on the new atheists?

An Evil Plot to Overthrow America!

As I've mentioned, one of many gifts in my life is to have a number of atheist Facebook friends who keep me posted on the conversation they're in.  The general insight is that they're freaked out by (a) the far right, which they see as religious and on the verge of a military coup and, (b) by evil parents who indoctrinate their children with religion (I believe Dawkins was the first to call this "child abuse").

A characteristic link is this one, to an article Frank Schaeffer wrote for The Huffington Post.  Schaeffer is the son of Francis Schaeffer.  At one point he was the heir to his father's mantle in conservative religious circles until he had a major falling away from those circles.  His book, Crazy for God, is quite a read--I found it really illuminating about conservative mega-preachers of the 70s--and pretty sad.  (In a fun note, the main "blurber" [celebrity endorser] of his book was also a blurber for my book.) 

Schaffer's main point here is that there's a hidden anti-American, about-to-overthrow-government-fifth-column--home-schooled kids who've reached adulthood.

Take a look at Schaffer's column.  I'd love your thoughts on anything that comes to mind--agreement or disagreement with the substance of what he's saying, or comments on his mindset, or comments on what this says about our experience as people of faith in secular settings or whatever.  Can't wait to hear what you have to say.

How Desperate Are You for a Mentor?

It's been fun to read your reflections on Richard Rohr and his provocative CDs on men's and women's spiritual journeys.

As I read your comments, I find myself reflecting on the role of a mentor in our lives.  It strikes me that that's how Rohr positions himself and why people either groove on him or don't.  As I flagged in my opening remarks, some of our commenters noted that his teaching can be hard to actually implement in any concrete way.  Others pointed out that, to get him at all, you need to have already made the paradigm shift into a contemplative way of life.  But folks I know who love Rohr often love him because, heck, he's just comforting to listen to.  Maybe my life really will work out okay!  Maybe the fact that all my dreams aren't coming to pass, despite my fervent prayers, is actually not only okay but a crucial part of my spiritual journey!  Three cheers for frustration and failure! 

As many of you know, I'm around a lot of young people, and many young people are up front about their desire for a mentor in the life of God.  Some of them were a part of Christian groups in college that gave a lot of attention to mentoring--or, in Christian parlance, "discipling."  So, they ask, who's going to be fulfilling that role for me in this next stage of life?  I remember the first time I was guilelessly asked this by a recent grad.  At the time I was working two jobs and running the church group she was a part of on the side.  My answer about who was going to mentor her: "Well, I've found that Jesus is really good at mentoring." 

So, all to say, I'd love to hear more from you.  Is finding a mentor in spiritual things a top of the mind hunger for you?  Have you found such a person?  How has it gone?  Do you find it more in books (or blogs)?  Do you find it directly from God, as per my annoyed suggestion those years back?  Have you given up the desire as something you needed to grow out of?  What have you learned about mentoring?

How Does Community Outreach Factor in for You?

Thanks for the comments from those of you who listened to the Richard Rohr tapes!  I may wait just a bit longer before adding any of my comments to your comments, to see if there are others who want to participate in that conversation.

I wrote a book for this past summer's summit on how the things we talk about on this blog can translate a bit more concretely into a church setting.  (We've kicked around a few titles.  The current leader in the clubhouse: BLUE OCEAN CHURCHES: Thriving Congregations among Very Secular People.)

I make a few comments late in the book on the irreducibility of meaningful community outreach in churches like these.  But I wonder what your experience on this front has been?  Has meeting concrete needs of your secular neighbors factored high in your own sense of calling?  Does it seem central to you or a wonderful but ancillary thing? 

Here's a bit of what I wrote on our front.

                Last night, Grace was with two of our kids at “Soccer Nights,” along with about 150 other kids and their families.

                It was a remarkable blend of folks.  Lots of them were from the public housing towers across the street from the snazzy rehabbed field in Cambridge. Grace schmoozed with one of the other moms—an Indian woman in a headscarf.  “I know you,” the mom said, but had to ponder how for a moment.  “Do you shop at Whole Foods?”  Grace said she did a few times a month.  Did this woman too?  “No, I’m a cashier there and I’ve noticed you.  I don’t usually get to talk with the customers outside of the store.”  They exchanged phone numbers.

                Our seven-year-old, Patrick, is a soccer whiz, near the top of the talent level for his age at soccer nights.  Except for Hamsa, from Morocco, who impresses Patrick and who Patrick wants to get to know. 

                The local cops who worked the Soccer Night detail were full of praise.  This is the sort of thing this town has needed for a long time, said one, especially during this economic downturn.  (Soccer Nights are free, the only free sports camp in Greater Boston.)  The local TV was there the night before.

                This is the second week of them this summer.  Round one attracted perhaps 120 kids.  Round three happens next month in another section of town.

                This is a remarkable turnaround from some initial efforts our church embarked upon to be helpful in the massive housing projects right down the street from our new building.  As we met some of the leaders there, we soon heard from the Cambridge Housing Authority with suspicion.  What were we up to there?  Were we proselytizing?  We weren’t proselytizing were we?  No proselytizing!

                So we started talking.  Were any other outside groups trying to be helpful in any of Cambridge’s housing projects?  Did the city want any help in there?  No, we were told, no other outside groups were and, yes, they were desperate—did they emphasize desperate?—for outside help.  Desperate.  But not from you!  Because you’ll proselytize!  It was a frustrating time for all.

                Meanwhile, one intrepid young woman in our church, Stephanie, a recent college grad, just started visiting the projects on her own time.  She has a strong cross-cultural interest (she’s helped lead one of our trips to the Middle East), particularly with Muslims, and there are large Muslim populations in these projects.  She had no plan at all.  She emphasizes she often wasn’t entirely sure why she dropped by, but she was just open to whatever God would do when she did.

                She met people in funny ways.  She met folks connected to the president of one Middle Eastern country as she walked down the street near our church, heard them talking, and said “hi” as they passed.  They talked briefly.  She ate dinner in their home that night.  They invited her back to meet their collection of friends the next. 

                Stephanie quickly discovered that making friends there was easy, not least because pretty much no one else from the outside was doing it among the thousands of people who lived there.  (These are three big towers, and there’s another housing project right next door to them.)  She was invited to so many meals that pretty soon she “knew everybody”—maybe an overstatement, but it didn’t feel like an overstatement.

                She invited our small groups to spend a night a month there setting up game nights for kids or to weekend pancake breakfasts to bring folks together who otherwise might not talk. 

                Suddenly our conversations with Cambridge city officials took on a bit of a different tone.  We asked them what they felt the biggest need in the city was that we could help with.  Youth, was the quick answer.  Cambridge youth are decisively split between university-connected kids, town kids, and project kids.  The first group is among the highest achievers in the nation—and they leave the Cambridge school system, on average, by grade 5.  The third group is at grave risk of leaving school, of crime, and so on.  That’s the greatest need in the city.  Could we help?

                We put our heads together with some other churches in town who had worked with such kids in other sections of town and a few churches who were hoping for a way into such helpfulness, but had no avenue.  We applied for government AmeriCorps grants to fund two positions.  And suddenly we, with this coalition, were running Passport [now called REACH], a two-site program designed to help kids stay in school.  Those who stick with the program receive a thousand dollar scholarship for college.

                And then Stephanie met a man who’d worked in North Africa with a church group for years.  The thing he’d most enjoyed doing and had seen be most effective was sports outreach, particularly soccer.  He’d be game to help set something like that up, but it would take someone who was already deeply networked in the communities at risk.  Stephanie said she thought she could help him there.  And it would take an army of volunteers.  Check, we could pull that off.  (About half of the staffing at Soccer Nights comes from our church, half from the community at large and from other area churches.)  And suddenly we’re the heroes of the city.  And Grace has a lunch set up with her new Indian friend.  And Patrick is setting up a playdate with Hamsa.

Back to now: So what's been your experience on these fronts?  How central is community outreach to your life or sense of calling?