[Dialogue] 8/19/2021, Brian McClaren: Progressive Christianity and the Preferential Option for the Young; Spong revisited

Thu Aug 19 12:00:00 PDT 2021

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Progressive Christianity and
the Preferential Option for the Young
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|  Essay by Brian McLaren
August 19, 2021Many people who identify as progressive Christians also identify as Mainline Protestants. Many draw from the lineage of liberal Christianity that goes from Luther and Calvin to Schleiermacher and Rauschenbusch to Fosdick and Niebuhr to Coffin and Borg to Diana Butler Bass and Catherine Keller today. Interwoven with this lineage have been feminist theologians like Rita Nakashima Brock and Katherine Tanner, and queer theologians Dale Martin and Marcella Althous-Reid. Some trace their lineage through various strains of the Radical Reformation, whether Mennonite or Quaker, drawing from the work of Rufus Jones, Elton Trueblood, and John Howard Yoder. Still others are rooted in Black theology - in a lineage that includes Howard Thurman, Kwame Bediako, James Cone, and Wil Gafney.Increasingly over the last twenty years, Progressive Catholics have also become part of this conversation, especially through liberation theologians like Gustavo Gutierrez, Jon Sobrino, and Leonardo Bosch, and theologians drawing from the mystical and monastic traditions like Richard Rohr and Ilia Delio. Progressive or Post-Evangelicals are also bringing their gifts an energies into this progressive community, having been exiled from an Evangelicalism that sold out to the Religious Right and Trumpism.This convergence and cross-pollination, to me, are truly hopeful signs. Another hopeful sign: the decades-long decline of Mainline Protestantism seems to have hit bottom in the US, at least temporarily, after a long slide. (See https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/nothing-is-as-it-was.) In fact, Mainline Protestants have once again surpassed Evangelicals as a percentage of population, after decades in second place. (See https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/10/opinions/american-evangelicals-protestantism-butler-bass/index.html.) However, before progressive Christians breathe a sigh of relief and use this data as a permission slip for complacency, I must raise a yellow flag of caution, if not a red flag of emergency.Mainline Protestants, by and large, are perched on a demographic cliff, with an average age of 54 and climbing. Like Catholics and Evangelicals, their retention rates of the young are unsustainably low, with more of their young in each generation joining the ranks of the religious nones. (See https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/18/mainline-protestants-make-up-shrinking-number-of-u-s-adults/.) On top of those statistics, for many, the “e-word” (evangelism) is taboo, which means that recruitment is off-limits, which means continuing decline is inevitable.If you believe, as I do, that the world needs a vital alternative to regressive and right-wing Christianity, then you should join me in raising the alarm — and calling for radical action among forward-leaning Christians. I call this mandate a preferential option for the young. This call is not intended as a rejection of the older term, a preferential option for the poor, derived from Catholic social teaching. It is, instead, intended as a double challenge. How will progressive Christians who are disproportionately prosperous, well-educated, and old … become a movement characterized by partnerships across generations, races, and social classes? Be assured, few of the young, and virtually none of the unco-opted young, want to perpetuate the racial, gender, and class-based hegemonies of the past. To empower the young is to empower racial, gender, and socio-economic diversity.The original Christian movement demonstrated this preferential option for the young. Obviously, it reflected the ethos of its thirty year-old founder who was dead by thirty-three, and who understood that his message would create tension between generations (see Matthew 10:34-36).The first generation of young disciples who weren’t martyred eventually grew old, and special honor was understandably given to the senior leaders of the movement. Within a century, the youthful vigor of the original movement became harder to detect, with internal turf wars, power struggles, and belief-policing replacing the founder’s original outward vision of speaking truth to power, proclaiming liberation to the oppressed, and deploying nonviolent peacemakers willing to suffer and die as witnesses to peace. That outward vision would gradually become the exception rather than the rule, and a preferential option for the old became the new norm.Thankfully, new vitality occasionally flared up in young reformers like Francis of Assisi, who began his ministry in his early twenties.Claie joined him when she was only eighteen, and soon was leading her parallel movement. St. Teresa of Avila ran away from home at twenty to begin her visionary work, and St. John of the Cross joined her movement when he was twenty-five. Among Protestants, Martin Luther was thirty-three when he nailed his ninety-five theses to the Wittenberg door (as the story goes). John Calvin was nineteen when he began writing his Institutes of the Christian Religion, and twenty-six when the first edition was published.The Christian movement, at its most vital, has been a youth movement. The Christian movement, at its most depressing, has been a gerontocracy.That’s why I say that wisest thing older generations of white  Christians could do starting now would be to invest unprecedented trust, money, opportunity, and coaching (without control) in rising younger generations, women and men, straight and gay, of diverse racial and economic backgrounds, listening to them, learning from them, trusting the Spirit to be alive in them, and then getting behind them. The old white boys’ club of the religious gerontocracy has reached its expiration date.And not just in religion. In politics, business, education, and other professions, the same pattern predominates: older generations holding onto power, too seldom investing in the future beyond their own retirement. There will be no new day without new, young faces.Yes, we need true elders as much as ever, if not more. Instead of hoarding their power and wisdom, we need them to empower and equip younger leaders, especially leaders from groups that have been historically marginalized.But the sad truth is that conventional Christianity — both liberal and conservative, progressive and regressive — currently depresses, disillusions, drains, and drives away many of its brightest and best by the time they hit thirty. Those with seniority status occupy leadership positions, sometimes because they embody the spirit and vision of our founder, but often, because the system rewards compliance and suppresses creativity.This transformation goes far beyond mere inclusion. No young person wants to be included to be consumed as an organization’s fuel for self-propagation. The answer at all levels of the Christian system, as far as I can tell, will involve going beyond inclusion to true partnership and true investment … investing in young people who are more concerned about the urgent realities of climate justice, racial justice, and economic justice than they are about nostalgic doctrinal debates, power struggles, and liturgical policing.It is especially for the young that I have just finished writing a book called Do I Stay Christian? (It will be available in August 2022.) I would never want to induct new generations of the young into a gerontocracy whose rocking chair is one rock away from tipping over a cliff. But I can imagine no greater opportunity than for younger generations to engage with the good news of Jesus, a radically progressive message, and to let it inspire a new youth movement for these pivotal times. I can imagine no greater honor for people my age and older than to become the advocates and supporters for these young visionaries.To all of my peers and seniors, then, I issue this challenge: what will you do to invest your wisdom, wealth, and energies in a preferential option for the young?The only alternative, of course, is for aging Christians to spend their remaining years “micro-managing their own decline,” as a sage Lutheran pastor once put it. That’s expensive. It’s depressing. And it’s inevitable, unless we wake up fast, before tipping over the demographic cliff.~ Brian D. McLaren
Read online here

About the Author
Brian D. McLaren is an author, speaker, activist, and public theologian. A former college English teacher and pastor, he is an Auburn Senior Fellow and a leader in the Convergence Network, through which he is developing an innovative training/mentoring program for pastors, church planters, and lay leaders called Convergence Leadership Project. He works closely with the Center for Progressive Renewal/Convergence, the Wild Goose Festival and the Fair Food Program‘s Faith Working Group. His most recent book is Faith After Doubt.  He is the author of the illustrated children’s book (for all ages) called Cory and the Seventh Story, The Great Spiritual Migration, We Make the Road by Walking, and Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? Brian is a popular conference speaker and a frequent guest lecturer for denominational and ecumenical leadership gatherings. He has written for or contributed interviews to many periodicals, including Leadership, Sojourners, Tikkun, Worship Leader, and Conversations and is a frequent guest on television, radio, and news media programs.  |

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Question & Answer

Q: By A Reader

What have we learned and can apply today from the Nag Hammadi Scriptures?

A: By Toni Anne Reynolds
 Dear Reader,As you can imagine, the Nag Hammadi Scriptures are full of many relevant lessons for life today. Despite being thousands of years late to the biblical literature game, this group of books is a well spring of lessons. What I love most about your question is that we need not dive into any particular book to find a powerful lesson to apply to today. The mere fact that an entire corpus of sacred writings was found not even 80 years ago tells us that we don’t know as much about ourselves as we think we do.

Along with poetic repetitions of familiar lessons about God, the Nag Hammadi texts are precious to people for different reasons. Friends with more monastic persuasions live with the Gospel of Thomas, slowly chewing on each saying over the course of several weeks. At least five artistic friends are using Thunder: Perfect Mind as the framework for originally composed songs, opera, and performance art. I am partial The Secret Revelation of John and the ways it points to a connection with Kemetic/Afrikan cosmology. In short form, the Nag Hammadi Scriptures are as diverse as the experiences each of us is having with the Divine.

Similar to the way people have found out long hidden truths about their family lineage, the general Christian history has been incomplete without this special group of holy texts. Now that the long lost relative of the Nag Hammadi Scriptures has been introduced to the wider family, the sacred work of reorienting our identity can begin. Soon enough, it is a reorienting that we will get to do as more texts are unearthed and translated from the ancient world. Namely, the continuous discoveries made at Oxyrhynchus. We simply have no idea how nuanced and intricate the early Christian understandings of God were. Nor do we have a vast sense of how those understandings influenced practical applications of belief outside of canonized spaces.

To my mind, the most important lesson to be learned from this collection of texts is: there will always be more to learn about where we come from, stay flexible.~ Toni Anne Reynolds

Read and share online here

About the Author
Minister Toni Anne Reynolds is committed to singing flesh onto the bones of the Christian tradition by incorporating recently found texts of the ancient world into liturgy, sermons, and poetry. Toni’s Christianity forms a holy trinity with the psychological medicine of Tibetan Buddhism and the eternal Life found in Yoruba traditions. Balanced in an eclectic faith and focused in theology, Toni’s ministry offers a unique perspective on life, theology, and spirituality.  |

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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited\

Examining the Story of the Cross, Part III:
There Never Were “Seven Last Words” From the Cross

Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
March 17, 2011One of the most dramatic services of Holy Week for me has always been the Good Friday “Three Hour Service.”  It was designed to enable Christian worshipers in some dramatic way to watch by the cross as their Lord died.  The traditional content of that three-hour service traditionally consisted of sermons or meditations on what were called “The Seven Last Words,” which were supposedly the words spoken by Jesus from the cross as he died.

Normally, the three hours were divided into a series of eight mini-services of twenty minutes or so in duration.  After one introductory sermon setting the stage for the day, each segment thereafter in this liturgy would usually consist of a reading from the gospel that included the quoted word from the cross; perhaps a Passiontide hymn like “Go to dark Gethsemane” or “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”, some prayers, which were characteristically of a penitential nature, and perhaps some silence for meditation.  There was opportunity for worshipers to come and go after each of the “words.”  A few, as the final act of their Lenten discipline, would stay for the whole three hours.  Sometimes these services would be ecumenical with clergy from various traditions taking one of the “words.”  Sometimes a number of churches would join in the observance and an outsider would be brought in to preach on each of the “Seven Last Words,” a pattern that would at least give consistency to the overall message.  Sometimes the local pastor would himself or herself do the entire three-hour service that, in my experience, would either be a work of supererogation for which the preacher would feel profoundly virtuous, or an intensely moving personal experience.  In my career I have participated in each of these formats; I have been one of many in a community service; I have done the entire service in the church I was serving; I have been the guest who did the “Words” in another city, and I have sat in the pews and listened to another for the entire three hours.  The three most memorable three-hour services that I can personally recall are first, when I was invited to be the Good Friday preacher at St. Peter’s Church, Charlotte, the downtown Episcopal church in which I had been raised as a child;  second, listening to a priest of my Diocese, David Hegg, in my present parish church, St. Peter’s, Morristown, New Jersey, preach on the death of Jesus on Good Friday, after he had experienced the death of his 27 year old daughter in an automobile accident just six days earlier, and, third, during the year that I had the privilege of teaching at Harvard I spent Good Friday listening to Dr. Peter Gomes, the senior minister of Memorial Church in the Harvard Yard and one of the great preachers of our time, do each of the seven words.

That three hour Good Friday liturgical pattern has, however, fallen into general disuse and for two major reasons I think.  First, churches located in the heart of business districts in the cities of this land have given way since World War II to churches located in the suburbs.  A noon to three p.m. service in the suburbs might not have a critical mass of people in the homes who might attend a midday service.  A city-center church where business people and shoppers could drop by for a convenient part of the three hours was the final expression of this tradition.  In recent years even in city-center churches this traditional Good Friday observance has thus been replaced with some lesser version, perhaps a one-hour services or, at best, one and a half hour services with perhaps a service toward the end of the three hours dedicated to the children, designed, I felt, to perpetuate the illusion of yesterday’s tradition. In many churches preaching has been replaced with liturgical music appropriate to the day.

The second reason for the demise of the Good Friday three hour service was, I believe, the fact that critical biblical scholarship has over the past 200 years demythologized, to use the word Rudolf Bultmann made famous, the way we understand the Bible.  The literal manner in which we once read the New Testament is simply no longer possible.  One of the casualties of that critical study is that we now recognize that Jesus did not actually say any of the supposed “seven last words” from the cross.  In order to reach the number seven people had simply collapsed the four gospels into a single blended collage, as if we could create from these separate sources a single historical and accurate narrative.  In our pre-literate biblical days we also did this with Christmas pageants, which were almost uniformly designed to blend Matthew’s story of Jesus’ nativity, which was the earliest of the birth accounts, with Luke’s story which was both the other and the latest.  The two stories are radically incompatible in many details, but that did not stop pageant producers from putting them together so that Matthew’s star in the east leading the magi to Bethlehem became the last scene in the story following Luke’s account of the angels’ visit to the shepherds and their journey to the manger in search of the baby.  Most people, influenced by too many pageants, still today think of these two stories as a single whole.
The “Seven Last Words” has had a similar history.  In the first two gospels, Mark written in the early 70’s and Matthew, composed about a decade later, the only “word” Jesus was said to have spoken from the cross was what came to be called, the “Cry of Dereliction,” which is “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  This intensely human cry, however, became an increasingly difficult “word” to attribute to Jesus as Christian history moved and the humanity of Jesus was increasingly replaced by various claims of his divinity.  Scholars also noted that this cry, while attributed to Jesus, was actually the first verse of Psalm 22, a psalm that clearly was used early in Christian history to interpret the crucifixion.  I will look at the influence of that psalm in the story of the crucifixion later in this series.

When the third gospel, Luke, was written, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” disappeared from his story and instead Luke created three brand new “words” from the cross that no one had ever heard before.  The mythical figure developed in II Isaiah (40-55), called the “Suffering Servant,” had clearly been influential in shaping Luke’s story of the cross.  The “Servant” was said to have made intercession for his oppressors so Luke had Jesus do the same, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they have done” was the result.  In Luke, for the first time, one of the two thieves crucified with Jesus was said to have become “penitent.” In the earlier gospels both thieves were said to have reviled him.  In his penitent state he was said to have begged Jesus to “remember him” when he came into his kingdom.  To this plea, Luke has Jesus promise, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”  Finally, instead of the final word from the cross at the moment of death being a fearful cry of forsakenness Luke has Jesus replace it with a note of triumph: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

When we come to the Fourth Gospel, written near the end of the tenth decade, the author omits everything that Mark, Matthew and Luke have all proposed that Jesus spoke from the cross and he creates three entirely new sayings designed to satisfy his understanding of the death of Jesus.  The first was: “I thirst,” a note that also has its roots in Psalm 22.  The second was: “Woman, behold thy son.  Son, behold thy mother,” which helped the author to develop the character of the one he called “the beloved disciple.”  It is also noteworthy that only in this final gospel is there any reference to the presence of the mother of Jesus at the cross.  Lastly, John suggests as Jesus’ final word from the cross: “It is finished,” which catches up one of the Fourth Gospel’s unique interpretations of Jesus as the author of the new creation.

The fact is that in all probability Jesus never said any of these words from the cross and they certainly do not present a complete and harmonious story, since the “seven words” never appear together in any book of the Bible.

Despite the loss of this homiletical trick of preaching on the “Seven Last Words,” I still think there is a place for a three-hour Good Friday service.  I believe it should be an offering to the community everywhere a church is located in a business setting to which commuters flow in and out each day and where Easter shoppers are present in abundance.  I would, however, like to give “The Seven Last Words” an appropriate burial as the format of this Good Friday liturgy.  In their place I would suggest that the three-hour service be dedicated to understanding the unique way in which the passion story is interpreted by each gospel writer.  One year, for example, this Good Friday service would be based on the passion story according to Mark.  The next year Matthew’s passion narrative would form the content.  Luke’s story of the cross would be the emphasis for the third year. Finally, in a fourth year to complete the cycle, John’s gospel account of Jesus death would be examined in depth.  The clergy conducting these services would themselves in their preparation be forced to embrace the perspective of each gospel writer in order to lead their congregations into the way each gospel writer interpreted the death of Jesus.  Both clergy and their congregations would then be able to experience and to embrace the unique ways in which the story was originally told, to see how each gospel writer added new details, to observe the ways in which the story grew through the years and finally to engage the interpretive task in the quest to understand why the various additions were made.  Above all, this approach would help people know that, while the fact of the crucifixion is history, the interpretive details of each gospel writer are not.  Good Friday would be transformed into a day of entering the interpretive process that might serve to draw us more closely to this Jesus, instead of being used, as is the case so often with Good Friday preaching, as a means of eliciting guilt for what we did to Jesus.  I have never known guilt to help us grow into wholeness.  Such a tradition might help us recover the Jesus of history and the meaning of the cross itself.~  John Shelby Spong  |

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