approaching exile
May 12[Middle English exil, from Old French, from Latin exilium,
from exul, exsul, exiled person, wanderer.]
I spent an hour at a Seattle’s Best café inside Borders watching the rain pummel disaffected hoosiers as they scurried about the plaza’s sprawling wet desert of a parking lot.
While drinking a cuppa, I read a couple chapters of McLaren’s A Generous Orthodoxy. I say that not to preface this thought, but to give you an idea of the waters in which I’m teabagging my mind at the moment.
“The church functions best when in exile.”
I should first say that though this statement is a product of my own mind, I don’t think I agree with it. But the nature of this disagreement is rather complex. I’ll explain this in a few articles, but for starters, here are three premises (which you’re free to disagree with).
- From the time of the ancient Israelites’ slavery under the Egyptians until the oft-suppressed rise of Jewish religion as we know it today, the Jews have largely existed under (or in opposition to) a larger host culture. That is to say, Judaism is essentially a religion of diaspora. Though this group of people has ostensibly existed and on occasion thrived, it has done so without political authority or even respect — often in disfavor and persecution.
- Christianity in its various forms, as ostensibly the default religion of modernity in the West, has enjoyed almost 1700 years in the sun beginning with the conversion of Constantine in 312 until some time in the last three decades.
- Today, we find ourselves in a culture that is less likely to accept or understand Christianity or its mythology (in any of it’s “official” 33,830 forms) as implicitly “true.” That is, individuals now must identify themselves as “Christian” and explain what that means — this identity is not simply assumed (or understood). Conscious engagement of biblical narrative (though still very much alive in the poets of our age) is very slowly but gradually fading from popular American discourse.
I often wonder what many Christians mean when they talk about “ministry in a post-modern world.” It seems that many confuse postmodernity with life in a culture that does not implicitly accept “Christianity” (as we’ve built it) as “true.”
We speak a language that has been “Christian” since its emergence as we know it today. Here, I speak of English as a “Christian language” from a diachronic perspective. In other words, English is a Christian language because it has been teabagged in biblical themes, both birthing, communicating, and transforming them.
But though our words and metaphors are steeped in centuries of Biblical myth as a framework for reality, we find ourselves approaching a time in which this myth will become less-understood by and less-accessible to our secular neighbors. As fewer and fewer recall or are subjected to years of flannelgraph indoctrination, we’re left of distillations of Noah’s Ark as “the time when God destroyed the Earth while Noah and his family floated in a boat with all of the animals.” Tales of the apocalypse are not stories of a renewed creation, but “when the earth will be destroyed like in Armageddon but Tom Hanks won’t save us.”
Perhaps the heyday is nearing its apex. For what are we without our language? And who is our God in a language that speaks of him as many speak of the NSA?
As Rob Bell said, should we turn up our noses, purse our lips, and say “People just don’t care about truth any more?” This seems like a logical response…and one that I’ve seen. But is there a better alternative? Can we productively engage it? And what might this look like?
Check back soon for more. I’m enjoying this.
Until then, what do you think?
c. scott andreas
May 13th, 2006 at 12:40 am
Some rambling thoughts on the matter…
I think the decline in what one might call Christianization leads us to what is at least for me a very exciting time. Conveying the significance of the gospel has been often difficult because our culture and language is so steeped in its concepts. But they are for most people empty words. Much of evangelism and such was trying to get people to see what they already knew but thought of as, to appropriate your example, silly stories told with flannelgraphs. Now perhaps again people can begin to see the gospel, and all Biblical truth, as the shocking thing that it is.
Just as missionary work among the gentiles in the first century showed more results than among the Jews who had grown up thoroughly educated in the Law and the prophets, we may find that those who are not steeped in cultural Christianity may find in the actual gospel what they are seeking (and many of them are seeking, having no religious heritage of their own), and with a responsiveness that we can scarcely imagine. The caveat, of course, is that now we have to explain to them what we once took for granted, but I suspect that effect may be more than offset by the gains.
As to whether and how we should engage the problem… A large part of the reason for this declining Christianization, I would assumse, is because people who are not attached to the faith are not interested in learning its intricacies. That is, of course, hardly a surprising result. But if that is the case, then the culture is finally just demonstrating the way many people in it have felt for a long time. Let’s get back to basics, persuading people of the gospel (which requires persuading them of its importance), and the rest will be taken care of in due course.
I seem to be having trouble putting together what I am trying to say here, so I hope that more or less makes sense. I hope also that that is more or less the kind of thing you are asking. I may have gotten carried away by my own thoughts there…
May 14th, 2006 at 10:56 am
Scott, I have to pick at you for a bit. I’m trying to determine the underlying assumptions that go into your post, and I don’t want to assume too much. Perhaps consider these questions and let me know what you think:
1.) When you speak of the Christian ‘myth’ as a framework it reminds me of many modern Christian thinkers outside of evangelicalism, specifically Reinhold Niebuhr (I may be confusing him with his brother in this case, H. Richard Niebuhr). Much of this ‘post-liberal’ theology is anthropocentric, focusing on how we understand God and emphasizing Christian narrative as a framework for understanding this — though most if not all did not believe the narrative to be actually historically true; rather, Christianity became useful in their endeavours. Niebuhr believed that Christ’s death and resurrection were ‘myths’ in this sense to symbolically convey to us in a deep and meaningful way some kind of deeper truth about ourselves and how we should interact with the world. What do you think of this?
2.) On the topic of the Church ‘basking in the sun’ after the conversion of Constantine, did you consider the many groups of Christians who faced persecution by the larger ‘Church’ (i.e. Roman Catholicism and even some Protestant groups)? Some interesting ones are Tyndale, Luther, the French Huguenots, John Wycliffe, and the Waldensians. I believe that looking at their histories will reveal a telling display of how the Church of God survives and even thrives in the darkness of this world. Do you think that any of these events and peoples could be mapped onto our modern, or post-modern day world?
3.) And finally, what about the ministry of the Holy Spirit? Jesus Christ said himself in Matt. 16, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” How do you think the relationship between the living Christ and His Church works in with the idea of preaching the Gospel to a postmodern audience? If people really were willing and able to come to Christ if only we would preach the Gospel in a way which they ‘understood’ (for here is my main concern with the idea… that understanding is a part that we must account for and is not a task of the Holy Spirit in regeneration), why would God let them sit around and wait? How can Christ make the promise that all of the sheep which were given to him will come to him (John 10) be fulfilled if it is largely up to our own creative pursuits? How are we to partake in God’s redemption??
I hope these can stir you into deep thought as you write the next few posts. Grace and Peace to you up in C-city