Christian environmental change has already begun. Its significance and impact will be much greater than what the sixteenth century reformers, Martin Luther and John Calvin, ever imagined. It requires that our churches be not only supportive caring communities but up to date biblically and historically, and open to discovery and development. It requires that our churches be much more than just well-organized religious institutions.
For a number of years, I have been active in church reform activities, most of it involving Catholics. When I think today, however, about changing the Christian environment, my focus is much broader than the Catholic Church. Today, all Christian churches must be part of a necessary environmental change.
I have great respect and appreciation for my maternal Roman Catholic heritage and upbringing. All my professional career I have happily worked for Catholic schools, parishes, colleges, and universities. BUT….I am also proud and appreciative of my paternal Quaker and Huguenot roots. I am still a Catholic, but in many ways I think I have a very Quaker psyche. After reading one of my recent articles, a friendly critic wrote “your Protestant roots are showing.”
Changing the church environment, for all Christians, has to be a prophetic movement forward. Today, I suggest eight ways to change, improve, and move ahead.
(1) We must move from living in the past to engaging with the present and thinking creatively about tomorrow.This means moving well beyond, for example, antiquated understandings of human sexuality and gender, prejudice against women, and distorted biblical and historical understandings. I am an old man. I respect old people; but I don’t want today’s church leadership to act like a bunch of old people simply repeating, again and again, their old doctrines and stories. As my friend and mentor Archbishop Jean Jadot, former Apostolic Delegate to the United States, said shortly before his death: “Now is the time to look ahead. Just as we can look at the sky at night and tell what the morning will bring, so we must be able to read the signs of the times to prepare for the future.”
(2) We need to shift from practicing religion to living the Faith. It is easy to go to church and comfortably recite the creed and official prayers. It also gives one a sense of self and civic importance. I think this is what Jesus was speaking about in Matthew 23:5-6: “All their deeds are done for people to see. They broaden their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels. They love the places of honor at banquets, the chief seats in the synagogues.” It is much more difficult to follow the example of Jesus and live our faith by being a contemporary Good Samaritan. Far too many “good Christians” remain anchored in racism, misogyny, and self-veneration.
(3) We need ongoing education that moves people from boxed-in religious ideology to open and developing theology. Whether Catholic or Protestant, all doctrinal statements are provisional understandings. We are all learners. No one has all the truth. There is still much to learn and discover. We need to move ahead into a new age of discovery and collaboration. Some people find it more comfortable to revert to “good old days” stagnation. There is no intellectual challenge. No human growth either! And frankly, the “good old days” were not always so great.
(4) We need to shift from self-protective bureaucratic hierarchies to communities of faith and courageous outreach networks. Christianity inherited and blessed some very bad elements of the power structures of the fourth century Constantinian Roman Empire. Thanks to Constantine, Christianity was both officially established and fatally compromised. The Constantinian church began to exercise power over people. Church leadership forgot that Jesus did not exercise power over people; but that he empowered people to take responsibility in living, learning, and caring for one another. Jesus did not control people through authoritarian decrees, laws, and sanctions.
(5) We need to abandon religious arrogance and move into humble inter-church collaboration. No Christian and no Christian tradition can be regarded as superior to others and therefore act in a haughty or snobbish manner. We need to humbly move from “possessing” all the truth to continually “searching” for the truth. Some Catholics still think they have all the truth. Some evangelicals think that way as well.
(6) We need to stop being energetic and proud temple-builders and start being traveling pilgrims, pitching their tents along the journey. What do people today really need? An impressive and bigger cathedral or a roof overhead, a meal, health care, child care, compassionate understanding, and a more secure and hopeful life. It is a values question. Very basically, do we value more impressive institutional architecture or men, women, and children in need? The Catholic Diocese of Orange California, by way of example, spent $57.5 million to buy the Crystal Cathedral of the American televangelist Robert Schuller and then $72.3 million to renovate it and turn it into Christ Cathedral,”the largest glass building in the world.” Just a thought…
(7) We must not focus on schooling professionals but mentoring spiritual leaders. When looking for a product or a service, I think we all appreciate people who are polite and professional. When it comes to Christian ministry, however, the mentality of the professional is often not enough. I trained and taught seminarians for many years. We need pastoral leaders and ministers who are much more than professionals who are well developed organizationally. We need leaders who are men and women anchored in deep faith and who, as our fellow travelers, understand us and support our own faith development as compassionate and genuine spiritual guides. Witnessing a funeral last year, by way of example, I saw an ordained minister who was professional and polite. When it came to his spiritual guidance and support for the family and friends, however, he was an incompetent cold fish who couldn’t wait to get the service concluded.
(8) Christians must stop seeing the world as their enemy and start appreciating the world as the real place where we live and encounter the Divine. He may have been an influential early bishop, but I never agreed with Augustine of Hippo’s dichotomy of the ”City of God” and the “Human City.” The Human City IS the City of God. Our world IS the place where we are and it IS the place where we encounter God and see the Face of Christ.
Conclusion: These eight points mean nothing unless we use them to OBSERVE, JUDGE, and ACT. We can and we must be change agents.
In our actions, however, we need to be nuanced and constructive. The aim is not to be confrontational but in a clear, responsible, and caring way to discuss, learn, plan, and move forward together.
- Jack
Oh Jack, what amazing timing – last night was the first gathering of a small nascent ‘Greening’ group from my local (Anglican) church who are starting to look at what can be done within the existing fabric of the buildings and worshiping community, as well as how to expand and engage with the wider community around them in green/environmental awareness and initiatives. I have taken the liberty of forwarding your text to the Curate who is leading the initiative as well as the parish priest. The Spirit is moving!!
Many thanks Gabrielle. And much success!
This is how I see your points above as connected to the ‘Greening’ project in the Church I’ve been attending.
On your points which are around Christians reaching out and moving together, I felt there was a very strong synergy with what Greening groups may find in terms of resistance and questions and approach.
Just my thoughts on what sprung into my mind when I read your post – how I see each of your points being relevant to Christians and the natural world/environment.
1. Thinking creatively about the future…read the signs of the times to prepare for the future: as a church reconnecting with the living natural world is so important if we are to engage with younger people and link into their deeply held concerns about what humans are doing to creation.
2. Shift to living the Faith: we are biological beings in a biological and physical world, not just souls and brains existing in a religious framework of codes and rules; living the faith involves honoring the whole of creation and not just ‘self-veneration’ of our human selves.
3. On-going education: the theology of Green Christianity is very interesting and I believe that linking concern and care for our environment with concern and care for others with our concern for the earth is a huge educational project both within the congregation as well as outreach to the local community.
4. Shift from self-protective to courageous outreach: there will be hesitancy about outreach, totally understandably, so slow small steps are required.
5. Inter-church collaboration: what is developed at a small,very local level could act as a beacon to others locally.
6. being travelling pilgrims: what do people today need? as well as their immediate physical and spiritual needs, an awareness of the interconnectedness of all of life – humans, animals, plants, climate, hurricanes, rising sea levels, coral-bleaching, etc. – to be able to grasp and recognise the unique place that each individual human being can play in being an agent for positive change.
7. spiritual leaders: understanding the issues is not enough on its own, there is a need to act with understanding and compassion for where individuals and groups are within their own world/natural world vision and understand that for many, the desire for some change may be there but the act of change, especially radical change, is somewhat uncomfortable and discombobulating, leading to push-back or inaction.
8. World as the place we live & encounter the Divine: we are biological and physical beings in a biological and physical world through which the life force of the Divine flows. The traditional Christian teaching of humans as somehow ‘special’ and ‘elevated’ above the natural world has created a dichotomy where we live in the world but are ‘not of the world’. This is where I think a large part of human resistance to involvement in environmental action stems from.
Many thanks!
Excellent! Many thanks!
Wow, Jack! This is a prophecy! Your words are a template for our growth as the people of God. And what a challenge to be bigger people of faith than simply living by the label we have chosen. What you have done is offer us a vision of how to really find God by our daily actions as well as by knowing the description what we are supposed to do to be a “good” Catholic/Baptist/Anglican, etc. You and Gabrielle have really opened up a scary proposition….maybe I have to “do” rather than just “be” to truly live as Jesus wants me to. You have made being “good” a lot more complicated than just following the catechism and doing what father says. I will be re-reading your words many times! The Spirit has again spoken through you.
Peace,
Frank Skeltis
Many thanks Frank! Perhaps a good Palm Sunday reflrction as we enter Holy Week… Jack
Love this, Jack. Can’t wait to share with friends. Blessings to you and yours this Holy Week.
Thanks Patti. Warmest regards
Amen, brother. You have it. Where do I sign up? Wait – stay where I am? Work from here? What foolishness. We want a revolution, not a revision. OH, a transformation! OK. I can do that . Thanks.
“A people without a vision (a dream, revelation, or prophecy) will perish.” Proverbs.
What a great blueprint, Jack, for the Church! Thanks so much for your vision.
EXCELLENT!! I can’t say it better than Frank Skeltis already did!
Thanks Betty!
Jack,
Excellent ideas you have shared in this essay. But, just perhaps something needs to be added to your list.
Here is a link to a very interesting conversation on http://www.catholica.com.au.
http://www.catholica.com.au/forum/index.php?id=239832
You Shall Have No Other Gods Before Me: The First Commandment
By Ron Rolheiser, OMI
JANUARY 27, 1996
Back in 1996 Rolheiser shared his thoughts on all Ten Commandments beginning on January 27, 1996 through March 27, 1996
http://ronrolheiser.com/archive/
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The following post on Catholica responding Rolheiser’s original essay has very interesting information.
The Eleventh False God – by Debb Saturday, March 27, 2021
I think a lot of the problem we have is that we speak and think in English. Seems it is all more nuanced in Hebrew.
I went searching for something about all this online and came across a comment written by Cheryel Lemley-McRoy. It was (in the comments) below an article in The Conversation
https://theconversation.com/what-the-early-church-thought-about-gods-gender-100077
This is what she wrote:
As a student of biblical Hebrew for the last five years, my tutor has taken me through the Bible, verse by verse, exploring all the ways each word could have been interpreted. If the Bible were fully translated, we would not be able to lift it! Much of what we puzzle about is caused by our lack of understanding of not only Hebrew, but the idioms, euphemisms, and culture. Culture begs the question, what would this mean to the people of the time.
Starting in Genesis 1: 1, one of the first words that we encountered was God. The Hebrew word for God is Elohim, one of the rare words in Hebrew that is both masculine and feminine. El is masculine, oh is feminine, and im is plural. Elohim is translated elsewhere as the gods of the nations, and completely translated would read, in the beginning the gods and the goddesses…, In English, the proper pronoun for Elohim would be They, Them, or Their. In Genesis, the first chapter They referred to Themselves in plural pronouns. And in Genesis 2 God identifies as the feminine/masculine Yahweh For those who are hung up on the Shema, “our God is one” , the word for one is echad. Echad is not the number 1, but means, unified, in agreement, moving in synchrony.
Then in Genesis 1:2, we encounter the creative power of God in the Holy Spirit. Now Spirit in Hebrew is always feminine, even as in “the spirit of a man..” But that is not what makes the Spirit feminine. It is in Her verbs, names and attributes, all feminine. Hebrew, like Spanish and French, has either feminine or masculine verb forms, depending on who is doing the action. But that’s not the only way we know that the Holy Spirit is female. In The Gospel of the Hebrews , written by James the brother of Jesus and head of the first century Church in Jerusalem, quotes of which only survive in extra biblical writings, and believed to be one source text for Matthew, Jesus is quoted as saying, “My mother, the Holy Spirit lifted me up…”And also, the first century church in Jerusalem is recorded as referring to the Holy Spirit as Eme Elohim, God the Mother or Mother God. (Do you see the image of family in the Trinity? God the Father, God the Son, and God the Mother.) For some it must cause cognitive dissonance to hear that after the ascension of Jesus, God sent the Feminine of God to lead the Church into all things. This would certainly be heresy to a patriarchal church!
For those who believe that God is genderless , they have only read the Bible in English or Greek. In Hebrew God clearly identifies Themselves as both masculine AND feminine. The logical conclusion of Their statement, “Let Us make mankind (adam) in Our image…” would be that They are both masculine and feminine since hence They created a man and a woman. So why is all of this important anyway? Only a man would ask that. To women who have been subjugated to a lesser role for centuries, this is dynamic and paradigm shifting. To finally realize that we, too, are created in the image of God’s femininity is validating and empowering. And no amount of mansplaining can take that away. What would happen to society if the fact of a God embodying the feminine were embraced by religion today? Would the violence against women lesson? Would women’s voices in every aspect of life be more and more heard as men began to listen to the “still small voice” of a mother god? Would the patriarchy of the Church relax its strangle hold on theology? I would hope so.
I found what Cheryel Lemley-McRoy wrote very enlightening, and reassuring. What do you reckon?
http://www.catholica.com.au/forum/index.php?id=239888
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We have yet so much to learn about the nuances of languages for that which we name as God and the metaphoric and poetry Scriptures written by humans two thousand years ago.