I was at O’Hare airport in Chicago waiting for a return flight to Brussels. A young fellow sitting near me asked if I had ever been to Brussels. I told him that I knew Brussels quite well because I lived in Leuven, which is 15 miles from Brussels. He told me he worked for a multinational and was going to relocate to Brussels. I wished him well and told him that over the years I had known a lot of US expats who worked for multinationals.
He asked what I did, and I told him I was an historical theologian. He stared at me, chuckled and said, “So you are one of those guys who plays word games with official church teachings.” I replied, in a friendly way, that historical theologians don’t play games with church teachings but try to understand what those teachings meant in the past and what they do or do not mean for us today.” He didn’t react, and, at that point, we were asked to get in line for boarding our plane. He headed for his first-class line and waved goodbye.
Church teachings do change – or ought to change – because our knowledge and our understanding of languages, cultures, and human life develops and changes. For example, Adam and Eve were once understood as historic people. Today we realize that the Adam and Eve story in the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Scriptures is not an historical account but a symbolic and cultural creation. It serves as a mythological explanation for the origins of humanity and the presence of sin and suffering in the world. The same thing can be said about the Genesis story of Noah and the myth of the global flood.
People in every age need to examine how they observe and speak about religious beliefs and experiences. That has been my point from my very first post on Another Voice, fourteen years ago. I was inspired by lines from T.S. Elliot’s poem “Little Gidding” – “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice.”
Today, we live in a world of tremendous and rapidly developing change. Understandings and realities are changing, whether people are comfortable or not about the new realities. Some people, fearful about change, are working hard to reassert their old, often prejudicial perspectives, creating an increasingly polarized society. Certainly, in the United States, we see a level of socio-cultural polarization that is higher than at the time of the nineteenth century Civil War.
We need a new stress on deep reflection and a new of level of serious conversation.
I have no desire to play word games with church leaders but the conversation we should be having with church leaders and politicians today is this: To what degree do the life and message of Jesus of Nazareth reverberate in your minds and hearts? To what degree does the Gospel guide one’s decision making: celebrating “loving your neighbor as yourself” to the extent that people genuinely care for others, support, and yes even forgive one another. This conversation undercuts racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and all human phobias.
Genuine Christianity promotes a healthy and healing ministry that sustains the individual and collective lives of people who genuinely try follow the way of Jesus.
If the life and message of Jesus do not animate and guide their lives, people who proudly wear the “Christian” label, whether conservative or progressive, are meaningless propagandists and phonies.
Historical theology is anchored in Christian living and examines the experience of faith: the human relationship with God – described under various names such as “Creator,” “Ground of Being,” “the Sacred,” “the Divine.”
Theological understandings – statements of belief — can end up as official teachings (doctrines) when institutional leadership judges them useful guidelines for Christian life and belief. But it is important to remember that all doctrinal statements are time-bound, because language and understandings are time-bound. All doctrinal statements therefore are provisional until a better expression comes along.
Some guidelines for theological reflections:
- Look less at the church as an institution and see it more as a community of faith-filled believers. What is happening within your own community of faith? What are the life-issues that really concern your family and friends? What does it mean for you to experience God today? Where do you find your support? How can you motivate and help the women and men in your community to truly minister to each other? What is keeping us from experimenting with new forms of parish life? Perhaps a parish should be a collection of many smaller communities of faith?
- Look deeper than the shortage of RCC male priests today and the questions about women deacons and women priests. Let’s look at the meaning of ministry itself. Let’s look at and examine the very idea of ordained ministry, as a ministry by trustworthy ministers. Jesus did not ordain anyone. Christian communities selected their own trust-worthy leaders for prayerful rituals and service.
- Years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, ordination was intrduced as a kind of quality control – to assure communities that the men and women who were their leaders were trustworthy and faith-filled leaders. Let’s scratch our heads about new forms of ministry and break out of the old patterns and paradigms. Why not have qualified graduate students — whether male, female, or nonbinary– with recognized faith and ministerial qualifications, helping out in liturgy and service in university parishes? If ordination is desired, could it not be for for two or three years? Does it have to be life-long? Why not ordain people for small or large group parish ministry? A parish could have several smaller “neighborhood churches.” Perhaps a parish could have many part-time ordained ministers who also have “regular” jobs? We can be creative.
- Healthy Christianity is rooted in being a healthy follower of the Way of Jesus. So, what does it really mean to be a follower of Jesus Christ today? This raises questions of knowledge and belief. What do we really know about the historical Jesus? He was not white, for sure. More likely dark brown. What about all of those very white, blue-eyed, and rather androgynous images of Jesus that really distort who he was and what he was all about? Was his biological father the Holy Spirit or the man we call Joseph? Isn’t the “virgin birth” more about saying Jesus was a very special and unique person than analyzing the biology of his conception? What if Jesus was gay or a married fellow? Would that make a difference for you? I have long thought that Jesus had a very close relationship with Mary the Magdalene. Would that destroy his meaning for Christian believers? Why? Was Jesus God? Early Hebrew Christians, including St. Paul, spoke with nuance about this. They understood Jesus as the revelation of God’s graciousness and love. And they understood that Incarnation involves all of us. As Jesus says in Luke 10:16, “The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” Our humanity is anchored in divinity, whether people realize it or not.
- We need to change our conversation and move beyond the old worn-out and repetitive discussions.Changing the conversation means moving from lots of talk to making lots of real changes. And change rarely comes from the top. In my RCC tradition, for example, change usually starts at the grassroots level. People see the need and make the change. The old pattern is proven historically: (1) change is made; (2) change is condemned by church leadership; (3) change endures; (4) leadership allows the change as a limited “experiment;” (5) change becomes more widespread; (6) and finally church leadership allows it as “part of our tradition.”
Creative and critical reflection is not a dangerous activity, and it can be a source of life, because it brings a new focus, a new conversation, a new change, and new life. Moving beyond last year’s language.
Another Voice 