Jefferson's Wall

One of the driving pieces of the Puritan migration to the New World was to escape state-imposed religion, which has never worked very well anyway. But state after European state used religion to buttress national interests and power, and people went to prison because of it, or were tortured and maimed, property confiscated and prohibitions imposed, with one version of religion trumping all others in service to national interests.

All of this history is clearly before us.

But over the years, many of the descendants of those who came here to be free of state-imposed religion decided that state-imposed religion, if it were their religion, the right religion, would be just fine.

The effort to formally establish religion has never ceased, and in recent years has gained momentum, driven largely by various forms of evangelicalism.

These interests added "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance and initiated the National Prayer Breakfast, in the early 50s, among other things, and struggled to establish state-mandated prayer in public schools, which ultimately the Supreme Court decided on June 25, 1962, in "Engel v. Vitale."

Jefferson's "wall of separation" was wisely raised up, to protect both religion and government from one another, that they might remain good neighbors, talking with one another, helping one another, but neither assuming control of the other.

Good walls make for good neighbors ...

Those who cherish their faith in God should be well-advised, that efforts to establish a religion backed by state interests can only fail it's intended purpose of instilling virtue in people's lives. It has never worked and never will.

If the state uses religion to further its own interests, religion is no longer religion in the sense of pointing us toward God, but only a tool to further some limited purposes which are mostly about power and money.

And if a religious body uses the state to further its own interests (as we saw in the Middle Ages), the religious body soon begins to look, talk, act and feel very much like the state, with soldiers, bankers and attorneys working over time to impose upon the people a particular religious expression, and woe to those who would violate it.

People of faith need to consider these matters with great care. The evangelicals of our day who so easily speak of "getting prayer back into the schools," and using Charter Schools to foster a sectarian creed, are making a huge mistake, often caught up in their personal version of the "culture wars" (one of the worst ideas every coined, because God is God in all realms - there is, in God's love, no competing cultures, no culture wars; only human vanity and the the lust for power that uses religion as a cover for its base interests).

People of faith (and these days, that encompasses a much wider horizon than previously imagined in the Western World) need to jealously guard their traditions from the intrusion of other religions or the power of the state. Every religion needs to respect the others, too, and the state serves its religious purpose best of all when it legislates religious freedom for all forms of faith and respect for the essential practices that characterize various creeds, without endorsement or establishment.

Religion, by its very nature, seeks the wellbeing of the land in which it resides ... but base instincts also drive religion to control and dominate. It's these latter instincts that Jefferson's "Wall" seeks to mitigate, both for the health of religion and that of the state. And with that Wall well built, religion can flourish and do what it does best - to provide encouragement and strength to its adherents to live well to the best of their ability, to encourage a nation to be just in its regard for all of its citizens, with a special effort on behalf of the poor and marginalized and to address the state when it appears that the state is veering off into some form of hyper-nationalism and its attendant militarism.

Jefferson was right, and it's in our best interests to heed his advice. Build the Wall high, maintain it well ... it has enough doors and windows in it to allow conversation and mutual regard, but preserve the Wall, and in so doing, the character of good government and the character of a living faith are more likely to be preserved and served.

A New Year and Mainline Hopes

Everything is up for grabs at the start of the 10th year of the 21st Century.

Not unlike the years surrounding Calvin's tumultuous and creative life. At any point in time, it was impossible to predict how the next ten years would unfold in Geneva. Yet Calvin wrote prodigiously and hopefully, anchored in God's sovereignty and with a passion for the person in the pew, so to speak.

As I begin the year and look back over my 40 years of ordained ministry, I turn to the future of mainline denominations with hope for our emergence from a "dark" period of time. Or was it so dark?

One man's darkness may be another man's light.

The last 40 years have seen us RECOVER from the supreme success we enjoyed after WW2 and during much of the 20th Century; we built our megachurches all across the landscape in American cities - talk about 24/7, with incredible programs, jammed worship services, gymnasiums and full-service ministries. Our pulpits were manned by princes, our seminaries were guided by theologians of immense ability, missions were expanding and especially after WW2, thousands of new congregations sprung up in the growing American suburbs, many of which became the second generation megachurch.

Yet in the midst of this, there remained small town and rural churches, places of energy and pastoral strength, but with huge shifts in American population, the disappearance of many of them was inevitable.

Our first generation of megachurches in the cities have clearly suffered huge transitions, and many of them are long gone, tough there are plenty of remarkable exceptions - e.g. Fourth Church in Chicago. And in our older suburbs, where so much of the post WW2 growth occurred, changing cultural patterns and the aging of the inner-ring suburbs have shrunk many of our second-generation megachurches, and many have closed their doors.

During this period of time, new forms of worship and music emerged, inaugurating what came to be known as the worship wars, and bloody they were, but out of the noise and smoke emerged a third generation of megachurches, beginning with Schuller's Chrystral Cathedral, a hybrid of sorts, of mainline and independent trajectories. Then came Willow Creek and Saddleback, and the rest of is history. All across America, the emergence of flagship megachurches - stripped down buildings, 24/7 small groups, high-tech worship, preaching that was both biblical and pastoral. Yet thousands of smaller congregations continued their work, though overshadowed by the media exposure of the large churches.

And there emerged, during this period of time, a truism: Conservative churches are growing and liberal churches are shrinking.

The problem with a truism is that it’s always a half-truth; it surely reflects a pattern, but some took that pattern as if it were the absolute and final blessing of God, and they became legends in their own time, if not their own minds. And the growth and creativity in other settings was ignored, if not ridiculed.

What with America's fascination with "leadership" and growth, folks forgot that church growth is largely the result of two factors: God's grace and location.

Stats in the last few years are beginning to reveal cracks in the truism; conservative churches are experiencing what the mainliners experienced 50 years as the tides turned. Their ranks are rife with debate, if not full-out rancor, with plenty of heresy trials underway, moral failures (nothing new there, but a reminder that everyone puts their pants on one leg at a time, even the superstars of the megachurch stages - pulpits, of course, no longer used), and slight declines in attendance – is this small change preface to the larger changes that occur inevitably in the shifting sands of time?

The megachurch and its success has stilted its creativity. Look at a 25-year old video and one shot last Sunday, and there is no difference: the clergy wear jeans and shirts pulled out, use high-tech tools, and preach pretty much the same message, and for many these days, the message has become a pop-psychology mix of personal triumphalism infused with Old Testament stories and a lot of Pauline materials.

The vaunted success of the "conservative" church is no longer a sure bet, and the churches that hung their heads in shame over their lack of or negligible growth are beginning to emerge from the shadows only to discover their worth, and that God is in their ranks as well, doing mighty things.

It's too early to tell, but the truism that propped up the pride of some (yes, it was pride, wasn't it?) and caused thousands of good pastors and fine congregations to hang their heads in shame and exhaustingly chase after every new program that came down the pike from the publishing houses or was touted at the megachurch teaching seminars, is clearly shifting. And sadly, thousands of congregants bought the truism and blamed their pastors, their denominations, their seminaries when the "thousands didn't show up,” even as the truism pitted enthusiastic pastors against their congregants, charging them with lack of vision and willingness.

But new images and ideas are emerging! The culture wars are subsiding. Mainline congregations, battered and bruised, are recovering, and books like "Christianity for the Rest of Us" by Diana Butler Bass are a part of the reconstitution of the mainline church.

Things are a-changin' ... God does that; lest we build our towers to the heavens, God comes down and confuses our language, spreading us out to the world.

All of us are learning, and perhaps we're learning how to bless one another, help one another. Megachurches are grappling with Barna-type studies that reveal embarrassing failures in their efforts to make disciples and nurture their own children into the faith.

Mainliners are catching their breath and regaining their confidence.

Sure, the church as I knew it when I was ordained at the First Presbyterian Church in Holland, Michigan, is long gone, but new energy is emerging all over the place, and we will find new ways of being Presbyterian, connectional and missional. Leaner, for sure; but not meaner. Humbler and contrite, as we discover God's grace anew.

I think the next ten years will be very good for the mainline churches, and the megachurches, too - as we learn how to humbly love one another and appreciate our respective visions and ministries.

After all, we’re all in this together … for the glory of God!

Where Will It All End?

Posted at my blog site at Presbyterian Outlook:


It's been awhile since I've dropped a line or two here at the Outlook blog site.

I'm sure some are delighted at my vacation since I'm pretty upbeat about the current state-of-affairs in the Presbyterian Church.

God's relentless love is moving us along in a deep and swift current taking us far beyond all the usual categories in which we formerly found comfort and too often took unwarranted pride.

Yes, we had the world by the tail, so to speak, but times change, and the world in which we now live is vastly different. But I'm hopeful, and more than hopeful, because I know Presbyterians - surely, not all of them; just a few actually over my 39 years of ministry, starting in West Virginia in the former West Virginia Mountain Project created by missionaries who rode into the area on mules.

I have known laity and clergy, pastors and executives, and I have witnessed a steady effort to be faithful to the large images of Scripture and the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. Have we always done it right? It's hard to say. Numbers and dollars, while so tantalizing to our eyes, is of no account to God. Sin itself abounds, but so does grace, allthemore. 

In the last 40 years, demographics and culture have changed radically, and we, and other mainline groups, nosedived on membership, and the more independent and self-confessed evangelicals grew.
Looking back over the carnage, I chuckle a bit, because their "growth" was constantly rubbed in our face, and we hung our heads in shame or anger.

For the growing churches, it became a matter of pride - their techniques and innovations, their technology and their theology, were clearly "right" and we were clearly "wrong."
But pride goeth before the fall.

And now the stats are coming in: the evangelical world is losing membership, they struggle with issues of second and third generation leadership vacuums, heresy trials abound as evangelicals try to define who they are and what they believe. Compelled by the Great Commission, thy sent thousands of their young to the mission field who come back home with a new sense of the Great Commandment and a passionate regard for justice, often at odds now with Mom and Dad.

I recently attended a luncheon at a large evangelical Presbyterian Church to hear a speaker from Internation Justice Mission.

I was shocked at what I heard, because I heard the language and thelogy and passion of justice. There was no bashing of the mainline, but only a sharp review of how the evangelical movment in this nation overlooked justice.

In my own words, the evangelical movement, bright and energetic, too often settled for the joy and power of charity and conversion, mostly ignoring the systemic issues of justice.

IJM deals with slavery (27 million in the world today), the sex trade and the theft of widow's property, and it was clear to me, they are dealing with systemic issues.

If charity and conversation are the two "c's" of faith, there is a third c, Change ... systemic change.
I was heartened by what I heard, and I believe that God's Spirit is moving mightily among a younger generation of evangelicals taking them beyond charity and conversion to changing systemic evils.

More than ever, I am grateful to be a Presbyterian - we have a fine track record on justice - our mission agencies, our missionaries - have tackled some incredibly tough issues around the world, and we've been making a huge difference.

Where it will all end, who knows. But I think mainline and evangelical Christians will find a lot to talk about, and pray about, TOGETHER, when we find common ground in the Great Commandment and the Third C.

Just a few random thoughts from a random kind of a guy!