I honestly wonder if it's fair to call me an "ex-pat" of Christian culture. But I know it's fair to say I'm not in it.
I'm looking at a church-attending schedule consisting of attending a smallish United Methodist church on Sunday mornings, and a new non-denominational church-plant a county over on Sunday evenings. I feel embraced by the Methodist church, but I don't entirely fit in, the denomination is slowly but surely aging and dying, and I don't feel totally invested in it. I yearn and hunger for the spiritual reality I see among the people engaging in the plant, but that depth of feeling isn't there.
And honestly, I've just told you the story of my walk with Christ. It's a good thing I'm supposed to be an alien and a stranger in this world, and that there is a time in another place where all things will be made right and I will see the fullness of God, because every attempt I've made to fit in this world somewhere has fallen flat.
One of the things that the three of us regulars here have in common is education. (And Eaton, I don't care that your formal schooling isn't as far along as the other two of us; you're still one of the smartest and best-read people that I know.) I think between the three of us, we cherish the life of the mind and looking at all things in our world intellectually, including the Christian faith.
And one of the things that's marked American evangelical culture has been anti-intellectualism. Hey, Jeff, what was that you were saying earlier?
I mean, it can be funny when Fark generates faked up logos and movie posters, but they’re doing it for kicks. Somehow, we convinced ourselves that wearing a T-shirt with the Reeces Pieces logo (but with Jesus, instead of Reeces!) was a daring, culture-jamming act of evangelism. It felt dangerous. It felt cool. In retrospect it’s kind of embarrassing: with two thousand years of history, a heritage of philosophy and world-shaping culture, and an explicit responsibility to care for the poor, is Christianity really reduced to gotcha-marketing? I don’t think so, but heck if that stuff doesn’t sell...
When I claim the title "evangelical", it implies that I think getting you to buy into the Christian faith is important. It means I really want you to buy in to this idea, however unbelievable, that a man walked 2000 years ago claiming to be God hisownself, offended the religious establishment to the point of getting himself executed - by physically being nailed to a cross - on trumped up charges, and then bodily came back to life three days later. That's not exactly an easy thing to convince your standard intellectual skeptic of. That's a hard idea to sell. I still don't understand how we thought we were selling it with Tommy Hellfighter t-shirts, or for that matter, with Stryper concerts, God bless Oz Fox.
And I still don't understand how so many churches think it's getting across now. The old-time gospel sing is a wonderful tradition, but good luck with getting anybody under the age of 50 in the door; there are only a couple of us geeks around anymore who think that music is of any value, and it's very near time for me to acknowledge that I'm outvoted. Never mind that, even if an outsider wanted to break into that world, those old-school churches are so chock full of country-club exclusivity, dressed up in the clothes of mock humility and proper language, that the breach is too great.
So we go to the rock band in front of the church, and we go to the worship by experience and emotion and hand-waving and, in the right place, even more spiritual mumbo-jumbo. (The discussion of tongue-speaking and prophecy is probably best left for another time and place.) If you're especially young, it is VERY easy to get caught up in the waves and leave your sense of logic behind. But when you wake up, has anything really changed? Isn't there the same sense of exclusivity, the same requirement to speak the right language, the same need to impress? Now, instead of impressing by your dress, you're impressing by your degree of emotional sell-out over your love for Jesus. And if you don't show exactly the right spiritual gifting, you can be headed for the door here too, stuck on the outside, never benefiting from the deep fellowship that the thing promises.
I guess this wandering ends with me standing with Bono. I really still haven't found what I'm looking for. I do tend to think that there are people who want to take this person of Jesus seriously, take the implications of Jesus' life seriously, and actually transform their lives to be something different and greater than what it was before they understood who Jesus was. And if somebody could help me find them, and if we could all agree to help one another get to that better place, that would be awesome. Because I've been looking for a long time, and a lot of people say they'd like to be that, but the follow-through leaves a lot to be desired.
Comments
There are about a dozen Permalink
Submitted by Eaton on Thu, 08/23/2007 - 04:15
There are about a dozen different things you said in this post that scream 'must be quoted.'
This is pretty much the story of my interaction with the Church over the last 15 years or so. The real bright spot in that stretch was when I was part of -- and eventually helping run -- a comparatively iconoclastic bible study/singles group/cult with several close friends. Benson, one of the Growing Up Goddy contributors who wrote a couple of the early posts, was one of my partners in crime. Volunteering to help paint apartments at a Chicago housing project, hanging out at the beach, doing historical studies on the evolution of the concept of 'The Kingdom of God' and how our interpretation of it has changed... Also getting concerned looks from a local church that wouldn't endorse us until we all signed a statement of faith. Good times, good times...
This is one of the difficulties I find myself facing, too. There is a decision that I make every day to see the world around me in certain ways -- to choose which set of philosophical lenses I'm going to use, I suppose. But it has been a long time since I was able to connect with more than a handful of isolated folks who share the outlook.
Man, after spending a year in a marketing company and then a year and a half as the webmaster for a church organization, I've got a zillion thoughts on THAT question, but I think that the answer often comes down to: "We treat our faith like a team." The language of spiritual warfare that is used in Scripture -- stuff I believe was intended to conjour up images of personal struggle and grappling to its original audience -- is interpreted as a Call To Pick Sides, and to Stand Up For Your Team. Wearing the shirts, converting the other side, and so on, fits well into that view. As does the whole narrative of persecution.
Why do they still think that it's getting across? They, as in North American Evangelicals At Large? Probably because most of our nation is coasting on a baseline of agreement with Christian philosophy and belief. 80%+ self-select as Christian; even though most people in 'The Church' say that only a small handful are really Christian, it means that the majority of the population of our country is already 'won over' so to speak. Convincing them to go that last five inches -- praying the prayer, attending the church service -- is not a very hard sell. And T-shirts, thought-provoking bumper stickers, etc.? Well, maybe they can do the trick.
They don't do much, though, to fundamentally change lives. To change how we relate to others.
Hey, how well does this Permalink
Submitted by Pearson on Thu, 08/23/2007 - 12:20
Hey, how well does this thing do quote-in-a-quote?
(Edit - not that well. I've highlighted Jeff's response.)
...so (and Jeff, I think we've been down this path several times before just between the two of us) your standard "evangelistic" T-Shirts and "evangelistic" rock concerts aren't really efforts to evangelize at all, but are simply looking good for the American Evangelical rank-and-file? And persuasion for the fence-sitters?
I mean, that does totally make sense. But it also goes against the storyline that the people in the rank-and-file tell you (and, having grown up spiritually among the rank-and-file, I will tell you that I absolutely and passionately believed that White Heart concert I went to saved people who might have otherwise been beyond saving. What's more, I'm still pretty sure it DID save at least one life I cared about.)
So, here's one question for us as we go through this thing, because so much of being an Evangelical is wrapped up in evangelism. How does evangelism actually happen in this culture? Again, in keeping with the stated mission, it's not going to be helpful to ask questions about how evangelism should happen; we know we're going to disagree going in the door. But asking about how people HAVE been evangelised for Christ - successfully and unsuccessfuly - is a pretty critical question for us, I think.
…Your standard Permalink
Submitted by Eaton on Thu, 08/23/2007 - 16:17
Ultimately, yeah. I believe that is the case. I don't think many people who Wear The Walk (so to speak) would think of it in that way. When I wore my 'Witness Wear' I felt that it really was something bold and startling that would grab the attention of non-Christians, and cause them to consider the truth of the particular bible verse that was plastered onto my neon-green-and-blue 90s' shirt. But realistically? With the exception of the one time a grocery store clerk was confused by 'Body Piercing Saved My Life', the only response the apparel generated was "Oh, cool! Where did you get that one?" from my Christian friends.
Ultimately, for me at least, it was the same as wearing a favorite band's T-shirt. You're telling the world, 'Hey! Depeche Mode rocks!' and you're telling other Depeche Mode fans that you're one of them. There will always be the odd case of someone looking at your shirt and saying, "Hey, what band is that?" and becoming a fellow fan because of the conversation, but ultimately it is about self-identification.
Statistically? The vast majority had several pre-existing important relationships with people who were Christians -- people whose behavior and lifestyles affected them. That had far more impact than any Billy Graham Crusade or Evangelism Blitz or Witness Wear or whatever.
Yeah, and that's the thing I should clarify -- given a population of roughly 300,000,000 people in the US, there are going to be anecdotes of amazing conversion stories based on almost any situation.
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