I think this is the question many of our contemporaries ask, to which the Churches are at a loss to provide a satisfying response. It is something many of us have to face, often in great spiritual and emotional pain.
Many of us are brought to ask ourselves whether we are proper Christians if we have doubts about the sales pitch of biblical, doctrinal or canonical literalism, exclusivity and the idea according to which this servitude is the condition for a happy afterlife as one of the “privileged elect”.
Increasingly, we are beginning to find this idea of the Bible and the Church as the only revelation of God, the notions of Christian life being a kind of “insurance policy” to obtain salvation after death and the “one true church” rings hollow and fills us with revulsion. How do we square such ideals with the words and acts of men of the Church who believe themselves to be dispensed from their own moral teaching? Many have turned to atheism or are just not interested in spiritual questions – or have extinguished this side of their personalities to quench the agony.
Now, what if Christian life were about relationships with God, other humans and the entire planet? What if it were not about “individual salvation” or any “future reward” or even about believing this or that proposition? What if it were simply a relationship with God that transforms our life here and now? I think that such a view of things would make us more responsible and would enable us to assume our freedom.
All this might look like half-baked Spong or the understandable reactions one finds in the American Episcopal Church. Not everything is bad because some things like persecuting conservative clergy and parishes are unacceptable – Falsus in uno falsus in omnibus. Everywhere, there is a prophetic voice to be found even, when it falls victim of human nature. See Bonhoeffer versus John Shelby Spong, an article contrasting the two.
Bonhoeffer’s call for “non-religious Christianity” (Nicht-religiöse Christentum) had nothing to do with abandoning rigid dogma and other forms of traditional Christianity in favour of a more spontaneous communion with the Ground of Being. Instead, it stands for the church having the courage to be the church, to follow Jesus in his uncompromising concreteness, and not to seek refuge in the shadows of pseudo-theological, liturgical or ethical obscurantism. The irony, of course, is that the mishmash of pop-existentialism and flaccid pluralism that Spong urges upon the disaffected faithful is precisely the kind of cancerous religiosity to which Bonhoeffer was opposed.
This way of thinking is nothing new, as it was already an issue with the Modernists. So-called “orthodox” Christianity became a stumbling block and was no longer capable of attracting the faith of their contemporaries. What can be said to those who cannot bring themselves to be exclusivists or literalists, to whom Christianity needs to be conveyed poetically and by way of beauty and love? Usually, the answer is Damn you! Is that not what the anonymous commenters are conveying when their certitudes are challenged?
It is generally understood that the early Christian communities were composed of marginal people motivated by a cynical (this word meant in its original meaning) kind of philosophy. They were committed to eschewing violence, sharing their goods, expressing their faith in helping the poor and the sick. They were in opposition to the power structures of the Roman Empire. People were attracted to these communities by the way that Christians seemed to love each other.
I willingly subscribe to the idea according to which the transformation came with the Peace of Constantine. This was the beginning of what we call Erastianism in England, the Church becoming subject to the State and political ambition. The Church was seduced by wealth and power, shifting from a prophetic role to one of affirming the ruling classes and the strong of this world.
From then, Jesus’ humanity was increasingly absorbed in his divinity and transformed into the image of a king. He had to be portrayed as perfect and sinless, beyond anyone’s reach. The only way to Jesus was to be through the power structures of the Church – if you could afford it. The Church became the persecutor in the most ruthless revolution known in history. Such a system would “domesticate” Christ and turn him into a kind of sugary sweet figure, even in contrast to his role as a king, and spiritualised the Gospel. Christianity was no longer to challenge the status quo of the powerful and wealthy. Even the Reformation needed the political power of princes and kings to survive and make its impact. Protestant national churches were just as oppressive and cruel as Rome.
In the wake of the Enlightenment, the notion of Christendom collapsed and thus was born the principle of secularism and the separation of church and state. There was a reaction, and Churches craved the support of political power. German Protestant churches supported World War I, and those who went to war claimed that God was on their side. The collaboration of churches and churchmen with the Nazi regime is undeniable and the greatest scandal of the time of our parents and grandparents. As Germany was defeated, those who collaborated suffered severe reprisals and the churches concerned lost their credibility.
Many American Christians, Protestants, Fundamentalists and Catholics supported the invasion of Iraq. Evangelicals support the right-wing agendas of US domination through warfare. Churches have failed to stand out by their opposition to evil in politics and focus on personal morality and sexual issues. The Church has inspired the sublime, but at the same time has allowed or even committed crimes of intolerance and hatred.
The real founder of what many call the Church was not Jesus or St Paul, but Constantine. The faith of power, wealth and constraint now has no place in our life. This is something Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw in his day. Days before being taken to the gallows, he wrote:
You would be surprised, and perhaps even worried, by my theological thoughts and the conclusions that they lead to… What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, for us today.
How could human beings claim to be religious and spiritual and yet kill and torture other people? What does being religious mean?
We are moving towards a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious anymore. Even those who honestly describe themselves as ‘religious’ do not in the least act up to it, and so they presumably mean something quite different by ‘religious’.
Should we relinquish religion in order to be Christians, give up churches, liturgies, priests, sacraments, just living a secular life? What would Christianity be is it were stripped bare? If religion does not transform or redeem us, what use is it?
Bonhoeffer resumed a war-torn Christianity of the future as prayer and righteous action among humanity. Prayer is essentially something we do alone, meditating on the Scriptures and being in communion with our surroundings. Prayer develops solidarity and empathy for others, because we bring them before God.
I move into the other man’s place. I enter his life…his guilt and distress. I am afflicted by his sins and his infirmity.
Empathy is the most important thing to acquire in our combat against the evil within ourselves even before thinking of the evil in others. We need to pray for empowerment to bring about God’s will for justice and peace. The goal is not merely a “spiritual welfare state” but a real effort to transform the world. We have not to wait for God to act, because God waits for us to act, chiefly through prayer and contemplation, and then through whatever action for good is within our power.
One call for Christians is solidarity with those who are outside churches and who struggle to get along in life. The biblical notion of righteousness needs to be finely understood, notably the goodness of a good deed and not the virtue of the person doing it.
With most of us, the Church has lost its authority to teach and bind through its complicity with evil and persecution of its own prophetic voice. I speak not only of Rome, but all institutional churches, the Fundamentalists and the Evangelicals.
Bonhoeffer may seem to neglect the monastic way, but he actually promotes solitary prayer for the sake of righteous action.
In the end of the day, we can ask ourselves whether Jesus intended to found a religion or what is generally understood in our own time as the Church. The Gospels would have to be really twisted to wrest out the meanings often given by Papal apologists. What Jesus seemed to want was a new kind of community and personal life in the midst of the Jewish establishment and the old world. In the context of the Roman Empire, he sought to challenge oppressive and divisive forces.
Some of us are forced out of the Constantinian Church, and this should not be an occasion of bitterness, but a new opportunity. The Gospel needs to be re-read and re-thought. We need to let go of our perceived ideas and conventional wisdom formed by the Church. There is a new world, a new beginning, waiting out there, and it is ours for the asking. We are called to open our minds, shed off the Matrix, and become like little children in their innocence and receptiveness.
The Blue Flower 