This is a very long email from Sam which we talk about (a bit) in this week’s show.
A twenty-first century faith…
…is a faith which moves beyond the axial age of dualism which still grips today’s world – the age of us and them, black and white, right and wrong.
It is a faith that can hold all things in balance, and when needed, in tension.
It genuinely holds genuine diversity in greater unity. This is very hard for anyone at this very moment – the left is no better at it than the right, and both are just as present in the church as they are in the world.
It is a faith that integrates the past, present, and future, and holds to what life is actually like: bewildering.
It embodies the spirit of what Jesus of Nazareth actually taught: reality is paradoxical. We must die to live. Love carries pain. Losers are the winners. The lion is a little lamb. The King is a suffering servant.
[Praxis: the church ceases to teach the dominant, linear, zero-sum, winning-salvation-through-correct-belief aberration that has taken hold of historical Christianity. Instead it teaches the actual teaching and life of Christ, in its full paradoxical nature.] Let’s go to here today
It is a faith that proactively names, mourns, repents from, and atones for the many harms done by Christianity and Christians through the ages, whilst also acknowledging and cherishing the good the Christian religion and its adherents have pursued as well.
[Praxis: church institutions commission truth and reconciliation initiatives and give up their immense financial wealth to provide reparations for harms done. Congregations hold truth events to voice and grieve the reality of the dark sides of Christianity in history, and reach out to relevant communities who’ve suffered. I believe nothing less than ‘all in’ can preserve Christianity as a tradition. Churches also explore and celebrate the role Christians have played in bringing about a better world for humans, whilst abstaining from unicausal accounts and Christian exceptionalism.]
It does not see its mission as defending or growing itself, but living out the faith ever more faithfully and lovingly, giving itself sacrificially to the transformation of the world. It continually draws and expresses itself from the ground of being, occasionally using words to do so, to paraphrase St Francis.
[Praxis: sharing the gospel is simply making a better world – “God’s kingdom”=everything being in tune with God – not converting individuals to a specific religious adherence. The institutional church, where it survives, ploughs its resources – political, economic, social – wholeheartedly into the mission of practical love to the outsider, the poor, and the vulnerable.]
It is a faith fundamentally uncomfortable with formal institutions and organisations, recognising the traps these lay for the frail human heart. It respectfully invites individual responsibility and awakening first, and last. When we die, this is all we can hope to make peace with and find beauty and meaning in, for the life given to us.
[Praxis: Christian communities define faith in terms of individual integrity, responsibility for oneself, and love towards others. Not in terms of assent to specific beliefs, practice of specific rituals, or membership of specific institutions – all of these are permissible if they are aiding personal integrity, responsibility, and love, but they carry inherent risk of going off course. Death, dying, and cross-carrying is part of everyday Christian language and discourse, as least as much as, and as the necessary counterpart to, talk of eternal life.]
It is a faith that is able to approach its scriptures with integrity, honesty, and humility, clear-eyed about the many dangers they hold, and the skewed places we end up in depending on how we read them, but neither does it assign them to the scrap heap, instead drawing on their manifold world-shattering and love-ushering perspectives.
[Praxis: the church actually equips Christians with the tools and knowledge to read the Bible for themselves, in full historical context and with respect to different traditions, with a clear point of difference: Christ is the Word of God, and the human is where the living Spirit dwells, not scripture. The church moves away once and for all from the Bible as a magic book whose interpretation is singular and lies in the hands of a religious elite standing at the front of church on a Sunday].
It is a faith constantly striving to create inclusive, healthy, diverse community, and at the very same time constantly acting to erase any boundaries between itself and the world. This is how Jesus acted. It is very difficult to make the case he ever intended to build a structured, identifiable community, rather, a radical, multi-faceted movement of individuals without a clear centre or form.
[Praxis: Christians do not fixate on which social identities to profess support for or ostracize at any given time, instead they move beyond to declare the universal of God, and build communities that reflect this God. Institutions of the church acknowledge being at odds with the Jesus movement simply by virtue of being formal organisations, even before falling foul of the many inherent traps, and act to deconstruct themselves – this would be the ultimate act of faith in God, trusting that the gospel will lead individuals to continue transforming themselves, their societies, and the world without formal religion.]
It is a faith that sees no tension between kindness and compassion towards the marginalised, and deep and energetic anger at injustice, greed, inequality, and other propensities harmful to humans and toxic to our planet.
[Praxis: it takes the risk to stand for a better world for others, even when that removes hitherto held privilege and comes at great cost. This would be living as Jesus lived and called us to live. I acknowledge I’m certainly not there yet myself.]
It is a faith that dares to dream and live out a bigger vision than what’s ever come before, to make all things new!