Christianity is Changing
Remember the famous last words of the church? “But we’ve never done it that way!” This guest post suggests that those dying words are conservative, and thus not at all traditional.
Jonathan Sauder currently resides in Fort Worth, Texas, where he is completing a Master of Theological Studies degree at Brite Divinity School. He focuses his theological research on excavating and exposing the empire-friendly habits of theologies past and present. He is teaching an upcoming online course for The School of Peace Theology called “Can A Christian Conscience Be A Good Conscience?” Jonathan and his family attend a Mennonite church. His wife, Brenda, is a spiritual director, and their four children are in grade school.
Religious Microcephaly and Bible Belt Assassins
All true learning involves a change of mind. A person who sets her will against change can only learn against her will.
Christianity is changing. Some of my friends feel profoundly threatened by that. Others find it energizing. I am fascinated by such divergent reactions to the same reality. I cannot speak for all of them, but, of the friends I know well, it seems that those who fear change tend to be the ones who equate faith with beliefs. When beliefs shift, their faith is threatened. Those for whom growth in faith involves outgrowing some beliefs and growing up into other ones that didn’t fit them a decade ago are those who seem most energized by Christianity’s versatility.
Not all change is progress. But I am convinced that it is only through change that we grow.
Two texts from two ends of the twentieth century remind me of the dangers of refusing to grow beyond adolescent spirituality and mentality.
The first text is in the epilogue of Tzvetan Todorov’s Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps [1996]: “I believe that compassion is something that human beings do not discover in themselves and make an active principle until rather late in life. Children are notoriously merciless, and as for adolescents, they tend to discover justice well before mercy.”
Todorov is not specifically addressing the stalled growth of Christian souls who take offense at the possibility that God is more merciful than their childish fixation on vengeance can allow for. But his insight helps me to see how some theologies (beliefs about what God is like) are not merely “inadequate” to adult experience, but can be morally crippling to the point of preventing adult spirituality. It is possible to temporarily live at a higher moral standard than your theology and to love those whom you believe God hates. But this is difficult to sustain for more than a few moments at a time, and people rarely mature very far beyond their own image of God.
The second text, from a much earlier decade, points out the deformities that can result from inert personal theologies that haven’t grown since one’s childhood. The importance of lifelong growth in faith and belief was graphically described by Walter Rauschenbusch in 1916 (in The Social Principles of Jesus): “But our growth sets a problem for our religion. The religion of childhood will not satisfy adolescent youth, and the religion of youth ought not to satisfy a mature man or woman. Our soul must build statelier mansions for itself. . . . A person who has failed to adjust his religion to his growing powers and his intellectual horizon, has failed in one of the most important functions of growth, just as if his cranium failed to expand and to give room to his brain. Being microcephalous is a misfortune, and nothing to boast of.”
The term “tradition” names a timeful dynamic, not a timeless holding pattern. The only way to truly “conserve” a tradition is to be nourished by its vitality and clothed in its versatility so that you can change and grow along with it. The greatest enemies of the Christian tradition/s today are conservative Christians.
Liberals frequently insult tradition. Especially those parts of it that are outdated. This honest frontal attack on tradition rarely damages it. Far more deadly attacks on tradition come from conservatives who refuse to let it sprout contemporary roots and shoots. When a tradition is not allowed to grow, it dies. Thriving traditions, particularly ancient ones, can have thick layers of dead wood under thin layers of living bark, and Christianity is no exception. But when fearful, teenage fifty or sixty year olds try to rescue a tradition from all changes of size and shape, they can warp it beyond recognition.
Many frightened American Christians have reacted to liberalism by adopting conservatism. This choice is made in all sincerity. Nothing is more sincere than fear. But when a tradition is not allowed to evolve, it is soon asphyxiated. A living tradition can carry you. It can allow for your personal liberal or conservative tendencies and enhance your growth in faith. But when you fear change as a threat to your faith, you start to choke your tradition to keep it from moving and if you succeed, you can soon find yourself carrying the motionless corpse of a tradition.
Static faithfulness to a dynamic tradition is impossible.
People who “conserve” the Christian tradition by trying to stop it in its tracks and make it “timeless” are far more effective assassins of their heritage than any liberal could ever aspire to be. They have opted out of being genuinely traditional by opposing all substantial change (growth) in belief. There seems to be an expanding pride in a contracting cranial capacity. When fear feels like faith, change feels like loss. When perfect fear casts out trust, growth feels like infidelity.
And that frightened and angry Christian stance in American churches scares me because I love the Christian gospel. I do not want to see it choked to death by a bible belt.
Some days I fear that the traditions that have nourished my soul will die of asphyxiation in the grip of their fiercest defenders.
A liberal or conservative belief system with an anchor chain of ironclad certainty connecting it to “timeless truth” will drown when the tides of time rise.
A tradition of faith is a more elastic anchoring cord that allows beliefs and practices to adjust to the tides and survive the storms.
— Jonathan Sauder
Have a look at Jonathan’s upcoming course offering at The School of Peace Theology: “Can A Christian Conscience Be A Good Conscience?”
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