{"id":28382,"date":"2017-06-07T06:00:30","date_gmt":"2017-06-07T10:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=28382"},"modified":"2017-06-06T22:06:24","modified_gmt":"2017-06-07T02:06:24","slug":"when-the-secular-was-sacred","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2017\/06\/when-the-secular-was-sacred\/","title":{"rendered":"“When the secular was sacred”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"640px-Cincinnati-blight-and-renewal\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I grew up in a liberal mainline denomination in the 1950s and 1960s, going to the conventions and participating in the youth conferences. \u00a0Reading Kenneth L. Woodward\u2019s account of this phase of church history in\u00a0Getting Religion: \u00a0Faith, Culture, and Politics from the Age of Eisenhower to the Era of Obama<\/a>\u00a0explains a lot of things that I witnessed and had to go through. \u00a0(See my earlier posts on Woodward\u2019s book\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

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Woodward, the religious editor for Newsweek<\/em>, tells about the impact of the Civil Rights Movement on mainline Protestant pastors and church people. \u00a0In addition to giving them a truly righteous cause, it introduced them to the black church, which seemed to be a truly socially relevant institution, unlike their own church bodies. \u00a0The excitement soon extended to other kinds of social activism. \u00a0And then came the Kennedy euphoria.<\/p>\n

It seemed to many mainline Protestant theologians that the secular world\u2013not the church\u2013was where the real action is. \u00a0Also the real virtues, the real meaning, the realm where God was truly working.<\/p>\n

As Woodward puts it, \u201cthe nation\u2019s liberal Protestant leadership came to embrace the secular as<\/em> sacred: \u00a0that is, to assume that if God is to be found anywhere, it is in the secular world, not the church\u201d (p. 96).<\/p>\n

He quotes an evangelism executive, who said that the question facing Protestants was not \u201cwhether the church can convert the world, but whether God can convert his church\u201d (p. 105).<\/p>\n

Thus we had the slogan of the National Council of Churches: \u00a0\u201cThe world sets the agenda for the church.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seminarians were analyzing Simon & Garfunkel: \u00a0\u201cThe words of the prophets are written on the subway walls. \u00a0And tenement halls.\u201d \u00a0The lectionary readings in church would include an \u201cepistle from the world\u201d: \u00a0a newspaper article or a rock song lyric.<\/p>\n

Theologians busied themselves with throwing out the traditions and the doctrines of the church, all in an effort to make it more secular.<\/p>\n

I remember as a teenager reading a book someone had given me: \u00a0The Secular City <\/a>by Harvey Cox. \u00a0I found it even at the time confusing and\u00a0upside down.<\/p>\n

This best-seller, published in 1965, praised the anonymity and autonomy of the vast urban centers. \u00a0I wondered, what\u2019s so good about anonymity and autonomy? \u00a0(Woodward says that shows just how Protestant the book was, despite everything. \u00a0As a Catholic growing up in Cleveland, Woodward recalls the city as a place of neighborhoods and community.) \u00a0Cox lauded the advent of the \u201ctechnopolis\u201d and the apotheosis of the pragmatic. \u00a0His saint was JFK.<\/p>\n

\u201cSecular or technolopolitan man does not waste time pondering the meaning of life,\u201d summarizes Woodward: \u00a0\u201che is a problem solver.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Christianity that was left had to do with \u201cfollowing Jesus\u201d into the secular city, working alongside him as society progresses to ever greater heights.<\/p>\n

By the 1970s, of course, Cox\u2019s optimism about the secular city seemed pretty misplaced. \u00a0Martin Luther King and JFK were assassinated. \u00a0Riots tore cities apart. \u00a0Crime was rampant. \u00a0So was poverty. \u00a0The Vietnam War bogged down America\u2019s \u201ccan-do\u201d attitude that Cox so admired, and the secular city degenerated into protests, conflict, social discord, and sheer ugliness. \u00a0And Neil Postman would show how \u201ctechnopoly\u201d brings problems of its own: \u00a0dehumanization, ignorance, and woes.<\/p>\n

What once seemed so exciting now seems merely naive. \u00a0What seemed so sophisticated now seems childishly simplistic. \u00a0What seemed so formidable\u2013the victory of modern theology over hidebound orthodoxy\u2013now seems weak and shallow and ephemeral.<\/p>\n

That can be said of much of liberal theology in its many fads and varieties and movements, as well as many of the passing trends of the secular city. \u00a0I needed the sacred, and so did the city. \u00a0 We all needed the City of God.<\/p>\n

Photo by Derek Jensen, Urban blight and Urban renewal in Cincinnati, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p>\n

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