Christianity for the (Non-evangelical) Rest of Us
Posted September 24, 2006
I'm reading "Christianity for the Rest of Us" a new book by former New York Times syndicated columnist Diana Butler Bass.
I selected this title for a couple of basic reasons. First of all, it was free -- a gift from Harper San Francisco. So if it's lousy, I've lost nothing but my time. Second, the title intrigued me. The author isn't proclaiming a "We" Christianity, but an "Us" and "Them" Christianity, so I was curious to see how she separates the wheat from the tares, the sheep from the goats.
Essentially, you're an "Us" if you're a Mainline Protestant Christian. You're a "Them" if you're an evangelical. And being a "Them" is a bad, bad thing, Bass insists.
"Them" Christians "fear cultural change," Bass says, "opting instead to make pronouncements about a God who is 'the same yesterday, today and forever' and insisting that they alone know the way to and the mind of God."
"Them" Christians "do not want to see" reality, and "build walled villages" to shield themselves from the real world. They are "loud" "aggressive" "fundamentalists and political extremists", "foot soldiers for the religious right", "narrow and inhospitable" people who see the world "in black and white" and emphasize "uniformity and authority."
When it comes to evangelicals, Bass rolls out all the stereotypes. She sees no shades of gray in the American religious landscape. Seemingly unaware of the irony, she insists it's all black-and-white.
"Us" Christians, on the other hand, are just wonderful. They're "well-educated and articulate." They're quieter than evangelicals, but they have "a faith that is open and generous, intellectual and emotive, beautiful and just."
So, why is Bass blasting evangelicals? It's partly frustration. Evangelical denominations have been growing for the past four decades. Mainline Protestant denominations, on the other hand, have been hemorrhaging members.
Perhaps it's also what her audience wants to hear. "Them" evangelicals may be bigger, but we're brighter, she tells them.
Based on membership and attendance figures, it's hard to argue with Bass's claim that "mainline Protestant institutions are in a state of deep crisis and desperately in need of renewal..." Some of them "are probably beyond hope of recovery or repair," she says.
My own denomination, the United Methodist Church, had more than 12 million members in the mid-1960s. Today it claims fewer than 8.2 million. Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopal and American Baptist churches have also suffered heavy losses.
In "Christianity for the Rest of Us", Bass seeks out mainline churches that are bucking the national trends. One of the churches she studied was Lexington, Kentucky's Central Christian Church.
The good news for "Us" Christians - extinction isn't inevitable for mainline Protestant churches. Bass has found 50 liberal congregations across the nation that are vital, vibrant and healthy. Most of them are also growing, she notes.
Bass spots "Ten Signposts of Renewal" -- areas that these successful churches stress. They are hospitality, healing, discernment, diversity, contemplation, worship, justice, reflection, testimony and beauty.
These congregations "focus more on God's grace in the world than on the eternal state of their own souls," she writes. They "offer a distinct alternative to a Christianity based on personal salvation and moral certainty."
"There is no spiritual test to come in, no intellectual position to which one must agree," she says. And there aren't many guarantees. The church "makes few grand claims about eternity and salvation. Rather these communities emphasize life in this world."
The churches make prayer and scripture-reading high priorities. They treat the Bible "seriously, but not literally," she says, quoting Jesus Scholar Marcus Borg.
Successful mainline churches are faith-based "communities" -- providing comfort, friendship, fellowship and opportunities for service on a daily basis. They're warm, inviting, nonjudgmental places. They welcome everybody.
Bass is a solid writer and she's chosen an interesting topic. The people she interviews seem compassionate, intelligent and deeply committed to their faith. Unfortunately, Bass speaks in "Churchese" at times -- what my wife calls "Godlygook" -- when simpler language would suffice. Nonetheless, her research is fascinating. Bass's book will appeal to a lot of people and it will offer hope and encouragement to mainline pastors across the country.
Archived Comments
Butler Bass answers the stereotyping, black-and-white morality of evangelicals with...
... stereotypes, and a black-and-white morality that merely swings on a different hinge. A mainline pastor would be encouraged by that...?
When I worked in a mainline church, I was deeply impacted by how many parishioners seemed to define their faith neither in terms of "personal salvation and moral certainty" or "God's grace in the world," but in terms of not being like the evangelicals - or at least their stereotypes of them.
Mainline elitism ("well-educated and articulate"?) is surely no better than that born of convinced "moral certainty."
I'm no evangelical, but based on your review, I don't think I'd offer Butler Bass any sympathy...!
Cheers!
Whenever my mother hears of christians arguing or saying "we" are better than "them" She has a certain phrase she always says and I think it applies in this case...
"I guess they're going to fence off heaven so they won't have to spend eternity next to each other."
I would lump Bass with Falwell...yes...same self-righteous crap with a different spin.
"us", "them"....who cares, I follow Christ alone.
Jwania, Frank's comments do in fact address the question of the Bible in mainstream theology: As he quotes Bass as saying, we take the bible SERIOUSLY, but not literally.
We mainstream christians take the bible seriously, as what it is, a complicated multifaceted document made up of many component parts, and translated into English from a variety of source manuscripts.
We don't try to dumb it down like the evangelicals do, reducing a complex, nuanced, layered work into a few "proof texts" offered to prove narrow doctrinal points. The bible is more important to us than that, and far more complicated.
If anyone disputes this, I would offer the wide variety of biblical analysis in the works of theologians excoriated as "liberal" by evangelicals such as the quoted Marcus Borg, and scholars like Elaine Pagels, John Dominic Crossan, George MacRae, Krister Stendahl, and Helmut Koester, to name just a few.
These scholars don't challenge anyone's faith, but they do revel in the complexity and nuances and layers in scriptural study, and more importantly, what these textual nuances tell us about the people who brought us the bible.
To look at the bible otherwise is to turn it into one of Jack Chick's comic books. We take it too seriously to allow that to happen.
Caleb, I most respectively must disagree that I, we, them, have "dumbed" down the Bible. It was penned by man, however most importantly the inspired, breathed Word of God. I don't believe He made it so complex that man must rely on scholars to interpret it for them. My Bible is as much part of my life as eating and working. To infer that I, they don't take it seriously is unfounded. Now I must go because this in running into my devotional time.
"Them"
Jwania, I certainly didn't mean to suggest that evangelicals aren't sincere about their biblical study, just that often they only scratch the surface.
An anology I would give would be my lack of knowledge of classical music. I can listen to a classical recording, hum along with it, and either enjoy it or not enjoy it, but that's about it. People who know more about music than I do could tell me about the structure of the piece, what pieces it resembles and doesn't resemble, what form of music it is, be it chamber music, a sonata, a symphony, or from an opera.
They might know the historical occasion for which the piece was composed, who commissioned it, and where it was first performed. They might be able to use their wealth of information on music in general to identify a piece of music listed by one composer as actually having been composed by another.
All of these principles have application to the bible: Whatever one may believe about the divine inspiration of the bible, it came to us as a written document and is thus as subject as any other document to modern textual analysis, and we have learned much about the bible through this analysis which make it a richer and deeper document than we ever thought.
The bible is like a piece of classical music. Yes, you can read it in translation and get a lot out of it, just as I enjoy listening to a piece of classical music.
But to truly understand it, one must dig deeper, and there is little tradition among evangelicals of that deeper digging. And I frankly lay this at the doorstep of their leaders, who have not stressed modern textual and critical biblical scholarship, or have actually opposed it. They do not serve their members well by this stance.
You suggest that God would not have made the bible too complex for the average person to understand. No doubt this is true on some level, but it should not be used as an excuse for refusing to use the intelligence we have to dig deeper, any more than I would make an excuse that a piece of classical music "sounds good to me" to suggest that I might not enjoy it more if I understood it better.
Dualistic thinking like this book portrays is almost always a caricature of each side, and almost always inaccurate.
What is a Non-evangelical?
What is an Evangelical?
Thanks so much for this review. I was just about to purchase this book but now realize it's really just a sham.
There are many evangelicals who severly critique the mega church movement, seek community, and serve Christ in the world.
But the way the author describes her "Christianity" makes you wonder if it can really even be called Christianity in any classical sense.
Again, thanks for saving me the time and money!
I find it most shocking that the Bible seemed to hold no place in the comparisons issue of "us" and "them". The "thems" base their belief on the Word, not what may make them feel good at the moment,or "..life in this world" mentality. Let's face it, the world can be ugly and unfair, the "them" position is to take those promises in the Word of God and make every effort to reach those who believe that this is all there is. God's mission was our salvation, and through that we experience His grace. I don't see how you have one without the other. The "thems" will continue to reach out to those who are without Him, not because they want to condemn or judge,but because Matthew 28: 19-20 mandates that they do this.
And because "they" have a love for their fellow man and a yearning to introduce them to the Word,(all of it) the "thems" will continue to pursue the mission given to "them".
Thank you,
one of "them"