I am getting ready for the Alumni weekend for my seminary, Episcopal Divinity School. They are trying to create a new way forward for seminary education. I'll know more when the weekend is over!

The Church We Knew Is Over

Some of us remember church. It was a all the rage at one time, a popular thing. People, largely women, made it happen. For some of us it was a beautiful thing.

And it is over. The church that we knew is over. It is sad that it is over, because sometimes it was a wonderful, powerful, faithful and grace-filled thing.

At the same time, in the United States it has been full of manifest destiny, patriarchy, racism, ableism, and more. One of the church's gift to this nation has been the sin of Christian Nationalism. Church is segregation, bias, self-righteousness.

The church writ large is stuck.

Before you argue that your church, the good one, not the one you were in before that is bad, but this particular church is not all these awful things: I say congratulations for all the ways you have successfully fought against the powers-that-be.

Still, it is good that the church as we knew it is over. It is good that we are forced to re-think exactly what church is, and what it can be, and to listen for where God is calling us next. I'm sure God's call is not to be the church we were.

The church is very important to the world. Or more accurately the church is important to the world when we serve the world. When we look for who is hurting, who is suffering, who is oppressed, and join with those children of God. We don't do ministry to them (that is the way of the past) and instead figure out how to be in solidarity with them. Change from focusing on them to becoming us.

The church that we knew was ever present and visible but on the whole was not willing to stand up to the powers-that-be. Perhaps it is only the collaborating church that is over. Perhaps those congregations and those people who took brave stands are the lessons for who church can be next. But also those congregations who sought out the poor, the lonely, those with mental health challenges, and those who are hurting, those congregations too will point us toward the next form of church.

This timeline is not the one I would have chosen to live. But it is a timeline that gives the church the potential to rise up and be the body of Christ, to be a people who choose courage, who take risks, and through that create a new church.

I just saw Ken Burns at a preview of his upcoming mini-series The American Revolution. What really stood out for me was his emphasis on the thirteen colonies as disconnected from each other before the revolution. Most white people's primary identity was as British citizens. Their primary goals, separately, was to get the rights the citizen rights they deserved. When the shots were fired in Lexington and Concord it did not seem likely that any other colony would be interested in how Massachusetts was handling their relationship to Britain.

It was more than a year later that the unifying document - the Declaration of Independence - was written. The idea that we all are created equal, and that we all have inalienable rights, this idea helped those in each colony realize that together we could be something new. Instead of working to go back to the way things were, we could create a new nation, based on higher, hopeful values. We found something worth dying for.

In Christianity, we already have the model that Jesus' message is worth dying for. We have the universal Christian understanding that we must welcome the stranger, the immigrant, the alien. We have the foundational belief that every person on earth is a child of God and thus worthy of our protection. Our belief in forgiveness means we can accept those who do not live out these beliefs fully; and is matched with confidence in God's justice for the poor and oppressed. We know that God's kin-dom is at hand.

We church folk are distinctly prepared for this moment. We can create a new church that starts by being in solidarity with those abused by our government. We can create a new church that refuses the trappings of empire. We can create a new church that is worth dying for. Let us Act! to Be Church Now.

What is your church doing, or thinking about doing these days? Are you ready for revolution? Reply to this email to let me know what's happening. ​
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This idea grew out of this article by Elliot Kirschner that claims that the United States that we knew is over. In some ways I hope this is true. Yet is seems easier to fight to go back to the way we were, rather than to have a revolution to become something new. What do you think?

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Ken Burns' The American Revolution mini-series is taking a radically wide view, including Indigenous, Caribbean, and Feminist Scholars. And Rhiannon as one of the musicians!

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