Anonymous
Church leaders must accept change
Sat Feb 14 11:33:11 2004
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Church leaders must accept change

February 14, 2004


LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Starting home after leading a church retreat, I feel a swirl of emotions. Self-doubt, for I took a new tack in this retreat and wonder whether it worked. Gratitude, from having met with some remarkable people.

And that pensiveness, common among travelers, about life's fragile balance of marriage, family, job, house, freedom, faith and health.

If we could step back from our conflicts, the relentless coarsening of our culture, the corrosion of our corporate and governmental ethics, and our headlong dash into self-destructive choices, I think we would see lonely travelers worrying about tomorrow.

Many search for some rock to stand on. Hence the manic greed of the well-connected, a feeding frenzy that makes no sense except as comfort to the self-doubting. Hence the crassness of a Super Bowl halftime show, which offered skin but seemed grounded in a belief that nothing matters. Hence the inevitable cheapening of election 2004 into a culture war, rather than a referendum on competence, results and policy.

Hence the dour parade of religious leaders who swoop into this nameless dread, like drug dealers invading a schoolyard, bearing easy answers and low-cost "rock."

They fix blame, name enemies and encourage scapegoating. They offer simple solutions to complex issues. They encourage denial of reality and escape into nostalgia. They divide crowds into Us and Them. They offer leaders who stoke rage and fear. They seize control of basic institutions.

They paint ugly pictures -- a culture needing to be cleansed of the not-Us, a faith grounded in rules and revenge -- while claiming to be advocates of the holy.

In a prominent Louisville suburb, a cleric tells an Episcopal study group that they may no longer read whatever they want. To ensure doctrinal discipline, clergy must approve their reading list and supervise their discussions. Group members are aghast. Where did this thought control come from?

My host relates a warning from a Southern Baptist friend, who saw fundamentalist ideologues seize Louisville's once- excellent Baptist seminary and turn it to rigid mediocrity. The strategy that ideologues used to take over the Southern Baptist Convention, he says, is exactly the strategy being used by conservative ideologues to take over the Episcopal Church.

Who are these providers of phony rocks? They aren't necessarily conservatives or liberals, fundamentalists or free-thinkers. They are those who speak in absolute certainty, who turn life's normal angst into scapegoating, who proclaim God their champion, who assert that some lives matter more than others, and some are so wrong that their voices must be stilled.

In their deceit, they give a bad name to fundamentalism -- true fundamentalism like that practiced by Baptists before ideologues seized power. They give a bad name to liberalism -- true liberalism grounded in free thought and free expression. They make Jesus seem elitist and the Bible a weapons cache.

A reader asks if Jesus experienced change. Yes, his ministry changed dramatically. His teaching moved from synagogue to hillside. His message ventured outside tradition. He went from expecting acceptance to expecting rejection. His messianic self-awareness went from redeemer to "suffering servant" to apocalyptic "Son of Man" to silent victim. His healings changed, his relationships with the disciples changed.

What caused Jesus to change? Events like standing on the plain amid lonely and worried travelers and feeling their pain. Jesus interacted with humanity, and those interactions touched him so deeply that he allowed himself to change direction, to step beyond tradition, to hear new voices, and to understand both himself and God in new ways.

The glory of Jesus isn't that he had it all figured out when he started, but that he learned along the way. No airtight ideology for him. He learned by loving.


Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest, writer and computer consultant. Send e-mail to tehrich@earthlink.net  .

• Re: Church leaders must accept change — Anonymous, Sat Feb 14 12:06