I guess this is maybe a Monday manifesto?
It's hard for me to write this manifesto because it's specifically about the thing I'm supposed to be "about" as a pastor. But here goes...
It's possible you may have noticed that I seldom if ever use overtly religious language. I'm not much into "I see God moving in this" or "I'm waiting for the Spirit's leading," or... well, none of it really.
Additionally, and this is something that has come up over a long period of time and from the perspective of many different people, often folks wonder if I might be better served working as a community organizer rather than specifically in the religious space, or folks will state (positively) that GSLC is like a community center with a chapel.
Ok, so go with me on this for a bit if you would. Increasingly I've become convinced that if in fact Christianity is what it says it is, a weak force in the world with a crucified God as it's primary focus, then in fact that kind of Christianity can disappear even without remainder into many other discourses/realities in our world.
This is to say, we are very free to join the discourses and practices of others because we do not demand "our" way, and in fact the self-emptying, weak aspects of the faith "give space."
As a result, I mostly don't need religious language to make sense of changes, movements in the world around us. I can borrow liberally from the language of others, join their discourse, have no need to super-impose my "Christian" discourse onto theirs.
Over time, this has shifted how I think of so many aspects of our church structure. It has made me not only question the effectiveness of things like synodical structures and denominations, but even to come to the conclusion that mostly I don't believe in them. They're too strong, too structured. I've grown to feel primarily right about small local communities, full stop.
But also, it impacts how I think about liturgy. I've started having a kind of Occam's razor mentality, feeling like a lot of what we sing in church, some of the confessions we make, make too broad of claims for what we can say about God, or faith, or really anything "supernatural" or "above" or "beyond" us. I kind of still like some of the main texts as rote anchor points to practice a few rituals, but all the flowery stuff misses me these days.
I take it to be true that in a sense there isn't anything supernatural at all. Whatever we are, it is the fulness of what we are as we are that is enough, natural. If we can speak of God, God is the one who joins us in that, helps us see the beauty in the nature of what we already are.
It also has a big impact on how I think of my role as pastor. I worry that so many of us have been conditioned to wait to really have what we believe about God, ourselves, the world, Jesus, validated by some religious authority person, and only then is it "true."
If you're still waiting on that somewhere (and I know there is irony in me saying this, 100%) let me just say, Be free. Stop waiting.
The whole heart of the Reformation insight was that we didn't need to worry about the "things above us" because they were accomplished in Christ, so we could devote ourselves entirely to our neighbor and their needs.
This should/can make all of us functional atheists. We don't need to worry about God, or we should only think of God as being wholly present AS our neighbor.
Maybe that's the most blunt way I can say it: my way of being Christian IS as a secular atheist, or at least quite a lot of how I live and move will appear as such, and what makes us differ is very little and perhaps mostly a difference in the use of terms.
Perhaps this can be a small relief to all those alarmed by Christian nationalist fervor or caught up in it. That there is another way, but that other way simply isn't going to look like a whole other fraught, supremacist, discourse of glory.
It will be instead hidden, under the form of and subject to discourse in this world, working with what is given as weak as that sometimes is, not a veneer or a set of words spread as salve over the surface of broken systems, but really just an entirely neighborly presence in, with, under what is the case.
I’m a pastor on leave from call. I resonate with what you wrote here. I didn’t have anything terrible happen, but I realized I was just so burned out on holding up the structure the larger church still expects, while realizing more and more, we aren’t truly speaking into the pain of the world.
If Christianity is going to survive it needs to take this perspective seriously and honestly. Even though i believe in god I also believe that the god we've believed in has been way too twisted and manipulated to be authentic and valid now.