Rooted or Entrenched?

The poster hangs in the busiest hallway at Shiloh Church. It is from the Still Speaking Campaign of the United Church of Christ, and reads: "Our faith is 2000 years old, but our thinking is not."

This past Sunday, Jesus, in the lectionary text from John, turned over the tables of the money changers and cast the sacrificial animals out of the Temple courtyard. He did so, I think, because the marketplace that was held in the Temple courtyard was based in injustice and inequality. It resulted in societal separation and cultural bias. It favored those who had assets, property, provision and possession over those who had just enough for their survival, or even less.

Jesus did not reject the Judaism of the Temple. Jesus rejected the tendency of persons to become complacent in the face of injustice and inequality because they are fostered in religious organizations. Religious injustice and inequality result from the inability or unwillingness of religious organizations to question their own policies and practices.

There must be a relationship between the foundational, core values of a religious institution and the policies, procedures and structures that are derived from them. In what is the Church rooted? In what ways have these organizations become entrenched? "Our faith is 2000 years old, but our thinking is not." 

How many church meetings have the readers of The Shiloh Insider wherein the line between rootedness and entrenchment is blurred? In how many of those meetings has some unwitting victim of the organization's bureaucracy uttered the famous phrase, "But we have always done it this way?"

It is certainly true that congregations and religious organizations benefit from being rooted in a solid tradition. Many saints have come before us. Their ways are not necessarily sacred, however. Their practices have not brought God's kingdom on earth. Their policies did not always match their core values. Even when they sometimes did, their core values are not necessarily our core values.

The contemporary Church is being challenged by shrinking populations and diminishing dollars, by a cultural agnosticism that functions in the whole without God, and a practical rationalism that denies the practice of what seems mystical and metaphysical. The Church is increasingly irrelevant to the developing culture.

To stem the tide of shrinkage, and to reverse the trend of diminishing dollars, the Church has devised all sorts of marketing approaches and practical approaches that are meant to attract others. Some have been met with some success. Some have worked, at least to meet the sociological and psychological needs of the culture.

None of the fancy marketing approaches or practical sociological or psychological methodologies will work in the long run, however. Only one approach will, I think.

The Church today must determine its own core values. In the past sixty or so years, we have learned so much about Christ Jesus, and about the development of the early Church, that old core values no longer apply. Old practices, procedures, policies and structures no longer work. The contemporary (Progressive) Church must re-examine and determine anew a core ethic for the Church. It must reinvent itself. Once the Church articulates the core ethic(s), it can begin to shape new policies, practices, structures and procedures.

In my humble opinion, the conversations should have started a few decades ago. They could have resulted, by now, in new formulae for what the Church is to be, what it is called to do and how it does its work. Even if some conversations started then, they were thwarted by organizational and bureaucratic entrenchment. The ongoing supply of money allowed the institutions to continue to protect their traditional configurations and practices, even if they resembled the market place of the Temple in Jesus' age.

Now the money has fallen short, and religious organizations are being forced to reconsider what they do and how they do it. This might be great news for the Church of Jesus Christ. Perhaps we can use the opportunity before us to narrow the gap between the core values of our faith and the ways that we have organized ourselves and the practices that we have adopted. Maybe this is the advent of the kingdom.

Let's hope and pray.

See You Sunday!