Lewis Rothschild: People want leadership, Mr President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.
President Andrew Shepherd: Lewis, we've had presidents who were beloved, who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference.
-The American President
This week I read two interesting articles, one a Christian Science Monitor article about the resurgence of Calvinism which juxtaposes with a blog by Walter Russell Mead about the decline of the Mainline denominations in America. Both articles cause me more than just a bit of grief. As a "recovering Calvinist" (which I think, much like alcoholism, one is never a fully recovered Calvinist) and an Anglican, they hit home in their own respective ways.
Mead makes a point that is rarely, if ever, addressed from the pulpits of the mainline churches,
The great question for fundamentalist and evangelical religion is the relationship of revelation to modern science. The great question for modernist and mainline religion is the ’so what’ question. If members are not sinners being saved from the flames of Hell, if Christianity is not the one path of salvation offered by a merciful God to a perishing world, if a relationship with God is not the only means to surmount the challenges of each day much less to meet the great tests of life — why go to church? Why pledge? Why have the kids go to Sunday school rather than soccer practice?
This is something readily grasped by the Neo-Calvinists. They answer that we are indeed Sinners in the hands of an angry God, damned to hell, and hanging by a thread if not for the unknowable grace of God. Undoubtedly, we always know where the Calvinists stand, and that is much of their appeal when faced with the Spiritual and Theological vacuum not only from the mainline churches, but from Stadium Church America and the likes of Joel Olstein and the other counterfeits who are just happy clappy motivational speakers thinly veiled by the rhetoric of pseudo-New Testament Christianity.
I contend that the resurgence of Calvinism is the direct result of a lack of alternatives. People would rather be told that they are damned to hell than that life will be better if only they think positively and pray to God to make them rich. The Calvinist claim is at least more believable, and the harshness of it leads people to the belief that it must be true, because it sure isn't a good marketing tactic.
Yet that is precisely what makes it a good marketing tactic. People are seeking truth, they want to hear from somebody who will level with them and be honest, rather than somebody who tries to play bait & switch with them. The Calvinists, as wrong and backward as they may be, at least appear to be telling hard truths, hence their appeal.
The mainline churches, on the other hand, assuming they choose to abandon their current raison d'etre, which is to attempt to provide theological cover for a radical left-wing political ideology, have the unique opportunity to reopen a dialogue with the unchurched, and with many people who have been drawn to Calvinism by its harsh message. That dialogue goes something like this (and it will work in growing the Church not because it is a clever marketing tool, but because it is manifestly true):
The world is a tough place. We are born, and then before we know it, we are on our deathbeds, wondering what more we could have made of our lives, wishing we had done this or that better or just differently. Our lives, as much as they last, are filled with physical ailment, broken hearts, financial worries, and unfulfilled dreams. No matter how smart we are, no matter how hard we work, most of these things are unavoidable. We don't know why it is, we just know that it is. Yes, life is difficult. No, there aren't any easy answers. St. Paul tells us that we are each to "work out our faith with fear and trembling." With life the way that it is, the uncertainty of what happens to us at our death, and our attempt to find meaning while we're here, we know there is a lot of fear and a lot of trembling out there.
But the good news is that you don't have to do any of it alone. We won't insult your intelligence by claiming to have the answers, because we don't. We aren't any different than you are in that sense. But we have decided that the unexamined life isn't worth living, and so we gather every week, sometimes more, to examine life, to live in community with each other, sharing each other's struggles, bearing each other's burdens. Nobody deserves to go through life alone, and that is why Jesus told us that we should be known as his followers in the way that we love one another. And that is what you will find when you come to see us--we truly love one another. There are no contrived handshakes and pointless mechanical greetings. We know each other and we want to get to know you too. We have our chaos, we have our times of depression and emptiness, and none of that will ever go away. But we have each other to lean on, and we have a remarkable example to follow in the life and sacrifice of Jesus. And that is something you won't find anywhere else.
Community through communion, shared struggles and common purpose. That is the Shepherding of the Flock, the Feeding of the Sheep, the task that Jesus laid at the feet of St Peter, and the task that is at the feet of the Church today, woefully left undone. The Gospel (Good News) is not that we are saved from the incomprehensible abstraction of Hell, but rather the Gospel of Jesus is "Come unto me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and you will find rest for your weary souls."
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