I traveled to Mena this week to help out with the aftermath of the tornado there, and my path led me to two churches: a Catholic church and a Baptist church. There was a one-stop help center set up in St. Agnes Catholic Church for people to come by for assistance, and the church was located in a heavily damaged and poor part of town. Miraculously the church suffered little damage even though the surrounding neighborhood was devastated. The metal cross on one of the steeples was bent, and it somehow was symbolic to what happens to people’s faith after something like this – it bends but does not break and when the dust clears it is still standing, albeit different. People were safe in the basement of the church during a Mandy Thursday service when the storm hit, but came out to see their homes and cars demolished. And the church opened its doors to helping the community. The second church I entered was Dallas Avenue Baptist Church who graciously made their educational facility the new home of the 6th grade, as the middle school in Mena was totally destroyed. The church even allowed scriptures to be removed from their classroom walls as not to interfere with the school’s obligation to separate itself from religious concerns. I am surprised that a Baptist Church would agree to that, but I was impressed with their willingness to serve the citizens of Mena, no questions asked. In fact amidst the disaster, I could not help but notice a number of large, new, nice churches in this small town of 6,000 and change. They all had impressive facilities. Surely everyone in Mena goes to church somewhere, and Mena is like other Arkansas cities where there are more Baptists than people. I talked to many people in Mena, and it is a town where everyone is religious and resultantly many had religious interpretations of what had happened to them. But even those that didn’t have such theological underpinnings at least relied on the good graces of the churches to meet some of their recovery needs, so they are a focal point in the community’s recovery.
On the way back to Little Rock, the conversation turned to church. One person in the car told the story of visiting a church in the Little Rock area and was offered a cookie in the middle of the service – yes you heard that right, the church was passing around cookies while people were trying to worship. So sorry, no cookies here this morning. And while we are at it, there is no PowerPoint, no outline of the sermon on notebook paper to fill in the blanks to follow along, no subjective choruses to sing and sway to, and no company-line sermons. All we will offer you is a beautiful pipe organ in a simple and sacred space and my best effort in 17 minutes to fry up a few of your theological sacred cows into hamburger meat. Sacred cows make the best hamburgers. But cookies? It would have to be a heck of a cookie to get me to put up with some church services these days, although donuts would be nice in Sunday School like the other guys; oh wait, I forgot–we don’t have Sunday School!
I suppose churches are doing all kinds of “seeker sensitive” things to bring ‘em in, and if you look at the church culture on Little Rock, we all seem to be prospering. Or are we? I have heard all kinds of statistics recently that basically suggest that 15% of churches are growing and prospering and 85% are stagnant or are declining. The churches that are growing tend to be the mega churches. I would point out that at Providence we have gone from about 12 on the roll to about 24 on the roll in only 10 years, so we are a church on the move. No stagnation here that is a 100% growth rate and we did it in a cookie free environment.
So why are churches declining? Why are we resorting to cookies or other smoke and mirrors to get people to like church enough to come back and to come to our church over the church down the street? The cover story in The New York Times Magazine for March 27, 2005, featured an Assembly of God mega church in Surprise, Arizona, about 45 minutes northwest of downtown Phoenix. The pastor, Lee McFarland, founded Radiant Church in 1996, and now weekend attendance has now reached 5,000 people. Impressive? Yes, until you stop to think what the impact of this kind of Christianity has been on the Christian enterprise as a whole. Many people have failed to realize that the success of fundamentalism in this country has been gained at a terrible price, the loss of respect for Christianity among people who want to think for themselves. It is as a blogger for the Center for Progressive Christianity writes:
The story of Surprise, Arizona, is a good example of what has been happening around the country. The author of the Times story, Jonathan Mahler, notes that Surprise, a town of 80,000 people, has 27 other churches, but he dismisses them with the observation that “none of them are growing at anything that approaches the pace of Radiant.” He does not supply statistics – maybe they are not available – but we can make some guesses based on national averages. Half of the churches in the United States have fewer than 100 members, and only 10% have more than 400 members, which puts them in the class of “large churches”. Let us give those 27 churches the benefit of the doubt and assume that on the average they are large churches with a membership of 500, for a total of 13,500. If you add in Radiant’s 5,000 members, you will see that 18,500 church members are the most you are likely to find in Surprise. On the basis of my informed guesses, at least 73% of the Surprise citizens have no church connection at all. Would other churches in town have better luck if Radiant were not giving Christianity a reputation for being anti-intellectual, anti-scientific, anti-gay, and anti-choice in medical decisions such as the end of life and the termination of pregnancy? No one can say for sure, but the statistics collected by the National Council of Churches and various polling agencies suggest that while groups such as the Assemblies of God and the Southern Baptists grew rapidly in the latter half of the 20th century, church membership as a whole declined. The so-called main line churches suffered serious losses, but the most significant trend may have been among those who claim no religious affiliation. In 1952, only 2% of the people polled claimed no connection with organized religion. By 1990, the figure had climbed to 10%. According to a survey conducted by the City University of New York, by 2001, 19% of the people in this county did not identify themselves with any particular religion. According to this survey, during the same period, 1990 to 2001, the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Christians declined from 86% to 77%. (James Rowe Adams, Better than Believing, online at the Center for Progressive Christianity, tcpc.org)
So what about religion in America, what is going right and what is way wrong? My own guess is that organized religion is losing its appeal, and that churches will suffer losses in the coming decades. “Why” is a complex question, but I am convinced that it is so with the younger generations because of hypocrisy and intolerance. By definition most religion seems to say that I am right and you are wrong and some even go further and say that because you are wrong there are dire consequences to pay. Religion is intolerant of those who are different and of those who always question even if they are honestly seeking the truth. Religion is not seeker friendly and giving someone a cookie or other gimmicks is not being seeker friendly. Religion has been intolerant of race, of gender, of sexual orientation, and of other denominations and factions within their own groups. Religion sets standards that are arbitrary and makes them the gospel and there is no room for dissension. The rise of the TV evangelists and the Mega Churches which are almost all fundamentalist has slapped society in the face with intolerance and irrationality, and this kind of press has been detrimental to younger people who are not vested in its sacred cows. Because they are no vested in the system, they see through what the church teaches and what is often right.
You may have seen the article in Newsweek last week, in fact it was the cover story, “The Decline and Fall of Christian America,” and while I have not read the article I have read a lot of reaction to it. I am sure a lot of people thought the article hooey and of the devil or of infidels, but I like the commentary by Jim Wallis of Sojourner’s:
Personally, I am not offended or alarmed by the notion of a post-Christian America. Christianity was originally and, in my view, always meant to be a minority faith with a counter-cultural stance, as opposed to the dominant cultural and political force. Notions of a “Christian America” quite frankly haven’t turned out very well. But that doesn’t mean a lack of religious influence — on the contrary. Committed minorities have had a tremendous influence on cultures and even on politics. Just look at all the faith-inspired social-reform movements animated by people of faith. But Martin Luther King Jr. did not get the Civil Rights Act passed because he had the most Bible verses on his side but because he entered into the public square with compelling arguments, vision, and policy that ultimately won the day. Those faith-inspired movements are disciplined by democracy, meaning they don’t expect to win just because they are “Christian.” They have to win the debates about what is best for the common good by convincing their fellow citizens. And that is best done by shaping the values narrative, as opposed to converting everyone to their particular brand of religion. Rather, they are always looking for allies around their moral causes, including people of other faiths or of no religion. The story of Christianity in America in the coming decades will be defined by a multicultural shift as well as a generational one. “New” evangelicals and Catholics, along with black, Hispanic, and Asian churches will now shape the agenda. But also included are the millions of Americans who say they are “spiritual but not religious,” finding homes in non-traditional churches, mega-churches that teach that true religion is found in care for “the least of these.” Making a real impact on the values and directions that a democracy will choose is, perhaps, a more exciting kind of influence than relying on the illusory and often disappointing hopes of cultural and political dominance. (Jim Wallis, Sojo.net)
Wallis says that the decline of Christian America might be the best news that we have ever gotten as a country. So maybe the church is losing more than members, maybe some of its influence and clout as well. It will be interesting to see, and expect Christians to not take it sitting down. I hope those cookies are sugar free.
While the organized church is declining, I am not convinced however that the need for faith is not diminishing as I am reminded that it is an anchor for so many. I see it every day and I saw it in Mena. Our need for something, somehow, someone bigger and beyond us will never diminish as long as we are assaulted by the human predicament. And the harsher the reality, the more the corresponding need for a God who is in control becomes. Do you remember the boost that our churches got after 9/11? It was kind of a mini-spiritual awakening. Now you might argue that it was not lasting, but it none-the-less proves my point. I see very few people, very few, who do not want spiritual support when they are in the hospital. Foxhole Christians you say? Perhaps so, but we will always have a need for our faith simply because the facts don’t satisfy us if the situation is critical or random enough. When the unthinkable assails our lives, we can only be satisfied by the unexplainable solutions that faith offers us.
I will confess that it is easy to get frustrated with organized religion, I am all the time. It is understandable that Christian people are often their own worst enemies. But I will also have to admit that it isn’t just religion that is tough, faith is a difficult thing as well. It is difficult because it is so ethereal and otherworldly in the face of real life and it is difficult because it is paradoxical to our rational minds and our sequential thinking. It does not require verifiable facts, in fact it often turns a blind eye and a deaf ear to the facts and it often defies logic. So faith may be in the end as essential as air is to life, is not easy for the thinking Christian.
With that in mind, I call you attention this morning to my favorite disciple named Thomas, whose first name must have been “doubting” as that is how history remembers him. Not for his faith, but for his doubt. He had to have proof to believe in the resurrected Christ, and he got that proof in a post-resurrection command appearance.
Now lest we are too hard on the doubting one, we are no different from Thomas. After all, we have our doubts don’t we? But you might never admit it, because through the vehicle of organized religion we never admit it is so. Religion might be the supreme enabler in a co-dependent relationship. Maybe Thomas ought be called honest Thomas as he simply said what we all feel sometimes but are afraid to admit or say in the presence of the faithful. And I will go a step further and say that the church has required us to be dishonest about our doubts and our fears in the name of propagating the institution based on a misunderstanding of what it means to have faith in the first place. After all, if we have doubts we must be doing something wrong. Some would say that maybe we never were saved in the first place. Or maybe we need to just quit thinking before God strikes us with a bolt of lightning or smites our town with a tornado.
I believe we are all either one of two things in our faith, either doubters or deniers. And if that is so and not just an over transparency on my part, then Thomas becomes the most intriguing person in the Bible. So what’s the story on Thomas? He was not there for the earlier resurrection appearances, and he appeared skeptical of the reports from the others. In fact, unless he saw or touched the scars, he would not believe. He wanted proof. He did doubt the others reports, but not necessarily Jesus however.
Thomas was not a chicken, and was not singled out for a lame watered down faith, or even a lack of commitment. What we know for sure about him is found in only three passages in the gospel of John. In John 11:16, it is Thomas who loyally if bluntly declares his willingness to follow Jesus back to Bethany and Lazarus’ tomb, even though Jesus was run out of town and nearly stoned there. While the other disciples were cautious about this journey, Thomas said, “Let us go along, that we might die with him!” For his steadfastness, he was rewarded by witnessing the stunning sight of Lazarus’ resurrection. Thanks to Thomas’ persistent inquiry in John 14:5, Jesus was provoked into saying, “I am the way, the Truth and the Life.” And the third and final passage of any substance about Thomas is this one. Doubting Thomas, what a way to be remembered!
And yet, if we are honest, we all are skeptics at times. I am not alone in this. To be honest, I have my doubts. I doubt the efficacy of St. John’s Wort, or the effectiveness of Glucosomine/Chondrontin for arthritis. I doubt that the bailout is the panacea for all our economic woes. I doubt that the Razorbacks will ever return to the final four again, and I doubt our legislature’s abilities to govern us well. I doubt the prediction that it will be a mild summer. I have doubts about faith healers, televangelist, psychics, glossolalia, and the Shroud of Turin.
But I also have many doubts about my own faith. I doubt all those views of God where he is created in the image of us instead of the other way around. I doubt that God really told the children of Israel to kill all the women and children and animals of their enemies. I have trouble with a vindictive God who torments his creation for not stroking his ego. I have trouble with a God of no tolerance, and even more trouble with mean Christians. I doubt God in answering my prayers at times, and I have a lot of questions to ask him someday. I doubt that God is going to strike me down because of my questions– if so He would have a long time ago. I doubt if God has a long white beard, and I doubt if he is either male or female. To me, Faith is not certainty, faith is not seeing only, faith is not on our own terms, faith is not superstition or magic, faith is not works, faith is not a noun, and faith is not the opposite of doubt. That’s right; faith is not the opposite of doubt! They go hand-in-hand at times and our faith is born in the midst of our doubts.
OK then, what is faith? It has to be more that sight, more than the physical evidence that Thomas demanded. An old preacher joke speaks of a science professor asked who in the class had ever seen God. He then asked who had ever touched God. The class was silent on both questions, indicating that no one had touched or seen God. He pronounced, therefore, there is no God. A student quickly jumped up and asked who had seen the professor’s brain, and who had touched it? Therefore, he retorted, you have no brain! Well, obviously the professor had a brain, albeit a misguided one and it needed no proof as it was a priori knowledge of the fact apart from sense experience.
Whatever else it is, faith is then something more that seeing or sensing. Faith is also something more than just knowing. James tells us in his writings that the demons believe, but tremble! We live in an information age where knowledge is power and money. Science is our modus operandi. Yet, knowledge doesn’t always satisfy us or heal our hurts. I have sat with many families who have had a loved one suddenly die in our ER. A doctor would then come in with all the scientific facts of what happened or what went wrong, and thoroughly explained what happened. And do you know what? It didn’t help, because their loved one was still dead. In fact, this information usually goes in one ear and out the other! Knowing is not a panacea for all our ills, nor is it the substance of faith, something all these Bible knowledge, Bible worshiping churches haven’t figured out yet. And since faith is more than knowing, doubt cannot be the antithesis to our faith.
I am here today to tell you that Thomas got a bad rap with his nickname. Thomas is elsewhere referred to as Didymus, or the twin, and I like that moniker better than “doubting.” Do you know who was his twin? He was never mentioned in scripture by name. I don’t know who he was, but I know who he is. You are, and you are, and I am. All of us doubters unite, because the disciple that has been immortalized in art, song and history as the quintessential doubter is our twin brother! But the good news is, it is OK. For the opposite of faith is not doubt, but fear. It is fear that paralyzes us from action, when we understand faith rightly as a verb, not a noun. Fear paralyzes us because faith is a mystery and not quantifiable. It is fear that keeps us from questioning honestly and it is fear that keeps us hostage to organized religion, at least some of the time. It is not our doubts that ambush us, it is our fears. We fear the truth about God and about ourselves. We fear the will of God and where it might take us. We fear that serving Christ might be too great a sacrifice on our lifestyles. We fear that following Christ might mean that we end up in a little church with little strength and no ski trips for the youth or trips to Branson for, well you know who. We fear that we will sell out to Christ, and that we might just be crucified for being different. You see, the inescapable truth is that faith is a step into the dark, yea a leap that lands us into the light. But we have to risk jumping in the dark where we can’t see if we are ever to experience the warm, loving light of the risen Christ.
Thomas’ great down-falling wasn’t really that great after all. He only believed what he wanted to believe, and we as his twins do the same every single day. But if the gospel of John doesn’t communicate anything else, it communicates that Jesus helps us in our unbelief, just as he met Thomas where he was. Thomas was a strong man, a leader, no doubt. Tradition has it that he went to India as a missionary, and introduced Christianity to that continent where he was eventually martyred for the faith. But as so often is the case, his strength became his weakness. But it was at exactly at his point of weakness that the risen Christ came to him. No wonder Paul said that God’s strength is made perfect not in our abilities, not in our talents or gifts, or not in our strength. But God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness! And even though offered proof, Thomas never did feel the nail prints in his side, it wasn’t necessary. But what Thomas said was truly revolutionary: “My Lord, and My God! My Lord AND MY GOD!! The most explicit reference to the deity of Christ in any of the gospels. Thomas knew that Jesus was God. No one else, no one, makes this claim or confession anywhere in the gospel of John. A great confession indeed! John saved the best thing that anyone ever said about Jesus on planet earth for last. The greatest insight, the greatest revelation, the greatest truth said about Christ in any of the four gospels came from one who has been stuck with the nickname of “Doubting” for two millennium.
But the truth is, and what Thomas must have realized, is that “show me” signs are never enough, and the world is full of false ones anyway. Thomas experienced the love of the risen Christ, and that love is not reasonable, not rational, you can’t explain it but it somehow contains the essence of something you only experience through faith.
So maybe we who are his spiritual twins will on occasion because of our glimpse of the risen Christ, risk faith in the midst of our doubts, a faith that can make a miraculous difference. You will have to if you are going to make the great confession that Thomas made, you really can’t do it any other way. You will have to if you want to be all God wants you to be. You will have to if God is to bless this church we call Providence. And you will have to if you are to have a faith that is stronger than all our doubts. And we won’t have to pass out cookies to bring people to church, because with that kind of faith you can weather any storm and that is the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God! Amen.