a future
In discussing "The Future of Christianity," Franciscan monk and priest Fr Richard Rohr has it all together in a way I've never experienced with another Religious, a way that speaks practical Franciscan real world sensibility over against the pious certainty of unquestioning, undoubting, unexamined Christianity with its institutions, authority, control, rules, canons, doctrine and dogma.
It points precisely, for example, to Jesuit priest and bishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio revealing a human approach to life in choosing his identity as Pope Francis: a Jesuit intellectual will be an openminded pastor, love over law, caring over dogma, the lovingkindness of humility over arrogant authoritative certainty.
Just so, coming from Jesuit retreats and rules, I see, in Fr Richard, humanity instead of reverence for Tradition: the week summary and practice on "The Future of Christianity" (scroll down) is excellent, especially for me in a church with the dichotomy of cutting edge social activism v. archaic, traditionalism in liturgy and worship wherein, lex orandi lex credendi, we say our theology is to be found - - that is to say, if we pray it, it's our theology, what we say and believe about God. We may not like the term "Progressive Christianity" but our ancient prayers and their theology are incompatible with informed scholarship and irrelevant to the concerns of life as we encounter it.
Tradition is such an official concern of our churchwide authority that we are not all that far removed from the line in the Preface of the First Book of Common Prayer (1549), "there was more business to find out what should be read, than to read it once it was found out." Just so, next Sunday, Advent Three, church authority requires us to open worship with a prayer that dates to the eighth century Gelasian Sacramentary, "Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily deliver us". A lovely and almost lyrical prayer from Roman Catholic theology, power, and authority in 700 AD that has little and nothing to do with our relationship with God in 2022 AD. For starters, we are NOT sorely hindered by our sins; nor indeed is Advent for us, "Little Lent" with its heavy penitential theme: we anticipate with joy, not with dread.
Nor do we really believe as we sing it in Advent, "those who set at naught and sold him, deeply wailing shall the true Messiah see," though we love the music and singing Wesley's hymn. We are oblivious to the words! A favorite, we've always sung it. Though recently online I watched a Cambridge Chorus leave out that verse. The rest of us could do as well.
So also are we required to say in our Eucharistic Prayer, "he took the cup of wine, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them and said, "Drink this all of you. This is my blood of the New Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins." Biblical evidence is that Jesus did not say, "for the forgiveness of sins." Matthew copied his words from Mark and put the words "for the forgiveness of sins" on Jesus' lips. Neither Mark's nor Paul's (nor Luke's) Words of Institution (as the Church terms what Jesus said) include "for the forgiveness of sins," it's Matthew's addition for whatever reason he may have thought his Jewish Christian audience needed Jesus to have said it. The words should be removed from the Eucharistic Prayer; indeed, the Eucharistic Prayer's medieval focus on sin and eternal life warrant its ongoing reform; but "this is the way we've always done it," and the same bishops and others who in their authority as Center refuse to authorize our giving Holy Communion to the unbaptized will keep it that way.
And on Ascension Day, "Almighty God, whose blessed Son our Savior Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things" - - from the Leonine Sacramentary of Roman Catholic theology as early as 400 AD a flat earth Time when "the disappearing feet" was taken not at all metaphorically.
There is surely a solid future for Christianity that, far from a Center-controlled religious institution concerned with disappearing feet, virgin birth and forgiveness of sins, will not be about Believing Doctrine, but about Living Life; Christians living life as Jesus lived and taught life. We already commit ourselves to precisely that in our Baptismal Covenant.
Anyway - -
Week Forty-Eight Summary and Practice
The Future of Christianity
November 27 - December 2, 2022
Sunday
For centuries, Christianity has presented itself as an “organized religion”—a change-averse institution that protects and promotes a timeless system of beliefs that were handed down fully formed in the past. Yet Christianity’s actual history is a story of change and adaptation. —Brian McLaren
Monday
Jesus never told us to put our trust in the larger institutions of culture or even the church. We must recognize that they are also subject to the paschal mystery, the dying and the rising of all things. —Richard Rohr
Tuesday
There are all these gifted people around but they didn’t have any power within church structures, which made people like me realize that the real power was not in the structure of the church, but in the living church. The gifted prophets in our midst. —Barbara Holmes
Wednesday
Our faith has been about the communities faithfully modeling a way of being in the world, of being in relationship with each other and with the prisoner and the hungry. It has been about Amos, standing up to the establishment in the name of God and in the name of justice. So, I believe that the future of Christianity is indeed its past and present. —Nontombi Naomi Tutu
Thursday
The question—“What is the future of Christianity?”—must be held in relation to other questions. Right now, the most significant of those questions is: “What is the future of humankind?” —Diana Butler Bass
Friday
One of the things that the Second Vatican Council taught us in the religious orders, and this was certainly from the Holy Spirit, is that we were each to go back to our founders and say, “What did Francis form the Franciscans for?” Francis didn’t accuse the system of being inferior. He just went out and did it better. —Richard Rohr
Week Forty-Eight Practice
Allowing Ourselves Not to Know
Before beginning to discuss the future of the church and Christianity, Brian McLaren invited the more than three thousand attendees of The Future of Christianity webcast to a fifteen-minute period of silence and contemplation. We share his invitation at the end of this week’s meditations, hoping it brings a spirit of openness to your faithful reflection this week:
This is a delicate moment to address deep issues in the Christian faith. If we come in with a set of unchallenged assumptions, we can pretty much predict how the outcomes will be in our thinking. That’s why we’d like to take a few moments now, as we begin this time of reflection together, to invite you to settle into a silence. And in that silence, to be willing to say, “I have a lot of ideas. I have a lot of opinions. But I am not my ideas and opinions, and if I allow myself to be captive to my current ideas and opinions, my horizons will be really limited.”
As we sink into this silence, we’ll hear the chatter of our own thoughts, the debates and questions of our own thoughts, and in a sense when we see those arising, we can say, “Oh yes, those are my own existing assumptions.” Maybe I can just let them be, and in humility open my heart to wisdom beyond my own. Wisdom that might come to us through the faculty, through our interaction, through the discussion that will happen, but also wisdom that may just come to you. May we dare to hope that our hearts, open to the Spirit of God, could not only receive answers to our questions about the future of Christianity, but that our hearts could be so changed in this time together, our minds and hearts and desires opened, clarified, maybe even purified. So that the future can be different.