Metamorphosis

Preaching after Christendom

Sarah Travis

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781532650635
  9781532650642
• eBook ISBN:
  9781532650659
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Post-Christendom, Christian leaders and preachers in North America struggle to respond to anxiety and despair about the future of the church. Declining participation, fewer resources, decreased influence, and confusion about pastoral and ecclesial identity lead to fear for the survival of the institutional church. Preaching must speak to the despair and confusion faced by congregations today, as well as cast a hopeful vision for an uncertain future. This book argues that preachers can change the narrative of the church post-Christendom, by urging an exit from Christendom ecclesiology and promoting the construction of an identity that embraces vulnerability and incarnation instead of power and permanence. Counterintuitively, failure, decrease, and marginalization constitute good news for the church. Through wide-ranging conversation partners including postcolonial theory and theology, social science, systematic theology, and homiletic literature, this book engages preachers and scholars who seek to reimagine both gospel and ecclesial identity in order to bring new life to communities in despair. Preachers participate in a process of metamorphosis, in which the church's self-understanding is transformed into a vulnerable, incarnate community that leaves behind the character of Christendom.

1

Establishment, Disestablishment, and Questionable Allies

In the autumn of 2015, corporate coffee giant Starbucks inspired passionate responses when it removed traditional Christmas images from its seasonal beverage cups. The new plain red cups sparked a debate that exposed the struggle for Christianity in the age of a dying Christendom. A video rant posted by internet personality Joshua Feuerstein asked, “Do you realize that Starbucks wanted to take Christ, and Christmas, off of their brand-new cups? That’s why they’re just plain red.”35 Supporters of the red cup implied that corporate America has a responsibility to uphold Christian values, and they interpreted the absence of explicitly Christian symbols as a “war on Christmas.” However, as journalist Emma Green points out in an article in The Atlantic, “Starbucks’s decision to make plain red cups is less an erasure of Christian values than a neutral design choice that also happens to reflect a solid understanding of the company’s diverse audience.”36 In other words, Starbucks has a large and diverse consumer base that is not entirely, or even primarily, Christian. The belief that corporate America should propagate Christian values reflects a cultural assumption that the United States is a Christian nation. This assumption may have been valid to some extent in past decades, but no longer fits the ethos of a nation at the end of Christendom. The controversy surrounding the coffee cup, even as it takes on a tinge of the ridiculous, represents a particular view about the relationship between Christianity and culture.

Each year during Advent there are debates across the United States and Canada about the presence of nativity scenes and Christmas trees in shopping malls and town squares. While some regard these as essential symbols of the Christmas season in Western cultures, others prefer less faith-based celebrations in public spaces or advocate the inclusion of symbols representing a variety of seasonal faith traditions. Some Christian parents lament the loss of Christmas concerts in their children’s schools, which have been replaced by “winter” or “holiday” festivities. Curiously, the most vocal opponents of maintaining the prominence of Christmas in the public arena are sometimes secular Christians—those who have been raised to embrace Christianity as a cultural entity, without necessarily subscribing to its doctrines or moral expectations. Jesus is indeed the reason for the season, yet for generations now, that season has been assumed to be a universal celebration, belonging to the culture as a whole, not to the church in particular. This is at least in part because the church has been indistinguishable from culture in the era of Christendom. Festivals that emerge from historical, theological, and liturgical traditions, such as Christmas and Easter, have been adopted and adapted by the culture at large. At the same time, more secular celebratory practices have found their way into the church—Santa Claus makes an appearance at many church parties in the month of December. The threads of debate on this topic are difficult to untangle. Some Christians lament the secularization of Christmas and yet simultaneously insist that Christmas retain its dominance in the cultural arena—for example, by rejecting the greeting “Happy Holidays” in favor of “Merry Christmas.”

When I was in first grade in the early 1980s, the Lord’s Prayer was printed in magic marker on a piece of chart paper hanging on the wall in the classroom. Together, we recited the prayer before we sang “O Canada,” which is Canada’s national anthem. The prayer and anthem went hand-in-hand at the beginning of the school day. A handful of students (Jehovah’s Witnesses) left the classroom because the singing of the anthem was incompatible with their faith tradition. Yet there was no such accommodation for the Jewish and Muslim children who learned Jesus’ prayer alongside the Christian students. Christian prayer is no longer widespread in public schools in Canada, a fact which is lamented by many Christians and celebrated by others. The lament points to an assumption by some that Canada is a Christian nation, and the government-funded educational systems should have Christian values at their core.

These examples—an unadorned coffee cup, Jesus in the shopping mall, Christian prayer in schools—illustrate just a few of the consequences of Christendom. Cultural dimensions of Christendom have been firmly entrenched in North American society.37 In North America, Christianity “contributed to the formation of a dominant culture that bore the deep imprint of Christian values, language, and expectations regarding moral behaviours.”38 I am a Canadian, but in my limited understanding of the establishment of the United States as a nation, it seems that creating an intentionally Christian nation was not, in fact, a goal of its founders. Yet Christian values have shaped United States culture to a large extent and play a significant role in politics and daily life today. The original inhabitants of North America were certainly not Christian (except by conversion), although the first settlers certainly were, some of whom were trying to escape entrenched and oppressive Christian systems in Europe. Ironically, some of these systems were reimagined for the context of the new world and resulted in the establishment of an empire guided by “Christian” values and practices.

The influence of Christianity in the development of Western culture, and North American culture in particular, is almost immeasurable. Think, for example, of the impact that biblical imagery and language have had on art in all its forms, the participation of Christians in the development of hospitals and educational institutions, and the influence of the Protestant work ethic on industrial life in America. While the church in North America was not legally established, scholars such as sociologist Peter Berger have argued that the church was established culturally rather than legally, “in a taken-for-granted manner as an important institution of American society.”39 In 1961, Berger was writing at a time when Protestant churches were “prominent and prosperous.”40 He argues that, while church and state are separated legally in the United States, in reality this has meant that the state is separate from any one particular religious group, but not from religion in general. Christianity has influenced the cultural situation in North America and continues to do so insofar as Christian values are encapsulated in law, morality, and education. Even those who do not attend church or affiliate with a particular denomination often continue to express Christian ideas, celebrate Christian festivals, and judge according to Christian ethics. According to Douglas John Hall, “Christ and culture are so subtly intertwined, so inextricably connected at the subconscious or unconscious level, that we hardly know where one leaves off and the other begins.”41 Despite this intertwining, Christianity is no longer the cult of the dominant culture, despite its influence on individuals or public policy. The situation in Canada and the United States is slightly different regarding the influence of Christianity on the broader culture. Sociologist Wade Clark Roof links the massive cultural change of the ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Establishment, Disestablishment, and Questionable Allies
• Chapter 2: The Stories We Tell Ourselves
• Chapter 3: The Gospel after Christendom
• Chapter 4: Metamorphosis
• Chapter 5: Preaching Metamorphosis
• Bibliography