In Theory: Follow Jesus, or stick with church?
A recent cover story in Newsweek magazine has called for Americans to forget the church and follow Jesus. Andrew Sullivan claims that organized religion, especially the Catholic and mainstream Protestant, have either lost moral authority or declined in influence.
And, he says, Jesus would be “baffled at the issues Christianity obsesses over today” such as homosexuality and abortion because they don’t appear in the New Testament. He goes on to say that Christians today would be better off following Jesus rather than relying on a church to interpret his teachings for them; that the words of Jesus are far more important than the theological doctrines of churches.
Sullivan’s claims seem to be backed up in a new Gallup poll that shows that Americans’ confidence in organized religion is at an all-time low. Once ranked at the top of 16 institutions in the poll, it’s now fourth, with only 44% of those interviewed saying they had “a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in ‘the church or organized religion.’” The
Striking back at Sullivan is Mark Galli. Writing in Christianity Today, he argues that taking the theology out of Jesus’ sayings is impossible as, given his nature, Jesus was a theologian. And he claims that organized churches have developed faults because of human nature since day one and yet they’re still going. He also points out that for many, just following Jesus’ teachings isn’t enough and that people need help interpreting and understanding them.
Q: Is Sullivan right, or, as Galli says, are churches as necessary as ever?
There is a certain appeal to trying to follow the teachings of Jesus, forgetting about the church. However, the church provides a good grounding experience.
Last century an Englishman by the name of Hilaire Belloc said, “The church must be divinely inspired; any other institution run with such knavish imbecility wouldn’t have lasted a fortnight.” And keep in mind the words of Jesus: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20).
OK, it could be argued that the church produced the New Testament, so maybe those words were placed in Jesus’ mouth by whoever wrote the gospel according to Matthew. However, remember such crazy people as Jim Jones in South America and David Koresh (not his given name, but one he gave himself) in Waco, Texas? These wackos formed their own religious communities because they didn’t want the grounding experience that a church provides.
Instead of having God or Jesus as the head of their church, they themselves wanted to be boss, and we all remember the disastrous consequences.
Before I was a minister, I sort of had my own private religion. I came to church and sang in the choir and gave money. But in my own mind I thought I was “on the fringes” of religion. I was proud of my maverick stance. But now I realize I need the church and perhaps the church needs me. It’s true that most mainline Protestant denominations are struggling, and some churches may have to close. Some already have. But don’t count out God or the church. There will always be a community of believers, whether it’s called “church” or not.
Are you religious or spiritual? If not, stop reading right now, because what I’m about to say doesn’t apply to you. If so, you need a community of believers to be sure your religiousness or spirituality doesn’t take you off the deep end. Can’t stand the hypocrites in church? Good, because we always have room for one more.
The Rev. Skip Lindeman
La Cañada Congregational Church
La Cañada
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The church will always be necessary. The church is the community God has chosen to foster healing in the world. The church emerges as people come together to live out the teachings of Jesus. Christianity, by its nature, is communal, and therefore it is impossible to separate the church from being a follower of Jesus.
However, the church is also messy. It is subject to corruption and political manipulation. To those who have felt that sting, I am personally sorry, but these evils are not evidence against the church. They are arguments for the church. Only in the church community can like-minded people keep each other accountable for their actions.
Sullivan thinks that if we get rid of our rich history of theologians and read the Bible “for ourselves,” we will get to the root of following Jesus. However, our history has strength to it. Brilliant people have come before us. They have asked questions similar to the ones we ask now.
We do not blindly follow their interpretations. Instead, by taking their thoughts into consideration, we enrich our own conclusions. In their wisdom (and faults) they help us better understand how to live this simple way of Jesus.
The hierarchical structure of the church that was seen in the 20th century may be coming to an end. There may come a day when it is not considered a pillar of American society. However, the community of God’s people shows no signs of weakening.
David J. Derus
Fuller Theological Seminary
Pasadena
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I don’t agree with all of Sullivan’s opinions, but I agree with his call for strict separation of church and state and for apolitical Christianity. He says, “We inhabit a polity now saturated with religion. The ability to be faithful in a religious space and reasonable in a political one has atrophied before our eyes.”
For prescribing a secular government and for his take on Christianity, Sullivan praises Thomas Jefferson, who used scissors to create his own pamphlet-sized New Testament consisting of only Jesus’ words, and said, “I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus.”
The question of the necessity of churches has already been answered to my satisfaction. As long as the world is heartless, religion will continue to be its heart, to paraphrase Karl Marx’s less-quoted words, and people will continue to create and recreate it.
Sullivan says that conservative churches obsess beyond reason on personal matters that turn people off. This, to me, fairly describes an ideology that would restrict abortion while simultaneously demanding that our secular government also impede access to family planning and preventive health services. The holders of this ideology then dare to call themselves “pro-life.”
But it is his vision of churches returning to the first principle of Christianity, namely unconditional love, not homosexuality, abortion and other press-candy, that is the main focus of Sullivan’s piece.
He says that to truly renounce all violence, per Jesus’ love-centric teaching, Christians must have zero tolerance for inequality, poverty, torture, and must “give up power over others.” To me, it logically follows that Christians must oppose war and coercion as instruments of our foreign policy. This is the Christianity I was taught.
I wish Sullivan well in getting his Christian church busy on that transformative project.
Roberta Medford
Atheist
Montrose
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A recent crackpot said the same thing about forgetting the church, but what would fill the void? Americans were supposed to tune into his radio show. Who was this prophet that agrees with Newsweek? Harold Camping, the guy who falsely prophesied the end of the world twice last year, despite the overwhelming voice of the church worldwide denouncing his private misapplications of Scripture.
When individuals abandon the body (a biblical metaphor for the church as a whole) for their own introverted reinterpretation of the historic (i.e., settled) faith, they are like dead skin cells washing off and down the drain of spiritual death. Theology has peer review just like other ologies, and when foundational Christian truth is maintained and practiced, there is the church doing what it is supposed to do: guarding Christ’s teachings and promulgating them.
Is it better to do this in a disorganized, haphazard method, or are we smart enough to know that order promotes excellence?
Imagine a business without organization. How successful can it be without supports, code-conformity, training and bookkeeping? Everything in life that thrives follows order, structure and cohesion. Likewise, the church, and its local organized expressions, is where charitable works develop, where Jesus’ followers become accountable, and where faith perfects.
Roaming the earth in solitude, like the Kung Fu guy, is neither reality nor is it rightly following Jesus. And it figures that the one who promotes abandoning the church shows himself already gone astray, not recognizing that Jesus is the author of every passage of the entire Bible (being God incarnate) and he inspired both testaments with commands opposing the murder of innocents and the perversions of heterosexuality.
I’m just baffled at Andrew Sullivan because I agree with Jesus, who said, “I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it” (Matthew 16:18 NLT).
Americans haven’t lost faith in “organized religion,” Americans have lost faith in him whose religious organization it is.
The Rev. Bryan Griem
Montrose Community Church
Montrose
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In his article regarding the relevance of the church for today, Sullivan is dealing with one of the oldest and most difficult struggles we humans face: being disillusioned. Right now in our culture, we might say there is an attitude of pervasive disillusionment with many, if not all, cultural institutions. While it’s accurate to say that public sentiment regarding the church indicates less confidence than it did 5 or 10 years ago, the church was still ranked 4th in the 16 institutions surveyed by the Gallup poll.
Sullivan is right to point out the church of today has some serious problems that need to be seriously addressed. But I can’t think of any institution in our culture that isn’t currently experiencing equal, if not more, serious problems. Public confidence in Congress, last I heard, was hovering near 5 to 7%. Does that mean we should disband Congress and start looking for a different form of government? The American family has been in distress for decades, with current divorce rates soaring above 50% in some places. Should we disband families?
I think God is a realist. He has always known that any institution sustained by human beings will have some serious ongoing flaws. He established the church anyway, and I, for one, am glad he did. Of course we all experience moments of disillusionment, when we feel like throwing up our hands and saying, “What’s the use?”
But I am amazed at God’s wisdom. He established the church using ordinary, fallible, mortal people and it has endured and thrived for 2,000 years. If we could interview the countless millions of people throughout the past two millennia who participated in the church, I think we would hear overwhelming gratitude. Thank God the church gives us a place to celebrate events like births of children, marriage and the holidays we enjoy together. Thank God the church provides a supportive community in times of grief and sorrow, like the death of a loved one, the crisis of a serious illness or the anxiety of a terrorist attack. Without the church, who would you call for a visit in the hospital or ask for special assistance in a time of financial need?
As imperfect as the church is, I thank God there is a place I can go and be reminded that problems truly are only temporary, that there is a greater purpose than my day-to-day existence, and that the God who created the universe loves and values me.
Pastor Ché Ahn
HRock Church
Pasadena
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I feel that churches, synagogues and other houses of worship remain vitally necessary, since they play a key role in the daily lives of millions of Americans. Ignoring this simple reality is disingenuous, and quite frankly ridiculous. The fact is that religious institutions serve as bedrocks of positive activity for so many communities across this country. These organizations offer myriad helpful services, ranging from preschool programs for children to continuing education classes for adults, plus they provide gathering places for seniors, food and shelter for the homeless, counseling for addicts, and solace for the broken-hearted. The list goes on and on.
Of course one may have theological disagreements with religion in general, or take issue with a specific religious doctrine in particular. But arguing that religious institutions such as churches are no longer necessary is akin to throwing out the baby with the (seemingly dirty) bathwater. This absolutist approach is unreasonable because it completely ignores the irreplaceable services provided, the innumerable people assisted, and the immeasurable good being done each day by hundreds of thousands of churches around the nation.
It is high time that people of all backgrounds recognize houses of worship and spiritual institutions simply for the good that they provide for millions of people. Dogmatic reservations aside, we need to give credit where credit is due and acknowledge the exceptional value that religious organizations bring to a community. Doing otherwise is not only insensitive, it is just plain wrong. One cannot dismiss all the benefits offered by faith-based social, educational, and humanitarian services.
Rabbi Simcha Backman
Chabad Jewish Center
Glendale
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Andrew, Andrew, Andrew: Are you crazy? Do you have any idea how hard it is to actually follow Jesus? No one in their right mind follows Jesus. Saints maybe, (as you point out about St. Francis); a few martyrs, Mother Teresa. Not the rest of us. We talk a good game, but none of us is anywhere close to following Jesus.
For starters, you’d have to give up your home, leave your family behind, sell everything you own, and give all your money away. You’d have to live among the homeless, take pies to serial killers in prison, and cast the demons out of crazy people.
You say, Andrew, that Jesus wasn’t political. But not only was Jesus political, you’d have to be too, in order to follow him – so political, in fact, so obnoxiously, tenaciously outspoken for causes of justice, that you’d get yourself executed by the CIA. Still want to follow Jesus?
OK, let’s say you do. You’re going to just stick to the words of Jesus. Fine. Which words will those be, Andrew?
Scholars have dedicated their lives to trying to determine which words in the Bible Jesus actually said, as opposed to the layers of interpretation added by the authors of the Gospels, and still they can’t agree. Thomas Jefferson took a razor blade to the pages, cutting out the only words he felt came from Jesus; and the voice and reasoning in the resulting Jefferson Bible sound a lot like — what do you know? — Thomas Jefferson! Are you really saying, Andrew, that it’s every man for himself, that we all get to choose which Jesus to follow, which words to listen to and which to ignore?
Because if you’re not, if you agree that religion should be more than a matter of each of us inventing God in our own image, then guess what? You need the church. Ugly and unwieldy though it is, we need a community of faith with multiple, diverse and dissenting opinions, to counter our misguided, narcissistic, self-serving ideas of the mind of God.
The Rev. Amy Pringle
St. George’s Episcopal Church
La Cañada
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I don’t want to get into a debate on Christian theology, since Unitarian Universalists are not mainstream Christians. But I feel very comfortable writing about the importance of churches, synagogues and mosques as valuable places for people of faith to gather and worship. People come to religious institutions not just because of their beliefs; they also come because there are other people there. They come for the feeling of supportive communities.
Certainly institutional religion has had its failings. That is because people are managing it. One of our UU ministers has said that we are “guilty by reason of humanity.” But just because congregations and religious infrastructures are flawed doe not mean that they do not have value. But we have to acknowledge that attendance and active membership in most congregations has declined in recent years.
There are many reasons for this lack of participation. One of the reasons is the decline of membership in many groups in society. Documented in “Bowling Alone,” by Robert Putnam and other books, we are no longer a society of joiners. Other reasons have been found in the scandals that have rocked the Roman Catholic Church and the revelation of hypocrisy in other religious organizations, where clergy and others do not live by the values they advocate.
But I believe that the major reason for the decline in religious activity is the lack of coherence people see between church doctrines and the reality of their lives. When they get to know same-sex couples in loving and committed relationships who are being told by their churches that they are living in sin and can’t get married, some may become conflicted in their beliefs. Likewise, when concern for the poor and disenfranchised seems to take a backseat to luxurious lifestyles and opulent accommodations, a disconnect between reality and dogma may well cause people to find other support systems for their lives.
Until religious leaders and adherents are able to connect religion to the circumstances that people are really experiencing today, it is likely that the decline in congregational membership will continue.
Rev. Dr. Betty Stapleford
Unitarian Universalist Church of the Verdugo Hills
La Crescenta, CA
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Andrew Sullivan, a prolific political and social commentator, suggests that we should forsake organized religion and follow the simpler teachings of Jesus. I sympathize with the second thought. Most of us would benefit from paying closer attention to Christ’s admonitions to love our neighbors, turn the other cheek, forgive trespasses and refrain from casting stones. Churches, when operating under divine inspiration, help us to do this.
The modern Christianity that Sullivan describes is quite different than the one I have experienced. For the most part, the people I have known, in my own faith and others, have been good-hearted and sincere in their efforts to follow Jesus.
The danger in Sullivan’s approach is that it is easily reduced to a pick-and-choose version of Christianity in which men and women, not God, decide what is necessary for salvation. If you don’t like a particular biblical passage, tear out the page. It’s quite likely that before long, the strong-willed and the power-hungry will insist on tearing pages from the Bibles of others. His Christian community, I believe, would be just as vulnerable to the foibles of human nature as our organized churches have sometimes been.
We overcome these foibles not by rewriting the Bible, but by humbly seeking the Lord’s spirit and direction in our personal lives and in our assessments of larger social issues.
In proposing that we abandon churches, Sullivan overlooks some of Jesus’ more important teachings that really can’t be excluded from Christian faith. It’s true that Christ taught general guidelines for human behavior. The Beatitudes come to mind. In addition to the broad admonitions and lovely parables that Jesus gave us, he also taught specific points of doctrine, including saving ordinances.
For instances, he taught by both example and by precept, that all must be baptized. Jesus himself was baptized by John and later, in his conversation with Nicodemus, said, “Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” He commanded his followers to perform a specific ordinance, or ceremony, as an outward sign of their spiritual commitment. This may be the sort of thing that Sullivan believes is irrelevant. I don’t think these specific teachings can be ignored.
Christ established an organization. He conferred his authority on righteous men and sent them out to teach others and perform ordinances. After his resurrection, he visited them to provide further instructions about how to build his church.
Members of the LDS church believe that God continues to provide divine instruction, or revelation, through a living prophet and apostles. Their mission is to testify to the divinity of Christ and clarify his teachings. We rely on additional books of scripture that complement and clarify the Bible.
We believe that these things help us avoid confusion misinterpretation of scripture. This doesn’t make us superior to others. Certainly, I’ve made my share of mistakes. But generally, I find that the closer I am to the church and its teachings, the more loving and charitable I become. The church helps me become a better person by helping me draw nearer to God.
Most of Sullivan’s specific complaints are directed at the Roman Catholic and evangelical protestant viewpoints regarding doctrinal and political opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage, practices that he supports.
One must ask, would Sullivan have written this essay if those religious groups supported his causes? Probably not. So what Sullivan actually posits is not a call to simpler Christian living, but an approach removes opposition to his point of view.
Michael White
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
La Crescenta