{Many Questions and Few Answers Along the Never-Finished Journey of Faith}
It’s Not About You, It’s About Jesus AND the Church
It seems it’s becoming passe to hate the Church and claim to love Jesus.
“The Church is an institution that Jesus never intended.”
“Following Jesus is about more than the Church”
“Being Christian can lead us to leave the Church”
These are just a few of the responses I’ve heard to the recent Newsweek article by Andrew Sullivan called Christianity is Crisis. Sullivan touches on a similar chord that Jeff Bethke struck a few months back with his YouTube viral hit Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus. It’s becoming more and more popular for people to construct this sort of false dichotomy where we reject the Church but still follow Jesus. But why is this so popular?
A Bad Case of MTD
In her book, Almost Christian, Kenda Creasy Dean argues that American Christianity has in large part evolved into what she calls MTD (Moralistic Therapeutic Deism). My friend, John Meunier, has an excellent introduction to MTD in his latest blog post. But let’s encapsulate it by looking at the 3 terms that make up the concept:
- Moralistic: The object of Christian faith is to be nice to others in accordance with moral lessons in the Bible as well as natural law observed through reason.
- Therapeutic: The main purpose of life is to find happiness.
- Deism: God created the world and holds ultimate power, but is very uninterested in human life and will not intervene except when someone needs an answer to a problem.
We’re taught that Christians are at least supposed to be decent people who pay their taxes and try to follow the laws. Getting along with one another is among the highest ideals of our MTD.
All of this makes me wonder whether we create this idea of following Jesus without the Church out of a self-centered, individualistic approach to faith. Does personal faith trump the community of faith? Can we be followers of Jesus without the Body of Christ? To these questions and others like them, I say absolutely not.
Faith is a personal idea that is absolutely dependent on a communal experience. One cannot hold one’s faith as a private possession and still call it Christian. To be Christian means we must have a community through which we learn how to live out our faith in the world. A common misconception is that we can read the gospel accounts of Jesus only to gain personal insight on what it means to be a follower. While that’s partially true, it’s not the whole story. The gospels were, in fact, written for communities struggling to figure out what it meant to be people of The Way (and then later Christians). They were a people formed by a communal narrative much like the Jewish people. Greek words like “oikos” (family), “soma” (body), and “ekklesia” (gathering) are the focal points of the New Testament. You see, there’s no “I” in the Body of Christ that doesn’t form a “we” — you simply cannot separate the two.
Institutionalized Cynicism
We’ve seen a growing distrust of institutions throughout modern life. The government can’t be trusted. Politicians are only looking out for their own self-interests. The Church is an institution that would rather offend, exclude, and hoard wealth than be the representation of Jesus Christ in the world. We’ve all heard these critiques before. I won’t dare try to claim that these accusations are entirely false–there’s a lot of truth in them. But I’m beginning to wonder whether criticizing institutions is in turn becoming institutionalized. Think about how many politicians rail against the institution of Washington only to conform once they get elected. The Church is no different. But what if criticizing our institutions is only masking an underlying desire to fight against authority because we honor individuals over institutional power?
In the Church, we call criticism prophetic–speaking truth to power. But we also have to remember that “truth” and “power” are relative and subject to our own personal twisting. My truth against your power sometimes might be nothing more than my wanting to disagree with your ideas on things. Sure, we get locked into the minutia of our individualistic “needs,” but if we’re honest with ourselves, we just don’t like following rules set forth by someone else. Speaking truth to power very quickly becomes an exercise of exerting power.
Are There Any Answers?
Sullivan rightly diagnoses a Church that has too often lost its way in following Jesus. We’ve become distracted by protecting national interests because we think no American means no Church even though the Church is universal and for all time. We’ve become distracted by social and moral issues because it’s easier to talk about other people’s sins than to really examine our own sinfulness that exists no matter how “saved” we claim to be.
But Sullivan (and others who jumped all over this article) missed a major pothole in the road. In the article he claims that the witness of St. Francis (charity and good works) linked with the reputation of Thomas Jefferson (faith rooted in reason) make for a more palatable Christianity. This is precisely what we mean by a bad case of MTD–being nice and exercising a certain amount of reason doesn’t make you a Christian.
It’s About Jesus AND the Church
As much as we love the idea of a renagade Jesus who thumbed his nose at organized religion, it’s simply not supported by biblical evidence. Jesus did critique the Law and Temple life, but he didn’t leave the organized community. He was a faithful Jew who observed the rituals and knew the Law inside and out. It’s an American phenomenon to think one can be faithful by leaving the organized Church to launch out on an individual journey of faith. MTD tells us that in those instances, Jesus just becomes the moral exemplar we choose to ascribe to. That’s very different than the Jesus who came, lived, and died to be the image of the unseen God that sin and death might be eternally defeated.
I want the Church in America reformed. I’m a United Methodist and I believe we need a reform within our denomination. But I’m very skeptical of those who would advocate the Church is dead and so it’s time to jump ship. Folks like Andrew Sullivan obviously speak from an MTD perspective where the individual has the ultimate power in setting the rules for faith. But those of us in the Church should know better. Baptism is literally (at least we say it is) a death to an old life and a rebirth into a new one. It’s something that God does for us. So part of that death is the giving up of the notion that I am the ultimate captain of my life. And if the Church is worth our salt, we should do our dead level best to form individuals into the communal life of a people called to a different way of living in the world. Distractions are not acceptable anymore.
Claiming to follow Jesus means we’re always in a place to be critiqued for falling short. But it also means we’re in a place to choose whether we really want to follow Jesus or simply put a Jesus stamp on our own self-centered journeys. Either way, following Jesus always means it’s about our life together in community.
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Thank you Ben. I wholeheartedly agree.
(On a side note I would be interested to see further discussion on the impact of cynicism in the Christian life. It seems to stifle both churches and “personal relationships.” I wonder how we came to accept it so nearly universally.)
Thanks for the comment, John! And I think you’re asking a wonderful question. Does cyncism really help or ultimately hurt our faith? Let me know when you come up with something!
I am in the midst of struggling with what role the UMC should play in my life–this after a lifetime of being a genetic Methodist. One thing that keeps me hanging in was a commentary on the UM Portal that dealt with even in doubt, stay with the community. The “punch line” was Judas left the community and look what happened to him. I absolutely agree that you only discover self in the midst of community. Interacting with others not only broadens your horizons but reveal who you are.
Thanks for the comment, Betsy! I’m also a genetic Methodist. And while there’s a lot I don’t like about the state of the UMC right now, I try to remember that much of what’s good is never publicly discussed. Then again, I think that’s how Jesus would have preferred it!
Hi Ben,
I found your article of great interest. My family is visiting churches but has no church home after moving for my husband’s job.
I recently visited several Methodist church websites. I became aware of them after learning about the ‘Steven Ministry’ for which I have great respect which apparently many Methodist churches participate.
As someone who is presently learning about the Methodist church could you explain what you meant by “there’s a lot I don’t like about the state of the UMC right now”? I’m not asking to be critical of the church but while I am very positively impressed in some areas I am uncomfortable with others. You are the first Methodist I have ‘met’.
Thank-you for your consideration.
For those of us whose relationship with the Church is informed by John Wesley, the notion of an individualized Christianity should be a complete non-starter.
“Directly opposite to this [the approach of the desert mystics] is the gospel of Christ. Solitary religion is not to be found there. ‘Holy solitaries’ is a phrase no more consistent with the gospel than holy adulterers. The gospel of Christ knows no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness.” –John Wesley, The Works of John Wesley Volume XIV p321 preface to poetical works; Hendrickson Publishers
The “desert mystics” were convinced that they only way they could experience Christ was to do so entirely apart from all other human interactions. Today’s individualists, including many who fill our pews and the ranks of our membership rolls, are equally convinced (self-deceived) that the one thing needful for them is their own private, subjective experience of God, and that everything else, including the community of Church in its multiple forms, is optional at best, if not an obstacle to be overcome and rejected. If Church adds to or affirms my subjective experience, great. If not, I don’t need it’s meddling with my life.
If you ask me, I might say the desert mystics may have been less subject to self-deception that today’s individualists.
But Wesley was adamant. Both religion and holiness happen in our lives only in the context of community, and more specifically community not of our own making– and so likely to be “like us” and therefore also subject to being equally self-deceived in similar areas, but the extraordinarily diverse community born of water and the Holy Spirit and marked with the blood of Christ.
For Wesley, these were matters of history and practicality. All religions on the planet, as far as he would have known at the time, were social. While nearly all also included personal and family or smaller group practices as well, the defining acts of the religious community as a whole involved gathering the whole body of them in a given area for worship on a regular basis. Certainly, this had always and everywhere been the case for Christians, with the notable and anomalous exceptions such as the desert mystics.
For growth in holiness, the observation was more practical. As individuals, our vision of ourselves, and our progress in holiness, is very, very limited. We can only know ourselves fully as we are more fully known in a face to face community in which we are all watching over one another in love. The class meetings and the penitent bands, in particular, were the “schools of holiness” where early Methodists were doing exactly this– and therefore, and only therefore, capable of helping each other experience the ongoing transforming influence of the sanctifying grace of God in their lives, individually and collectively.
The Wesleys were also equally adamant that it was impossible for such growth to be sustained solely by participation in the Methodist Societies, class meetings and bands. It was essential that Methodists also participate actively in “the institutional church”– a local congregation. Why? Because they saw clearly that as problematic as English congregational life could be, congregations offered “social religion” in a powerful way that the Methodist organizations, per se, could not and were not even trying to do.
Specifically, John and Charles wrote:
IF it be said, “But at the Church we are fed with Chaff, whereas at the Meeting we have wholesome Food:” We answer, I. The Prayers of the Church are not Chaff: They are substantial Food for any who are alive to GOD. 2. The LORD’S Supper is not Chaff, but pure and wholesome for all who receive it with upright Hearts. Yea, 3. In almost all the Sermons we hear there, we hear many great and important Truths. And whoever has a spiritual Discernment, may easily separate the Chaff from the Wheat therein.
“Reasons against a Separation from the Church of England” 1760 edition (originally 1755, then republished continuously in every hymnal as well as separately) http://anglicanhistory.org/wesley/reasons1760.html
This is who Wesleyan Christians are– those who recognize no religion and no holiness apart from how these are expressed first and foremost in actual, flawed, human communities that seek both the forms of religion and their true power in God. We know no other way.
I really appreciate your post. I was first exposed to “MTD” just a few days ago through John Munier’s post. In John’s article he asks how we can overcome MTD in our local contexts. The answer to that question is, I think, found in your post. The way to overcome MTD is to ground ourselves fully in the community of faith (the “Church” universal)–past and present. The question then becomes, at least for me, how do we (as pastors) foster this universal and timeless sense of community within our local contexts?
Good question Jacob!!! For more than 23 years I have fought MTD (without knowing it’s name!!!) by preaching and teaching our Methodist Doctrine. Thanks Ben for bringing up the subject!!!
Ben, found the link to your article on the front page of umc.org. Great article and even greater exposure! Keep up the great work.
Thanks Ben and all for your thoughtful comments. Before I was willing to pursue ordained ministry, I knew that I did not love the church and found it annoying. I prayed that God would change my heart if he was preparing me to serve. That has changed it all.
How can we love Jesus and not his body?
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