My cousin Sally is struggling with her faith. She finds it difficult to attend church services because she can’t find one that will engage her questions or make her feel welcome. Sally was raised in a conservative Baptist tradition, and loves everything she learned about God and the teachings of Jesus, but challenges homophobia and the literal appropriation of the Bible as the only way she can remain a Christian. As a Presbyterian minister, I was able to reach out to my cousin Sally after almost 20 years, to let her know she was not alone in her questioning the relevance of Christianity in contemporary society.

As our country considers their military involvement in the Middle East once again, it might seem insignificant to be concerned about civil discourse in faith communities, but I am appalled at the way some people who call themselves “Christian” speak to each other. Recently I was participating in an interesting discussion on Progressive Christianity’s Face Book about a woman’s right to choose. The bloggers were going back and forth, seeming to respect each other’s opinion when out of the blue someone remarked: “I don’t know how you can be a Christian and support abortion!” First of all, most people I know support a woman’s right to choose, while understanding the complexities involved in terminating a pregnancy, and don’t necessarily support abortion–there is a difference. But more importantly, the seething judgmental nature of this kind of accusation mirrors what we are experiencing in our society at large. Liberals can be just as guilty. I have often heard people say, “I don’t know how you can be a Republican, and call yourself a Christian!”

In the midst of the Christ vs. Culture debate, I would like to offer the following remarks I gave to a church on the west coast recently that was interested in how I would handle theological diversity. We are always talking about diversity: race, gender, sexual orientation, and how the church needs to be more inclusive, an extremely important goal, but what about differences in theology? How can we have a more civil discourse, a more relational theology?

The question this particular congregation asked was this: We are a very liberal and theologically progressive congregation with an exceedingly wide interpretation of the Trinity–from those who believe in Jesus as Christ, fully human and fully divine, to those who question and may no longer believe in a literal interpretation of the Trinity. How would you preach to and engage a congregation such as ours, most of whom share very liberal beliefs, but includes those whose beliefs are more conservative?

I responded by saying that folks need to understand that a literal interpretation of the biblical text is just that: an interpretation, one of many ways of appropriating these sacred texts. There are two books I have found to be helpful in this regard: Marcus Borg’s, The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogma for a more Authentic Christian Faith, and James Fowler’s, Stages of Faith. I told this church I would do a series of sermons or book studies on these resources so we could explore our faith journeys together.

Borg’s contrast of the pre-Easter and post-Easter Jesus explains how the Jesus of history became the Christ of faith, without necessarily undermining our Christian tradition or the early church understanding of God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity. The Greek work for person is more like that of a mask or persona. The mystery of the trinity defies any easy description or definition, Creator/Parent, Christ, Spirit, but the more we engage one another in the mission of being the body of Christ in the world, the less we have to worry about needing to comprehend the totality of the divine life.

Fowler’s discussion of the stages of one’s faith journey, from the earliest stirrings of the call to discipleship when our understandings tend to literalism, to a mature faith that embraces more questions than answers, is helpful for being comfortable with tensions and ambiguities about the mystery of God. Having an understanding of the process, much like the stages in grief work, can enlighten folks without being condescending about where one is on their own path. Orthopraxis (right actions) can then replace orthodoxy (right beliefs) as the focus for the person of faith.

For the past five years, my husband and I have been ministering among the Navajo people in Arizona. The Navajo understand the Great Spirit, the teachings of Jesus, and call upon Diyin God when they pray to the Creator. This understanding has been helpful to other Navajo who either practice their own spiritual traditions or are members of the Native American Church, who use peyote as their sacrament. Most Navajo Christians were taught by the early Christian missionaries that they had to give up their culture and spiritual traditions in order to be truly Christian. Currently, most mainline denominations encourage folks to appropriate Christianity in the context of their own culture, this is good news to folks who have only experienced the judgmental theology of religious fundamentalism.

What my husband and I have discovered in working with various church groups who come out for mission trips to work with us on the Navajo Nation (many of these groups having left their respective denominations over issues of sexuality), is that when folks work together for the good of the people, doing mission, theological and ideological differences no longer matter. Working side by side toward a common goal enables real dialogue and true community to happen. The body of Christ in the world!

Finally, undergirding it all, there must be a context of trust and pastoral care. One of the things I used to tell seminary students is that the members of your congregation will not care how much you know, they want to know how much you care! If you take the time to build that as a basic foundation in your church, people will listen to you say just about anything!

Once folks have an understanding that there is a history to the doctrine of the Trinity, from the Nicene Creed, the Apostles’ Creed, ending up with our Brief Statement of Faith (1983) in the Book of Confessions (for us Presbyterians) showing how this doctrine evolved over time–you get the point that our theology evolves over time, like our religious consciousness. Whether it was the Barman Declaration in which the confessing churches in Germany took a stand against Hitler, or the Confession of 1967 during the Civil Rights Movement, our church has tried to teach all that Christ commanded and be a prophetic voice for our time.

Another creative resource is a skit for Reformation Sunday that I usually have confirmands act out in worship called, “the game of the century”. Performed like a football game, it is all about the controversy at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 (when Jesus became God),when the Antiochans and the Alexandrians were fighting it out over whether Jesus’ humanity or divinity would win the day! Like any good rivalry (e.g., Ohio State and the University of Michigan), it was serious and intense, with excommunications going back and forth until it was finally decided. Nobody likes a tie, but in order to prevent a blood bath, it was determined that Christ was one person, but had two natures, the divine and the human.

These kinds of educational events help folks understand that early Christianity was always multi-cultural, and rarely appropriated the same way in different contexts. It wasn’t until the 4th century when Constantine wanted to unify the empire, that he declared there was only ONE way to think about the Christ event, but it was for political reasons, and all others were soon excommunicated and labeled as heretics!

In answering this question, I would say that education, faith formation and building relationships of trust is how I preach, teach and minister to a wide variety of theological perspectives. I am encouraged whenever I discover congregations like this one who can proclaim progressive Christianity, but are inclusive enough for people with literal interpretations of Scripture. We all have our own path to the divine life, and God alone is Lord of conscience!

The above remarks were very helpful for Sally. She said she felt affirmed in her own beliefs and comfortable that she didn’t have to give up her “faith.” I told her she was just letting go of some of her childhood ways of thinking about her faith, not who she was as a Christian, and that religious consciousness evolves over time, just like everything else. It was a wonderful experience to re-connect with a cousin I thought I would never be able to have a serious conversation with, much less a theological one! Sally assured me there were many younger adults out there with similar issues and concerns about Christianity today, and she is encouraged that one day she might be able to speak to others in our family with very different ways of understanding what it means to be a disciple of Christ. Wouldn’t this be good news for all of us?

Christians have had a tendency to be exclusive for nearly 2,000 years. We should try being radically inclusive for the next 2,000 and see if that is a better witness to the world!

 

 

 
A member of the Grand Canyon Presbytery, Rev. Hubbard worked with her husband Lynn, pastor in the Grand Canyon Synod of the ELCA, on the Navajo Nation for the past five years.