A research psychologist friend told me about epigenetic trauma a couple of years ago. Can the traumas of one generation be genetically passed on to the next? Not just environmentally but biologically? Might there be some influence/alteration on the DNA of offspring following extreme stresses on the parent? I thought it improbable, fantastical even; then began to discover the scientific research and was amazed. Rachel Yehuda writes in the Scientific American (July 1, 2022) of “How Parents’ Trauma leaves Biological Traces in Children.” The article makes modest claims, even suggesting some potential benefits; still it is clear this phenomenon is rooted in a growing body of research. Some report significant inherited vulnerabilities among children, as gene functions are altered by violence and trauma to a parent.
My research friend notes that over the past seventy years, generation after generation have lived in a time when foreign wars never ceased for long. For decades now gun violence and mass shootings have become a staple in our information diet. He conjectures that well over 60% of our societies’ population lives with some degree of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or Depression. Significant increases in suicide rates and treatment for severe depression stand as evidence something has changed.
This has left me wondering about the United Methodist Church. What has been the impact of decades of disinformation and disagreement on the denomination and leaders? Following the decisions of the 2024 General Conference in Charlotte, removing the harmful language excluding LGBTQ persons from congregational care and leadership, the question of institutional epigenetic trauma weighs on my mind. Sociologists have long understood the phenomenon of “structural effects” or “institutional effects.” Persons are shaped, restricted, influenced, limited, or open based on the ecologies in which they reside and work. This has been evident in the responses of denominational leaders following General Conference. An ecology of abuse and division has prevailed in the denomination for decades. Much of it is carried out by well-funded advocacy groups like the so-called Institute for Religion and Democracy and Good News Movement.
The decisions in Charlotte, long overdue, offered a time of relief, celebration, joy. I was there – and found myself laughing and sobbing all at once. As some sang and hugged, there was a muted quality to the celebration. A good thing, I thought. It was not a time of gloating or retribution. As Steve Harper puts it, we need to be an “Un-reviling Methodist Church” to become, in truth and fullness a “United Methodist Church.” This spirit of forgiveness and opportunity was reflected in persons who spoke in favor of making space for congregations who had disaffiliated to return in the future.
Still, it seems, many denominational leaders were careful not to engage in too much celebration in Charlotte and upon returning home these “leaders” were more inclined toward defense. Many who quietly supported welcoming all into the church, returned home (to their local context – district or conference) with a more muted response. Their main theme became, “If you disagree with the decision in Charlotte, don’t worry, your local church doesn’t have to change. You can keep behaving the way you always have.” Meaning keep excluding as you will. This is to my understanding much more a PTSD response than imaginative leadership. The violence done by groups specifically organized to do damage has left its generational marks.
I can easily ask “Where is the courage? Where is the imagination for the future?” And I do. Even so, I am mindful that for decades groups organized to do damage on the UMC continue at their work. Even before we left Charlotte, there were forces publishing and on social media seeking to bully and diminish the joy that should otherwise accompany the new day of openness and welcome for United Methodists.
I don’t have an easy remedy to this institutional epigenetic trauma. My research friend recommends meditation, prayer, music, seeking calm, new collaborations, reaching out to others who have been wounded. In my experience imagination will require finding time for laughter and celebration. It will require an end to seeking to placate those who have been a part of the damage inflicted. Now is time for generational healing and for the imagination that will follow.
We are passing through a season of Ascension and Pentecost in the liturgical year. The fires of Pentecost continue to burn. Willie James Jennings of Yale Divinity School says of this season, “The revolution has begun.” Time to focus on the future. Time to admit our institutional PTSD and find care in one another and in our core and gracious identity as United Methodist.
Perhaps I was six or seven when the question first came. What is “good” about Good Friday? Our lives are full of questions; or at least mine is. These days most of my questions are about more mundane things, like “How did those spots get on my shirt or on my necktie?” Any man over seventy-five will understand.
After more than seven decades, the more profound and intellectually jarring theological question about the goodness of Good Friday still stirs in my spirit. I don’t have the one right, true answer as many of my conservative friends suggest they have. The soup stains on my necktie are so much more easily explained.
Other friends, more secular searchers, ask, “Why a focus on the cross? Isn’t there a better, less violent, symbol?” Without answering, I think of all the modern-day crosses people bare. I have been with families after a painful death, a murder, a rape, or a drowning. There are realities of starvation, war, captivity, and financial ruin. Abuse and discrimination are crosses of a different sort. Sin is woven within the human condition. Evil is present. No matter our desires for something less violent and more velvet — there is brutality and death.
Catehdral de San Isidore in Argentina
I recall the historic theories of the atonement. Jesus’s death is portrayed as Ransom, Substitute (suffers for), Penal (suffers instead), Example, and Victor. Each theory today is understood in decidedly individualistic ways. It is a quid pro quo formula as in Jesus did this and I get some reward. Such theology appears deeply embedded in St. Paul’s perspective (I Corinthians 15 or II Corinthians 5).
It was my beloved New Testament professor, Robert Lyon, who challenged me to think beyond this; to think more deeply and widely. The word study he assigned me was on the word λύτρον, meaning either redemption or ransom (Mark 10:45 and Matthew 20:28). I can still see the twinkle in Bob’s eye as he said, “And the context? Who is this ransom for and why? What is the larger Biblical frame?” These were the years of the Vietnam War and Civil Rights struggles over racism and sexism. Bob wasn’t dismissing classic atonement theories out of hand; he was asking for more – for a deeper grasp of the whole of the scriptural story. What does “ransom” have to do with justice? What if this is bigger than an individualistic transactional act? What if it is transformational for the entirety of God’s purposes? What if it is not primarily about one’s personal “free of sin” credit card? What if it is for ALL and for the entire Creation!
Walter Brueggemann suggests we speak of the execution of Jesus rather than his crucifixion. ALL THINGS are seen as potentially redeemed and redeemable: corrupt institutions, the violence of every empire, the despoiling of creation. Brueggeman speaks of God’s purposes as displayed in the life of Jesus as prophetic imagination. He speaks of “the alternative world that God has promised, and that God is birthing before our very eyes.
For me, even with food stains on my shirt, the questions in my spirit find greater meaning. This is the GOOD in Good Friday – God’s promise displayed for all persons and all creation. If we have eyes to see it and the will to live into it.
It happened again, recently. A public gathering, I prayed or presided in some fashion. A reception follows. All seems “normal” until one of the folks nearby starts to share a story and stops, “Woops, I forget, a preacher is here.” Often, I could anticipate what was going to be said. I have heard the story or off-color joke previously… I do not have “virgin ears”… but, somehow, I represent a purity zone. Clergy are thought to reside in the “Area 51” of polite conversation.
At times it is even worse. I am cornered as “an expert?” Some long-stored-up theological questions are brought forward. Many are just silly. Some would require a semester course in seminary, or perhaps the completion of a dissertation. Many are qustions that require attention throughout a lifetime. Some questions are asked as a “gotcha.” They are meant to make the preacher squirm.
Often, it begins with the words, “Pastor, I am not very religious, but I am spiritual and am troubled by some things; can you help me understand?” Here are a few I have encountered:
“What kind of fish swallowed Jonah?”
“Did Jesus really walk on water, or did he know where the rocks were?”
“If Jesus was alone when tempted in the desert, who knew to write about it?”
“Do you believe in Hell?”
“Do dogs go to heaven?”
“Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?”
“In the Prodigal Son story, doesn’t the older brother get a bad rap? What did he do wrong?”
“Is everyone forgiven no matter what they do?
“Where did Cain find a wife? Isn’t marrying a sister incest?”
“Wasn’t Catholicism invented in 1054 so political leaders could break with the Eastern Church?”
“Does U.S. House of Representatives Speaker, Mike Johnson, have a Biblical Worldview?”
“Don’t you think Pope Francis is a Socialist?
Only a sample of the queries are here, some serious and knowledgeable, others an effort to be cute, too many with monistic (either/or) assumptions that miss the discovery and value of paradoxes within the theological task. (e.g., “If one would be master he/she must first be servant.”) I have learned the value of the rabbinic method of answering a question with a question. This is not the time for an overview of differing Biblical texts and literary scriptural devices. Much as I would like, there is little time to teach about the call to live in terms of the realm of God. (And there is certainly not time to speak of my preference for Kindom of God rather than Kingdom.) Often personal faith-journeys, current events or some family disputes are at the core of the seriously asked questions.
I find it a little like the “pick-up” basketball games played while growing up in Indiana. You call your own fouls and get to choose your team mates. The game unfolds “on the spot” but there are certain moves and shots that need to be tested against the other players. Could I make that hook shot now? Could I guard that more experienced player this time?
If possible, when these “questions for the pastor” spontaneous moments come my way, I invite folks to do their own study, later, and suggest a book or two to read. Then, I look for JOY. Is there a way to find in this moment the wide and wonder-filled sense of holiness carried within a smile or even a light chuckle? Perhaps thereby, faith is made more durable, understood with a richer complexity, and invitationally rather than a collecting up the right set of answers. So, when recently asked “Did Adam and Eve have a belly button?” I paused for a moment and said, “O yes, I think so, and I am certain God continues to have stretch marks from such births.” I was rewarded with a smile.
I am told that Thomas Langford, the former Duke Divinity School Dean, enjoyed driving a red pick-up truck around Durham and especially on the university campus. The license plate on the truck read “JOY N IT.” Folks who didn’t know Tom, might have mistakenly thought he was expressing his joy in driving that pickup. Others knew better. He was perhaps speaking of the joy of the truck, but I suspect he was also talking about the joy of a life of faith, of living and leaning forward into the questions, of imagining the joy of a life of gospel relevance… filled with gratitude and delight.
The poet John Keats wrote “Call the world, if you please, the Vale of Soul-making.” This task of “Soul-making” involves asking good questions and establishing habits of the heart. Habits of study, meditation, observation and being open to new imaginative insights, and yes, humor. It is the keeping of these patterns, until these patterns keep us.
So, I look forward to the next set of “questions for the pastor.” Maybe I can do better next time. Until then, I will remember the words from correspondence that is included in the Bible, James 1:2-5: My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. (NRSV).
Whether national politics or elementary school, we observe bullies and victims. It is not a new phenomenon. Seventy years ago, at West Spring Street School in New Albany, Indiana – I saw it – and felt it – on the playground. This ancient human reality goes all the way back to Cain and Abel, Joseph and his brothers, King David and Uriah, Pharoah and the Israelites, or King Herod or his wife murdering John the Baptizer. Bullies and victims are forged deeply into our emotional and moral foundations.
Literature is built on the anti-hero, victim, and hero motiff. It is a delicious formula that fits well in literature, movies, and television series. Still, this easy pattern is missing something critical and complex. It is the place of responsibility. It is the paradox of the cross. As H. Richard Niebuhr noted in his classic “The Responsible Self” (1963) ethical behavior requires sorting through the ambiguity and distortions of real life. Ethical behavior requires attention to a universal community and honest observation of the best intentions and failures brought by each and every actor.
A victim can often turn into the bully; the research is clear. The story of the man bullied at work who comes home to kick the dog is a familiar one. Most adult abusers were abused as children. Limiting our frame to either bully or victim is a gestalt that has gained a wide purchase in our society. It is the core “stuff” of the MAGA movement. It plays out in the courtroom, city halls and, even in the church. Politicians market in meanness. Tough talk and threats are confused as “strong leadership.” On the other side many can only see themselves as victim. So much of our social service efforts and congregational life assumes a primary task to rescue the victim from the bully – and, of course, we are to be cast as heroes rescuing the victim.
In the wake of the trial of United Methodist Bishop MinervaCarcaño there are persons on each side suggesting they have been victimized – and “the other” was a bully. What’s missing? I would argue it is responsibility to the larger community. Was it a struggle over power, gender, culture, money? Perhaps all of these, yes. How did we arrive at the point when good folks on each side are to be sorted into the “bully/victim” divide? Perhaps one party was unwilling to seek a responsible remedy before going to trial. Perhaps both parties were unwilling. But here we are… still living in the bully/victim wilderness.
There are many ways forward. (Many will point to Matthew 18 counsel on how handle a dispute. It is a good place to begin.) However, I will start by borrowing from Robert Greenleaf’s notion of Servant Leadership. He writes of a servant leader’s responsibility in this way: “The best test, and difficult to administer, is: do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will he or she benefit, or at least, will he or she not be further deprived?” (The Servant Leader, p. 7)
Might it be that while dollars, publicity, trust and energy were put into a drama of victimhood or bullying, the opportunity to act on the behalf of the least privileged among us has been lost?
In November 1954, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached his inaugural sermon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In retrospect, it was his future ministry’s thesis statement[i]. His text? Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect” (NRSV). The sermon was titled “The Transformed Nonconformist.” He was proposing that Christians sometimes needed to act in ways that didn’t always “go along to get along.” Civil, nonviolent nonconformity, was a preferred option when democratic institutions failed, and discrimination continued unabated.[ii]
There were scores of other faith leaders, expressing such a witness, prior to and alongside of, Dr. King. The church had a rich history of persons acting as Transformed Nonconformists.[iii] Urban Training Centers were active across the nation in the mid-1960s, most notably in Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland. There were many models unfolding ranging from the East Harlem Protestant Parish in New York to Church of the Savior in Washington D.C., to Operation Push in Chicago. In Boston, Cleveland, Nashville, Atlanta, and Los Angeles such efforts were institutionalized and often funded by mainline denominations. In the rural south there was the witness of the Koinonia Farm in Georgia and Voice of Calvary in Mississippi.[iv]
In Indiana the Rev. Luther Hicks in Indianapolis founded Dignity Unlimited. Hicks, a pastor, also set up work with youth in a storefront outreach effort near Shortridge High School at 34th and Meridian. Hicks was arrested on several occasions for leading nonviolent protests over racial injustices. Urban legend has it that the “Methodist” bishop would call the “Methodist” mayor to intervene. Hicks’ crime? Seeking to de-escalate possible violence and “promoting patience and reason.”[v]
In earlier decades, Gary (Indiana) Central Methodist Church championed racial justice efforts as the Reverend S. Walton Cole encouraged members to confront their own prejudices, welcome new members from diverse backgrounds and march in demonstrations for equal pay and education. At Trinity Church in Muncie, Indiana, Rev. J. C. Williams’ activities in Civil Rights struggles lead to his candidacy for Mayor of Muncie as “Poor People’s Party Candidate”[vi]
Back to Evansville, and to the topic the closing of desegregation and the closing of inner-city schools, the counsel “You cannot fight city hall” was heard, and it was reframed to a need the importance of speaking directly to school administrators.[vii] In the process, changes did come. Culver School was not closed, and a new building was constructed. Elaine Amerson was elected to the county-wide school board where she served for eight years, three of them as board president. Resources that had been heavily directed to suburban schools were shared more equally across the school system. And, yes, county-wide busing did occur, while at the same time several “naturally racially integrated” schools continued to serve a neighborhood.
Despite the range of these efforts, little research, or documentation of the import of such faith-initiated efforts at transformation has been produced. Dr. King’s legacy endures. It has been revived by persons like the Rev. William Barber II. Taking a longer view, while significant advances have occurred, perhaps a deeper and wider story has gone untold.[viii] There has been little reporting on the breadth of the many faith-based activities.[ix]
Denominations have turned inward. The slow and critical work of building up neighborhood parishes appears pushed to the sidelines. Examples of genuinely interracial and multicultural congregational life are little-known or valued only at the margins in Mainline Christianity. The death of Dr. King in 1968 dealt a severe blow to the call made to the church in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” The time of Non-conforming Transformationalism abated but it has not disappeared.
In the wider culture, since Dr. King’s death, change has come fast and hard, resulting in questions as to the relevance of the church and much handwringing among church leaders. A decline in attendance began in the late 1960s. Baby Boomers emerged as a new and different demographic. At colleges and congregations on university campuses interest in church attendance declined dramatically at the end of the 1960s. Many campus pastors and priests point to 1967, or thereabouts, as a critical juncture when students who had once filled the pews began to disappear in large numbers from worship. Meanwhile, in urban neighborhoods, those expanded church facilities that had been built in the decades following WWII for all the children, were emptying out.
The Vietnam War, the birth control pill, and the weak response by churches to support the civil rights exposed how insular, self-absorbed, and out of touch religious institutions were in the culture. Going along and Getting Along had taken a toll. We were said to be entering “a post-denominational era.” The call of Dr. King and the work of scores of faith-based initiatives designed to engage the church in seeking transformation in society was seen more as an artifact than a calling.
For denominations these realities accelerated the anxious casting about for ways to find or retain relevance. There was a willingness to try many things to stop the growing loss of membership. Ironically, efforts to value and benefit by affirming a core denominational identity and neighborhood parish locations was typically missed or overlooked. The megachurch movement was off and running. It has served as a central hoped-for-solution among denominational bodies.[x] Now, in hindsight, it appears exclusive focus on a megachurch model was destined to be insufficient to the changes that continue.
Less attention was given to taking seriously the need for in-depth lay theological education. Popular narrow cultural ideologies, “seeker-friendly” worship that avoided symbols of sacrifice like a cross, along with contemporary music, mixed with safe political perspectives were the tail that wagged the theological dogs of this era. As church historian Martin E. Marty put it: “To give the whole store away to match what this year’s market says the unchurched want is to have the people who know least about the faith determine most about its expression.”[xi]
Especially notable, in the 1980s through the 2010s, were the more agile, drive in, folk-based religious mega-church expressions. Willow Creek Community Church in the Chicago suburbs or Mars Hill Bible Church in Michigan are often-cited examples. These “independent community church” expressions are now in second or third generations of leadership and appear to be going through their own identity crises — and decline. The recent exclusion of Saddle Back Church from the Southern Baptist Convention is worth considering as persons consider what the future of the megachurch will be.
The story of the megachurch in United Methodism is more complex. At places like the Church of the Resurrection in Kansas, St. Andrew UMC in Colorado, or Ginghamsburg UMC in Ohio, there have been deliberate efforts to encourage thoughtful theological discourse and support for nearby neighborhood parishes. Typically, however, these types of megachurch congregations are the exceptions among the large church expressions.
Anxiety was the driver. There was a widely held belief, a self-fulfilling prophecy in fact, that we had entered a post-denominational era. This anxiety was a symptom of what might be diagnosed as“Church Growth fever.” Such fear-based views and flight to “safe places” continues. There have been few efforts to stop to consider what gifts may already be present in smaller and more local parish settings. Megachurch models were advocated that were too often independent from a denomination’s core identity.[xii]
The response over the past four decades has only reinforced the self-focus and self-concern in many settings. Denominations and philanthropic entities focused attention on leadership training and congregational development. These efforts, while not bad in and of themselves, turn attention toward inwardly directed programs. They also, inadvertently perhaps, set up a system where pastoral performance is measured against the “successes” of the booming megachurch in the suburbs. Looking inward, it was the pastor or the congregation that needed to change to be “more valued.” One might say the time of Non-transformational Conformity had arrived.
Sadly, in many places, the value of neighborhood congregations was lost; the importance churches as a local center of informal gathering and values-production among residents living nearby was sacrificed. Starbucks, neighborhood eateries and bars now filled the civic void left behind in urban neighborhoods.
BUT WAIT, THERE IS MORE!
In many urban neighborhoods, congregations have survived, even prospered. They have persisted despite often being undervalued and overlooked.[xiii] While thousands of neighborhood congregations have disappeared, thousands of others are being transformed. Not all continue as worshipping communities only, or primarily. It is often not the church as known it in the past. Some places are more traditional but in almost all, there is a willingness to be Nonconforming Transformationalists.
There is a remarkable phenomenon, for example, of church buildings being transformed into low-income residences.[xiv] In other places congregations are building tiny houses on church property and are forming communities of care where church members build fellowship with persons finding health and spiritual care for chronic difficulties. There are at the same time new models of faith life bubbling up that don’t require a building, as in coffee shop Bible studies and parenting fellowship groups. There are new forms of believers assembling to “be transformed together” working on immigration reform or providing shelter or health care for low wealth persons that have begun and are beginning. These are signs of hope and joy and celebration. They are places where diversity is celebrated, where multicultural expressions are honored, and where everyone, no matter race or sexual preference, is welcome.
COMING NEXT: Parish-based Renewal and Seeing Christ in the Neighbor and Neighborhood.
[i] McCullough, Marcus, “Go Along to Get Along,” The Graduate Journal of Harvard Divinity School, 2023.
[ii] Passages from Romans chapters 12-15 have been cited to undergird both conformity and nonconformity with government practices across the centuries. In Romans 13:1ff, Paul seems to argue that Christians should simply submit to civil authority. However, King and others suggested Romans 12 set the terms for any such submission. When faced with evil institutions, conformity is predicated on the ever continuing the call for transformation? Discrimination, Jim Crow laws, lynching, unequal economic, societal, employment and education systems could and should be transformed.
[iii] Too often forgotten or overlooked were the many others who were part of Urban Training Centers shaping urban ministry around the country. Gibson Winter’s book The Suburban Captivity of the Churches helped set the stage as did his work with the Urban Training Center in Chicago. There were the folks like Clarence and Florence Jordan at Koinonia Farm and Gordon and Mary Cosby at Church of the Savior in Washington D.C. There was the ministry of Father Jack Egan for the Chicago Catholic Diocese and Vincent Harding with the Mennonite communities in Chicago and Atlanta. Folks like Don Benedict, Archie Hargraves, Bill Webber, and Letty Russell at the East Harlem Protestant Parish New York.
[iv] I mention these few, of many, because much of this history has been overlooked. Dr. King’s work, and that of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was essential to the changes brought about by the civil rights struggle. At the same time there were dozens of localized ways people of faith were engaged in taking their faith to the streets.
[vii] We heard my supervisor’s admonition that one “can’t fight city hall” as a call “not to turn city leaders into the enemy.” This led to many lunches with school administrators and city officials. Some of the best allies in seeking more equity in public education came from teachers and administrators within the school system.
[viii] Examples come in many dimensions: In housing (Habitat for Humanity grew out of the witness of Koinonia Farm with Millard Fuller and Clarence Jordan in Georgia), with economic structures (e.g., Rev. Faith Fowler at Cass Community in Detroit provides a model, as does John Perkins with Christian Community Development Associations, or incubator businesses out of several congregations), and resources linking spirituality and social action continue (e.g., Fr. Richard Rohr’s at the Center for Action and Contemplation and Rev. Jim Wallis’ leadership at the Sojourners in Washington, D.C.).
[ix] Research waits to be done. In the early 1970s, for example, Project Understanding looked at the efficacy of programs designed to bring racial change through religious congregations – little has followed.
[x] Dr. Scott Thuma at Hartford Seminary has done considerable research on the rise (and decline) of the megachurch phenomena. See: mhttp://hirr.hartsem.edu/megachurch/research.html.
[xii] It is not surprising that many of the same folks who pushed a singular focus on tinkering with the patterns of congregational life warned we were entering “a post-denominational era.” From “Keys to Growth” and the “Habits of Successful Congregations” the remedies proposed included more parking, new member campaigns, management by objectives, leadership training, changing music or moving the location of the congregation to a “better place.” Long established denominational connections or linkages with other institutions in a community were not highlighted. Mostly, the unspoken assumption was that larger congregations of like-minded people were the answer. Seldom was there a focus on the parish surrounding the church – and when there was such a focus, the parish was seen as a place of scarcity, even danger. A place needing outside help rather than a resource for congregational vitality.
[xiii] Some researchers speak of these examples of heath where there is perceived poverty and decline as “positive deviance.” I choose to see it as the work of the Holy Spirit.
[xiv] A remarkable initiative is being carried out by the United Methodist Foundation in the New England Annual Conference where “redundant” church buildings are being evaluated as places for potential residences or for new ministry/mission sites.
In June 1979, the Indiana United Methodist Annual Conference met in the I.U. Auditorium. The presiding bishop, Leroy Hodapp,[i] set an agenda for the future “We must go to where the people are!” The subtext was clear, we must go to the suburbs and invest talent, time, and resources there. As pastor in a core-city neighborhood at the time, I leaned to a friend beside me and whispered, “What are the people in our neighborhoods? Chopped liver?
The post-WWII Baby Boom population surge was slowing. A “population shock wave[ii]” or “Agequake”[iii] disrupted assumed church practices. Denominational anxiety about the future was on the upswing. In 1970 Alvin Toffler, with his wife Adelaide, published the popular Future Shock.[iv] It spoke of the events of these years as “too much change in too short a period of time.”
Urban neighborhoods, perceived as dangerous and in inevitable decline, were changing rapidly. Homes were abandoned by families, mostly of European ancestry and sold to real estate speculators. The houses left behind were often subdivided into multiapartment residences. The new arrivals came mostly from non-Caucasian ancestry. Typically, they were families with lower wealth. Dramatic population and neighborhood changes continued, wavelike over the next decades, as residences and local businesses were turned into rental properties. Only a couple of decades later, change came again as younger folks who were given the rather ironic label of “urban pioneers”[v] arrived and refurbished the older houses again into single-family dwellings.
In an earlier post,[vi] I wrote of the demise of the Central Avenue United Methodist Church in Indianapolis. A version of Central Avenue’s story was replicated in thousands of churches in the U. S. during the middle-and-late Twentieth Century. The underpinnings of parish life were vanishing as linkages with surrounding neighborhoods diminished. This pattern, like rolling ocean waves, washed across city neighborhoods. Social connections withered, were then rebuilt, and again diminished, and then reestablished again.
Gentrification was only beginning. White flight had speeded changes.[vii] The none-to-subtle subtext of the bishop’s counsel in 1979 was that primary attention should be directed to those leaving the core-city and refocused on suburban church growth. Ironically, of course, the population density in core-city neighborhoods was growing to levels higher than ever.
The good bishop’s analysis and strategy failed to perceive the ways in which the “left behind” neighborhoods were becoming more global, more multicultural.[viii] There was also a failure to discern the gifts being brought by the new residents. Even as new Asian, Hispanic enclaves emerged, and African American communities were enlarged, at the same time many of these “re-establishing” neighborhoods became more multiethnic in composition.[ix]
A listening to, visiting with, and welcoming of the people of the neighborhoods near the church buildings by church leaders was rarely practiced. The focus was on who was leaving, following “our” people. There was a blindness. Importantly, and in truth determinatively, the financial base for many city congregations was diminishing as members left for the suburbs. In the Baby Boom years of the middle 1950s and early 1960s, many church buildings were expanded beyond what could be afforded by those left behind or newly arriving in the following decades.
The call to “go to where the people are” failed to consider options other than an exit strategy. Left behind were paternalistic responses welcoming the new arrivals. If there was an outreach to the newcomer, it was typically an effort to “fix” these new in-migrants. Rather than seeing these persons as resources, with gifts to share, they were thought of as “the needy” and as such, well-meaning ministries like food pantries, thrift shops, and tutoring programs became the primary mission of many inner-city churches.
As was noted in the previous post, “It is one thing to restore buildings and houses, quite another to re-establish (or perhaps rediscover) a parish.”[x] What lessons might we discover from this history? We ask: why?what if? and why not?
Why did these parishes evaporate or vanish? In the next two postings I will offer what I believe are the two primary reasons for this phenomenon: 1) the social and political ecology of embedded racism in the nation; and 2) Ineffectual denominational and congregational responses to these changes lacking in theological clarity.
Coming Next: 2-B, The Social and Political Ecology of Embedded Racism in the Nation.
Your thoughts? — Please enter these in the comment section.
ENDNOTES:
[i] Bishop Leroy Hodapp was a good and intelligent man and a good friend. Still, he was a product of the mid-twentieth century church culture that selected him and shaped him for leadership. He would be considered a Christian “progressive” and generally friendly to many urban ministry efforts at the time. However, the pressures of office and desire to balance competing expectations of over 1,100 congregations and 300,000 Hoosier United Methodists limited what he perceived to be the best way forward. There were dozens of urban congregations and pastors that might have helped widen his vision, but the dye was set by the prevailing myths of the inevitability of suburban growth and urban decay.
[ii] Rizvi, Abul, Population Shock, Monash University Publishing, 2022.
[iii] Wallace, Paul, Agequake: Riding the Demographic Rollercoaster, Shaking Business, Finance and Our World, UNKNO, 1999.
[iv] Toffler, Alvin and Adelaide, Future Shock, Random House, 1970. Society was said to move through the three stages: agrarian, industrial, and post-industrial and with each transition there was a period of societal disruption and stress. Toffler’s analysis followed in follow-up books, The Third Wave and Powershift.
[v] Hwang, Jackelyn, Pioneers of Gentrification: Transformation in Global Neighborhoods in Urban America in the Late Twentieth Century, Demography, February 2016, 189-213.
[vi] Amerson, Philip, Recentering the Parish – Part 1, see: https://wp.me/p5lzr1-3Kc. Upon reading the earlier piece on the decline of Central Avenue church a friend reminded me of other changes including the interstate highway system where Interstate Highways I-64 and I-70 sectored off neighborhoods from one another. He also noted the consolidation many city and county functions in a new structure known as Unigov in Indianapolis. He was right. There are multiple other contributors as noted in this essay and each one seems shaped by racial discrimination.
[vii] Semuels, Alana, White Flight Never Ended, THE ATLANTIC, July 30, 2015.
[viii] Buccitelli, Anthony, Bak, City of Neighborhoods: Memory, Folklore, and Ethnic Place in Boston, University of Wisconsin Press, 2016.
A familiar folk axiom is as follows, “institutions are designed to serve the needs of people, but before long those people serve the needs of the institution.” In my experience, this truism is evident in a variety of settings and across every organizational type.
Let me affectionately pick on a category of institutions I value and have come to know rather well – theological schools. Seminaries are established by religious denominations to teach, prepare leaders, develop resources, and do research. A midwestern seminary, with which I am very familiar, recently invited me to join a “video conversation” scheduled for the evening of February 22, 2023. A “select group” of us were asked to learn about exciting initiatives of the field education program. I opened my calendar to add the date, stopped, double checked, and laughed out loud.
The event was scheduled for Ash Wednesday evening, when most congregations I know will be holding a worship service. Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent leading up to Easter. In many Christian traditions it is among the more significant days in the liturgical calendar. The scheduling of this event was an unforced error; more, it was a sign of disconnection. Since then, the date of this seminary’s video conference was rescheduled. To repeat, seminaries were begun to serve congregations and denominations, but… well, the seasons and gifts of congregational ministry, are sometimes missed in the planning. This was a failure in awareness as to who was serving whom.
At another seminary where I was in leadership, I visited a gathering of interfaith congregations in Tucson Arizona. It included a wide range of faith traditions who engaged in regular, innovative joint gatherings. A young faculty member was with me on this visit. A few days later, back on campus, a faculty committee shared their plans to “teach congregations how to do interfaith work.” Sadly, this committee had failed to explore what was already taking place among congregations in places like Tucson. I waited before speaking, expecting my young professor friend to share her experience. Later she confessed she didn’t want to challenge the plans of more senior professors. Instead of discovering the gifts already evident in the ecology of existing congregations like those in Tucson these well-meaning faculty folks had seen their role as being the producers of knowledge, the source of innovation. Sadly, the connective tissue, the patterns of reciprocity and mutuality were missing.
I could write of dozens of other examples where institutional expectations and design missed the mark. Denominations often exhibit this blindness as to gifts already present at their own seminaries or their own congregations. I think of denominational efforts to establish in house “leadership training” or “research programs” when the very schools they started and support, offer some of the best resources in the nation. To be fair, we shouldn’t miss the reality that congregations themselves are too often quick to start projects without knowing the gifts in the neighborhoods or cities where they are located.
A very different example is evident as a “new denomination” is being formed among dissidents from the United Methodist Church. Who is serving whom? Are some seminaries and powerful caucus groups misrepresenting the denomination’s institutional practices for their own purposes? Have congregations been being encouraged to disaffiliate based on the needs of institutions who have little or no awareness of the context and neighborhoods where the congregations are in ministry?
At the outset I suggested our world is full of similar examples of this disconnection. In government, health care, education, law, agriculture, economics and on and on we see it. The Dilbert comic strip by Scott Adams was built around such institutional blind spots. I have no sympathy for anarchy; I do not suggest all institutions inevitably fail and should be abandoned. To the contrary we have seen the tragic results of the “deep state” myth and conspiracy nonsense in our local, state, and national governmental institutions. I am arguing that sometimes basic linkages and necessary relationships are lost. Not all institutions should be saved. Slavery is an example. Institutions designed to exclude other humans of basic rights should be ended.
I am suggesting that the connective tissue allowing for mutuality and dialogue needs to be exercised, like the muscles of a human body. Our human institutions need to be continually, evaluated, strengthened, and open to democratic reform. In the process, a complex web of reciprocal teaching and learning is essential. All healthy institutions will seek democratic renewal and will be attentive to what can be learned from the gifts and assets of those at the grass roots of society.
A North American Adaptation of the Lord’s Prayer – for too many Christians
A “Distortion” of The Lord’s Prayer as understood by too many North American Christians
(With interpretive notes)
Matthew 6:9-15
Pray then in this way: Our* MY Father in heaven, hallowed be MY UNDERSTANDING OF your name. Your SPIRITUALIZED kingdom come, Your SPIRITUALIZED will be done, On earth** AMONG MY TRIBE as it is in heaven. Give us ME this day ourdaily MORE EXCESS bread, And forgive us our ME MY debts, as we I also have forgiven our MY debtor FRIENDs WHO DESERVE IT. And do not bring us ME to the time of trial, but rescue us ME from the evil ones WHO DISAGREE WITH ME. For if you forgive*** CONDEMN others of their trespasses,
your heavenly Father will also ESPECIALLY forgive you;
but if you do not forgive others,
neither will your Father WILL forgive your trespasses ANYWAY. –Matthew 6:9-15
Interpretive Aids:
*This prayer is distorted to fit “modern” North American individualistic sensibilities held by many Christians. Toby Keith’s song “I Want to Talk About Me” can be sung after the prayer. It is based on the message preached and believed that all the followeres of Jesus are to focus on is individual salvation. This view forgets any mention of love of neighbor, the Year of Jubilee, Gospel stories about welcoming the outsider and stranger, Paul’s mention of each having gifts needed to be a part of whole community, historic practices of social-justice or ideas of covenant and commonweal.
** Faith in this view is all about heaven and the hereafter. It has little reference to daily life on earth. My current life is to get me ready for the “sweet by-and-by.” God’s will is meant only for those who think like me and believe the same theology and creeds that I hold. In other words, “on earth” is about how I treat those who are part of my tribe. This means, climate change is a myth, any government aid the poor is “evil socialism,” the earth’s resources are to be dominated and used up for my benefit and those who are like me. The earth is not our “Common Home” as Pope Francis proclaims. The United Methodist bishops calling for “environmental holiness” was wrong.
*** Forgiveness in this view is a sign of weakness… unless it is asking for a pardon for crimes. The individual praying the prayer doesn’t need forgiveness because he or she has the right answer on two or three critical issues (e.g., against homosexuality and all abortions) and all else is “up to God.” I don’t really need to ask for forgiveness as my way is the only way to salvation. The story about the prodigal returning home is always about “them” and never about “me.”
Among my summer bouquet of reading — or re-reading, I have put two in my backpack to carry along with others. These are meant to be devotional books. I plan to carry them as devotional resources to be read and re-read as gifts in these challenging days. These are valuable starting points for reflection and meditation… a stopping to smell spiritual flowers.
For persons of faith, or those interested in exploring Christianity, I recommend these two theologian/prophets from the mid-twentieth Century as among the best of the witnesses of their time. First, take a look at a book about E. Stanley Jones and second, a book penned by Georgia Harkness. Both were essential Christian figures writing during our nation’s troubled times of war, depression, racial injustice and rapid social change.
Dr. Georgia Harkness
In the recently publishedThirty Days with E. Stanley Jones Jack Harnish offers a fresh look into the life of Jones – the mystic, prophet, missionary, peace activist, evangelist, ecumenist and global ambassador. Georgia Harkness’ Prayer and the Common Life is written for folks in that mid-Twentieth Century, socially moble, economically bubbling and globally expanding culture. Professor Harkness, theologian and philosopher, authored more than thirty books, some scholarly and many others, like Prayer and the Common Life, are meant to be accessible to the lay audience. I believe both have much to teach us, today.
By reading these two together one can see the hoped for seeds of renewal and unity anticipated in the church and society in those years, and at the same time, they point to the troubles ahead for Christendom caught up in narrow cultural understandings. For Christians inclined to devotional reading that comes from an earlier time and yet speaks with profundity to our current dilemmas, I lift these two remarkable people of faith for our personal and common benefit.
For believers, doubters or just plan folks interested, I share these two suggestions as remarkable additions to a good summer reading boquet.
Bob Greenleaf shared the story of an elderly, reclusive couple living in a small village who seldom ventured from their home. However, one day the elderly man set out alone on an adventure. He traveled to a nearby city and after some exploring he returned with a battered cello he had found on a trash heap. The damaged cello had but one string. The twisted bow stick had only a few remaining hairs. That evening and for weeks following, he seated himself in a front room corner and sawed away on the one single open string. Over and over he played one scratchy, repeated note. Day after day he played — his playing droned on increasing his wife’s unhappiness. Finally, able to stand it no longer, she decided to travel herself to the city.
Upon her return, she confronted her husband. “See here,” she said, “I have gone to the city and found people playing instruments very much like yours. The instrument is called a ‘cello’ and should have four strings. What’s more, those who play them move their fingers all along the neck of the cello and play many notes on each string.” “Even more,” she continued, “people often play these cellos along with many others instruments. The sound is beautiful and powerful when they all play together. I am told such a group is called a symphony. Why do you sit here day after day playing that one raspy note?”
The old fella gave his spouse a cold look and responded, “I would expect that of you. Those people you saw are still trying to find the one right note, I have found it!”
Robert K. Greenleaf, was a mentor to scores of folks; I was privleged to visit with him several times. His writings on Servant Leadership were widely read and practiced. Even in this, Bob knew that there would be the tendancy to turn his ideas into a distortion — a limited understanding — a one-note perspective. Too often it would be focused on “fixing” and “doing” rather than on “listening to others” and “reframing life with wider understandings.” Bob would chuckle at those who used Servant Leadership as a formula and say, “Leadership is a little like playing the cello. If you can’t hear the music maybe you shouldn’t try.” Or, Bob once opined “if you can’t share your playing with others, in a call and response way, then you will likely miss the beauty of the whole.
As I listen to the singular issues expounded in much of today’s social and religious discourse, I think of Bob and the story of the man and his broken cello. One note, one idea, one conviction (or two or three) can capture and predominate. Such behavior is like playing with too few strings on an instrument or giving too little attention to seeing things whole, seeing life and our challenges more comprehensively.
Perhaps you have seen the video of Johnny Mathis who holds one note, loudly, for almost a minute-and-a-half. It is amazing. Mathis is singing Johnny One Note, a song from the Broadway Musical “Babes in Arms” from 1937. (The movie version of this show starred Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney.)
The Free Dictionary identifies the idiom “Johnny-One-Note” as “Someone who repeatedly expresses or maintains a strong opinion on a single or a few particular subjects.” The song Johnny-One-Note and the idiom display the reality that when one person holds one note long and loudly, it is difficult to hear anything else.
Robert K. Greenleaf
Bob Greenleaf died on September 29, 1990, at the age of 86. Some of the wisdom Bob shared seems even more relevant today. He called himself an “institution watcher.” His experiences within large institutions like AT&T and the Ford Foundation led to his insights, his consulting and writing. In answering the question how does one best lead in humane, constructive and effective ways? He wrote “The best test, and difficult to administer, is: do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will he benefit, or at least, will he not be further deprived?” (From The Servant Leader, p. 7)
Bob is buried in his hometown of Terre Haute, Indiana after spending much of his working life in corporate headquarters on the East Coast. His head stone captures his sense of humor, and the whimsy of life, with an epitaph he wrote for himself: “Potentially a good plumber, spoiled by a sophisticated education.“
One of his many insights that comes today was his statement that “Whether we get a better society in the future will be determined by how well older people nurture the spirit of younger people.”
Bob Greenleaf encouraged folks to “see things whole;” maybe this is why he liked telling the story of the man and his battered cello.
philipamerson 