Dark Times as Colonialism Dies

Yesterday I listened to an interview on the CBC with author Alexandra Fuller who was brought up by white and English parents in Rhodesia, which has since become Zimbabwe.

Her candour in describing systemic racism and white supremacy as a matter of course was really astonishing. However, in the midst of the interview, she said a casual throwaway line that reverberated in my brain for the last twenty-four hours. She said, "These were the last days of colonial rule, and in the end times, the people hold on the hardest."

It was as if a light bulb went off in my thinking about the modern world.

In the last days of a system - instead of accepting the coming change and working to move carefully and harmoniously into the new world order, we fight tooth and nail against said change and seek to hold ever more tightly to the past.

Wow.

First off, the whole populist political shift in the world all of a sudden makes sense. We know, intuitively, that these are the last days of capitalism and our current economic system. We know that these are the last days of nationalism and independence. We see through travel, global economies, and transnational corporations that, well, everything is changing and what will be remains to be seen.

When I first started to become interested in the church, in religion and the like - I was still in the tail end of the era when we thought everything was set in stone. The '80s were a rich and heady time when everything was working. Systems and institutions had power. Racism and Sexism were being addressed. Life looked good for a few years there before it inevitably fell hard.

As the world tilts on its axis, we are finding ourselves deeper and deeper into shifts where we do not see the outcome. Whether we are talking the move from a goods-based to an information-based society, whether we are talking about the divide and class structures, or whether we are speaking of the climate disaster that will destroy most of what is left - things are changing and the final form of our politics, economy, and even global map seems unwritten.

But then it clicked in terms of church.

We are dying faster than most.

Or, rather, becoming irrelevant in the new system.

At our full power, the church controlled the medical, educational, and perhaps even the political realm. Now we have trouble influencing the crosswalk guard.

(see, this is where it clicked for me - I have for a decade been questioning how the mainline, progressive, left-wing United Church is attracting clergy, leaders, and even congregants who are right-leaning and traditionalist - that simply is not our jam, or was not our jam when I decided to play with the band) 

It only makes sense that what we see in our dying congregation is the last gasp of holding on to something of the past. Ministers are becoming more authoritarian and old fashioned. People are actually talking about heresy and fundamentals and things that would have been laughed out of an annual meeting not that many years ago. Our church who once fought the government for inclusion of LBGQT++ issues now turns inward and fights about the nature of biblical inerrancy or Christological significance.

I have been riding along, wondering who cares, and why, and how we got so off track from the socialist hippy message of loving everyone and sharing that Jesus taught us in kindergarten.

And it really is just fear. It really is just a lack of acceptance that those days are over. It is the hardcore believers in the institution and in the Christian Kingdom refusing to let go and say this is no longer Rhodesia and controlled by the Whites, it is now Zimbabwe and open to everyone getting their say.

(I realize it might not be the best example because Zimbabwe and most of the post-colonial countries had a hard go of it too - but I hope you get the meaning behind the example - the "church" we grew up in is not coming back...)

I think that we are seeing staunch belief in old fashioned religious ways of thinking because we are witnessing the fear of death. And the reality that death leads to resurrection is not good enough for most, because we cannot control the form of resurrection.

What will "faith" look like on the other side of this period of upheaval and change? We cannot know. But it too, like global boundaries, politics, and economic systems, will change. The change will be rapid and continue to be painful.

It could be easier if we let go.

But I admit it is always scary when you need to let go in order to fall into the unknown. It is hard to go with the flow and live in the moment and realize you cannot control tomorrow...

Still... we should try