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

The Truth About Change

In the United Church of Canada, we have something called a Needs Assessment. It is a document that is created every time a church wants to hire a new minister. 

There is a formulaic way that a Needs Assessment is created and it ends up highlighting the community at large, as well as the congregation. It spells out the benefits that will be paid upon the successful hiring of a candidate and all that jazz - but at its heart, the document is exactly what it says it is. This is what we need. 

At the risk of sounding bitter - I can tell you what your church will say in its assessment before I even read it. 

I have read scores of them and helped to create a handful more. They all differ in terms of what they describe their community as, and to be fair and upfront one in a hundred will be different from what I am about to say - but in a nutshell, despite the idea that each church is creating a unique document, they are all the same...

Here is what they need:

- an engaging, biblically focussed preacher who can connect to all ages

- a minister who loves to visit and will always be there in times of crisis.

- a minister who will perform weddings, baptisms, and funerals.

- a minister who works well with others.

- a minister who loves children and youth.

- a minister who will do administration tasks.

- a minister who will be visible in the community and represent the church well.

In other words - someone who does what has always been done and does it better than the last gal.

If you read the whole package, the surveys, the write-ups, and everything between the lines - here is what I imagine every church means by this.

 - You have to be interesting enough that people will flock to hear your sermons.

 - You need to seek out every single person who ever attended this church and have tea with them and hope that makes them feel better and perhaps even come back on Sunday.

- You need to be willing to baptize our grandchildren from away while at the same time doing such a good funeral that we all feel taken care of.

- You need to not rock the boat. There are people in this congregation who have been doing things here longer than you and you have to honour their wisdom and play along.

- Bring back our kids. Pure and simple. Our church needs more people paying the bills and somehow that will be accomplished if young families come and bring their children.

- We need you to manage all the forms, census, housekeeping etc. in such a way that we do not have to worry about it, but simply vote on it. 

- Bring more people to church by going out there and being so popular and present that everyone who sees you anywhere wants to come to church on Sunday. 

And the unwritten expectation is this - you need to keep our church open, by getting more people, who will give more money, simply to enjoy the show on Sunday morning. 

You have to realize that this blog is where I air my own grievances and frustrations - so I apologize if that sounds bitter. But I think we need to start owning the real problems of the church. And this is a real one.

Every congregation seems to harbour this secret fantasy that they will magically return to the 1950's and 60's when their church was the "boys club" of professionals and the "wive's club" of the community and everyone went and everyone had coffee together, and maybe there was a church picnic, and there were bowling leagues and couple's clubs and everyone loved being there but no one really had to do anything.

The world has changed. Society has changed. Faith has changed. Technology has changed. Hell, everything has changed and the church is the one single organization that spends the entirety of its effort trying to go backward. 

We are not living in the past - we are actively trying to recreate it. To return to it. To glorify it. 

You know what - just because everyone came did not make it better. People were not more faithful. People did not follow Jesus and more closely. It was a sham. 

If we were serious about this whole faith being the important thing we would be spending all of our passion, energy, and enthusiasm in figuring out what we should BECOME and how different that needs to be from what we WERE.