World of Love Sess12 - Radical Reformation in the Age of the Spirit

In the past, we had the so-called motive of saving souls. We were convinced that if not baptized, people in the masses would go to hell. Now, thanks be to God we believe that all people and all religions are already living in the grace and love of God and will be saved by God's mercy. -Father Walbert Buhlman, Order of Friars Minor Capuchin ¹

When mother church is dying, perverse energies are unleashed. Sadomasochism substitutes for morality, control for prayer, moralizing and condemnation for play and celebration, and a self-centeredness and preoccupation with human-made games and rules substitute for cosmic adventure, interest, wonder and living ritual. -Matthew Fox ²

If the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle? -St. Paul ³

The church is periodically under great pressure to change in response to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. If we translate that into the images of this study, we would say: The proliferation of stage 5 people, the increase of stage 6 persons and influences, and the incarnation of stage 5 and 6 principles into more of our institutions and causes renders current church structures and programs outmoded. Rather than pushing people to change, the churches tend to suspend growth at stages 3 and 4 or, in the case of the liberal churches, stage 5. I say "tend" because even the worst church reads the Sermon on the Mount with its stage 6 and 7 challenges, and every church includes a few people whose behavior transcends the congregation’s average stage level.

The age of the Spirit calls for radical change and gives by implication some specific guidance on the directions it should take. This session suggests some principles and guidelines and gives examples of such change.

A new reformation should be already taking place. Frankly, I can't see much happening except in movements like the Sojourners, some small groups in churches and the organization of a few new congregations which are dedicated to making gay and lesbian people feel welcome.

The equation of salvation-as-godlikeness is this: One cannot get to stage 6 and be filled with its universal values and live by them without identification with the poor, the weak, the oppressed. Only by taking in the pain and suffering of the victims of the world can we be broken open to a universal value system and dominated by its all-inclusive caring. Otherwise, our protests of universal love are just a head trip. Remember what Jesus said about people who intone, “Lord, Lord.”

Sadly, churches can't very well help people move on to stage 7 without embodying stage 6 in their faith and life. This is not to say that we advance because of our works. We are advanced by our immersion in suffering and experience of vulnerability. An inevitable implication of this is that we have to join the struggle for equality, justice and dignity for all.

Another implication of stage 6 is living by God's nonviolent love. At stage 6 all of us humans become brothers and sisters in one family. When Claire Gray, anti-nuclear activist, was challenged by the prosecutor as to why she didn't "render to Caesar the things are Caesar's," she replied, laughing, "Why Mr. Pavone, God doesn't tell us to kill our brothers and sisters."

Two Questions

In relation to church renewal our two questions take on this form:

(1) What would be different about the churches if salvation is understood more as becoming like God than getting to a place called heaven?

(2) What would a stage 6-7 church look like?

The age of the Spirit also raises a third question in the matter of church renewal:

(3) How are people to be become like God or reach stages 6-7 unless there is a living, acting community incarnating those principles so that they may see them with some clarity? If the trumpet sounds no clear call, who will know where to march?

The Faltering of Church Renewal

Much has been said in the last 40 years about the necessity for renewal of the churches. In the last decade or so, much more has been said about the failure of all these efforts. This session describes and evaluates the various proposed strategies for recreating the church in God’s image.

Most of all we need living examples of the new to show the stalled churches of our day what a stage 6-7 family of faith would look like.

There are two ways to go about this and both are honorable and can have some effect: The first way is to vote with the feet, to come out of the existing churches and form new communities of faith which embody stage 6-7 principles. The other is for those who believe they are called to stay and try to change existing structures from within. This requires the formation of small communities dedicated to living a stage 6-7 style of life within existing church structures, with all the conflict this ignites.

Strategy for Church Renewal

Since World War II there have been hundreds of books and experiments focused on renewal of the churches. These tended to take one of more of the following ways: liturgical renewal; social action; denominational restructure and mergers; evangelistic outreach; and house churches, small group life and retreats.

As a denominational and ecumenical bureaucrat at the time, I witnessed and took part in all of these.

None of them worked; none can solve any of the major problems faced by the churches, at least not by themselves.

1. Liturgical Renewal

Liturgical renewal with its vernacular masses, guitars and pop music and greater participation of lay people has been interesting, fun, and mildly helpful. It is, in a sense, a stage 5 kind of worship, which breaks out of the artificial, superstitious, gothic-awesome forms with a breath of fresh air.

It fails because the vitality of worship depends on involvements and changes taking place in the lives of the people. When people are learning to give and receive love, to forgive and accept forgiveness and are working at justice issues and really serving the poor and oppressed then, it's been my experience, any kind of worship is vital. When these are absent, no liturgical change really helps.

2. Social Action

During the sixties I was involved in the civil rights movement in Mississippi and in Indianapolis and in resistance to the Vietnam War. My colleagues on the national staff of the Disciples accused me of emphasizing social action to the virtual exclusion of the other aspects of the church's life.

What was not clear to me at that time, is that they were liberal Christians and I was becoming a radical Christian; we had come to quite different theologies and worshipped different Gods. I believed as they did in evangelism, service to individuals, vital local congregational life, the world mission of the church, and all the rest. But I came at all of these from a different direction. I was willing to see the denomination's giving and membership decline because of its involvements in standing up for the poor and against war, and believed that we would have experienced a corresponding vigor of spiritual life if we took that path.

This was not tested. The denominations all ended up muting their social action stands and starving those departments' budgets in order to meet the objections of conservative and pietistic Christians.

The denominations also had a disconcerting practice of jumping each year to a different brief enthusiasm which was just as quickly abandoned as we moved on to some other crusade. During 1965 concentration on civil rights was ending and the Vietnam War came to the forefront. In 1966 emphasis shifted to the less controversial War on Poverty. Individuals and social action departments continued what they could on civil rights and the war, but the balance of the burden had to be carried by secular groups because of the churches' unwillingness to sacrifice money and numbers in any cause whatsoever. Preservation of the institutional church structures came first.

One amusing and symbolically significant incident happened along about 1966, when I was editor of the Social Action Newsletter of the Disciples and had the portfolio of social welfare concerns. I was liaison to the National Council of Churches and its member denominations on the War on Poverty.

An organizational specialist from one of the most innovative large corporations in the country was invited to come and speak to our national staff, presumably to educate us on how our own bureaucracy might function more effectively in the service of God. He told how his corporation was experimenting with bringing in young people who were bright and nonconformist. Some of them, he said, had long hair and wore jeans and T-shirts. Some were loners. They were given tasks and the resources to carry them out and encouraged to do them in their own way. Gone were the emphasis on the gray flannel suit and the examination of an executive's wife and family for compatibility to the corporate style. In concluding, he challenged us to think that by means of innovative thinking and experiment we could become more efficient and solve our bureaucratic problems. At the conclusion of his talk, he asked for questions.

There was a long pause. Finally, I stood up and said something like this: "The common assumption here is that all our efforts should be directed toward increasing the number of members in the church and the amount of money coming in so that we may finance the work of God on earth." I paused to take a breath and he was nodding. This was an easy one for him because we had the same basic bottom line as his corporation. I continued: "But suppose that the task of the church is different.
Suppose that the mission of the church is to give its life, to die for the world as the Savior died on the cross for us all. Suppose that our job is to stand on the side of the poor and oppressed, at whatever cost, and in the process lose members and lose money, actually become smaller in the course of being obedient. Can you tell us how we would go about doing that?"

I still admire him for his answer. He smiled and he didn't even pause before answering. "It's up to you," he said, pointing his finger at us decisively, "to decide what the goals and objectives of the church are. You tell me what they are and I'll tell you how to do achieve them." And I've never doubted that he could have done it. There were a lot of dirty looks flung my way and an embarrassed pause. Then, someone got up and asked a question about internal functioning of a bureaucracy and we never got back to my question. I think the expert was frustrated because he really wanted to tell us how we could go about dying for the world efficiently.

It wasn't an option and it still isn't. The churches in their bureaucratic structures are dedicated to survival first and growth second. In effect, these are the only major objectives everyone can agree on.

There were some who agreed with me, in principle. But in sad fact, the mainline denominations have no clear theology. They are collections of people spread out over all six of Kohlberg's stages and with divergent theologies to match. They cannot take consistent directions and speak clearly because to do so would be to alienate and lose members. So the bureaucracies become places where vague inspiring language is the rule and bureaucrats are hired whose expertise is in double-talk and compromise.

The denominations continue to make a few brave statements on behalf of disarmament or social justice, which pastors are generally careful to see that their congregations don't hear about. the leadership has loved issues like Apartheid in South Africa which are far enough away not to upset anyone.

I joined the Quakers with the determination that I would keep one foot in the historic church while searching for a Christian community which could be an example such as we need. They seemed to me to be a less objectionable branch than the others. I love the equality of the sexes in leadership, the emphasis on all members as equally ministers, the pacifist tradition and active struggle against war, the openness to outcasts, and the theology of the Inner Light. However, the Quaker tendency to discuss endlessly how to act until the action has passed by, the devotion to old ways, awkwardness in dealing with the emotion of anger, and the bias against confrontation with evil systems in the name of gentleness all raise within me a very unquakerly fury at times.

As a minister in the Disciples I could not fully speak my mind. I could not preach what I believed without hedging. I could not say what was on my mind without offending others and endangering my job. I was schizoid, as I believe a great many ministers continue to be. Voting with the feet means to go find or found a community of faith in which we can say what we believe without muffling or mumbling, and that we can act on it without gross compromise with evil. It is to find a family of faith in which we can be whole and not split between a public image and a private convictions.

Radical social action is a necessary part at all ages, times and places of helping each other become like God. It is one way the god-self of agape naturally conducts itself in response to injustice and human suffering. But it does not accomplish church renewal by itself.

3. Restructure and Mergers

Denominational restructure and mergers almost never help reform or renew the churches.

When I was with the National Council of Churches in the 1970s the Council itself and most of its large member denominations went through a major reorganization. These restructures were supposed to be based on new theology which used all the latest jargon about mobilizing the laity, ministry of all the people, concern about the poor and the oppressed, and so on. So far as I can tell they did little for any of these causes. More women were brought on staffs or elected to high office. More minorities were brought in. Little has changed because the same crippling facts obtain.

The denominations continue to be giant collections of people of vastly different theologies, strung out all along Kohlberg's six stages. Consequently, every time they restructure or labor for a year to set up new criteria and procedures for allocating their money it comes down to making a place in the system for every pressure group in the church. What emerges looks like an ecclesiastical camel, an animal which reputedly was put together by a committee. The new structures are as theologically vague, ambivalent about how the church should live, and bureaucratically muscle-bound as the old. Sometimes moreso.

The results of denominational mergers are worse, and this deserves a book in itself. When northern and southern Presbyterians merged, most of the time in discussions had to be given over to how to accommodate all the institutions to one another and how to keep on most of the old bureaucrats. A huge amount of money was spent.
The denomination had to move more to the right, politically and biblically, to accommodate the southerners. The crippling effect of theological diversity became even greater. The merger postponed further the day when Presbyterians will be able to openly welcome practicing homosexuals into the ministry. It became an example of what Bishop Ivan Holt of the Methodist Church described back in 1947 in this way: "Uniting two icicles never produced any warmth."

Interestingly, the March, 1989 agreement for greater church cooperation and unity by the denominations participating in the Council on Christian Unity (COCU) seems to agree with me. Structural unity is not only not in the cards, but is increasingly seen as undesirable, I suspect for some of the reasons I've noted above.

Contributions of the Liberals

I have been too negative about liberal Christians. I've been one for most of my life and still continue to be in most respects. We tend to attack hardest those most like ourselves.

Do stage 5 liberal denominations have a role to play in God's economy? Yes, of course. They help move people from stages 3 and 4 over to stage 5. They generate liberals. This is a great contribution to church and society. But it still is my contention that those who find themselves split within by what they are required to do in service of those churches would better serve God, themselves and their families if they walked out and found or created communities where they could speak and act with full honesty. I respect my friends who have stayed with the leadership in these groups. I admire sometimes the grace and daring of their political high wire act without a net. But I do not think they best serve God, the church or themselves by being willing to "be damned for the glory of God." To die for others may indeed be blessed of God. But does God ever ask any of us to sicken ourselves morally and psychologically by stifling a part of our deep inner convictions just to stay in a position of leadership where we can effect small changes? Isn't there always a better alternative?

4. Small Group Life

The most effective renewal since the fifties has been done by house churches or small prayer, action or encounter groups within or alongside existing congregations. I have helped organize and been a part of a half dozen of these.

Some have been primarily social action coalitions which also engage in Bible study, worship and interpersonal sharing. All have helped break through to a certain extent the prevailing boredom of creative people within the sterility of local church life. By sterility I mean the deadness of worship and other inner church life due to the fact that most of the people have been church members for years and it has changed them hardly at all.

The customary defense is that people can change if they open themselves to the influence of the church, and those who don't change, by definition, haven't opened themselves.

In these small groups this argument is exposed as a cop-out. People have been drawn in and led to experience self-examination, sharing and social involvement which have broken them open and started a process of radical inner change. I've seen it happen repeatedly. This exposes the barrenness of the usual church organization and practice.

I am asking why anyone should want or need to stay within a stage 4 or 5 church when it is possible to go out and find or found a stage 6-7 congregation, based on a stage 6-7 theology and style of life. Such a congregation can be a more hospitable home for persons at all stages and can nurture people along faster and more effectively in their growth. Children and adults operating at lower stages can be compared to members of a family with mature parents. Mature adults nurture children along faster, more smoothly and effectively because the organizational principles of the family are dialogical rather than patriarchal and punitive.

Who, then, is going to keep the stage 3, 4, and 5 congregations going in order to serve their function of picking people up where they are and moving them along in their growth? The answer should be obvious. The people who believe in them honestly will participate in and run them honestly. Those who can no longer believe in them wholeheartedly might better get out and move on for the sake of the mission of the church on earth as well as their own psychological, spiritual and moral health rather than trying to change them from within.

5. Evangelism

There are those who list a fifth element in church renewal. The church is renewed and stays fresh, they claim, whenever it is an evangelistic, missionary church. The continual addition of new joyous, youthfully enthusiastic members is a constant renewing force.

Japanese theologian Masao Takenaka commented ruefully that evangelism is too often like pulling a fish from one dirty pond (the world) and putting it into another dirty pond (the church). We also remember Jesus' accusation against the Pharisees that they ranged the world making converts who became twice as much sons of hell.
Effective evangelism, which is also faithful to the God of transforming agape, is that based upon a powerful example of redemptive, loving community. Wherever missions has succeeded in the world, succeeded in producing god-like character, it has been through this kind of example of life and not through verbal pyrotechnics or vivid audiovisuals. Authentic life produces authentic life. Evangelism, outreach, should be done by those who are filled with joy and not those pushed by grim sense of duty or fear of hell.

Evangelism compatible with agape is inviting people to "come and see," to "taste and see that it is good." People will come and visit and look at the Christian community. If it is real many will stay and be changed. If it is not a community of agape, they will go away or they may stay but for the wrong reasons.

How will these faith communities be different?

Controversy, a Mark of the True Church

If we want to see where the church of tomorrow is emerging we will look beyond the above formally correct qualities. We will be on the watch for a kind of reckless daring in both witness and intimacy.

It will certainly involve a more passionate involvement in social justice causes and serving the poorest of the poor.

And -- a big change -- it will also involve deliberately tackling controversial issues and grappling with them in the congregation, rather than avoiding it as the churches do now. This is a part of the churches’ vital function in preparing people for the 21st century and true maturity. If the churches cannot cope with controversy within, how can they be of help to people who will have to help decide the most difficult and complex political and economic and moral issues out in the world?

The Beacon Hill Friends Meeting, to which I belonged, is not yet a stage 6-7 community, by far. But some of its practices reflect aspects of such a faith community.

One example: A weekend retreat in the late Fall of 1987 was given over to the consideration of the explosive subject of same sex marriage. There were worship and prayer and play during the retreat. But most of the time was given to seeing if the group could come to a consensus on the subject of whether men can marry men and women wed women. There were deep differences, especially since the group was divided about equally between gay and lesbian members and those who are heterosexual.

It was reported to the Meeting the next Sunday that, while no final agreement was achieved, there was a deep feeling of oneness and love in the group and a sense that they had been in the presence of the Spirit in their deliberations.

The contrast should be clear. The congregations I've belonged to in the past would not have even sponsored such a discussion. Most of them could not even docket a discussion on the Vietnam War. One of the characteristics of a stage 6-7 community, at the very least, is that no topic on which even one member feels strongly is taboo, and there is an openness to listen, discuss and consider being changed. There is also a commitment to living in love and understanding with people whose opinions differ sharply from one's own.

There is no assertion that the people who belong to the Beacon Hill Friends Meeting are more moral, more intelligent, more spiritual, or in any other way superior, on the average, compared to the membership of any congregation anywhere.

The point is that the community has a theology and style of life which are different. It is a community established on
principles and practices considerably nearer to a stage 6-7 theology and style of life.

An analogy -- as to the strategic importance of structures -- would be the US Constitution, a stage 5 document which has operated as a major change agent in the direction of political maturity in a nation the majority of whose adult citizens continue to function primarily at stages 3 and 4.

There is a reverse analogy in the world of politics. Compromise, some say, is the heart of politics and the churches are organizations in which compromise must be a part of the life. Not wholly untrue. But it must not be compromise with the evil of the institutions of the world outside the church. This is the way to continue and refuse to heal the disastrous poisoning of the life of the church which goes back to the time of Constantine when the church began to bless war and take part in it.

Beacon Hill Friends Meeting has members who are not pacifist and who disagree with some actions and statements of the community. No one demands that they conform or asks them to leave. They are welcomed and loved.

We must recognize that the church is not to be an institution in the same sense other organizations in society are. It is meant to be the people of God, representing God's Kingdom in the world. When it embraces violence or other evil means in order to try to influence the nation and its policies and their policies, it only confuses its message and leaves God's love without clear witness in the world.

This ideal of open, unfettered communication is the core of Jurgen Habermas' definition of how society must come to function. To him this is an essential condition for the development of ethical and moral maturity. Habermas characterizes his stage 7 as the place where "the principle of justification of norms is no longer the monologically applicable principle of generalizability but the communally followed procedure of redeeming normative validity claims discursively." ⁴

Actually, we all have to have controversy, challenge and examples of advanced moral thinking and living to lead and push us beyond where we are, to give us the ability to transcend each stage and move on.

If we need controversy to grow, keeping the peace should be a third level objective within the churches.

Quality Rather than Quantity

This brings us again to our other basic question: the difference it makes in faith and life if one believes salvation is ultimately to become like God. It is more important for the churches to help a few people to grow decisively -- those who are willing to -- than it is for them to keep a lot bodies within the four walls of the institution. In the long run, this will bring more people to godliness and will change society more rapidly and positively than will a spurious inclusiveness at a minimal level of commitment.

When we no longer believe in a hell of punishment, then we are free to live out this very different view of how the churches should be living.

Fortunately, the church is not limited only to its own resources. Communities spring up in the secular world which challenge the churches' apathy, as with the civil rights
movement in Mississippi in the 1960s which, in its early years, showed a remarkable level of non-violence, participatory egalitarian leadership, and sacrificial love for the poor and for one another. This did not last beyond the sixties, but it exposed the serious sickness of the institutional churches by a clear vision of what they should be like.

Such examples also occur repeatedly at the fringes of the institutional church, from the life and order of St. Francis through the contemporary base communities in Latin America.

Redemptive Small Groups

Understanding salvation to mean becoming like God and picturing a stage 6-7 organization alter decisively the terms of the discussion of church renewal.
This calls for churches which are more open to discussion, discovery, experiment, conflict. If no one will be lost to God in the end, it is not important to hold on to those who do not accept change. Size and wealth are no longer as important as clarity and daring in living out of God's nonviolent, self-giving love on earth. The power to change individuals and move them forward in growth is more important than keeping those who do not accept the heady new wine of controversy or the threat of intimacy in small prayer-encounter groups.

People are changed and history is moved by small groups which incarnate and exhibit the power of the new being of agape. This wholistic style of life will attract people who are ready to change and it will repel those who are not.

A great historian wrote of how reforms and revolutions, significant innovative changes, take place in history:

... the strongest organizational unit in the world's story would appear to be a thing which we call as "cell," for it is a remorseless self-multiplier, it is exceptionally difficult to destroy, it can preserve its intensity of local life while vast organizations quickly wither when they are weakened at the centre; it can defy the power of governments and it is the appropriate level for prising open any status quo. ... And the men who form cells are pursuing a higher strategy than those who seek immediately to capture governments; for those who make a direct bid to capture a government must bow before existing gods and existing tendencies in order to open a path to power; while those who form cells have no need to dilute their purposes or to purchase favor from the superiors of the status quo. ⁵

Liberal church people who seek stay in power in existing church governments and institutions should consider more deeply how God's strategy for advance in history seems to operate. Liberal churches are in several respects stage 5 churches. God's plan did advance a notch at the point they began to be. God's success involves advancing at least two more notches, so that the world may see and believe the full love of God in all its glory and joy.

Those living in the age of the Spirit have to sit looser to institutions and institutional loyalty. The churches must incarnate and live nonviolent, sacrificial love for the poor and for one another, rather than trying to return to or enforce out-moded morality and structures. They must be willing to trade some numbers and money for spiritual vitality and a style of life which changes people radically.

My criticisms of the institutional churches arise from no bad experiences or personal resentment. Churches and church people have treated me only with kindness, encouragement, forgiveness and much needed assistance of other kinds. If the above evaluation seems extreme I invite the reader to examine the similar charges made by
M. Scott Peck in The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace:

The Maundy Thursday Revolution began to be aborted at the time of Constantine, when Christianity became a legal religion. A short while later the abortion was virtually complete when it became the official religion. It then became safe to be a Christian. The crisis was over. And when crisis ends, community generally tends to fade away. So, as if the time of martyrs largely passed, so did the life blood begin to flow out of Christianity and out of the Church.

We come here to the nub. Because Christ so clearly called us to peacemaking, the Church is the most important key to disarmament. But in order for the Church to get wholeheartedly behind the disarmament movement the issue of the arms race will have to be fought out within the body of the Church. And I do not mean simply fought out within the councils of Church leaders. It must be fought, parishioner struggling with parishioner, in each and every congregation across the land.

In fact, the Church has failed in one dimension because it has attempted to be too inclusive. ... The plain reality is that by and large the Church has not been in the community game, it has been in the numbers game. The second thing to remember is that there are vast numbers of uncommitted religious who remain uncommitted because they have never seen a church worthy of their commitment. What they have seen instead are churches in the numbers game, churches that are wishy-washy social clubs, churches that lack community and the spirit of community ...⁶

Questions for Thought

1. Does your congregation embody stage 6-7 principles and practices? List them. Does it have small groups? Does it have controversy over more than the color of the new carpet? Where would you place it on the Kohlberg scale? Is there a statement of mission? What does it say about justice or the poor and oppressed? About world peace?

2. What would like to change in your congregation after this study and how would you go about it?

Contact the author: vjross22@hotmail.com

1. Time, December 27, 1982, page 52
2. The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, Harpers, 1988, page 29
3. I Corinthians 14:8 (NIV)
4. Communication and the Evolution of Society, page 90. Habermas, on the grounding of ethics in truth, writes: "... in the final analysis the idea of truth requires recourse to an agreement that, if it is to be capable of holding as an index veri et falsi, has to be conceived as if it were achieved under the ideal conditions of an unrestricted discussion free from coercion." Philosophical-Political Profiles, The MIT Press, Cambridge, 1985, (Translated by Thomas McCarthy), page 122
5. Herbert Butterfield: Writings on Christianity and History, edited by Herbert Butterfield and C.T. McIntire, Oxford University Press, 1979, page 25
6. A Touchstone Book, Simon & Schuster Inc., New York, 1987, pages 295, 299-302

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