A magazine article has been making the rounds among people interested in the evangelical expression of Christian faith. It was published in The Atlantic and authored by Peter Wehner. The article is called, “The Evangelical Church is Breaking Apart.” Depending on your perspective, your reaction to the title may be one of the following:
“Interesting. I wonder what this article is about. I think that I will read it.”
“I disagree. The gates of hell will never prevail against the church.” (My retort: “But the gates of heaven might prevail against the evangelical church.”)
“Hallelujah! This has been a long time coming.”
“Who cares?”
Wehner is writing from an American context. He has heritage within evangelical circles and the article argues that the fracturing of the evangelical church has accelerated recently with heightened conflict and political posturing. The Canadian experience is no doubt different, but we can see the evangelical church in Canada facing difficulty and decline and fracturing as well.
Religious faith is often seen as something that offers a sense of continuity and certainty within the storms of life. It is noteworthy that at a time when so much that we have taken for granted seems uncertain, church perhaps seems most uncertain of all. In my conversations and work with pastors and members of congregations I have seen this uncertainty. There are many words that can describe the feeling, but one that I feel works, a word that has entered my vocabulary of prayer is “displaced”.
No one is immune from the vicissitudes of life. We can’t stave off all unwanted change or loss, but what we have seen since March 2020 is a collective kind of trauma in which the ground that we used to stand has become less certain. Might there actually be hope in the coming apart of the evangelical church? I think that there is. Maybe some of the trends described in Wehner’s article are extreme versions of some of the excesses, distractions, and sanctification of political and moral views that many of us saw in milder forms. When such things are taken to their extreme they become a caricature, and as they tear down established institutions they leave behind swaths of destruction, but maybe also the possibility of renewal and life.
We are all having to learn to let go of certainty. For many people such a reality is fearful and daunting, but in hopeful ways of seeing the world we can sometimes glimpse the life and light within and beyond this time in which we are living.
Last week Jen and I were watching the evening news. There was a story on a weather phenomenon that was about to hit the area where we live. The phenomenon had a name that if we had heard before we did not recall. The term fit into a category of meteorological words that we had seen adopted into regular use recently, terms such as “heat dome” and “atmospheric river” (both of which visited our neighbourhood in this past year). The new term, at least new to us, was “bomb cyclone”.
A bomb cyclone occurs when a mid-latitude cyclone rapidly intensifies, dropping in atmospheric pressure at least 24 millibars over 24 hours.
Jennifer’s response when she heard the term was one that reflected the displacement and uncertainty felt by so many right now. Her words:
”That’s dumb. Now they are just making shit up.”
We knew that they weren’t, but such is the feeling at a time like this. Church is less certain, weather is less certain, life in general is less certain. I don’t quite know what it means to embrace the times, riding out a bomb cyclone, somehow welcoming major change in important and varied aspects of our lives. I do know that uncertainty can bring a heightened awareness of life, of blessing and of hope.
A prayer; (a bit rambling)
Dear God,
I pray for those feeling displaced right now; vocationally, emotionally, spiritually. For those feeling displacement in relationships, in church, in community, in work.
Grant us, in faith, an awareness that such displacement is somehow part of your character, that you did not remain far off, but in humility turned towards us, towards all of us. Bless us with compassion for those who are scared and angry about change that they have not welcomed. Such fear and anger can lead people to be such assholes, but help us to not dehumanize anyone, even those who dehumanize themselves. I saw Donald Trump doing the tomahawk chop with a big grin on his face at an Atlanta Braves World Series game recently. I mean, what the f#*k?! This dehumanization can go pretty deep.
I pray for those whose feelings of displacement lead not to anger, but to emotional turbulence or paralysis. I pray that we would aim for maturity and growth in times of difficulty. What might it mean to thank you for these times? How blessed am I to live this day? How blessed are each of us and all of us together? Dear God, grant that we might learn no more apocalyptic meteorological terms at least for a bit. It’s all been a bit much lately. And grant us awareness that many people in this world have lived lives without the any of the certainty that we took for granted for so long. May our displacement now bring us together with others in thought, prayer and action, not further apart.
Amen.