I recently returned from a cycling trip to Spain, hence the break in Evangelically Departed posts. I was part of a group of five cyclists and we were staying not far from Barcelona in a place well known to road cyclists called Girona.
This is the first time I have been on a cycling vacation and it was just about perfect.
We rode a lot, and the ideal weather meant that we could ride everyday. The roads were astoundingly good and the rides were beautiful. It was not expensive. The accommodation was not even close to half of what it would cost to stay in Vancouver and the food was much less expensive than here as well.
Anyway, the purpose of this post is not to offer a kind of travel brochure, but to give a theological reflection on the trip. It turns out that cycling is a great way to see a lot of places. We visited many villages and towns, mountain roads and the Mediterranean seaside. In every village that we rode through there was at least one common feature - a church; usually clearly having more to do with the past than the present or the future and mostly now part of the landscape of what people might describe as “beautiful”.
What was clear, though, is that in every case, the village church was not what it used to be. The churches sparked a kind of consideration of the past, of another time. Some of the villages were small and often the largest building was the church. In many cases it was clear that the church used to be the cultural and social hub of the community. Now, the building was adding to the patina-like serenity of the scene, but for the most part, it was abandoned. Left behind. Whatever role the church used to play in the community, for most people, it did not do this anymore.
Would you prefer going back? Would you like to live in a time - a century or more ago - when those churches were flourishing? What kind of ideas of God and of other people might have been prevalent then?
If you do long for such a past, have you asked yourself why people in town after town, place after place, have left the church behind? I often comment, in Evangelically Departed, about something I read in James K. A. Smith’s book, How to Inhabit Time. Nostalgia in the book is identified as an act of forgetting more than an act of remembering. Nostalgia, as you may have heard, is a longing for a past that never existed. We forget more than we remember.
It might just be possible, that even in my faith as a Christian I can be thankful that we have moved beyond the time when those churches in those villages were much more vital to the community. I’m confident that there were likely many good things about the time, about a simplicity of life, about people caring for one another, about the rhythms of daily worship and prayer. However, it is also likely the case that an understanding of God and others was perpetuated in many of those churches that saw others as bad or evil, that say unbelief as a kind of failure or terror, that saw people who did not fit in as deviant or sinful or even evil, that saw God as a kind of angry deity to be appeased.
Karl Barth, in a series of lectures that was compiled into the book “Evangelical Theology” (not “evangelical” in the political sense that the word carries today), pointed out that true and good theology must always move forward (“a theology of freedom that looks ahead and strives forward.”) We must grow in our understanding of God's love and goodness and in our views of self and of others. Is it possible that when theology does not move forward, the world leaves the church behind so much so that village after village, in country after country, is marked by visible reminders of such abandonment?
Many expressions of church are in decline again. The evangelical church, which once proudly boasted that only “liberal” churches were sinking, is now sinking faster than most before. In the part of the world in which I live this is being marked by those who do attend church regularly coalescing into new churches that look larger and “successful”, but often mostly gather people who have left other churches. If we look ahead a few years or decades it might be that what is left is a memory of what used to be. In most cases, there will not be beautiful old ruins, either. Unless people years from now see multi-purpose, theatre style auditoriums as beautiful.
If this sounds like hopeless lament, that is not my intent.
Riding through those villages I found myself thankful for the faith of the past, but grateful that we are no longer in the past. After I wrote a draft of this post I saw a news report addressing how the Catholic church in Spain is admitting that sexual abuse in its ranks was much more frequent than previously acknowledged. It is possible to be grateful for the positive aspects of the rich heritage of Christian faith while being grateful that damaging power structures are losing their grip.
I find the disintegration of the church rather hopeful. I am grateful for the church and regularly attend, even working at two local churches, but I don’t try to hold onto any particular hierarchy or model.
The disintegration of the church is the hope of the church.
The church disappearing into the world might just be a positive step for faith and life.