Leave Main Street USA behind

You may not know that my wife is a fairly serious addict of Walt Disney World. Yes, she'll also generally want to see Disney movies and other stuff but Disney World is her place of bliss. I don't share that enthusiasm, but I try to go along with it because marriage. (My one complaint is that I think we should visit Disneyland at least once, which she has no desire to do.)

Admittedly I use those trips (outside of one, for Epcot's Food & Wine festival in the fall, which I use for...food) for different purposes than does she. Usually I'm mentally deconstructing the place, trying to shake out clues to the culture that made that spot so ridiculously popular. While this works to varying degrees in the different parks, it's never more rewarding (or depressing) than in the flagship park, the Magic Kingdom.

While virtually anything in that park is ripe for such rumination, it's entirely possible that ther is no more fertile ground for it than the very entrance to the park, once you get past the ticket booths and gates (and security): the Town Square and Main Street USA.

It's the site of parades every day (at least when the park doesn't get closed by hurricanes). Behind the somewhat gaudy nineteenth-century-ish veneer, it's all about what a Main Street is frequently about: selling stuff -- in this case Disney merchandise, naturally, with some food thrown in.  It's generally crowded and noisy and extremely white (in terms of the Main Street it portrays).

It's fairly public knowledge, I think, that Main Street USA is Walt Disney's attempt to recreate (in an idealized fashion to be sure, as memory tends to do) the Main Street of his hometown in Missouri. Walt did not include one for obvious reasons, but I have to wonder what church or churches were on that "real" Main Street when he was growing up. It would be interesting to know, I think to have a clue about just what churches were busily fitting themselves into the culture, personal and commercial, exemplified by that Main Street.

May I suggest that, for some segments of the church today, that Main Street USA is a pretty good representation of the problem of some of our mainline churches and denominations?

Nostalgia can be deadly, you know. The more we yearn for what is past, the more we choke off whatever future is out there for us. And yet so much of the mainline -- from the folks in the pews to the folks running things on higher levels -- are profoundly hung up on (a) preserving what little "Main Street" real estate we have left, holding on desperately to the last little shreds of influence we have (or think we have) in Mainstream America, or (b) desperately trying to get back. For every visionary you see in a pulpit or an office or a classroom trying to urge the church forward, there is at least one desperately trying to get back to Walt's Eden, between the millinery shop and the ice cream parlor.

But that's not the place for the body of Christ to be, and it never was. The poor and the oppressed may be on Main Street in your town, but they're decidedly not on Main Street USA. And (painful as it is to say sometimes) where they are is where the body of Christ needs to be.

Even this mainline guy (UCC, right?) falls for the seduction of Main Street USA... *sigh*

Time to relocate. Put out the FOR SALE sign and look for a place closer to the need. It's not without pain (I'm not above a good chili dog at Casey's Corner), but Main Street USA is not our home, and we don't need to get caught up in trying to hold on to what should never have been ours. 

The Year of Matthew 10:34

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace to the earth, but a sword.
For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daugher-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's foes will be members of one's own household. 
Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 
Those who find their life will lose it; and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

Matthew 10:34-39


(Reminder: evangelicals, you were told way back at the beginning of this blog re-reboot that this blog was not for you.)

I'm not sure how much this kind of thing gets beyond what might be called "church Twitter," but if you note much of that you are probably aware of the release of the "Nashville Statement" earlier this week. (Google it; I have no intention of propagating it further than it has already spread.)

The statement has already been torn apart in multiple fashions. Its attempt to situate an anti-LGBTQ+ screed in the church's historical belief is punctured here by some historians; other groups have offered point-by-point rebuttals like the Denver Statement (spearheaded by mainline-ish quasi-celebrity pastor Nadia Bolz Weber); pastors have noted its odd lack of scriptural foundation (no reference to the "six verses" or "seven verses" in particular); petitions have been signed and so forth and so on. It made for an active week on "church Twitter."

In short, many far more skilled and informed pastors and scholars and writers and other folk have debunked the content of the statement to a degree I cannot hope to match much less exceed. Go read. Inform yourself.

My intent here, on the other hand, is to argue that at least one part of the "Nashville Statement" should absolutely be taken seriously.

Article 10 of said statement is for some the most brash part of the statement, claiming as it does that "it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism and that such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faith and witness," and that the issuing speakers "deny that the approval of homosexual immorality or transgenderism is a matter of moral indifference about which otherwise faithful Christian [sic] should agree to disagree." In short, you cannot disagree with the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (the issuing group behind the manifesto) and be a Christian, according to the CBMW. Its president, Denny Burk (who seems awfully famous for reasons I cannot fathom), flat-out calls Article 10 a "line in the sand." It is meant to exclude.

OK, fine, I'm not part of your group.

As I have noted, this blog is addressed to my fellow dying mainliners, that twig of the church that others like either to belitte or ignore. The likes of the CBMW are certainly not under my authority to any degree. I, however, am not under their authority either, and frankly their orders do not apply to me. Trying to do my job and fulfill my call in the corner of the church I now occupy is enough challenge for me. I care about those persons, particularly those LGBTQ+ persons who are yet again being dragged through the slime by some particularly hateful pastors, who are directly harmed by the statement. The persons who issue such statements are irrelevant to me and have no place in my thought or theology, outside of the occasional sermon about those who get hung up on "statutes and ordinances."

Other mainliners do not share my indifference. The whole reason "church Twitter" gets all riled up is precisely because such hardcore evangelicals cannot resist rising to the bait when groups like this bleat out statements like this. Personally, my blood pressure couldn't take such regular "engagement" in such disputes, but it's not my place to judge them either.

What I do have to go on about, and be a little bit of a jerk about, is the degree to which mainliners tend to get fluttery about this to the detriment of being about our business of serving and following.

We have a lot to do: welcome to the unwelcome; care for those for whom nobody cares; proclamation of the gospel without bullying; non-stupid worship; presenting our bodies as living offerings and being transformed by the renewing of our minds and such work as that. We'd also be well-advised to get on with welcoming and loving those who are targeted by these occasional blasts from the would-be popes of evangelicaldom. Instead, we have this bad habit of getting obsessed with the ones doing the blasting.

I so wish we would grasp the truth of Matthew 10:34.

At the risk of trumpeting my own sermon, it's not about seeking to cause division. It is, however, also not about avoiding division, about being so cowed by those who come bringing the sword that we forsake our call to follow and serve. It emphatically is not about engaging in some kind of "let's not offend anybody" straddling that does nothing but shield the bullies.

It is about living in the light, living in Christ, living as if Jesus were going to show up tomorrow (after all, He just might), which only happens by living in love. If that means the sword comes, then the sword comes.

Cutting to the chase for us mainline types: our call as a people of God, as followers of Christ, is not enhanced by getting into these pitched battles with these militant forces of fundamentalism. It's not our call to fight that war.

Maybe our call is to be the medics, the ones who are called to extend ourselves out into the battlefield to gather up the wounded, to bring them in to safety and welcome them and care for them and even join with them in doing Christ's work in God's world.

Can we please get on with it?

Maybe we're called to be stretcher bearers in the church wars?