Here goes my new blog

All,
Here goes a new effort. I'm not sure how it will turn out, and if you happen across this blog, I'd be interested in your reaction. The dialog we might create about the matters discussed here will sharpen what I think. I never really know much without listening carefully. I want to listen to you.

While this not an official DJAN effort, as one of the founders of the DISCIPLES JUSTICE ACTION NETWORK, I am passionate about what this decade-old organization has done, is doing and will do. I have known many of you over the years--and you have known me, so much of what I say will probably be familiar.

Since returning from teaching theology in Australia, Wendy and I have lived at Pilgrim Place in Claremont, California. I do some teaching for the Disciples Seminary Foundation, and am employed about a quarter time for Progressive Christians Uniting--a peace, justice, ecumenical body. I put out a hard hitting "Alert" for them, and will add you to the list is you send your e-mail address to me at cbayer@pcu-la.org.

Now let's get down to business!

I am a churchman. I have served it all my life. I believe in it. A number of years ago I published a book called, Hope for the Mainline Church. The last chapter was really dedicated to a young minister--a Timothy. My advice to him was "love the church." Over the years of his ministry he encountered plenty of reasons NOT to love the church. He is now out of the ministry and out of the church. He does not love it.

While that grieves me, I understand it. I have had, and still do, a love/hate relationship with the church. I still hope that God will find new ways to use it as a forerunner of what Jesus called the Commonwealth (Kingdom--Reign) of God. But hope is not optimism, and my confidence in what I find in so many congregations, and in our extra-congregational bodies--Regions and the what we have called the "General manifestation,"-- is modest in the extreme.

We'll get to those issues as we go along in these blogs. But briefly, and with particular relation to the Disciples of Christ: I find congregations here and there which are open, clearly identified with God's call for justice, peace, equity and inclusion. However, I find many more just fixated on trying to survive, and as such have lost any edge which says, "It is the world, not the church, which should be at the heart of our message."

I talk to ministers who know what is asked of faithful people in our day, who never say anything about GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) inclusion or the disaster of the war against Iraq or much anything else, because they tell me, "I have lost too many people already, and I can't afford to offend those who are left. So I must try to be a pastor and not to raise issues I really can't to anything about." So they sit quietly in the middle of the boat watching it slowly sink.

I see much the same thing among the work of our Regions, and even in the Office of the General Minister and President. Now Sharon Watkins has an impossible job, with not enough resources and with a denomination that is not sure what it is to be or do. It seems to me that she--and the rest of the church--has a brace of options. She can either see her job as trying to hold onto what is left of a troubled church, or pointing in a hard new direction. For now it seems that she has mainly taken the first option, while John Thomas of the United Church of Christ--at some risk--has said: "Folks, here is a direction we need to go, and if there are those ready to go with me, come along."

So much for that. I will not spend much time in denominational or other church gymnastics. I am far more concerned about what is going on outside our ecclesial cocoons--and so to a couple of those larger issues in the next entries to this blog. But for now that's enough of an introduction.

I will end these blogs as I did editorials I did on the nightly ABC news in St. Joseph, Missouri: 'But that's just my opinion.' So please feel free to share yours with me and with others reading this blog.

Charles Bayer

DON'T GIVE UP ON THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

It is important to affirm the roots of faith. I am a Christian because of the stories, myths, metaphors images, and hopeful dreams which have come to me and therefore define who I am. At heart, these stories are shaped by the life and ministry of Jesus--his story. And Jesus was a story teller.

Every religion has its metaphors. They are the only way anyone can approach the Mystery to which they simply point. They are not proof, but only evidences of that which cannot be proved.

When religious people forget that their holy stories are only ways to approach the divine Mystery, and assume they are literal, historic, scientific facts, the rest of the world tends to be in trouble.

My despair about Christian fundamentalism is the same as my despair about fundamentalisms of any religion--or any economic political, nationalistic air-tight orthodoxy. The belief that the myths of one's tradition are true, and everybody else's only dangerous fantasy, continues to plague an already troubled world. Fundamentalist Christianity, Islam and Judaism, while growing out of many of the same stories, foul the nest when any of their adherents take them literally, and they become matters of doctrine.

Ed Bacon, Rector of All Saint Church in Pasadena, recently said, "Faith is what you are willing to live for. Doctrine is what you are willing to kill for."

Progressives--and I have never been fond of that designation--are committed to a faith growing out of stories, which may point to the truth, but do not define it. These stories are the ship, not the cargo. Their basic use is to transport the cargo from one place to another. To worship the ship is idolatry.

To defend our truth as absolute makes everyone else an enemy, so we support wars against "them". We defend our homes against "them" with firearms. We kill "them" with capital punishment. We legislate our superiority against "them" by manipulating the tax code in our interest. We call "them" heretics or infidels, deviants, unclean, and unrighteous. And we have doctrines and texts to prove how right we are.

Authentic faith grows out of hearing stories of love, inclusion, forgiveness, generosity, justice, compassion for what they are. Jesus not only told stories. but also lived them out. To follow Jesus means to spread our arms as wide as he spread his. So the "them" become brothers and sisters to be embraced, not enemies to be defeat. The political and social implications are enormous!

I am not about to give up on Christian faith because it has been turned into a weapon against whomever the "them" of the moment happens to be. If our stories do not make us more loving, just, accepting and generous, then of what use are they? They are only the seeds of self-righteousness, bigotry and violence.