“In God We Trust”

In greed we trust.

In power we trust.

In politics we trust.

But God? Not so much.

I am desperate for a shift in the religious winds. I was recently asked why I think so many people have left the Church in America. “Oh my friend,” I said, “the list is like a Venn Diagram with circles overlapping and connecting. It’s hard to say what is the catalyst.”

Maybe sex abuse scandals from Church leaders. Maybe Evangelicals gleefully supporting a master manipulator for president. Maybe the pandemic took Church away and replaced it with hobbies and laundry. Maybe people can’t stomach another sermon about hell when it feels like their life is hell. Maybe the obsession with women’s bodies and the shame culture that cycles through. Maybe the “love” they have for LGBTQ folx that feels a lot more like rejection. Maybe the quest for Christian nationalism in a country founded on religious freedom that feels more like controlling shackles. 

I am desperate for a shift in the religious winds—a Holy Spirit groaning wind of peace—and I believe it’s possible.

Late Church historian, Phyllis Tickle, wrote about some markers in Church history. About every 500 years the Church holds a “great rummage sale” of all the extra accumulated junk to figure out what needs to stay and go in regards to doctrines, traditions, rituals, and practices. Decades of theological disagreements might pass, causing instability in systems and institutions until the last straw occurs and leaders become pressed to determine the future of the Church. In painful and sometimes violent outcomes, the Church splits, relationships severe, hearts break, and ways of religious practice die. 

But God tends to move through dead things to bring about life. And life can’t occur without death.

(A word about “rummage sale;” I can see how limiting this phrase is. Rummage sales are meant to sell off what is no longer wanted, however a lot of what needs to go, REALLY shouldn’t be given anywhere else. Maybe dumpster fire is a better term, but for consistency, we’ll stay with “rummage sale.”)

A first rummage sale came around 500 years after the birth of the Church and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. (Obviously the birth of Jesus was a significant historical shift, and about 500 years before that was another significant historical shift with the last prophetic writing—Malachi). During this time, the Roman Empire was being dismantled. Christianity had become an accepted religion without much pastoral oversight or doctrine, so defining what it meant to be a Christian and follow Jesus had to happen.  

Phyllis Tickle wrote in her book, The Great Emergence, that “During the long decline of it’s civil governance, the population of Rome was increasingly composed of illiterate barbarians who had grown weary of raiding the Eternal City and decided instead to take up residency and stay awhile. Because Christianity was the religion of the Empire, many, many of these new raiders-turned-citizens adopted it; but they also and inevitably adapted it as well.” 

Around 500 years after that, in 1054, was the Great Schism. In the most simplistic terms, after years of arguing and debating over some beliefs like whether communion bread should or shouldn’t have yeast in it as well as questioning if the Pope had ultimate authority over the Western and Eastern Church, they went their separate ways. The Western Roman Catholic Church insisted on unleavened bread and Papal authority while the Eastern Church broke away and continued as the Greek/Eastern Orthodox Church with a different structure. 

500 years after that another rummage sale broke out with the Great Reformation. German Catholic monk, Martin Luther (along with others), began deeply questioning some of the Roman Catholic Church’s practices, like indulgences, where Christians could pay the Church money for alleviation and forgiveness of sins or a deceased loved one moving from Purgatory to heaven. Because most people were illiterate and couldn’t study scripture for themselves, they believed what the Church decreed was what God decreed. On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther wrote out 95 things needing to go in the Roman Catholic Church and implored people to strip everything extra away to simply focus on Sola Scriptura, Sola Gratia, and Sola Fide — Scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone.

In the biblical book of Acts, we find this early church community. They met in the Temple courts. They met in each other’s homes. They broke bread and shared meals together and listened to teachings on scripture and prayed together. They made sure everyone had enough and there was equality and equity among them. Maybe this is idealistic today, but it sure sounds nice (although reading into Acts we find squabbles and arguments existed then). But, how did we get so far from this early example? Going from this early church, simple and inclusive, to an Empirical Church, to a split and another split and now thousands of Christian denominations splitting and starting and arguing and dying. 

The printing press had recently been invented before Luther broke away. People began having access to Bibles written in their own languages. These variables, plus a rise in literacy, created more Protestant denominations out different interpretations 

In the 500 years since the Reformation, the Church (Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant…) has picked up some good stuff along the way. But some of what we’ve collected is embarrassing. 

Colonialism. Indigenous boarding schools. Slavery. Purity culture. Patriarchy. Christian Nationalism. 

I believe it’s time for another rummage sale! (Or dumpster fire!)

Statements of Belief pages on church websites or denominational Books of Disciplines are long and thick, making sure to list out every little thing so no one gets God wrong. We fight about what we think it means that “God so loves the world” instead of simply believing that God so loves the world! We are more focused on upholding what we believe is “correct theology” than we are at loving people.

I believe we are on the precipice of new movements of Love but we live in a fearful world. Church leaders worry about the amount of people leaving and in a post-pandemic world, so many people never came back. We don’t know what the future of the Church looks like with more churches closing than opening. Fear-based questions make Christians either give up or get aggressive: What if our generation is the last Christian generation and this ends with us? What does this mean for our children and grandchildren? What are we leaving behind for them? Dilapidated buildings and some religious trauma?

I think there’s a lot of good old religion in the way of new Holy Spirit movements.

So I wonder, what needs to go in the rummage sale to create spaces for the Holy Spirit to breathe into our lives, to hover over our humanly hopelessness, to direct the way forward in greater love with awe and curiosity? What needs to be removed, stripped away, and what needs to stay? You might say, “Burn it all down.” And I get that sentiment of wanting to see it all go into the proverbial dumpster fire. But I ask you, have you sat in Mass lately or prayed the Lord’s Prayer alongside others? Have you engaged with your precious soul, recognizing your and your neighbor’s beloved worth? Have you been challenged to love your enemy and forgive others as you have been forgiven? 

I don’t believe the answer is to burn it all down, but I do believe when the church bravely sifts through all the old good and helpful stuff, is honest about what’s no longer helpful or even good, and humbly releases it, what we’re left with is Jesus and I believe there’s nothing better in the whole world than him. The constant throughout each of these profound historical movements is Jesus. So my friends, if your faith feels strained, if hope feels bleak, if it’s hard to be faithful along the way, know that God is faithful to you. God will make a way forward and it’s probably not the way we would have imagined, but there’s nothing to fear. 

May we let go of the religious vice grip.

In God we trust.

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Bethany Cseh is a pastor at Arcata United Methodist Church and Catalyst Church.