“The true issue for 2019 is maintaining dominance.”
Cynthia Astle in her excellent article “Where Do We Go from Here? Challenging the UMC's Will to Dominate” raises the real issue before our denomination, The United Methodist Church. She hits it squarely when she writes: “the true issue for 2019 is maintaining dominance.”
Isn’t this really the issue for every denomination today? The Anglican Communion is so divided over the how they deal with gays and lesbians that they, too, are coming apart at the seams. Who will determine the attitude? Whose will shall dominate?
The latest issue of domination among the Southern Baptists revolves around a president of one of their leading seminaries backing the idea that a wife who is the victim of domestic violence should stick it out because she may, as was the case in his example, be the cause of ‘bringing her husband back to church and Jesus.” The Roman Catholic Church conservatives, who were part of the majority under the last two popes, are finding themselves using words like “heretic” about the current pope because he is confused, thinking the church is on the side of the poor, not the proper and the powerful.
Constantine the Great
Head of the colossal statue of Constantine I, Musei Capitolini, Rome. Marble, Roman artwork, 313–324 CE. Wikimedia Commons Photo
For centuries, the church has been confused as to its real nature. From the time of the Roman Emperor Constantine, the church has been so cozy with those in power, those who dominate, that they have borrowed the mindset of the powerful, which is that the church should be powerful. By extension, those in the church who can dominate have the right to make the decisions.
Conveniently, the past couple of decades has seen the appearance of biblical scholarship that strikes right at this issue. One thread of biblical scholarship, which has developed in this new century, has been to uncover the context in which the New Testament was written and in which the early church formed: the Roman Empire. I’m familiar with more than 100 books that put flesh on the context of the first two centuries. (See my bibliography- https://subversivechurch.blog/bibliography/ )
What was the response by the followers of Jesus to the dominating, oppressing entity that was the Roman Empire? The true issue for the first-century church was not maintaining dominance.
First, Christians had no power to maintain. They, along with 95 to 98 percent of the residents of the empire, were the dominated.
Second, they had a different idea of who they were following. Again, to quote our editor, “I sometimes think this urge to dominate was the real reason that Jesus was crucified: he taught that all are equal – and equally loved – in God's eyes, confronting both Jewish religion of his time and Roman politics.”
Spot on, dear editor! This is what Empire Context Scholarship says to me. Jesus preached about a different empire, the Empire of God. When cornered by Pilate to answer whether he was a king, Jesus responded, according to one Gospel: “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” John 18:36 (NRSV)
Traditionalists draw the that wrong conclusion from this scripture. Instead of hearing Jesus say that God’s rule does not use the means of domination, they say that God’s Kingdom is not earthly, but in heaven. That would be to deny the Hebrew/Jewish understanding found in “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.” Psalms 24:1 It would deny Jesus’ prayer, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth” (as it is also done in Heaven.)
As our way of making decisions in the church we have even appropriated the false understanding of what democracy is: “Democracy is the rule of the majority.” Thus, with good conscience we can push through whatever legislation for which we can get the most votes. The church, when it has been true to its nature, has proclaimed something different, that “the role of democracy is to protect the rights of the minorities from domination by the majority.”
God is giving us an opportunity for the renewal of the church, which, to me, is more important than the unity of the church. The church is already divided; what would be new would be a renewed church following the spirit of the Christians of the first two centuries.
The Rev. H. A. “Bud” Tillinghast is a retired clergy member of the California-Nevada Annual Conference.