Redbud tree
A redbud tree in bloom.
Special to United Methodist Insight
There is a certain kind of visceral joy that overtakes when one beholds a redbud tree in April. Its bright purple blossoms stand sentinel to Spring, to new life, new hope from rocky outcroppings in the American South to far distant dunes of sand on the shores of the Great Lakes.
Weeks ago, when April was not yet a memory, late-season snow blanketed the redbud’s blossoms from Missouri to Pennsylvania. The effect of the snow was devastating to the beauty of these otherwise hardy trees which had bloomed brilliantly in the unusual warmth of an early spring. The brilliant blue-red petals on the tree in the parsonage yard browned and dropped within days despite inches of snow lingering only hours.
Almost simultaneous to this event the first honest, albeit anecdotal, reports of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on churches in the region began to emerge with greater clarity. A local church plant, seemingly thriving before the pandemic, had ceased operation. Various congregations report the need to replant and restart ministries of varying size from the ground-up. Broader studies suggest a trend, while many communities of faith rose to the challenges of the last year, many more have felt a frosting in their human and financial resources alike.
It is tempting to chalk the chill up to Covid-19, restrictions on gathering, and the isolation of the last year. It is possible to sense something else in the air as well.
The spiritual and cultural climate of the United States is changing.
The reality of this climate change has been observed by a multitude of witnesses. Perhaps the best known of these is Charles Taylor whose textbook work “The Secular Age” described the events unfolding on the religious landscape of Western Civilization (2007. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press). Taylor is astute enough to notice that the rapid un-churching of America is not necessarily an un-faithing. Neither the religious institution holding less cultural cache nor the world seeming less transcendent generally makes the average person any less hungry for transcendence. Of course, Taylor and his ilk also demonstrate significant blind spots. It is certainly the case that some of the cultural power of the Church heretofore has been at times and in places due to its unholy alliance with the racism and sexism of the society. This is something seen more clearly in 2021 than in even in 2007 when Taylor published his work. If the hegemony of whiteness now stands threatened, even tentatively, so too certainly will the church which has sustained it. This challenge is all to the good. Notwithstanding, this reckoning further contributes to the spiritual climate change being documented. One need not strain to imagine a generation asking, “If churches can do that much harm, why would I want to be a part?”
No matter if persons use the same terminology as Taylor, the effort to make a robust response for the Church has been underway for the better part of the last 60 years in the United States especially, and specifically within United Methodism.
Some have admirably turned to the consensus of the past, seeking out an almanac of sorts, hoping to find a prescription for our time. The problem remains, though the Church has navigated terrific transitions in society before it has never been exactly this way before.
Others have capriciously turned to the hope that particular and arbitrary canons, cherry-picked from the Christian philosophical and theological heritage might, in certain admixture, be applied to the church as a salve for the season. That such a fix will save and protect from the dramatic change in the air is promised but has hardly delivered more than splinters.
Still others have felt most obliged to reckon with the concerns of justice that have only hastened Taylor’s thesis. Could it be that these challenges of secularity are but a form of judgement for a tree that has not born fruit in keeping with righteousness, mercy, and justice?
Should it not be high time now to engraft new branches of persons to the fullness of life to this unfruitful tree before the ax is laid to the root? This will surely create a fruitful hybrid more suited to the season and better able to offer haven to all of the “birds in the sky nested in its branches” (Luke 3:19 CEB).
The spiritual and cultural climate of the United States is changing.
It is not only happenstance that the range of the graceful redbud overlays the statistical heartland of American United Methodism. While its browning petals point with clarity to the ecological crisis, it invokes viscerally the awareness of the spiritual crisis impending for the United Methodist Church and Christians of all stripes. There is a certain kind of slowly creeping horror that steals when one beholds the rotting, swiftly falling petals of the redbud tree in the days after the late-season snow. This is especially true in a season when other changes come swiftly on every cultural breeze. We are left with a sight and sense best described by Heschel, “Our sight is suffused with knowing, instead of feeling painfully the lack of knowing what we see. The principle to be kept in mind is to know what we see rather than to see what we know” (The Prophets. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1962).
COVID-19 and the attendant social pressure has and will continue to be a terrific challenge and subtle opportunity, but it is only a harbinger of the rapid changes still unseen. No one will be spared enduring the painful challenges which are yet ahead. Real and deep transformation, adaptation faster than naturally possibly, death and new life: these alone will suffice for the greater cataclysms to come. If any hope may be had it is that these are not beyond the reach – and are available in abundance – to those who remain connected to the True Vine.
The Rev. Glenn Knepp is an Elder in the Indiana Conference of the UMC, currently serving Lapel Ford Street UMC in Lapel, IN.