A New Mission for Our Time

With Christmastide waning, the angel’s message – “Fear not!” – fades into dim echo when its reassurance is most needed.

Many people put their fears on hold over the 2016 holidays. We needed a respite from the many shocking and dispiriting events of the year. Now “Merry Christmas!” and “Happy New Year!” have ceased to be our bulwark against fear. We tremble watching our institutions crumble around us, feeling powerless to stop their fall. The slow erosion of the past few years has turned into an avalanche, and we have no idea how it will end.

In the midst of such uncertainty, our struggle to maintain hope becomes not only an affirmation of faith, but also an act of political resistance that rejects the scenario being painted by those in power. The scenario of the powerful may be enacted, but it will be merely a façade for what is happening underneath: the labor of a new human community struggling to be born.

The late religion expert Phyllis Tickle presciently discerned what was happening eight years ago in her book, “The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why.” She determined that the church was in the midst of what she called a great “garage sale” of ideas and practices in which everything becomes ripe for assessment, discard, preservation or transformation. The last such event occurred about 500 years ago, influenced by two major factors: the invention of the printing press, and the Protestant Reformation.

Now this turmoil has broken open, spurred mainly by a retrenchment of forces resistant to cultural globalization and the impact of a new technology, the Internet. Running parallel to cultural phenomena, signs in organized religion have also been easy to identify, if less easy for Christians to accept: the decline of organized religion’s influence in society, accompanied by internal theological and communal splits into tribes.

Among United Methodists, the fractures over the acceptance of LGBTQ people show the internal struggles. However, the deeper and more significant fractures appear to be retrenchment into out-of-context theologies (since all theology is contextual) and an unwillingness to participate communally in faith expressions. The creation of the Wesleyan Covenant Association marks one example of the former, while the development of a new, digitized and customizable United Methodist Hymnal marks the latter.

In other words, the WCA represents those who continue to espouse centralized, hierarchical command-and-control authority based on the Roman model of the church. Meanwhile, after the model of inclusive-but-dispersed Celtic Christianity, the new hymnal symbolizes our communal disconnect. Whether either or both bode well or ill, their undeniable discord harries our souls.

How do we chart our way through the chaos of this lost cohesion? If we no longer vigorously proclaim, “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing” (often singing all seven verses in harmony, from memory), then where is the binding tie for United Methodists?  Can there be the kind of “and also” community that embraces both extremes and the middle?

Phyllis Tickle and other experts would say, no, such organized religion is now impossible, because individual authority has supplanted the institution as the means of social cohesion. What this model begs are signs that a new kind of community is coalescing out of chaos. We are in a time when, like the Hebrews escaping Egypt’s slavery, we must choose what we will carry though the desert to the promised land against a backdrop of threat, fear and great uncertainty.

For these reasons and more, we at United Methodist Insight have decided that in 2017, we will expand our mission to lift up two values we choose to carry through coming changes. Inspired by the congregational theology of our sponsor, St. Stephen United Methodist Church in Mesquite, Texas, these new goals are:

  • To be a stronger advocate for the rights and dignity of all, after the commandments of love and justice taught by Jesus (Matthew 22:37-40 and Matthew 25:31-45, respectively); and
  • To bear witness to United Methodist churches that demonstrate love and justice, especially those willing to shelter and defend vulnerable people, through frequent articles and the development of an online directory.

We believe these to be core values of following Jesus Christ. We also believe that these values of love and justice will be most under threat in the weeks and months to come, not only in the United States, but in all places where United Methodism is present. Some examples from 2016:

Yes, we are living in “interesting times,” as an ancient Chinese curse says. Yet in such times the most enduring spiritual truths of Jesus Christ shine out: that we should love God with all our thought, being and action, and that our neighbors, made in God’s image, deserve from us as much love as we give ourselves. Anything less betrays the One whom we profess to follow.

Fear not, said the angel, for unto us has been born a redeemer, teacher, model and friend: Jesus, the Christ. As our baptismal vows attest, Christ gives us power, if we accept it, to resist evil in whatever forms it presents itself. We believe that love in action best demonstrates this resistance, and we commit to amplifying its examples, now and in the future.

A veteran religion journalist and certified spiritual director, Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor and Founder of United Methodist Insight.