Can the Church Save the World? - Part 3 of 3

The hottest summer on record is ending. Despite the efforts and promises made by countries signing onto the 2015 Paris Agreement, the latest assessment says basically, “Good effort. Not nearly enough.” A UN report now says that “climate breakdown has begun.” In other words, in terms of catastrophic outcomes from climate change, we have now crossed the proverbial Rubicon. “Extreme” weather events are no longer extreme. They are normal, and it’s going to get worse. 

Given where we now are as residents of Planet Earth, the crux of this last blog of this series is to address my opening question: Can the Church Save the World? If we are talking about church bodies and global Christianity taking collective action led by church leadership, the answer is no. If they could, they would have already done it. The same for elected leaders of the world. So, my short answer to the question, Can the Church Save the World, is “highly unlikely.” Yet, the reason I do not sign off and end this final blog right here is the reality and promise I cannot abandon: With God all things are possible. Or said another way, nothing will be impossible with God.

 Baptized communities are dangerous.

I do not recall who first said it: “Baptized communities are dangerous.” It’s true. Baptized communities have long changed the world, or at least part of it. When I speak of “baptized communities,” please note that I am not talking about the institutional church. I am not talking about the structures of church bodies and related hierarchies and accoutrements. Speaking specifically about the particular tribe into which I was ordained, I am not talking about synods, bishops, churchwide staffs, synodical and churchwide assemblies. I am speaking specifically about folks, folks who gather together because they have been baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus and are called to lose their lives, abandon everything the world has told them about how to secure a rich and full life, and to find real life, life as God intended, life rich in purpose and overflowing with joy and goodness, in following Jesus. It is to you, the baptized and who consider yourselves to be followers of Jesus that I write this blog.

 Reconstructing Our Minds

The late Bahamian pastor, Myles Monroe, often said this: 

The most difficult project in the world is the reconstruction of the human mind. 

There are some understandings of what it means to “be church” that have been so disastrous for the planet and life that we must unlearn and relearn in new ways. The New Testament tells us that the ministry of John the Baptist who was sent to prepare the way for the coming of Jesus on the scene preached about repentance. The first words of Jesus call us to “repent.” To repent is not to beat ourselves up and wallow in our mistakes. It literally means to change one’s mind, a reconstruction of the mind that then takes one in a totally different direction. Jesus was calling us to see God, God’s mission, and the world differently and live accordingly. 

From Sin to Suffering 

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the evolution of the church is how it became totally focused on human sin as if God’s ultimate concern is sin. This focus on sin is how Christianity became a competitive religion among many with a mission to “save people” from the dire and sure eternal consequences of their sin. It gave rise to Jesus’ death on the cross being proclaimed as an act of substitutionary atonement in that Jesus took the punishment we all deserve. We can “be saved” if we confess our sin, accept Jesus as the price paid for our sin and as our personal Lord and Savior.  

This dominant view of what happened at Golgotha is at the center of the rise of Christian triumphalism, as well as Christian arrogance and its sense of cosmic entitlement. It undergirds the biblically indefensible notion of “my God-given individual rights” that sanctions outsized lifestyles, massive consumerism, as well as the military industrial complex that has been destroying our planet. Once saved from eternal damnation one can really do whatever one wants because, after all, “I am saved.” This is so far off from God’s mission in the person of Jesus and the biblical value of community over individualism that the only way that I have been able to expose it is in what I have written earlier and named as Malignant Christianity. 

The truth is that God is concerned with human sin but only to the point of how sin causes suffering. God’s ultimate concern is that all of what God has created not be excluded from the goodness of God. From the very beginning God’s most ardent desire is that all of life flourish. The scriptures tell us that God heard the cries of his people enslaved in Egypt and became personally involved. The New Testament points to a Jesus who pronounces blessings on the poor, the meek, the hungry, the hurting, and the marginalized. The stories of Jesus expose how he chose to mingle with those who were considered sinners, unclean, or outcasts. He did not walk around the hills of Galilee trying to fix people’s sin but to address their suffering and to provide them with hope. When Jesus announces “Woes” upon those who are wealthy, he is not saying that laughter or a full belly is bad. His ire is because such things may come at the expense of others.

Folks, our outsized lifestyles and accompanying carbon footprints come at the expense of the planet and of others. To be a follower of Jesus is to be as troubled by the suffering of others as Jesus is. In the 11th chapter of the Gospel of John, we see Jesus weeping at the tomb of his friend Lazarus. Can we see Jesus not only weeping at Lazarus’ tomb but also see Jesus weeping for those whose lives are being devastated by climate change? Can we see God, the creator of all that exists, weeping over the state of our planet and the ravages of climate change and the untold suffering of billions of people whom we do not know and have never seen?

If the church, that is, followers of Jesus, have a shot at saving the world from the abyss of climate change, it must start with our own weeping. Can we weep for those for whom God weeps? Can we be so moved and so repentant about our own culpability in the suffering of others that we reinvent our own lifestyles and carbon footprint?

From Charity to Solidarity 

If you are like me, you receive many mailings, sometimes several a day, asking for a contribution to this charity or that charity whose focus is on the environment, or children displaced by climate change, or other worthy causes. To be followers of Jesus is not just to be charitable per se but to be in solidarity with those who suffer. Charity keeps us at length from the recipients of our goodwill. Solidarity unites us. We stand in solidarity with a suffering planet first through the transformation of our own lifestyles and carbon footprints.

If you look at the history of the world you will know that no significant transformational movement was ever initiated and accomplished by top-down efforts. Significant movements that positively altered history and changed lives began and happened at the grassroots. They happened because someone or some group found themselves in solidarity with the suffering. And those in power or who have the most to lose will always be against anything to disrupt their status quo. Recall that King Herod, who heard from the magi about the birth of the messiah did not go throw a party in celebration but rather sent soldiers to find him and kill him (Matthew 2). We are naïve if we expect politicians, fossil fuel enterprises, or even church hierarchy to actually lead the charge of mitigating against climate change.   

Jesus and Our Call

God sent Jesus into the world because God is in solidarity with us. We call Jesus, “Emmanuel,” God-with-us. What happened on Golgotha was not some kind of religious deal but rather the ultimate depths to which Jesus would go to stand with us in all of our suffering as a planet and as God’s children. Golgotha tells us that there is no place so desperate, no station so devoid of hope, and no situation so dire that God has not already, in Jesus, entered into and on Easter risen beyond it. In the cross and the empty tomb, God has already overcome everything that would crush us, fragment us, cheapen us, or destroy us. God rolled the stone away and raised Jesus from the dead as the first fruits of the promise that love and life win.

Because love and life do win, we live proleptically. That is, we live in the midst of the climate crisis and voices of doom while clinging to an already secure outcome of love and life. We cling by joining in and working for what the world cannot see or dream or even hope but with the vision that love and life for all will win.  

As the baptized, claimed in baptismal waters and sent with a promise, we are called to participate in the impossible, to so love what God loves, to so weep with what God weeps over, and to be so moved to action that we will imitate Jesus in how we order our lives and love the world that Jesus loves.   

 A Prototype of Faithfulness that Saves the Word

On Ridley Circle in Decatur, Georgia lives a remarkable woman who, with her husband, has traveled the world, lived-in far-off places, and seen unspeakable suffering. She lives in a small, downsized house with a small but beautiful yard, which is her joy and refuge. Always aware of her carbon footprint, she embodies the motto, “Think globally and act locally.” She refuses to use pesticides and herbicides in her haven. She would rather spend each day on her knees in the dirt, weeding with her hands. Her lawnmower, edger, and trimmer are all battery powered. She waters her garden with water collected in a rain barrel connected to a downspout. She has a huge compost pile that she tends. Her yard holds native plants and pollinator species that attract bees and butterflies. She also has her own vegetable and herb garden. She recycles everything recyclable, sorting and storing materials and periodically hauling them to a recycling center. Plastics are forbidden in her home, and she has reusable bags for grocery shopping. If you walk by her house, you might just see the washed laundry hanging on a makeshift clothesline strung above their back deck. Using a clothes dryer is rare. She and her partner’s preferred mode of transportation is to walk - to the pharmacy, local stores, the post office, and local restaurants. They have only one car, and it is electric. As she works in the yard or walks the neighborhood, she often wears a t-shirt that says, “Choose the Common Good.”

Behind the simplicity by which she lives and the love with which she tends her garden yard is a deep love for God and all of what God loves. Her love for the earth and for all of life is contagious. I know this remarkable lady well. I am her lucky husband, and in all practical matters of conservation, she is my guide and my inspiration.

When I imagine what it looks like for the church to save the world, I do not envision great fanfare. I rather imagine a grassroot movement that evolves into a large enough critical mass of disciples around the world who have chosen to live their lives like Harriet for the sake of the whole world.

I Beg You

Folks, this is not complicated. We know what we need to do and how we should live for the sake of the world. Using words from the 4th chapter of Ephesians, “I beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”

In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,

Can the Church Save the World? - Part 2

When I opened my Atlanta Journal and Constitution app last Thursday (July 20, 2023), the banner read, “Dangerous Heat Rages On.” The newspaper’s front page declared its top national story: “Nation Endures Searing Heat, Deadly Storms.” The paper then had a tagline for the national story, “Extreme Weather.” As I wrote in the first installment of this 3-part blog series, we can no longer call what we are experiencing, “extreme” weather. No longer can we say that searing heat, massive rain and floods, water shortages, violent storms, and never-ending droughts represent extreme weather. It is all normal now. This is where we are. And it is going to get worse.

Can the church save the world? It’s an audacious question, particularly in light of the state of the church today. There are 2.6 billion persons who identity as Christian today. That number is larger than the population of any country on earth. Moreover, that number is larger than any other religious sector on the planet, followed by the 2 billion persons who identify with Islam. But the church is not well. The body is sick.

 Malignant Christianity

I first coined the moniker, “Malignant Christianity” in mid-2020. It was when the country and the world were coming to grips with the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. Here is the link to the blog: https://www.rightspirit.org/blog/2020/6/9/being-saved-from-malignant-christianity 

Christianity did not get sick in 2020. To understand the sickness today you have to go back to 313 CE when Emperor Constantine established Christianity as the state religion throughout the Roman Empire. With that edict alone, the church’s identity and calling completely changed. To understand what happened is to look into the mind and the motivation of Constantine. His aim was not to humble himself and seek to follow Jesus. It was to get God on his side. It was to elevate his power and to rule as much of the world as he could. Fueled by the fusion of empire with church, his program would seek to conquer, subjugate, and enslave whomever the “other” was in relationship to the empire. In other words, Constantine managed to enmesh the political and military power of the empire with his idea of Christianity. This is an astonishing development from when Jesus carried his cross up to Golgotha because it was the religious, political, and military powers who colluded to crucify him. The God we know in Jesus, who stood with the powerless and marginalized at the bottom of the social strata, was now co-opted to align with raw power at the top. And Jesus wept (John 11: 35).

 Identity and Calling

When God called Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 12, God made clear their new identify and that of their descendants. I will be your God and you will be my people. God made clear their calling – to be a light to all the nations and to bless all the people of the earth. In the same way, being baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus confers identity and calling. You are a child of God, sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever. Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.  

Whether one is listening to the calling of the people of God in the stories in the Hebrew Scriptures or the words of Jesus, everything that God’s people are to be about is summed up this way: Love God and love neighbor. To love God is to love what and whom God loves, which is everybody. To love neighbor is to love not only the person next door but also the desperate immigrant at the border, the urban poor living in high density housing and suffering from searing heat, or the migrant halfway around the world dangerously malnourished and mired in water up to the neck because of climate change. It is a love without limits or boundaries.

But that’s not the way things are. Christianity has become malignant. It’s sick and must be healed if it has any shot at all at being the prime catalyst for saving the world from the existential threat of climate change. 

A Brief Pathology Report

There is a large swath of the church straight out of the Constantine playbook. Armed with political influence, it sees its role as the admirals of the fleet of rescue ships, primarily to save people from the coming rapture and wrath of God. Never mind that the entire notion of the rapture, as well as the popular Left Behind series on which it is based, is a lie. It emerged in the 1830s by Anglican John Darby, who had an agenda. It got people’s attention and it sells. This mutation of malignant Christianity offers a deal to have a ticket on the lifeboats through a transaction that includes a particular confession and conversion experience which asks persons to do things Jesus never asked. It is a church that seeks to save people from the wrong side of the cultural wars and from woke-ism. It is where White Christian Nationalism is celebrated as being ordained by God. It resists anything that may mitigate against climate change because all measures are infringements upon “My God-given rights and freedom.” If you are not aware of how powerful this typology of church is, every person seeking the Republican nomination for President is trying to woo the adherents to this malignant version of the church. Of course, Democrat candidates also will nuance what they say to get whatever votes they can.

The particularly distressing aspect of this malignancy is that it both belittles the science and asks its adherents to not pay any attention to climate change. It’s all woke-ism. The rapture is soon coming. And if God is going to rescue them and then destroy the earth, why care about it?

We hear much about “My God-given rights,” whether it is owning an arsenal of assault rifles or making personal choices with an exceptionally large carbon footprint. Never mind that the prominent American value of individualism and God-given rights are not biblical themes. To the contrary, the scriptures and the teachings of Jesus hold as primal importance the value of community and how we are to live and love together as part of a human community.

So that the reader does not presume that I am solely focused on what seems like the role of the MAGA “Christians,” there are also very progressive and liberal expressions of the church that wear their woke-ism as a badge. They are quite arrogant about it. Loving their causes, they get folks riled up about all kinds of social issues. They see and label anyone who is right of center as the boogeyman. Paying scant attention to the bedrock claim of the church – God raised the crucified Jesus from the dead – they devote energy to their causes. Sadly, the evidence reveals more talk than action, more finger-pointing and blame than trying to bridge differences.

Tension with the Truth

A friend of mine who is a bishop of one the ELCA synods in the south told me that two-thirds of the pastors in his synod are under great duress in the congregations they serve. Because they have preached and taught about racial justice, white privilege, and climate change, influential parishioners have attacked them for being a “mouthpiece of CNN and MSNBC.” Pastors often feel threatened by the realities that if they preach or teach about racial justice, gun control, or climate change, large donors will leave. Even worse, the pastor may be forced to resign.

In a papal encyclical letter in 2015, Pope Francis declared that the Catholic Church views climate change as a moral issue that must be addressed in order to protect the Earth and everyone on it. Lauded by many around the globe, Pope Francis also got substantial pushback from people arguing that the “church needs to stick to spiritual things.”

 Dare We Hope?

Despite the sordid history of empire Christianity and today’s manifestations of malignant Christianity, there are yet followers of Jesus and congregations of all sizes and stripes whose life and witness in the world serve as a sign of what is possible. These are congregations who understand themselves to be contrast societies, that is, in the world and not of it. The death and resurrection of Jesus has grasped them in such a way that they are intentional about being the heart, hands, and feet of Jesus in the world. They come not as saviors or judges, but as humble and joyful servants. They know that God does God’s best work among God’s people in the dark, when matters look their bleakest, when we are at the end of our proverbial rope. They are able to see what the world cannot see, dream what the world cannot dream, and work for what the world cannot give itself.

If the church is going to be the catalyst that brings about a new day in our attention to climate change and can save us from a cataclysmic future, these churches will have to show us the way.

Can the church save the world? Against all odds, I believe it can. I will shine the light on that hope in my coming third and final blog in this series, to be released in early August. Stay tuned.

In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,

Can the Church Save the World? - Part 1

Can the church save the world? Can it? Can it experience a wholesale and complete transformation that reclaims its identity and calling in the world in time so that it becomes the chief catalyst for saving the world from the greatest existential crisis the planet has faced since the dawn of human existence? I believe it can. (I can already hear the laughter and outrage.) But to be clear. I am not asserting that the church will save the world. I am suggesting it can, though not probable but still possible. After all, with God, all things are indeed possible. 

The ecological future of the planet and the astonishing gap between the global rich and poor are not two crises. They are one, intertwined together. And with all reverence to other causes that matter – racial justice, gender equity, LGBTQIA+ rights, stopping gun violence, finding a cure for cancer, fair wages, peace in Haiti and in Ukraine, and much more – if we, as a global community, do not attend to this greatest of crises, nothing else will matter. Nothing.

  For the whole creation groans in eager longing… (Romans 8:19 ff)

I first began to hear about the possibility of climate change due to human activity around 1969 when I was an undergraduate engineering student at North Carolina State University. Though the idea was interesting, few people really took it seriously. It seemed abstract, and besides, if what the environmental science was telling us was true, then, of course, there would be plenty of time for the global community to do something about it. Surely the greatest scientific minds would get together, and public and environmental policies would be developed to mitigate what science was telling us. I mean, who would not want to stop a climate disaster?

But time marched on and greenhouse gases continued to spew. We continued to poison our waterways, rape our land and forests, and build dams that radically altered riverways and the migration of fish upsetting a whole ecology. No matter what the warnings may have been, nothing could interfere with keeping the industrial complex going. When we began to see polar ice caps melting and huge glaciers calving and disappearing, when 150-200 animal and plant species went extinct everyday due to human activity, some would sound the alarm, but not enough has happened. Maybe it was denial. Maybe it was arrogance thinking that one day we would just flip a switch and fix it. Maybe it was the great American ethic of entitlement that recognized the crisis but thought, “Yea, it’s bad. But it won’t really affect us.” Or “I’m not going to worry about it or change anything in my life. It’s not my problem.”

Time flies. It is hard to believe that it was seventeen years ago – that’s right 17 years ago! – that former VP Al Gore presented his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.” Some found it interesting. Some ridiculed it and Mr. Gore. Others were alarmed, but in the whole scheme of things it really did not move the needle much in the right direction. Never mind that every mainstream print publication has tried over the years to sound the alarm about climate disaster. Five years ago, teenage (at the time) Swedish activist Greta Thunberg drew attention to the crisis by publicly shaming world leaders at a gathering of the United Nations. And, of course, there are the frequent gatherings of global leaders to address climate change, but again, in light of what we are seeing and experiencing today, every effort has fallen short of what is needed.  

That Canadian wildfires have unleashed massive smoke and dangerous air over much of Canada and the US. Wildfires is not new, but what is new is that the prime culprit has been wildfires in eastern Canada with forest land the size of Ohio on fire. Everyday day we hear of massive floods, draught, the migration of millions to escape the ravages of rising tides, extreme heat, and famine associated with climate change. Every day in this country hundreds of people are dying from extreme heat. Rising ocean temperatures have transformed the waters of South Florida and the Florida Keys into a hot tub, destroying coral reefs and sea life. We saw one third of the country of Pakistan under water from massive flooding, and then we saw the same thing in Vermont and in Pennsylvania. Power grids are under great strain to hold up under the demands for air conditioning. And it’s just July.

 A New Normal

No longer can anyone refer to any of this as “extreme weather.” It’s not extreme. It’s the new normal.

But cheer up! Things are going to get worse.

Here’s the really inconvenient truth. As catastrophic as things seem to be, there is no strategy or climate agreement that could actually undo what has been done, and, in effect, cool the planet. Nope, the damage is done. The Paris Agreement set as our shared target to limit the heating of the earth to a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase over pre-industrial levels. An increase of 2 degrees would be apocalyptic. Last year the planet already had warmed to 1.15 degrees above pre-industrial levels. There’s a 66% chance the planet will reach 1.5 degrees of warming in the next five years. If what we are experiencing now in terms of fires, floods, tornadoes, suffocating heat indices, and human suffering are happening at a 1.15-degree rise, what does a 1.5-degree rise bring?

 The Church Shares Much of the Blame

 The church deserves much of the blame for the situation in which we find ourselves. Churches have ridiculed the science and have told their adherents that “man” cannot destroy what God has created. For centuries much of the church has taught that the mandate God gave to the human beings in the first chapter of Genesis to have dominion over everything as full license to strip-mine, drill, dam, bomb, poison, rape the earth, destroy wildlife, and enslave and/or subjugate other human beings to the white male. What is beyond tragic is that Genesis 1 and its creation narrative actually serve as a vision for the identity and calling of the human species. Identity: God created humankind in God’s own image and after God’s very own likeness. Calling: God appoints humankind as God’s agents to tend to, care for, and steward the earth, the seas, and all its creatures. In other words, for God’s sake, take care of it! It is akin to the Kenyon proverb:

 Treat the Earth not as if it was given to you by your parents, but as if it was lent to you by your children.

The arrogance that fostered the devastating interpretation of Genesis 1 and the greed and quest for power and domination that followed are only part of the story. A large swath of the “Christian Church” could not care less about the climate and actually works to sabotage climate action. “Christian Church” is in quotes because I do not think this collection of churches can be called authentically Christian, certainly not followers of Jesus.

Having said that, I will again ask the question that drives this blog: Can the Church Save the World? I think it can, not because I am ridiculously optimistic but because of the One who loves us and is risen from the dead.

Part 2 is coming. Stay tuned.

In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,