denominations – Houghton STAR

This past summer and current school year, I have been given the opportunity to work at a local church, assisting with youth and adult ministries. So far the experience has been a good one, but it has got me thinking about the nature of “the church” and its role in society. Ultimately I believe the church as it stands is in dire need of re-imaging lest it slip further and further to the periphery of Western society.

The re-imaging of the church is not a matter of being relevant. It is not about trying to make your church as appealing as possible to the outsider in order to draw her in. This, unfortunately, is what many churches are resorting to these days. I see churches that meet in bars, advertising a nice cold pint while you talk about the moral issues of the day. I see churches where worship is akin to a rock concert. And of course there are the 15,000 person mega-churches where the 45-minute sermon reigns supreme. All the while the idea of sacrament has all but vanished from many of these institutions. We are a collection of individuals appealing to individuals.

These attempts at a new church experience ultimately fail. After a while the new tactic stops attracting people and the church is left to find a new way to pull people in. If I were a member of one of these churches I would be infuriated because so much effort is spent on drawing people in that those who are already in the church are left to struggle their way on their own. Thus we are left with spiritually malnourished congregations and rapidly declining numbers in almost every one of the near 40,000 denominations.

So what do we do? Well, many have suggested that we have to start over, abandon our current traditions and become like the first century church. But the problem does not necessarily lie within our traditions; indeed I believe some of the answers are found exactly there. The solution is found in Jesus’ view of the family. For most they are familiar passages (Luke 14:26, Mark 3:31-35): Jesus repels his biological family and says that his followers are his real family. He even goes as far as to say that those who want to follow him must hate their family, turn and follow him.

I don’t think Jesus really means that we should hate our families; I think rather that he is emphasizing the importance of the church as a family. This is what we need to embody for the church to survive in our culture. I do not mean the church should be a family in the sense that we all feel close to one another only every Sunday when we gather. The term “family” does not mean simply that we have to tolerate each other. Reimagining the church as a family means that we meet like a family, interact like a family, care for each other like a family. It means that instead of church being a once-a-week thing, it is a lifestyle, founded on the sacraments. As Dean Jordan stated in chapel on Monday, church is not about the individual experience, it is about existing as a corporate body. The church should be a refuge against the anti-gospel veins in our culture, supplementing them with the words of Christ.

This is where my work at the local church comes in. They are a church that is on the right track. Worship is only every Sunday. The Lord’s Supper is celebrated every Sunday without exception and the church is grounded in the notion that we meet Our Savior every time we eat the bread and drink the wine. But the church does not stop there. Every other day of the week, the church is busy with parishioners coming and going, tending not only to the building but also to each other. The church building is a hub for all that is going on in the church community. People help supply each other with food, tools, service. It is not a group of people who are cordial to each other on Sundays. It is a group of people who live together, work together, play together and depend upon each other. That is what the church must be.

We live in a religiously pluralistic society. We see it in manifested in our own faith tradition with tens of thousands of Christian denominations, and also outside in the realm of world religions, spanning Hinduism and Buddhism in the East, to Islam, Judaism, and beyond. Even in the evangelical Christian milieu of Houghton there is still a reasonably large spectrum of beliefs and experience. For Houghton, as a Christian institution, does this plurality merely represent our extensive mission field? Or does it perhaps provide us with the opportunity to understand our faith—as individuals and a community—more deeply?

Practically speaking, it is necessary that we come to terms with our religious differences, both across the spectrum of Christianity (which we experience on campus) and across the spectrum of religions we see as “others”. Though our respective traditions may be directly opposing one another, faith remains essentially a human trait, something solid to provide a basis for successful interfaith dialogue. But how are we to go about this dialogue?

Last fall in my Judaism class, I read an article by the rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, (known popularly as “The Rav”) which I found to provide solid guidelines for interfaith dialogue. He stipulates that a confrontation (dialogue) between two faith communities is only possible if it is accompanied by a “clear assurance that both parties will enjoy equal rights and full religious freedom.” Additionally, both parties must have an assurance that they will be upheld in high respect, and not dragged through the mud, so to speak, when difficult issues or severe disagreements arise. In other words, if we neglect to provide a safe environment for these discussions, it is inevitable that neither party will come away with anything constructive, rather both sides will probably emerge somewhat insulted or discouraged.

Granted for the majority of us on campus it will be far easier to approach different denominations rather than entirely different religions; engaging a Catholic is quite different than engaging a Hindu, whose vocabulary, beliefs, and traditions are completely foreign for most of us. That being said, it is vitally important that we as a Christian institution strive to engage these very “other” communities. If we continue to avoid interacting with these other faiths, we risk allowing “monsters to grow in the silence,” as Dr. Case said, one of our world religions professors. I would define these “monsters” as our tendency to demonize or vilify any religion that opposes Christianity. This mindset only serves to further the disparity between our respective faith traditions, burning bridges rather than building them.

Thus these conversations should not be taken as opportunities to merely target non-Christians for conversion (or even to convert those outside the perimeters of our preferred denomination). In other words, our mission should not be to proselytize, but to establish relationships. These dialogues and relationships would help to destroy our unwarranted prejudices and misconceptions about other faiths, and aid us in being effective in a world that preaches tolerance. Constructive interfaith dialogue should force both sides to be open minded without requiring either side to sacrifice their beliefs to the other, helping foster conversations and relationships as opposed to mission fields.

This being said, we do have a “missionary mandate” as a Christian institution and church, and when all is said and done, even in these honest dialogues there remains an element of persuasion on each side. While conversion should not be our only aim, it is legitimate, but perhaps it is best pursued in the context of these relationships we establish through dialogue. After all, is our goal merely to increase numbers for the church or is it to welcome new members into the body of Christ? It’s at least my experience that the most successful evangelism is done within the context of real relationships, and when it comes to people of other faiths, we cannot hope for true relationships unless we are willing to engage in open dialogue.

Houghton appears to be heading toward becoming a more welcoming campus when it comes to interfaith matters. Dean Michael Jordan has said that the administration is on-board with increasing the diversity of speakers both in and outside of chapel. He mentioned that the Franciscan friars will be back, along with a couple speakers representing the Catholic and Presbyterian churches in the coming spring semester. This is a step in the right direction, providing the campus an opportunity to learn from and engage faiths that may be foreign to our own. Jordan also said that he is open to, and hopes to welcome, speakers outside of the Christian tradition on campus for panel events and discussions in later semesters. Presented with these opportunities, we have the potential to become a community of believers who are open and willing to engage in dialogue with the religious diversity in our own community and outside it.