When Did We Lose Experience in Favour of Rules?

The first reality in life is being, everything else comes later: principles, laws, rules, the lists about how to act good and be good, holiness codes – all these are after-thoughts. We experience life before we evaluate it and codify it.

In Critique of Pure Reason published in 1781, philosopher Emmanuel Kant says that it is the job of the mind to turn the chaos of raw experience into something that we, as individuals, can understand. We need rules, according to Kant, so that the confusion that is around us in life can be interpreted – can be made sense of. This sounds reasonable, except for one thing: Kant begins with the assumption that, at its essential nature, the universe is bedlam and human beings are the ones who bring order to it. Today the opposite is true. Philosopher Jay Ingram in The Theatre of the Mind says that the mind itself is bedlam – not the universe, and our job is to still the mind so that the harmony that is all around us can filter in.

If you study meditation– whether Christian or Buddhist or Hindu, you’ll know this latter reality to be more along the lines of these ancient religions. For thousands of years religion has said that when you still your racing mind, you come into a place of pure God. God is the first reality. Rules about God, far from being ultimate truth, are reflections of the people who make the rules up. They are secondary.

For instance, Paul becomes a follower of Jesus not because Peter or one of the other disciples comes to him with a brilliant thesis on Christian ethics or a well-packaged course on interpreting biblical texts. No, Paul has some sort of experience. It might have been an out of the ordinary and ecstatic experience, but it felt integral to him. Every parent who has watched their eight month old put her fist, the dog’s tail, or someone else’s old candy in her mouth knows of what I speak. In the beginning there is the event. The discerning and deciphering of the event happen afterward. The rules come later.

Of course, rules are important. Like the directions in a cook book, they help us move from a stage of uncertainty to a stage of proficiency. Rules mean that you don’t have to re-invent the wheel every time you try to make something that you haven’t made before. But any good cook knows, once you have become proficient, you throw the rules away again and do your own thing. You throw in some lemon grass. And some sweet basil. And a hint of hot pepper. And then the thing comes alive. Once the rules have served you, you leave them behind.

This is also true of rules about God. There is not one rule, one doctrine, one teaching in the whole Christian church, as important as they all are, that will exempt you from living your life as a full human being under your own steam. That’s why Paul says, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you.” After you become proficient, you have to let the rules go. Your job is to live. Period. Because living is what God intends us to do.

Sex and the Church

I am grateful that the ELCIC has acknowledged the inadequacy of the document Sex, Marriage and Family, A Social Statement of the Lutheran Church in America, 1970, and is creating a new Social Statement that reflects the growth that has happened in the Christian community and in Canadian society at large over the last forty years.

The full inclusion of lesbian and gay Christians in the life and ministry of the church is the issue at the heart of the next Social Statement. As a pastor of a parish that has been intentionally involved in welcoming gay and lesbian Christians since Caring Conversations was introduced at the 1999 National Convention, it is important to me that the wording of the statement be unequivocal when it deals with the twin issues of marriage and ordination.

The ELCIC needs to clearly support same-gender marriages while allowing for a diversity of opinion on the matter. I have regular requests for marriage from same-gender couples. The reality of our current system is that I must either refuse to honour these request in order to be in good standing with my church, or else honour these requests and be silent about my participation. What I do know is that policies that encourage a don’t ask, don’t tell mindset never serve the church well. An unambiguous Social Statement will encourage honesty in our church, foster maturity, further compassion, promote understanding and advance the cause of justice. For the same reasons, the ordination of non-celibate gay and lesbian clergy also needs to be addressed. We have ordained non-celibate non-straight individuals since the beginning of the church’s history and benefited from many wonderful ministries in the process. Why as a church would we want to be anything but transparent about this?

As the church seeks to build the next Social Statement, it will receive many letters from many perspectives, including theological, historical, confessional, personal and more. This is a brief, pragmatic letter asking only that our next Social Statement be truthful about the current reality of the church and its diverse practices. The work is already being done, let’s honour it.

The End of Church

Canada’s churches are suffering such a serious decline in membership that some denominations could disappear, according to a report to the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC), released recently by Can West News Service.  Keith McKerracher, a retired marketing expert who advises the church, published data showing that, between 1961 and 2001, Anglican membership plunged from 1.36 million to 642,000 – a decline of 53 per cent. McKerracher said the ACC is losing 13,000 members a year and “is facing extinction by the middle of this century.”

McKerracher also reported that membership in the United Church of Canada (UCC) fell from 1.04 million to 638,000 over the same period, a loss of 39 per cent. And membership in the Presbyterian Church of Canada declined by 35 per cent, the Baptist church 7 per cent, and the Lutheran church, 4 per cent. Roman Catholic membership figures were not available, he said.

The Rev. Harry Oussoren, executive minister of the UCC Support to Local Ministries, told Ecumenical News International: “Generally, not only across Canada but the entire Western world, we’re aware of a trend that says that institutionalized religion is not central to peoples’ lives, as is individualized religion.”

A group that calls itself Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance says on its Web site that “small non-Christian faith groups are increasing in number and popularity.” [1] It says percentages of self-professed atheists, agnostics, humanists, secularists and people of no religious adherence are increasing rapidly, and many Canadians “identify themselves as adherents of a specific religion, religious group or denomination, but no longer attend services.”

Others have pointed to a decline in birth rates among the Anglicans’ traditional constituency – white Anglo-Americans and Anglo-Canadians – as a root cause of the membership drop.   According to Oussoren, the drop in support of institutions is also marked among the more traditional, conservative religious groups: “For example, in the 2001 census the Jehovah’s Witnesses are showing a loss of 8.1 percent and the Mennonites 7.9 percent.  The largest drop in the conservative group is with the  Pentecostals  at 15.3 percent,” he said.[2]

I invite you to think about your church.  Are there fewer people in the pew beside you than there was a year ago?  Five years ago?  Will Christians be extinct in North America by 2050 as is suggested by the Ecumenical News Service?  This is a tough question.  But here’s a much more difficult question:  If we assume that Christians in North America will be extinct by the middle of this century, is this a bad thing?

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