Work In Progress

Working Title: Catalyst

Material from the book in progress below may not be reproduced in any form without the permission of the copyright holder Patricia Gundry. If you are interested in possibliy publishing the finished work email Patricia Gundry.

The chapters below begin with Chapter 2 rather than Chapter 1, which will be an introductory chapter to the whole book, built around the book's alternate title, which shall remain a secret until I'm ready to publish it. A secret because I think it's such a good title that I'm afraid someone else will love it so much they'll use it before I get the book into print. It is about the current climate in religion, in Evangelical Christian religious belief and practice in particular. I'd like it to be a catalyst for thought and a catalyst for change.

Pat Gundry

Chapter 2  The Need for Synthesists & Understanding Metaphor

Just now, the Church is in need of synthesists, people who can bring resources and truth and facilitation to it from many disciplines and directions. The Church has always needed such people, but even more so now when knowledge is expanding at an almost explosive rate while people are increasingly narrowing their focus of attention through specialization, "knowing more and more about less and less."

But the Church, as has always been its tendency, expels synthesists. Because they are people of free thought, full of many ideas, many notions, the Church is uncomfortable with them. Synthesists stir up water pastors and others would rather leave calm and stagnant. They are not controllable. Or, to put it another way, they are not sheep-like enough.

Sheeplikeness is highly prized in the Church. We want our pastors to pastor sheep who are sheep all the way through. The sheeplikeness we foster in our churches makes it all the harder for synthesists to arise and flourish and remain in them.

This situation is part of a strange reversal of purpose within the Church (and the religious world in general from as far back as I know anything about). The organized Church, and Judaism before it, spins ever inward, rather than centrifugally outward. It rotates ever tighter and more solidly its conception of truth revealed and behavior tolerated. One result is that the more the synthesist of any era is needed, the less he or she is accepted.

Sheeplikeness, and its peaceful opposite--synthesist behavior--is a good illustration of the point. Metaphor is generally, if not always (and I think always, because one does not use metaphor to constrict meaning already understood), given to expand awareness and understanding about some subject. That is, the teacher, the explainer, the relater of information builds upon what is already known on the subject and expands the listener's conception with a metaphor. The whole purpose is to show new insight, to show more, not less.

So that with the believers-as-sheep metaphor Christ is expanding their awareness of who and what they are. They are not only learners, followers, they are more than that. And the use of the sheep metaphor shows in what direction the expansion takes place. There is more in that direction--an added dimension.

But what we have done is use metaphor in a reverse manner. We have seen the sheep image and become more sheeplike, seen the pastor metaphor and become more restrictive and controlling of our "flock." We have seen sheep and pastor as roles we are to fit into rather than new understandings for First Century believers learning more about this Jesus and relationship with him and with each other. Rather than as expansion of meaning, we have used it as restriction.

To study the Bible, we commonly go to words and try to find the perimeters of their meaning and fit the concepts related to them in the passage within those perimeters. We say, "The word means this, not that," and thus prove there is nothing more to be believed about it.

But that is the reverse of the process we should use to extract meaning from those words. To find, or at least approximate as closely as we can, the true meaning we need to go back to the experience, world, expectations, and understandings those First Century believers owned before this metaphor was given them to expand their understanding further. For there was no purpose in telling them what they already knew. This had to reveal more.

So we must ask, "More in what way? How did the use of this metaphor add to their understanding?" Then we can begin to see in what direction the expansion goes. What more would it tell them? How would it go beyond their previous experience with teachers and rabbis?

If we look at metaphor as an expanding of knowledge in a new direction rather than a confining of concept, and can approach the subject from the life experience and viewpoint of the original recipients we can see what damage and violence to true meaning our ever-constricting of meaning and experience has done. And we can see how the synthesist, who is not sheep-like, is probably exactly the person we need to welcome, listen to, and talk with to expand our horizons to the place where we can see metaphor as it is intended. He or she will stretch our minds and experience to understand more and more again instead of less and less.

Chapter 3  In Defense of Principle

"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." Tacitus

Life forms are flexible, they bend in the wind, float on the tides, move along the surface of the earth. Institutions become calcified and rigid, eventually crumbling into decay. They lose their life-essential flexibility.

All movements, issues, and faiths are based in the beginning upon principle. They have a vision, a belief, a hope. Law comes later and hastens the calcification process, the erecting of walls and barriers.

Law, in and of itself, is not a negative force. It is the use law is put to that causes decay and destruction of the living principles laws are founded upon. In fact, principle is the foundation of all law. It is when that fact is forgotten that the trouble comes. Law, in and of itself, can never be adequate for administering justice and enhancing and facilitating life.

Law, by its nature, has perimeters, limitations, and so must be tempered and applied with careful attention to the principles behind the law. That is why we have judges and lawyers. All law must be interpreted. And what we use to interpret the law is the principles the law is based upon.

So why would we need law at all, why not just live by principles? That, I think would be a good idea, and much superior in every way to living by laws. And one can do this. However, one cannot force other people to live by principles. For by their very nature principles are applied from within outward. Laws are applied from outside and imposed on the individual. They are an attempt to concretize principle--to make principle enforceable on the unwilling. And as such they are always in danger of violating the very principles they are intended to serve. So law must always be in the process of being examined and evaluated for its service to its underlying principle. Otherwise it becomes a bad law.

Bad laws are either based on inadequate principles, or inadequately represent good principles. In either case, one must extract the principle in order to improve the law.

But principles are slippery to handle, uncomfortable for people who demand certainty and form to lean on. Because of principle's elusive nature, it gets pushed aside easily and replaced by several inadequate substitutes. They are: pattern, precept, analogy, personage, and law. These elements are limited by their natural boundaries, in that they are by their natures only useful as illustrations or representations of principle, not as substitutes for it.

Illustrative material must fit both the experience of the one for whom it is illustrating and the principle it is illustrating. Because of the nature of experience (it is personal, specific, and limited) it is also inadequate for expressing principle completely and permanently. Experience is limited, and experience changes. Principle is of a different order.

Pattern

Since humans are habitual creatures who are always searching for meaning, pattern fascinates in a most elemental way--from the patterns of veins on a leaf to the repetitive behavioral patterns of living things. We use our identification of patterns to find food, avoid danger, and survive in this world. Patterns of all kinds contain highly valued information for us.

But patterns are not a substitute for principle, nor can they adequately embody principle. Great errors of humankind have been perpetrated on the basis of observable or supposed patterns. Aristotle supposed that one could detect the nature of women by observing patterns. He said,

"While still within the mother the female takes longer to
develop than the male does; though once birth has taken place
everything reaches its perfection sooner in females than in
males--e.g., puberty, maturity, old age--because females are
weaker and colder in their nature; and we should look upon
the female state as being as it were a deformity, though one
which occurs in the ordinary course of nature." 1

Persecutions of all kinds are based upon observation and misinterpretation of patterns, witch hunting, racism, bigotry, ageism, and elitism, to name a few.

Precept

Precept, a coalescing of pattern into language, is limited because its perceived meaning will change as language and experience change. And it is, again, unable to cover all possibilities. So it must only be applied lightly and flexibly. It must be able to bend and to be lifted.

Analogy

Analogy, assumptions about one observable or supposed pattern based upon another, is imperfect because to things are never exactly the same. Thus there cannot ever be perfect analogies. They are only useful for illustration, as is precept.

Personage

Personage may embody principle to a lesser or greater extent but cannot be a perfect embodiment of principle because the extent cannot be accurately determined. Even in the ultimate case of God, one cannot accurately determine the meaning of all acts and words. So one cannot be sure one knows what they mean. One can suppose with enough certainty to act, but must be flexible enough to correct one°Zs actions when other information appears.

If this is true of personage when applied to God, applying it to human personages is even more important. So one can never elevate what another human does or says above principle.

Law

Law is limited because it cannot provide for unforeseen variations, or even for all foreseen variations. So law must be flexible and subject to change and exceptions. And because principles embody truths greater than language, they can only be inadequately expressed in law.

Principles are the spirit of law, the life force behind the embodiment. The hand that writes in stone.

You could say it this way, principles are better because no rule can cover all possibilities. Perhaps God gives us principles rather than rules because he wants to create in us a holy reasonableness. Principles reflect God's nature and ways with us. Observing and being guided by them is the only way to live wisely.

But the big problem with all this is: How do you know how to interpret the principles and apply them to your life? That leads to another very good reason for principles instead of rules. It keeps us close to God.

Chapter 4  The Primacy of Relationship

Christianity isn't a religion. Not true Christianity, it°s a relationship. We claim that Jesus is alive, that we have an ongoing living relationship with him as individuals. That°s a relationship, not a religion. But, since the beginning, people have been trying to turn that relationship into a religion instead.

God walked in the Garden with Adam in the cool of the evening. That was the relationship. For some reason, unknown to us, God has sought us all, from the beginning, to be with him in partnership. We were not created to be ruled over, but to be friends with.

God seems to want to be friends with us because he enjoys us, loves us, longs for us, and I think, because he knows we need his perspective in partnership, to make it in this world, and the next. But our very need for that perspective we don't have trips us up. We keep trying to make decisions with the limited amount of information we have from our own senses. We eat of the fruit, not knowing its consequences. We ask for a king so we may be ruled over, we reject the Savior, we ignore the Holy Spirit--all efforts to supply us with the God perspective we lack. All rejected because we do not have it.

Laws and rules are our way of trying to create a false security in this world of inadequate information. It seems easier to superimpose rigid boundaries--whether they are appropriate or not. We will eat the fruit we see now and worry about the consequences later. We will demand the king now and worry about the oppressive rule later.

If we must always rely only on our own observations we quickly experience our inadequacy to deal with all situations equally wisely. We just don't know enough. But we have access to the Holy Spirit. And that person does have all the information. If we are guided by the Holy Spirit in interpreting and applying biblical principles we do not have to rely only on our own selves.

But the kind of guidance we need is based on a continuing close relationship with God. It is not so easy to get the guidance we need if we aren't such close friends with God--if we only come once in awhile when we are desperate. And that is why rigid rules appeal so much--they seem to be an easy solution. No personal relationship to tend, no still small voice to listen to. If we listen for God's instruction, we are apt to hear it, and we fear it might conflict with some other desire. Believing that God is as rigid as we have learned to be, we think that our other desires must remain unfulfilled. So we distance ourselves from God and find a substitute, a mediator, a rule, a ritual, a penance, a charity, a conscience soother.

People think being a friend with God is difficult. And it is, but not for the reason they think. It isn't hard because God is a hard taskmaster, it's hard because of all the interference from other people. And sometimes the interference of events and experiences they do not understand, events and experiences they find inconsistent with what they think a friend would allow another friend to experience.

If you look around you will find a long line stretching as far as you care to see of people eager to interpret God to you and act as a go-between for you. In exchange, they want something. Some want money, most want power, very few want you to experience that relationship with God free and unhindered. If you did, they would be out of power, out of money, and out of work.

Did you ever wonder why God would go to so much trouble to make a relationship with you personally and individually possible and easy if all these go-betweens were necessary? The Bible says, "whosoever will may come." If you read that book you find that God is always moving toward us, wanting to be near us, to be our friend, wanting to unconditionally love us personally and individually. If you talk to God personally and listen in your heart for his response, you again find that love and acceptance.

Unfortunately, if you follow the close personal relationship route a lot of religious professionals are going to be short in their pay checks. So they give you instruction about how to reach God, how to smooth God's feathers so he won't be so mad at you (Why would he be mad in the first place? God better than anyone else, knows that you're human.), tell you how to pray, what to do with your time, your money, your family, your fun (or lack of it), your sex life, your future, and how to feel about the past. Just about everything. Think about it, if you have all that advice, do you need God?

You could just say you know God, and go to these folks instead. Which is what happens for too much of your time, and life.

But God moved toward us, and he moves toward us repeatedly because he loves us and wants our friendship. He wants to be partners with us, supplying what we do not have, adding his perspective to ours. We can reach out at any time toward him. That is not to say that Instant God Relationship is as satisfying as the kind made from scratch, lovingly maintained over time. But it is to say, that even if we have fallen for the religious substitutes for a real relationship with God we can begin at any time and any place to reunite the partnership and begin again, or to begin for the first time.

And I think you will find that God will be kind and loving and accepting of you in this relationship, guiding you and teaching you with principles rather than frightening and punishing you with rigid rules. Because though God is the only one who knows all the facts, he prefers principles.

But human superimposition of barriers between ourselves and God in the form of warnings about God and mistaken ideas about who he is and what he requires are not the only things that keep us from a relationship with God. Some of it is a natural result of our human condition. And I think that is the reason that God is always making an effort to seek us out and make a way for us back to himself. He knows that we are, by nature, afraid because of our human experience. We learn to conceal ourselves, and even to deceive, by natural means beyond our control. We learn to hide from God because we have learned to hide from other people.

Concealment and deception are points on a continuum, a socially conditioned practice evolved for self protection. The person who practices absolutely no concealment is totally vulnerable and open to attack. He or she does not survive in many societies without adopting concealment modes.

We learn to conceal our body processes, our emotional reactions, our unacceptable practices, and our thoughts. We learn by being told to or as a reaction to attack and punishment for revealing them.

Eventually the step from concealment for protection to deception for gain is reached. It can be and probably is an accidental one at first--one gets gain as an added and unexpected corollary to necessary concealment. Later, opportunities present themselves for unnecessary concealment for the attainment of gain and then for outright deception for gain. Where one stops is an individual and highly subjective choice.

Since the process is part of a continuum it cannot realistically be approached with laws. It must be approached with principles. People who would claim this is merely the application of situation ethics and insist on the existence of absolutes must realize that absolutes are too great to be contained in laws. They must be framed in principles. And though the moralist may insist that laws are the solution, he does not believe it--because he sees the need for a judge to interpret those laws. And the judge must do this on the basis of the principles behind those laws--to be a just judge.

So absolutes always must be expressed ultimately in principles, not laws. Laws are only for the convenience of administrators and as practical guidelines for people. They must never be viewed as embodiments of absolutes, for they are too inadequate to contain them. Their focus is too narrow, their sides too rigid.

Rigid mores developed by religious groups run counter to the whole concept of God as Friend. They perceive God primarily as Lawgiver, and wanting to improve on his position they formulate ever more laws and rules and attribute them to God.

But God, in his love, moves away from rigid rules and laws, and reaches out to us with relationship, within which he can teach and interpret principles and guide us in their application.


Chapter 5  Theology and Process

"Analogy is the essence of medieval logic." Mary Slessor

If it were true that Theology is the Queen of the Sciences (as some say), and if I were a sexist, I would say that History is the King. History proves over and over that Theology, left to herself, is a petulant, conscienceless, arrogant termagant without adequate regard for her subjects or her Lord.

"Evolution" is a bad word to many Christians. Its use to ignore and wipe out traces of their biblical views of the origin of the earth and its contents has given the word an abhorrence that makes it unavailable for many of its valid uses.

But evolution is not really a bad word. It has only suffered from the company it was forced to keep. It is guilty by association only. Evolution is, like "compromise," a perfectly good word that does not have to be lost to us through negative usage by our religious peers. Many things do evolve. Knowledge tends to evolve, relationships evolve, institutions evolve (or possibly devolve is a more accurate word here), ideas evolve. One day we get an insight, it is added to what we already know. Other insights lead eventually to conclusions which time and trial and error and thought either confirm or deny. But our ideas evolve.

History evolves, and the Church, as a part of history (made up of people with ideas and insights and thoughts who have relationships with each other and with God himself), evolves too. We are often able to see new facets of truth at a later time and in another place with other circumstances than we may at first glimpse of truth. The truth has not been changed, it remains constant. It is our perception of that truth that has evolved.

Evolution does not necessarily apply to everything; some things may not evolve. For example, God may not evolve. Truth, justice, and love may not evolve. They may be timeless verities that merely exist. But our understanding and experiencing of these verities can and do evolve, because evolving is really the process of matching up experience with thought. As we have more experience and more thought our conclusions are refined. They may change materially to other conclusions, or they may be more firmly confirmed and verified than ever. Either way they have evolved.

In the medieval past the Church came to think of God in a certain way that reflected its own perception of itself. The Church grew from a small band of simple working people in Palestine into a huge megalithic structure with political, financial, educational, and life and death power. In the beginning it was easy to tell those simple believers about God's love for them by likening them to sheep and Christ to their shepherd. They had every reason to believe that God had ample room in that parallel to express his caring for them. But later, when the Bishop of Rome waved his censer, held up his scepter, and moved through great palatial halls clad in expensive clothing of most unsheperd-like finery and claimed to be Christ's representative on earth, a change had clearly come about.

And part of that change, perhaps all of it, can be traced to conforming the Church to secular images of power and authority. It was not new for political leaders, kings, and emperors to claim divinity, or divine aid, or to be representatives of divinity. And it is not new for beliefs to become lost in procedure, fervent faith to be lost in preoccupation with detail, and purpose lost to edifice and trapping. The Church conformed to the world. And as it did so its perception of God evolved.

How can a God who loves as a Jewish father, cares for his children like a nursing mother, yearns for their own safety as a hen for her chicks, and seeks the lost like a shepherd fit into a system of political intrigue, jockeying for position, graft, and greed? Obviously, he can't. So the image of God must evolve to fit the system.

In order to make God fit, professional theologians were invented. Have you ever wondered why theologians are needed? Why does anyone need some ivory tower scholar to tell them who God is and what he is like? Someone who spends most of his adult life studying technical papers and writing things only other scholars can understand? I have wondered that myself.

And I conclude, after some thought, that everyone is already a theologian by nature. We all have a theology. Whether we know consciously what it is, have ever identified it, given it any purposeful thought, we all have a theology.

One's theology evolves naturally. That is, one refines one's beliefs about God as one learns more about God. One can learn first hand or second hand. One can read the Book oneself and talk to the Person and think on this, or one can ask other people what they think. Sometimes asking other people will get you distorted information, sometimes it will give you good information and further your own understandings. But, ultimately, everyone is responsible for their own theology.

And it was on this key point, individual responsibility before God, that the whole distortion of God by medieval theologians turned. If one were not responsible directly to God, but to an intermediary instead, then one could be deflected from all manner of things that would endanger the growing power of the religious-political machine, so profitable to those at the head of it. One could be made to do as the leader wished. One could be made afraid not only for this life but for the next as well. Take away individual responsibility and you have the best of all possible worlds for those who would lord it over others.

So it was done. Pagan practices were available for adapting to such uses. The Queen of Heaven could become Mary and intercede to her son for us. Minor pagan deities could be replaced with saints who would also intercede for us. The priest could forgive our sins, pray us out of purgatory, tell us what works we must do to be acceptable to this now more distant God. And above all, the supreme potentate, the Vicar of Christ, could rule over all God's kingdom on earth and bind or loose whatever he chose in heaven or on earth.

To maintain this power and keep all subjects in the proper subjected state, a form or structure was developed to fit everyone into. Humans are strangely drawn to the false security of structure. Put any group of civilized people together and someone will want to elect officers. Then the hierarchies will instantly begin to form. Never mind that no structure is necessary and that it interferes with performance and the emergence of natural leaders and skills, structure comes first for security's sake.

But perhaps humans are not so much that way naturally (addicted to structure) as they are corrupted by a forced dependency on structure early in life. They learn that if they step outside the structure forced upon them when they begin to live in organized groups at school, and perhaps at church too, that they will be punished. Being punished often enough, they become insecure whenever freedom of choice and lack of structure rise too obviously on their horizons. They run back to the security of habit, to the leeks and onions of Egypt in preference to the open space of free choice.

As the Church grew in power it took upon itself the power structures of secular oppressors. There needed to be a chain of command. Someone must be in charge. Some must needs rule, some must needs serve. And some must needs suffer, because they did not fit into the structure.

It has been so ever since. We have made inroads into the theology that gave all power to the Pope and the priesthood, but we have not dismantled it. Not by many miles. At the core of that theology was the hierarchical structure itself, putting some people over others in importance and power. We still have that. And though we go about maintaining it in slightly different ways, we still manage to be successful in construction and maintenance of the hierarchical structures in every setting under the sway of our churches, from the person who heads the denomination, to the pastors of the local churches, to the heads of deacon boards, to the man who lords it over his family because he is the "head of his wife."

The reason we give for all this is that it is biblical. But in fact, that is not the reason. The reason is in our theologies. We believe that God is an authoritarian God. And because we believe that is the kind of person he is we act accordingly. We say that if he is an authoritarian, he is someone who has others under him, and that there are different levels of responsibility under him. We line up people who we want in these different levels, and by one way or another we make sure they stay there if at all possible.

But what if God is not an authoritarian God? What if he is not really interested in being up there separate and separated from us, ruling over us? What if he wants to be close to us and with us, and walk in the garden with us in the cool of the evening with nothing between us and him? What does that to do our structures? And to our relationships with him and with each other?

But, you say, he is both. He is both authoritarian and friend. He wants to be above us and with us. That is what we tell ourselves and each other on occasion. But we do not really believe it, because what we do bears out our dominant belief. We really believe he is the authoritarian because we base almost every relationship on earth of a religious nature on the assumption that an authoritarian structure is necessary because God decrees it. We instill fear in our children and ourselves of this awesome fearsome God whom we must not provoke to wrath. We go to pastors and others for our guidance and comfort. We are often afraid to go to God himself because we have been taught to fear God's authoritarian sternness.

When a person says one thing and acts out the opposite we say he has a problem. The term for it is "crazymaking," because that is one way a child is set up for a future of mental illness, for his parents to constantly tell him one thing but act out another. It makes it impossible for the child to accurately process information. It also makes for constant anxiety and stress. When we say that God is our loving friend, but superimpose a structure and act out information that says God is an authoritarian who must be viewed from a distance we are teaching ourselves and our children to crazymake about God. It makes an ongoing, productive, comfortable relationship with God difficult if not impossible. Impossible without an adjustment of this view to fit with evidence that will allow a close secure relationship.

The medieval Church needed to view God as an authoritarian because structure based upon authoritarian hierarchies was essential to maintaining and increasing the Church's power. We do not need to view God that way anymore because the church has been stripped of most of its political power. (Though it would like it back, as is evident in the political activities of many electronic Evangelicals.) It is safe for us to operate without giving up our individual responsibility to God and handing it over to a priest, pope, or pastor. But remnants of form remain long after their originating causes have disappeared. They are like grooves in a dirt road caused by rain and wagon wheels. Long after the rain is over, the mud dry, and many wagon wheels have passed over, they remain, channeling other wagons in their paths just because they are there and it is harder to go around them than to follow them.

Structures and form also maintain themselves because some people have a vested interest in keeping them as they are. Any time there is a hierarchy, those on top profit. When profit is grown accustomed to, those who become accustomed are loathe to give it up. They work hard to keep their position. So the theologies that began the hierarchies may be called in question in part or in totality, yet the hierarchies will remain for an extended period after their foundation causes have passed on, purely because of losses anticipated and feared by those profiting from their position in the hierarchies.

That is not to say that those profiting sit down cold heartedly and scheme ways to keep their favored positions. No, they are usually not even aware of the situation. They find reasons to keep doing what feels good and right to them. Another thing humans are prone to do is find reasons to do what they want to do. So there are always reasons given to support any past-its-time system or structure, whether they are adequate or valid reasons or not.

But, as I said, history evolves. and as the church is a part of history, it has evolved too°Zwithin history in general, and in and as a part of its own peculiar history as well. We are not the same group we were on the Day of Pentecost, but we are not the same group as we were in the heyday of Thomas Aquinas either. We have found some things to be not true. We no longer believe that woman alone is not made in the image of God. We no longer believe that some groups of people were born to serve other groups and can only find their true purpose and happiness in that service. We no longer believe that the Earth is the center of the universe. Those beliefs were an important part of the theology of Thomas Aquinas' time.

We have evolved out of totalitarian religious dictatorships into a belief in democracy. We even have forms of democracy in some of our churches. Not pure democracy maybe, but a long distance from the Church of the Medieval period.

And the central reasons we have changed our minds about these things so strongly propounded by the medieval church are that we have changed our views about God. We have come to view God less and less as the unapproachable authoritarian and more and more as the Friend who wants to commune with us personally and individually. The story of history is in some respects the story of theology and the story of theology the story of history.

In every case, when changes were being pushed upon the organized Church by the outside world, or by those within its ranks who were working for change, the cry was raised that these changes were not God-directed nor good, but a shameful, disastrous accommodation to the ways of the world. This is a curious situation, because students of Medieval history of the Church can easily be convinced that the Church had already accommodated itself to the ways of the world, was in fact wallowing in worldly corruption that was the sore to be excised if it was to regain its true and early nature. Yet some of those same students will recoil in distaste at current efforts to purify the Church from remnant medieval distortions and errors, and cry again that the proposed changes are dangerous accommodations to the world.

Theology was at the core of the rise to power of the Medieval Church and theology is at the core of the resistance to change the Church has experienced since. That is not at all to say that all change is good, nor that resistance to change is necessarily bad. It is to say that the resistance to change has been in the same vein whether change was needed and representing a better, more biblically accurate theology, or whether it was not. The objection is always that change is an accommodation to the world, when in fact, the need for change is more probably caused by a previous accommodation to the world that was brought about slowly and insidiously by incorporating into the Church the same motives and methods of a world system that is based upon "more for me, less for you."

At the present time, we are engaged in several endeavors that bear upon our theologies and will likely change the theology of many. We are debating the place of women in the church. That in itself is unfinished business from the Reformation. When the individual responsibility of the believer to God was recognized as a responsibility all believers must be allowed to answer to, that was the time for allowing women free and equal access to all the nooks and crannies of Christendom. But it was not done because it did not suit the power structure, and probably because we evolve slowly in our collective understanding, extremely slowly in some cases.

This addressing of the place of women in the Church (The idea that there is a "place" for women poignantly identifies the area in which the problem lies, in our hearts and in our theology which says that woman is not quite wholly human but, as Thomas Aquinas said, only in the image of God when joined with man in marriage.) brings about a whole new examination of who in the world we think God is. Is he someone who puts people in miserable slots because of some outward category such as race, sex, financial status? Or is he someone who sees us all as creatures he has given abilities to and who he expects to use them? Does he care enough about us to keep teaching us things, or do we just need to go as far back as we are comfortable and find out what those people thought God wanted and try to copy them? If people are miserable where they are, do we have a God who cares? And does he care if we care or not?

Another factor that has a prominent bearing on where our theologies are going is the emergence of hermeneutics into its own for the first time in the history of the Church. Those in our seminaries must have thought for a long time, like the child who mourns that all good things have been invented°Zthat he or she has arrived too late to invent the electric light, the airplane, to discover penicillin°Zthat all orthodox theology has already been done. They needed only to keep to the established straight and true lines, repeating what they learned from the masters of the Faith.

But the emergence of hermeneutics as a discipline for detailed and concerted study may change that. We need not think that we have learned everything yet. Just as the child, growing older, finds there are more horizons than she or he knew, and plenty to conquer and discover and invent, theologians (I am including us all, professional and otherwise) have not finished with their work either, not even orthodox, Evangelical, straight-arrow Bible believing ones.

Chapter 18 Trashy Christian Books And The Death Of Good Preaching

Lots of Christian books are trashy. There, I've said it--what so many of us know, but few of us can comfortably admit. Oh, that's not to say there aren't any good ones, or many good ones. I'm an neither insulting other writers or your favorite books. I am stating a fact: There are many, may trashy Christian books on the market, and more will be out this year, next year, and on into the foreseeable future.

There is a saying in religious publishing circles, "Good books don't sell." That is, of you publish a high quality, well written, thought provoking book, you can feel proud of it. But the sales figure will not be among the things you feel proud about. Alternatively, you can publish a poorly written book on the right subject and it will sell and sell. That is why Christian publishers produce so many of them, they sell.

Creating A Thirst

Why do Christians buy books? The answer to that should shed light on what kinds of books sell. Most people probably think of reading as an intellectual pursuit, something you do to learn or expand your mental horizons. However, I suspect that among the readers of popular Christian books it is often more of an emotional pursuit.

Most book buyers oat religious bookstores are women, and they buy for emotional satisfaction. The appeal of most of the high volume books is to the emotions. Surely, they do have s spiritual message, but so do the "good" books (the ones that don't sell). it is the book that gives some kind of emotional payoff that moves quickly off the shelves.

What kinds of emotional payoffs sell the most? Books about suffering, self denial, failures, problem solving in simplistic miraculous ways, and stories about the private lives of celebrities all do well. empathetic books that offer a chance to vicariously share someone else's problems and receive an assurance that it all worked out well, or will ultimately do so, dominate the market. Books that generate a certain amount of guilt or fear and then give some promised or implied relief if one follows the writer's prescriptions also succeed.

I believe there are several root causes of the reading preferences of Christians, or more accurately, Christians who buy books from religious book stores and through religious book clubs. There are plenty of Christians who read secular books, and the occasional religious book they buy at a general bookstore, who never go near the religious bookstores nor buy from Evangelical publishers at all.

That brings up another subject, that of marketing to the "outside world," the world beyond the rather small domain of the religious bookstore. But for now, let's look at that narrow market which, even though only a fraction of the population, still accounts for substantial book sales and a large amount of people. Why this particular thirst among the buyers of the emotionally slanted Christian book?

I believe it has to do with a certain climate within our Evangelical churches, perhaps within almost all churches at this time, caused by a lack of good, substantial, consistent, quality preaching and teaching.

A century ago preaching was in its prime. Great preachers received front page coverage in daily newspapers. D. L. Moody's sermons were transcribed by secretaries attending his meetings and printed on front pages the next day in Chicago and other large cities. Preaching was the man means, outside of bible reading, for christian edification. And preaching, having been liberated from the formal, oratorical, and often stuffy confines of rhetoric by the likes of D. L. Moody and Charles Spurgeon, burst out in pulpits around the country in richness and depth. preaching was seen as a means to being people to Christ, to edify them, and to instruct them in the truths of the Scriptures. church was where people went to learn and to develop.

but now church has become a conglomerated business. Preaching is in decline. One can name a few superstar preachers who have built large congregations around their skills or their dynamic personalities. But if you want good solid meat and potatoes instruction in your local pulpit, you are most likely out of luck.

The reasons why are not hard to find. Most pastors are exhausted and diverted by business and administrative duties. We have evolved a local church structure that effectively squeezes out preaching excellence for the average pastor. Committee meetings, office hours during which the pastor is available to anyone who wishes to drop in or call, attendance at all services of the church, and overseeing a large physical plant and staff all conspire to deprive the pastor of the time and unbroken concentration for study and thought that gestates good sermons.

But pastors are conscientious and human. They want to feed the flock. They want to feel they are succeeding at being interesting, attention retaining speakers. So they do something--(most of them stoop to it without even being aware of it) they appeal to the emotions to get a crowd response. I am not saying that preaching should be an emotionless lecture, dry and scholarly. Not at all. What I am saying is that there is a method of crowd manipulation that is so subtle and insidious that it creeps into sermons without being consciously bidden to do so. It comes as the unnecessary telling of gory, tragic, horrifying stories to illustrate, stories that cause gasps or startled expressions and hushed crowds--attention getters.

The emotional appeal also appears in the laying of guilt, accusations, inferences and doubts about personal motivations planted in the hearts of listeners. It may be the laying of a weight upon the congregation, of one kind or another, in order to have them in the speaker's grip, in control. And then the preacher may or may not release them partially from it by telling them how to lay down the gilt or cleanse their dirtied consciences, or lift the weight of fear. He or she may merely urge them to come back next week or put money in the offering.

I do not think, for the most part, that this is an intentional or conscious action on the part of the manipulators. Undoubtedly, there are those who are fully aware of using such methods and clear about what they hope to gain by it. But most speakers have innocently and unselfconsciously fallen into this emotionally manipulative stop gap measure to reassure themselves when they felt ill prepared or were experiencing what performers call "flop sweat," that awful feeling that you are going over like a brick. And since they probably listened to others before them who did it, the use of such methods springs into being spontaneously out of the less than quality contents of their memories.

Since the problems that grow from inadequate preaching and teaching are long in developing and rather subtle in nature, the dangers in the loss of good preaching do not become immediately obvious. We have told ourselves that it is almost self-indulgent to long for, expect, and insist upon good preaching. "After all, Pastor mans well, and he tries. He's not so bad." One feels a little picky insisting on being fed every Sunday at the communal table. But is why we go there. Or is it?

Since preaching has declined and become ever more heavily loaded with subtle emotional manipulations, people go to church more and more to get an emotional fix. It's like a drug dependency. Have you ever said, "I just don't feel right if I don't go to church on Sunday?" Or, "I feel guilty if I don't go." Ever stop to wonder why you feel guilty about it? Because you belong there. Even if you are getting nothing and giving nothing? Well, yes. Why? Maybe it is because you have been emotionally conditioned to feel guilty if you are not merely there. And how did that happen? By long -standing subtle emotional manipulation--by having guilt used to manipulate you for so long that you now feel it is a valid tactic.

What happens to people who grow up in such an atmosphere, or grow accustomed to it? One thing that happens is that many of them get a sort of emotional catharsis every time they go to church. They don't feel good about themselves until they go to church and get emotionally stimulated. They become dependent upon emotional arousal and the feeling that going to church makes them more OK.

There are certain similarities between the repeated indulgence in self-punishing or other-punishing catharsis in church and the king of thrills sought in horror movies by people who love to be scared. One can vicarious experience horror, or fear, or pain (and the relief that it isn't you), or the the thrill of anxiety and suspense over possible terrible events to come (prophecy buffs beware).

One of the problems with becoming unconsciously dependent on this kind of emotional manipulation is that one confuses valid and realistic concern with fantasy concern. It is possible to lose perspective about what is and is not important in your life. Another problem is that repeated subjection to emotional manipulation makes it easier for unscrupulous or obsessed authority figures to manipulate you for their own purposes. For example, you will be much more likely to be receptive to sending in money to help them or others in apparent financial trouble (which may or ma not exist).

But the problem that relates to the kind of books Christians tend to buy has to do with the substitution of vicarious living for living ones own life realistically and fully.

Because we in Evangelical Christendom still restrict the lives of our women in many subtle, and to so subtle, ways, we leave them nowhere to go to express or fill many of their basic needs other than though fantasy, vicarious living, or sublimation of the need into other forms. Reading can be a substantial part of the substitution process for many women. And that, I believe, is what is at the root of this love of the substandard book, the disregard for really good books among Evangelicals, and attraction to the shallow, quick fix books.

Women have become accustomed to being manipulated and told to fit into Evangelical role expectations. They have also become accustomed to getting an emotional catharsis in church through emotionally charged stories that emerge from less than adequate sermons. They seek the same kind of release for their own person o9overload and deprivations through Reading. Since many Evangelical women do not think it is right for them to rad escape reading available on the secular market because of its questionable moral standards, they choose religious escape reading that matches their church experience.

Making changes

Improving the preaching ministry in our local churches by making good preaching more possible is a good beginning toward change. We could free the preacher to preach and make it more profitable by encouraging him or her, providing materials and space for study, praise, and adequate pay for good preachers who are not super pastors with empire building in mind.

We could listen, really listen, in church instead of being blank paper to be written on. and ask ourselves if what we are hearing is true, if it is reasonable, if it is profitable, if we are being manipulated. We can sort out what we have heard during the intervals between listening.

At some point we need to ask what we are doing to our women. Is it worth the personal cost to them to restrict their lives and minds as we do?

Beyond what the local church can do and those in it, there is much that the publishing and book selling industries can do.

Because religious booksellers do not, as a general rule, make their stores attractive to a wider representation of Christendom (they make available only what sells), only those who buy the narrow range of books offered tend to come back.

An innovative bookstore near where I live tried what I thought was a great idea. They stocked their religious books from Evangelical publishers interspersed with secular books. Books from Zondervan would be placed beside books from Simon and Schuster or Rand McNally. Their reasoning was that people buy books, and if regular people came in looking for a book on child rearing, and found one by an obviously Christian writer along side the others, they might buy the one from the Evangelical publisher because it: looked like a good book, must be a good one or it wouldn't be stocked with these other standard books. They hoped to serve both Christians and the general public better by offering a wider selection of books to regular religious bookstore patrons, by providing religious books to people who never enter religious bookstores, and by reaching people who were not Christians with information they would otherwise never be exposed to.

But this bookstore stopped stocking their religious books alongside the secular ones and moved them all nearby to an obviously religious book store well decorated with religious mottoes, posters, and plaques. they said, when I asked them why the change, that some of their regular religious book customers objected to shopping in a bookstore that contained books they did not approve of. They didn't like seeing things on the shelf that offended their sense of propriety. they objected to some novels, which they new were about immoral people, etc. In other words, they wanted a "clean" bookstore they would feel at home in, just as they like a "clean" society of Christians to associate with at church. That is why they have no meaningful social contacts with people outside their church.

If booksellers could successfully integrate religious and secular book and make their bookstores appealing to more people, they could, over time, widen their buying constituency to include all those Christians who are potential buyers of the better books. They could also, almost certainly, reach people with information about God and their faith who would never be reached in any other way.

Book lovers are very curious, they are drawn to good books. You write a good one, package it attractively, put it on the shelf or table where they can see it, and they will buy it. Even if it's about something they don't know anything about, or Someone.

Chapter 35: Why There Are More Women Than Men In Church On Sunday

Women traditionally have made up the majority of pew inhabitors. The Faithful have always been more female than male. In kinder previous times, this was explained by male churchmen (who have been forced to all the explaining for a long time) as evidence of woman's more religious nature. They also said things like: woman is more acquainted with the realities of life, birth, and death, so she knows more of the need for God. And, woman is a more sensitive being.

But I wonder if there may be a more down-to-earth reason why women outnumber men in church. The clergy and leadership positions of the church have been pretty much exclusively male for many hundreds of years. The leader of each congregation is an exemplary male who stands before his parishioners each week providing guidance, instruction, and aid. He is a father to them, but not THEIR father. He is gentle and caring, clean shaven, and directorial.

Women growing up in a male dominated society have many wrong impressions about men. They tend to idealize their potential adult relationships with men. And, as a result, they are frequently disappointed and confused by the reality that confronts them when they find themselves in a permanent marriage relationship with their own man. He isn't all those things they hoped he'd be, thought he'd be. Their illusions have been severely damaged.

But on Sundays--here is a man who looks and sounds like the man they thought they could have. And he is safe. They can vicariously take part in a relationship with this man each time they sit in the obedient intimacy of a religious service.

I suggest that the reason, one reason at least, why there are more women than men in any church service is that many women are sexually frustrated and profoundly disappointed with the man in their lives. They come to church, at least in part, to be with a man they can idealize, one who never looks shabby and unshaven, who appears to be forceful, not weak, who smells good and is never dirty or sloppy.

He listens to them and responds to their questions. He cares when they have fears, worries, sorrow, and pain. A sex symbol of the most innocent kind, he will not overwhelm them with self-centered or inconsiderate raw sex, but can be safely admired from a distance.

They can return each week to reassure themselves about their own basic worth because this man values them for loftier purposes than dark fumbling encounters, hastily eaten meals, and clean clothes thoughtlessly crumpled, or worn and tossed on the floor. They are quality creatures to him--as they had ever been taught they wire before marriage negated and shattered those images of themselves in their own minds. The male Domini binds up the self-images of the women in his flock by his simply being there before them each service.

It is a truism that the more a congregation loves their pastor, the less they like his family. His wife and children are often envied. Any pastor's wife can testify to the uncanny timing of phone calls at the dinner hour--when the man is sharing intimately with his own family. The congregation unconsciously views the family of faith as his real family. His wife and children are sometimes regarded as benevolent parasites who distract him and sap his strength. They are important, though, because they make him safe. He has a wife (though not good enough, or quite right for him, of course),so the admirer from afar does not feel guilty for admiring. She is not seeking him, he's taken. She can dream a little. And a little is enough.

The combination of male domination and sexuality is very present in many women's sexual fantasies. Although in real life they abhor fierce, hurtful men and may be very independent creatures, in their fantasies they are overcome by a virile, intense, overwhelming male. This does not reveal as much about their preferences in men as about their inner struggle with their own sexuality. Women do not want to be raped. What is happening here is a desire to override the inhibitions and repressions tied to their own sexuality by their conditioning and by a natural fear of the results of loosing their sensuality completely.

Women have to live with the results of sex, men can often escape them. So a woman longs for the complete freedom of utter abandon. But she knows that may be irresponsible, dangerous, and horribly consequential. So she imagines someone else to do it for her, the ultra male who will overwhelm her. She can then stop resisting her inner desire because resisting him will do no good.

The fantasy man is not evil, he is merely not stoppable. Totally fearless, his sexual attraction to her completely consumes him. She is everything. He does not harm or abuse her--he merely must have her. Thus he is morally neutral, there is no sin. no evil, no harm--just pure emotion.

And the fantasy with the male cleric is the same. He is benevolent, but forceful. He knows the absolutes, and thunders about eternal truths--he must be believed. Though he be gentle and understanding, he brooks no denial. He overwhelms. God is on his side. The attraction is pure, there is no sin, or guilt, or abuse. Women believe they can safely let him into their minds and lives.

Women who grow up in a society that praises and adores them for chaste obedience find a way to gain comfortable approval from their pastors by chaste obedience, as they gained it from their own fathers--but can gain it no more from them (marriage being the obvious proof of the end of their original chastity and obedience).

Obeying the husband is entangled with many dangers and conflicts that are not present when obeying the pastor. So women find at church a man who answers many needs and fills many empty places in their lives.

I am making no value judgments here, not saying that, if this is true, it is either good or bad that male church leaders provide their female followers safe sexual substitutes and enhance their self esteem by these means. And I do not mean to infer that this is all women get at church, or that all women go for these reasons. But if what I suspect is true, then I think we can find better ways to meet some of our needs.

We can educate our daughters to be real people who relate to males as real people. We can help the sexes understand their common humanity better so that neither will have a distorted view of the other. And both will have a fuller range of choices for themselves.

And when we allow women equal access to all types of ministry in the church, then perhaps some of the adulation toward the pastor will be neutralized as women see "someone like me" before them and are raised up to share an experience rather than idealize a person.