Christian Piatt Blog

Isn’t it time for church to embrace diversity?

We are witnessing a popular divide within the greater church. As ministry begins to reflect the pluralism of the American culture, impasses arise with respect to traditional values, morals and guidelines about who may and may not serve as leaders.

While in some cases we have moved assertively toward a more diverse body of church leadership, there are others who resist such change.

Gender issues still pose a major point of potential division. The Southern Baptist Convention still claims that women should not be allowed to preach or lead churches. In January 2007, Dr. Sheri Klouda, a tenure-track professor of theology at Southwest Theological Seminary since 2002, was fired because she was a woman.

These differing positions do not come without a price. In a recent interview, Bishop of Rochester, England, Michael Nazir-Ali, said, “Nobody wants a split (in the church), but if you think you have virtually two religions in a single church, something has got to give sometime.”

In a post-denominational world which divides more along lines of ideology and orthodoxy rather than church affiliation, it is difficult to imagine a church that will do anything but grow further apart.

If we maintain traditional standards upon which the historical church was built, we risk cultural alienation, a lingering sense of oppressiveness and further cultural irrelevance. If we press forward toward a vision of church within which gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation are not criteria for ministry, we risk divisions that may never be mended.

We tend to assume that we know about people’s beliefs based on their church allegiance, but that’s harder to do these days. Evidence of ideological ties being stronger than denominational affiliation is no more evident than among today’s young adults.

In a January 2007 report titled “How Young People View Their Lives, Futures and Politics: A Portrait of ‘Generation Next,’ ” the Pew Research Center notes not only that today’s young adults are increasingly liberal in their social and political views, but that the trend becomes only more pronounced the younger people are.

More young adults attend evangelical churches than any other age group, but these liberal social trends are consistent even among them. Those who seek to bolster their own position with numbers find it increasingly difficult to rely on membership as an indicator of the strength of their own constituency. This tells us that people will believe what they choose to believe, regardless of what we tell them to think.

Despite how one feels about sexuality with respect to scripture, it’s in our best interest as Christians to deal with this in a matter-of-fact way. For some, it’s a moral wedge issue. For others, it’s a call to justice and equality. The idea that both sides will take the time to discourse about their beliefs – and even their differences – is critical to our sustainability as a cohesive body of faith.

Mary Lou Makepeace, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado, believes that churches must be actively engaged in the discussions about these issues, not just as they relate to the church, but in the context of society as a whole. “The ministry is on the front lines addressing this issue with families and individuals on a daily basis,” says Makepeace, “but may be lacking the tools to comfortably have a discussion.”

Our young adults lack a sense of hope for their own peer group. There is a crisis of belonging, strong leadership and capable mentoring to help guide them toward the hope they would seek for themselves. Simply dividing ourselves further over irreconcilable differences instills no more faith in the institutions who claim moral authority on many different grounds.

While we argue over the place of women, gays and other groups of people in the pulpit, a generation loses faith in the religious system itself. Someone may claim victory in time, but by then, there may be little left to celebrate.

It’s no surprise to anyone who attends church on a regular basis that women outnumber men in the pews in many congregations. There are many theories about the attrition of males in church, from the swell of female ministers to paradigmatic changes in the social role of religion in our lives. Regardless of the cause, the numbers don’t lie.

In response to this trend, some ministries are making a point of reaching out specifically to men. From biker ministries – not exclusive to men, mind you – to football-watching parties, the point is to meet men where they are, in all of their stereotypical, oil-stained, sports-infatuated splendor.

A few weeks ago, one of the religious wire services carried a story about a ministry taking this a step further. Not only do they meet in a gym, promote casual dress and serve pizza after the service, but they even have a “shot clock” that counts down to the end of the service. Rock music blasts before the message, and topics focus on guy stuff, whatever that means.

All of this seems benign and well-intentioned enough that it took me a while to figure out what bothered me about it.

First of all, church runs the risk of oozing desperation from every pore if, in our effort to bolster our ranks, we bend over backward to accommodate every niche group. There are enough situations already in our culture where, if we have something a company wants, they will cater to our ego or our fascination with comfort and entertainment. Church should not be employing these predatory techniques.

While we’re not in the business of flagellating each person at the door, we also should not be focused, first and foremost, on making people comfortable. Our job as leaders in the church is to set an inspiring example, to keep people stirred up enough to want to change if necessary, and to spur them to act. The truth is that a comfortable person is one who is not likely to seek out change. This is not the call of faith.

Second, any time we begin to define who can and cannot participate in a ministry, we risk compromising the essence of the gospel message of mutual dependence. If we only surround ourselves with people who make us comfortable, or who look and think like us, what’s the point? That’s not church; that’s a social club.

Jesus, Siddhartha Gautama (aka Buddha) and other prominent spiritual leaders hung out with a melange of unlikely people. To see a prostitute rubbing elbows with a tax collector would have been pretty weird in Jesus’ day, but it’s what you would have seen.

When people come to us seeking vision, inspiration and hope, we sit them down in an easy chair and put their feet up. In doing so, we confirm a secular cultural message that is viral in its prevalence today: You are the center of the universe.

Well, guess what? You’re special, but not that special. Get over yourself. Think about someone else for a change. Live with being uncomfortable if it helps you develop some compassion for how the rest of the world lives, or if it prompts you to be more aware of how much suffering there is in the world.

President John F. Kennedy was spot-on when he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” We as the greater church universal would do well to adopt a similar mantra for those wondering what they will find within the walls of our faith institutions.

Ask not, then, what church can do for you; instead, ask yourself what you should be doing for God and God’s creation. Then instead of looking for the church with the denominational logo on the door that you’re used to, or instead of picking the place with the hippest music or shortest commute, find the place that’s really going to help you be a better person.

You only get one chance at life. You can spend it obsessing about getting every one of your own infinite needs met, or you can step outside your own skin and help make this world a better place. That’s what a good church should help you do.

Taoist Philosopher Lao-tzu once wrote that weapons are instruments of misfortune, and that those who are violent do not die naturally.

The recent events at the Virginia Tech campus attest to this truth.

Cho Seung-Hui, a native of South Korea, moved to the United States at age 8 with his family. At the time of the shooting, he was a senior in the English department with a chronicled history of abnormal behavior and a particularly violent writing style.

All told, between 175 and 225 bullets were fired, killing 33 people, including Cho. All indications suggest the massacre was premeditated, and that there were some signs of his instability to those around him before he carried it out.

As experts sift through the evidence trying to understand Cho’s motive, the argument is raised once again about gun control. One side is quick to point out that permissive weapons legislation allow such troubled young people to buy devices of extreme violence everywhere from local storefronts to eBay. Proponents of the constitutional right to bear arms contend this is just such an act against which a responsible public must be allowed to protect themselves.

This event, the bloodiest in modern American history, has caused me to reflect on my own personal relationship with guns, or more accurately, that of my family.

My grandfather died of cancer when I was a teenager. He was a generally angry man who seldom afforded himself any emotional intimacy, even with his wife and children. As I grew older, I learned bits and pieces about his past, generally through others.

As a boy, my grandfather found his mother’s body in the garage of their home, after she had shot herself in the head. Neither he nor anyone else in the family ever spoke about this while he was alive, though I pieced a few things together over the years. Such an experience could help explain much about his morose disposition, and his habit of waking up to a cocktail of orange juice and vodka nearly every day.

He had the triple whammy of genetically based depression, the loss of his mother and the trauma of finding her dead. In this context, his reclusive nature and tendency to self-medicate made more sense.

Strangely, though, he maintained a disturbing connection to the incident by keeping the gun she used to kill herself. As if this was not macabre enough, he gave it to my father before his death.

Throughout my childhood, my father kept two guns in his unlocked nightstand. One was a Ruger with a fully loaded clip, and the other was an old black revolver. Though I can’t confirm its origins, since we don’t speak of it, I believe the revolver is the one used in my great-grandmother’s suicide.

I remember, on occasion, sneaking into my parents’ room to peek into the drawer at the guns. The very sight of them made my skin tingle. Once or twice I actually picked up the revolver, just to feel the weight of it in my hand. There was a morbid exhilaration, both in the power it held and the knowledge of the life it had claimed.

I have fired a gun only once, at a gun range under the supervision of my father. Both the noise and the recoil of the firearm scared the hell out of me, and I’ve never touched one since.

The most frequent argument I hear in support of owning a gun is protection against others with the capacity and means to commit acts of violence against those whom we love. Self-preservation is a natural human response. However, it is not a Christ-like response. Nor is it a response advocated by any major world religion or philosophy, including mainstream Islam.

Albert Einstein once was asked how World War III would be fought. His response was, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

Our dependence on mechanized tools of aggression ultimately will be the instrument of our own misfortune. The prospect of mutual annihilation may help maintain a temporary peace, but like Cho and others who find solace in these means, they point to an inevitable, and unnatural, end.

A multi-year study of several abstinence-until-marriage sex education courses has found recently that the programs have no effect on the number of sex partners participants have or the age at which they first engage in sexual activity.

The same legislative body that spends more than $175 million on these programs every year ordered the study, though proponents of the approach were swift to argue reasons for the negative results. The programs in question, they say, are some of the oldest in existence, and do not reflect the more recent advances in abstinence-only education.

That having been said, there were many differences among the programs. Some were voluntary while others were mandatory. Some took place during the school day and some were after school. All programs offered what were considered to be intensive programs (more than 50 hours), and thousands of students were tracked over a seven-year period.

No statistically significant differences between those in any of the studies and members of the control group were found.

In the interest of fairness, critics of such programs have argued for years that abstinence programs actually have a negative effect, causing more children to engage in risky sex activity than if they had received no instruction. This was not found the case to be either. So at least we can say our $175 million has had no impact, at the worst.

What strikes me as most interesting about this is not that the programs didn’t work. Instead, the most compelling point is the collective surprise demonstrated by those who believed in them. For the most part, advocates were and still are generally theologically conservative folks who believe there is a moral basis for not teaching the use of contraception, or any means of risk-reduction other than abstinence, for that matter.

It seems to me that if this group was using Scripture as the basis for their position, they’d see that there were some indicators that this approach might be less than effective.

Let’s consider the Garden of Eden. God provides a paradise for his beloved humans, and gives them one caveat: Don’t eat from the Tree of Knowledge. So what do Adam and Eve do? Exactly what they are not supposed to.

Also, it’s worth pointing out that the term for sex in the Bible generally is “to know” someone. So do we really believe they were fiends for actual fruit, or is it possible that the very first morality tale has to do with sex?

Furthermore, if God batted less than a thousand keeping us in line once we were given the ability to choose our own way, what makes us think we’d be any better at it with our young folks?

Later on, King David struggles to keep his loincloth tied, and so the stories go, particularly throughout the Old Testament. Though it’s not sexually related, even Peter, the cornerstone of the Christian church, faces the weakness of his own flesh. Though confronted by Jesus himself about his denials to come, Peter says, “Come on, not me, right?”

Then, with the best of intentions, he goes and does it anyway when faced with mortal fear.

Even Paul, the fiercest defender of the faith, decries his tendency to do the very things he hates. Some role models we have! All prone to human weakness and fallibility.

Malcolm Gladwell, author of the bestselling “The Tipping Point,” discusses in his book why, though America is spending hundreds of millions on teen smoking campaigns, teen smoking is on the rise. He notes that it’s in the nature of teens to rebel and even to seek out behavior they know is risky. His answer? Do what you can to mitigate risk factors, rather than focusing on the impossible task of hoping to change teens into compliant, risk-averse mini-adults.

Plenty of folks will continue to argue that talking about condoms and other protective measures is tantamount to sexual permission. However, when you’ve spent more than a billion dollars on programs proven not to work, maybe it’s time to consider the possibility your moral compass is pointing you in the wrong direction.