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Hope for mainline renewal Bill Fentum, Mar 21, 2008
Diana Butler-Bass
By Bill Fentum Staff Writer
DALLAS—Diana Butler Bass was raised in the 1960s and early ’70s in a United Methodist congregation where people kept their faith to themselves.
She memorized Scripture in Sunday school, but no one urged her to spread the gospel outside the church walls.
“Back then, piety in mainline denominations was private, personal and introverted,” she says. “You were to do good works and not tell anyone.”
Can you guess what happened next? That’s right, several decades of decline as many people looked elsewhere for church homes.
Dr. Butler Bass, author of Christianity for the Rest of Us (Harper SanFrancisco, 2006), shared that history and also gave hope for mainline church renewal during a March 6-7 class at the annual School for the Laity at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University.
The School gives laypersons an opportunity to hear Perkins faculty and other speakers who are among the nation’s foremost teachers in the Bible, religion, theology and ministry.
Dr. Butler Bass, who is also a senior fellow at the Cathedral College of the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., told stories of mainline congregations where open spirituality and social holiness are no longer taboo.
She cited the work of the late Rev. Dean Kelley, a United Methodist clergyman who had studied religious fundamentalism in the U.S. In his 1972 book, Why Conservative Churches Are Growing, Kelley concluded that the movement had gained ground because it answered people’s questions about faith and called them to hands-on ministry.
“But hands-on ministry is making a comeback in more liberal mainline traditions,” Dr. Butler Bass said. “It’s not just because of a generational shift, but a change in worldview.”
For much of the 20th century, she said, modernism held sway in most cultures. Historians, artists and philosophers assumed that Truth—with a capital T—could always be grasped by using logic, rationality and the scientific method.
Theologians followed suit, and mainline Christians soon responded more to reason and moral arguments than to altar calls.
In the 1970s, though, postmodernism started to flourish.
“Now, instead of the Truth, we talk about truths,” Dr. Butler Bass said. “We’ve moved from a culture of assumption to a culture of choice and negotiation.
“If Americans respond to such changes, we might expect their churches to do the same. And that’s what I’ve witnessed.”
Funded by a 2002 grant from the Lilly Endowment, Dr. Butler Bass traveled across the country to visit 50 churches in six denominations. She hoped to find people who practiced what they preached. Sometimes she hit a dead end.
An Episcopal church in Virginia, for instance, declared a mission of “radical hospitality” on its Web site.
“But when my husband and I walked in, no one said hello to us,” Dr. Butler Bass said. “We had to find our own bulletin, then we sat in someone’s favorite pew and had to move.” They learned the congregation had spent $750,000 building a fence around its property, which was effective in keeping out homeless people.
“It turned out, they had also bought their ‘radical hospitality’ statement from a church consultant who forgot to tell them they actually had to practice it,” she said. “That’s not authentic and it’s not spiritual.”
She ended up spending three weeks to a month in 10 congregations that she profiled in her book, getting to know the members and pastoral staff who had discovered paths to church renewal.
At Perkins, Dr. Butler Bass also talked about her home congregation in Washington, D.C., Episcopal Church of the Epiphany. Each Tuesday, the church holds Street Church, a worship service and lunch for the homeless at nearby Franklin Square Park. They also host a community breakfast on Sundays and keep an emergency counseling center open throughout the week.
Such practices, she said, shouldn’t be confused with programs.
“Programs are like diets; if they work, it’s because you’re doing what someone said you ought to do. But successful practices mean changing your way of life.”
Renewal ideas can come from rethinking traditions that churches have abandoned, she said. Church of the Epiphany started its Street Church after members recalled their canteen for troops during World War II.
Putting old tradition into practice, she added, can lead to new wisdom for church members.
One member who volunteered at Street Church saw a woman donate 13 cents—all the money she had—to help the ministry. A few hours later he went home and told his wife, “We’re not giving enough on Sundays.”
“That’s getting wisdom,” Dr. Butler Bass said. “And it’s part of a cycle of renewal—tradition, practice and wisdom—that keeps a church vital.”
Membership growth won’t always follow: Some congregations she researched added hundreds of new members while others measured their renewal in terms of spiritual depth.
But the recent survey on religions in the U.S. released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life should sound an alarm for mainline Protestants, including United Methodists.
The Pew Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, based on a huge sampling of 35,000 U.S. adults, showed that 8.3 percent of the population had grown up Methodist. But 4.4 percent left the denomination, and only 11 percent of United Methodists today are aged 18-29. Young postmodern Christians, Dr. Butler Bass said, may clash with older members in their approach to theology.
She told about a time when Christian author Phyllis Tickle was speaking to a congregation in Atlanta. An argument broke out in the sanctuary over Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong’s rejection of the historical truth of the Virgin Birth.
A 17-year-old boy later told Ms. Tickle: “I don’t understand what the adults are arguing about. I believe in the Virgin Birth. It’s so beautiful that it just has to be true, whether it happened or not!”
His comments showed, Dr. Butler Bass said, that young people in the church did not connect with the theological debate.
“Questions that bedevil modernists are no longer in the frame of reference for postmodern Americans,” she said. “They haven’t lost the concept of truth, but they want to discover it through experience and perspective, not through belief systems. We need to take note.”
Mainline Christians, however, should not expect their denominational leaders to save the day, she said in a keynote speech. She compared church hierarchies to business executives failing to turn a company’s fortunes around.
“One mistake,” she said, “is to deny they have a problem. Or they may realize there’s a problem but they blame it on their customers: ‘What a terrible thing, people aren’t loyal to brand names anymore.’
“Third, they look for one new product that will fix everything. And that never happens. But a few odd cases find the creativity that is already in their midst, at the edges of the organization—from its margins.
“Do I believe in mainline renewal? Yeah, I do, because I’ve been to the edges and I’ve seen it. Congregations that lead the way won’t be perfect, but they will be communities of practice, tradition and wisdom where people’s lives are changed, and we might have a shot at transforming the world.”
Other 2008 School for the Laity events included studies of spirituality in music, Christian-Muslim relations in the U.S., and the spiritual journeys of men and women.
Arlene Andrews, a social work professor at the University of South Carolina, received the Woodrow B. Seals Laity Award, given annually to a layperson who embodies Christian faith and commitment through stewardship, witness and service. Dr. Andrews is also a counselor for Salkehatchie Summer Service, a community development ministry of the South Carolina Conference.
Diana Butler-Bass
