Mainlining Christianity: 95 Theses for the 21St Century

By Reverend Thomas F O'Donnell

Moderate and liberal Christians, Unite! Reclaim Jesus from the evangelical Christian right.

Imagine a faith tradition divided up into literally thousands of denominations based on such silly things as organizational structure (how many bishops can you fit on the head of a needle?), or theological differences such as whether baptism is to be done by "dunking" or by ""sprinkling" or whether or not the bread and the cup are actually transformed into the "body and blood of Christ" during the Lords Supper (the "doctrine of transubstantiation").

Imagine that, even within a single denomination of this faith tradition, those who profess to share the same faith have diametrically opposed views on the nature of God, the source of salvation, the nature of sin, the meaning of scripture, the relationship of Science and Religion, of Reason and Faith, of Truth, Certainty, and Doubt. Imagine further that they cannot even agree on the nature and/or message of the man upon whom their religion is founded.

Finally, imagine that a vocal minority of these diametrically opposed views is dominating the public airwaves, while the "silent majority" remains hunkered down in the hallowed halls of their sanctuaries. While the message of this vocal minority is embraced by a few in search of simple answers, imagine that the masses of un-churched, de-churched, under-churched, never-been-churched, fed-up-with-church are turned off and are walking away in droves.

Unfortunately, there is no need to imagine any of this. It is happening right here, right now in the United States of America. The faith tradition is called Christianity. The vocal minority that is dominating the bully pulpit of public opinion is the "evangelical Christian right," and the "silent majority" are moderate and liberal Christians everywhere.

Mainlining Christianity is a call to Christianitys "silent majority" to stand up and speak out and to join in a New Reformation. Through the vehicle of "95 Theses for the 21st Century," the book is divided into eight separate sections:

Religion, Christianity, and Worldviews
Truth/Certainty/Doubt/Fear/Faith
Physical Truths: In Search of a Theory of Everything (T.O.E.)
Spiritual, Scriptural, Literal, and Mythical Truths
In Search of the Logos: From Jesus the Man to Jesus the Christ
In Search of the Logos: Jesus and the Love Ethic
Interfaith Interconnectedness and the Logos
The Logos Intersects with the T.O.E.: God Is LOVE

Within each section is a series of messages designed to offer a practical/theological roadmap to just such a Reformation. Moderate and Liberal Christians, Unite! Reclaim Jesus from the evangelical Christian right.

http://www.reclaimjesus.net

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 23, 2006
• ISBN: 9781462833030

Reverend Thomas F O'Donnell

Reverend Thomas F. O’Donnell, Esq., is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ serving as pastor of Plymouth Bethesda Church in Utica, New York. He is the author of numerous other works, including his most recent works of fiction, The Damnation of Tucker Tolliver and The J, E, D & P Murders.

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Copyright © 2006 by Reverend Thomas F. O’Donnell.

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Contents

PROLOGUE

PART I

CHAPTER 1

PART II

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

PART III

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

PART IV

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

PART V

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

PART VI

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

PART VII

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

PART VIII

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

PART IX

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

EPILOGUE

APPENDIX I

Appendix II

Bibliography

This book is dedicated to all the un-churched, under-churched, de-churched, never-been-churched, and fed-up-with-church who either have walked away or been driven away by the public posturing of the evangelical Christian right. Moderate and liberal Christians, Unite! Reclaim Jesus from the evangelical Christian right.

PROLOGUE

Jesus Resurrectus

It Happened Once Before

It happened once before. The tomb was empty, and Jesus was dead. The Logos-made-flesh was gone. He came to dwell amongst us (and continues to dwell within us and amongst us) to deliver the message of what it means to be made in the image of God. He came to help everyone understand that all the laws, and rules, and codes, and rituals, and procedures that were being promulgated by an elite priestly class were no answer. Unfortunately, Jesus’ message—a message of non-judgmental acceptance of all God’s creation, a message of mercy and forgiveness—was (and continues to be) too much for people to handle. So one of his own people, Judas Iscariot, sold him out for thirty pieces of silver. They dangled him in front of the entire world and called it crucifixion. Technically he died of asphyxiation, literally strangled to death by the weight of his own message.

It happened once before.

When it happened, they immediately started talking about the second coming. And sure enough, he came back. This time, he showed up in the form of a group of persons who first became known as pagans, then Christians; eventually, when they really gained a foothold in the power structure of the world, they became known simply as The Church. The Church became the Body of Christ, and its members became the hands and feet, the arms and legs of Jesus. Just as Jesus the Man was the most unlikely incarnation of the Logos imaginable, so, too, is the Church. If the body is not careful, it can get caught up in itself. This is precisely what happened in the past and continues to happen today.

In its glory days, The Church grew, and grew, and grew, building an empire second to none. In the name of the Lord, The Church spread the good news through what were dubbed Holy Crusades, and if it meant laying waste to untold millions who got in its way, so be it. If it meant putting Galileo under house arrest for the rest of his life for refusing to recant his heretical claim that the earth was not the center of the universe, so be it. If it meant an elaborate system of creeds, and doctrines, and rules, and regulations, and procedures to preserve the integrity of the empire, so be it. If it meant an elitist priestly class to tell the people what to think, what not to think, what to do, what not to do, so be it. Even if it meant creating a system of Indulgences, whereby those with enough money could literally pay off local church officials for the forgiveness of sin, so be it. It was worth it. In the name of God.

And Then It Happened Again

Finally, on October 31, 1517, a relative nobody by the name of Martin Luther had had enough. So he posted 95 Theses challenging The Church and all that it stood for on the door of Wittenberg Castle. The rest, as they say, is history. They didn’t call it a Resurrection, but they could have. Instead, they called it a Reformation.—a Reformation of The Church arising out of a protest-ing group of believers, or, in contemporary terminology, an extreme makeover of the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ split apart. Literally. Out of the Roman Catholic empire was born the Protest-ant branch, and The Church became the churches. Shouting from the rooftops for all the world to hear, the newborn Protest-ants cried out, NO to an elitist priestly class, NO to indulgences, NO to an empire which had become all caught up in itself.

The Protestant Church grew, and grew, and grew, and got caught up in itself. Denominations erupted exponentially—Jesus Eruptus—as splits occurred over matters of polity, personality, and theological technicalities such as whether the bread and wine literally became the body and blood of Christ (the doctrine of Transubstantiation), or whether baptism was to be done by dunking or sprinkling. Almost five hundred years have passed since the last Reformation.

Just like the first time when one of his own betrayed him, so today Jesus is literally being strangled to death by the weight of his own message once more. Once again, just like the first time, the message—a message of non-judgmental acceptance of all God’s creation, a message of mercy and forgiveness—is too much for many to accept. A message that cries out, NO to laws and rules, NO to creeds and doctrines, NO to rituals and procedures, NO to an elitist priestly class telling the people what to think, what not to think, what to do, what not to do: such a message is too much for many to accept.

So they shout back from their own rooftops, The burden is too much. The cross to bear is unbearable. Give us back our God of Laws and Rules; give us a Jesus of creeds and doctrines; give us a priestly class who will tell us what to think and do, give us a checklist of how to achieve eternal salvation. Non-judgmental acceptance, forgiveness and mercy—that’s too hard. Keep it simple for us. And so they re-write the message in their own image.

It Is Time To Happen Again

If the sale of Indulgences for the forgiveness of sin threatened the lifeblood of the Body of Christ during the time of Martin Luther, such a threat pales in comparison to the threat facing Christianity today. The danger lies in the subtlety of it all. This time, unlike the last, there is no Crucifixion; there is no dangling of the physical body of Jesus the Man for all the world to watch die of asphyxiation. This time thirty pieces of silver have not crossed the palms of a betraying loyalist. Quite the opposite, this time those who are threatening to undo the message of Jesus (thereby strangling the Body under its own weight) are so subtle that they themselves do not even see what they are doing. They genuinely believe they represent the message of Jesus to the entire world, and under the code word evangelism they passionately are working to spread their version of the message throughout the entire world.

I speak, of course, of the evangelical Christian right, a label which they wear with great pride and which they use to distinguish themselves from everybody else. Undeniably, it is a gross oversimplification to break Christianity down into two mutually exclusive camps—evangelical Christian right and everybody else. Yet, just as undeniably this is precisely what the evangelical Christian right has done, so for purposes of what follows, I am merely accepting their classification system to demonstrate, among other things, how silly it is. Under their own categories, everybody else includes both moderate and liberal Christian churches.

Set forth as Appendix II, A Comparative Analysis: Red Church, Blue Church, is an attempt to summarize the basic differences between the evangelical Christian right (red churches) and the moderate and liberal thinking churches (blue churches). For present purposes, suffice it to say that the God of the evangelical Christian right is a vengeful, wrathful God of Judgment, a God of Laws and Rules, and a God of Exclusion. Many, of course, will deny this, proclaiming we all worship the same God and insisting theirs, too, is a God of Love. But while making these empty platitudes, out of the other side of their mouths, they will be preaching for all the world to hear such nonsense as the following: Reverend Franklin Graham’s recent public position that Hurricane Katrina was God’s way of wreaking havoc on the sinful people of New Orleans; Donny Swaggart’s recent suggestion on TV that before we know it they will be aborting babies at nine months; under the guise of a God of Love, the family value folks co-opt a term that traditionally is meant to evoke ideas of trust, loyalty, commitment, and love, and convert it into a homophobic hysteria that evokes ideas of distrust, disloyalty, lack of commitment, and hatred. Family values, indeed. (Rather than going on, I refer the reader to Appendix II).

As the voice of the evangelical Christian right grows in strength and dominates the bully pulpit of public opinion, they hold themselves out as The Church of Simple Answers. Follow our rules, we’ll show you the way. We’ll tell you what to think, what not to think, what to do, what not to do, who to vote for, who not to vote for. All, of course, in the name of God. Meanwhile, in overwhelming numbers the everybody else of Christianity hunker down, cowering in the hallowed halls of primarily mainline Protestant sanctuaries (or in the ivory towers of academe), preaching to their ever dwindling masses, trying to be all things to all people and as a result being very little to anybody. They remain silent with no one to blame but themselves for what is happening.

So, what is happening?

The answer depends on whether you look on the surface or below the surface. On the surface, the public record suggests the evangelical Christian right Church of Simple Answers is winning in the battle for the hearts and souls of Christians. Not just winning, crushing everybody else. Highly visible television evangelists and isolated mega-churches grow at impressive rates at the same time the overall attendance in mainline Christian churches in America continues to decline. But when we look below the surface, we realize how misleading these superficial statistics can be. What these statistics do not tell is where all the unchurched, underchurched, de-churched, never-been-churches, fed-up-with church are going? And why? The more the evangelical Christian right Church of Simple Answers continues to dominate the public marketplace of ideas—appearing as the sole arbiter of such basic issues as Truth/Reality, Faith/Reason, Science/Religion, God/Jesus/Interfaith communities, Moral Values, etc., etc., etc.—the more those who reject simple answers are left with no other choice than to abandon their faith.

On behalf of moderate and liberal Christianity, on behalf of all those unchurched, underchurched, de-churched, never-been-churched, fed-up-with-church persons out there seeking another lens through which to make sense out of the human struggle, and on behalf of a God of Love and Mercy and Forgiveness, it is time to end the silence. It is time, once again, to speak out, loud and clear.

We owe it to Jesus. We owe it to God. We owe it to ourselves. But most of all, we owe it to all the unchurched, de-churched, underchurched, never-been-churched, fed-up-with-church who readily admit they are seeking something spiritual but also admit they have no interest in organized religion. Why not? Who can blame them based on what they are hearing on the six o’clock news, or reading on the opinion pages of the paper, or hearing from the politicians, or seeing on TV’s Sunday morning worship service? Who can blame them?

It is time to resurrect Jesus as Jesus resurrects us. It is time we breathe new breath into Jesus as Jesus breathes new breath into us, a la God with Adam in Genesis 1, a la God breathing fresh breath into the dry bones of Israel in Ezekiel 31. After all, is that not how the original Resurrection worked? We became the hands and feet, the arms and legs, of Jesus. Let’s stand up. Let’s get back into the march. As Soren Kierkegaard once observed, If man does not learn from his mistakes, he will not amount to very much.

PART I

95 THESES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

CHAPTER 1

95 Theses in 95 Words

STOP!

Do not pass Prologue. Do not do anything.

If you have not read the Prologue, please go back and read it now. (If you have read it, please forgive me, and good for you. You may skip ahead to the next page and the 95 Theses in 95 Words). Just because it is labeled Prologue and might have been relegated to the world of Roman Numerals does not give you permission to disregard it. Please go back and read it now. While I am at it, let me put in a good word for the Epilogue and the two appendices at the end. Be sure to do them justice, too, at the appropriate time.

GOOD.

Now that you have completed read the Prologue, aren’t you glad you did? Your penance complete, you may:

(continue on the next page)

GOD IS A GOD OF:

32772-ODON-layout.pdf

95 Theses in 95 words is the short-hand version. Set forth in Appendix I hereafter, 95 Theses for the 21st Century, is the longer version. It is eighteen pages, single-spaced covering the major theological issues of our day: the relationship of worldviews vs. sets of beliefs; the relationship of truth, faith, fear, and doubt; the relationship of physical and spiritual/scriptural truths; the relationship between Science and Religion; the relationship of the Scientist’s search for a Theory of Everything and the theologian’s meaning of the Logos; the relationship of Jesus the Man with Jesus the Risen Christ; the relationship of humankind with Jesus and Jesus with humankind; the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the relationship of the Christian faith tradition with other faith traditions, and so forth.

If this sounds like a lot, it is. In my judgment, however, the 95 Theses of Appendix I (or something like them) are absolutely essential to the future of Christianity in America. If so, you ask, why are they relegated to second class citizenship as a mere appendix? Good question. Simply put, they are strategically placed at the end, because we must gradually work up to them. We must learn to walk before we run. Ours is an Information Age. It is the Age of the e-mail, the blog, the posting. Just say it in four or five words—we call them sound bites or bullets—or don’t bother saying it at all. We no longer think or talk in sentences, never mind paragraphs. We don’t have time for one thesis, never mind 95. Furthermore, who can be bothered with all that theological stuff? We’ve already made up our mind, one way or the other, pro-God, or con-God, so, either way, who wants to bother with the details? We all know what is in the details.

So, we begin at the beginning. With 95 simple words about who God is. Notice who God is. God is a God of Non-Judgmental Acceptance; a God of Love; a God of Interconnection, Interdependence, Interrelationship; God is a God of Open-mindedness; a God of Mercy; a God of Forgiveness. God is a God of Freedom; a God of Immanence; a God of Blessing. Also, notice who God is not. God is not a vengeful, wrathful God of Judgment and Punishment; God is not a Cosmic Scorekeeper God prepared to sentence fallible human beings to an eternity of damnation in the deepest depths of Hell for wrongdoing.

From 95 words to 95 theses. Let us begin the journey. Each step of the way (Part by Part), we will build our theological base without even noticing what we are doing. It is important that we do it, however, because only with an underlying theological base can we make sound, reasoned decisions on the hot-button social issues of the day ranging from beginning-of-life questions to end-of-life questions and everything in between. This, I believe, is what is lacking in Christianity today, and it is what promises to be its downfall as a faith tradition unless things change. In today’s world, everyone wants to argue/debate/proclaim their views on the hot-button social issues of the day without anything substantive to support those views. This attitude leads to what is often called the post-modern dilemma. Everything is relative. That’s your opinion, and this is mine, and let’s just agree to disagree. No, let’s not agree to disagree. Let’s go underneath the surface and get into the details. As it turns out, when you do, you discover something very interesting. God is in the details.

Let’s go see for ourselves.

PART II

RELIGION, CHRISTIANITY, AND WORLDVIEWS

(THESES 1-5)

II. RELIGION, CHRISTIANITY, AND WORLD VIEWS

(see Appendix I for entire 95 Theses)

1.        Generally speaking, religion is a belief system in something more, whether we call that something Materialism with a capital M, the Sacred, the Ultimate, the Ground of Being, gods with a small g, or God with a capital G.

2.        In its purest form, religion as a belief system is not so much a system of beliefs as it is a lens through which to view/experience the world. Most organized religions have, however, become reduced to a set of beliefs, including traditional orthodox Christianity.

3.        As individual religions have moved from a worldview orientation to a set-of-beliefs orientation, more and more persons have moved away from organized religion. This is especially true of Christianity in Europe and America as Western World society moves more and more away from organized ways of celebrating the Sacred (commonly called the secularization of society).

4.        In recent years and in response to this phenomenon of secularization, there has been a resurgence of the conservative branch of Christianity offering itself to anyone who will listen as The Church of Simple Answers. The resulting rise of TV evangelists, the growth of so-called mega-churches, and the dominance of the evangelical Christian right in the public media: all these factors suggest a religion of simple answers is the way to go.

5.        Beware of simple answers. And beware of statistics based on them. As the success of the evangelical Christian right has virtually silenced mainstream (moderate and liberal) Christianity, all those in search of something other than simple answers are responding the only way they know how—with their feet, walking away from organized religion and enlisting in the ever increasing forces of the unchurched, underchurched, de-churched. It is time for mainstream Christianity to speak up, loud and clear, and to take back that which rightly belongs to them: the Christian story. It is time to reclaim Christianity.

CHAPTER 2

Worldviews, An Overview

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

—1 Cor 13:11

Generally speaking, religion is a belief system in something more, whether we call that something Materialism with a capital M, the Sacred, the Ultimate, the Ground of Being, gods with a small g, or God with a capital g."

—Thesis 1

To be truly workable, any belief system has to be more than just a set of beliefs. A belief system, a/k/a a worldview, has to serve as the lens through which a person experiences the world and makes sense out of the world. The simplest, at times most comforting, belief system is placing one’s faith in an almighty authoritarian figure who gives us a set of simple rules to live by, demands obedience, and promises us a just reward if we comply. As children, our parents provide us with this authority figure in exchange for comfort and security. Simple answers are comforting. Do as I say. Period. If our authoritarian parents truly love us, they loosen the reins as we grow, encouraging us to discover for ourselves that life just isn’t that simple. They encourage us to stop thinking like children, to abandon our childish ways. If they don’t, we don’t. Unless, of course, we rebel.

Enter the adolescent stage of life—when no rules are sacred, when no authoritarian figure knows what he or she is talking about, when up is down and down is up. A time for testing. And being tested. It is a time when the adolescent reaches out for independence, for freedom, for the right to re-write the rules, the right to make their own mistakes, the right to discover their own values. It is a time to take two steps forward, one step back, or one step forward, two steps back.

Eventually, the adolescent settles on his or her path, internally adopting many of the rules once imposed from without, modifying some, rejecting others, but most of all discovering that it just isn’t that simple. No matter how hard we try, no matter how much we want to, we simply cannot reduce life to a set of simple rules. Welcome to adulthood. But even as adults, we sometimes seek the comfort and security of childhood. If only there were an authoritarian figure who could tell me what to do and assure me that everything will be all right—if not now, if not immediately, at least assure me that everything will turn out all right in the end. And in the end, some of us surrender the rights and obligations of adulthood and opt to return to our childish ways.

Such is the history of the human condition. Not only is it the history of the human condition, it is also the history of faith systems, is it not? Certainly, it is the history of the faith system we call Christianity. In its infancy, Christianity was all about an other-worldly, transcendent King of Kings, Lord of Lords; for that matter, it was all about the God of gods as monotheism gradually overcame the prevailing preference for polytheism. If one God is good, many gods are better—division of labor, specialization, etc., etc., etc. So our monotheistic God ruled with an iron hand, seemingly arbitrary and capricious at times—sometimes jealous, sometimes zealous, sometimes both.

As God and humankind began working things out, somewhere humankind went wrong. Like little children afraid of the dark, or worse yet, adolescents experimenting with the light, humankind became mired in rules. The more humankind pro-gressed (re-gressed?), the more rules they seemed to demand. We started with ten simple commandments, or so we thought. Before we knew it, we were bombarding ourselves with a Tower of Rules that could reach to the heavens a la the Tower of Babel or Dr. Seuss’s Yertle the Turtle—rules teetering under their own weight.

With the advent of Adolescence, how else do we carry out God’s dictate to maintain dominion and control over our rebellious, adolescent selves? Enter the Ten Commandments—or is it twenty or thirty or more? Enter the Holiness Codes, the Covenant Codes, the Ritual Codes, yada, yada, yada. Until finally, the prophet Jeremiah declares on behalf of God, ENOUGH! No more laws, no more rules, no more regulations. We’ll try a new way. I’ll write it on your hearts.

And then along comes Jesus. Adulthood, or one would hope. In his own words, I come not to overthrow the law but to fulfill it. Translation: I’ve come to teach you through word and deed that it is not a set of rules, a set of beliefs that you seek. Rather, it is a lens through which to experience the world and to reflect back upon the world—a non-judgmental lens of acceptance, respect, dignity, and forgiveness. A lens found in interrelationship and ground in interdependence.

Centuries passed. Millennia past. And the more things changed, the more they remained the same. It would be so much easier if only we could have a simple set of rules, if only we could revert to our child-like ways—if only we could have a carrot dangling out there for an ultimate reward, with a clear path (tr: set of rules to live by) to insure that we win the prize. Please, God, please, give us rules. We don’t want to be treated like adults. It’s no fun, it’s too hard, we need to know what we’re supposed to do and why and what we’re going to get out of it.

Enter: The Church of Simple Answers. Give the people what they want—absolute rules to live by. Tell them what to think and what not to think, what to do and what not to do, who to vote for and who not to vote for. Give them a contemporary version of the Holiness Codes, and Ritual Codes, and Covenant Codes, except this time instead of defining the unclean in terms of the food they eat, define it in terms of the company they keep, the faith they profess, the beliefs they hold; define it in terms of driving wedges between those who accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and everybody else.

In this Part II, we begin our journey together in Chapter 3, 3,628,800 Commandments, by suggesting the Ten Commandments be seen, not as a set of independent rules, but rather as an interconnected foundation of a lens through which to view the world. In Chapter 4, Reading Between the Commas, we remind ourselves that by limiting the ten commandments (or, for that matter, any set of rules) to a set of simple rules, we are, in fact, subjecting ourselves to a particular form of bondage. In Chapter 5, Declaration of Inter-dependence, we discover the only way to free ourselves from such bondage is to align ourselves with the Great Commandment of Matt 22, The Love Commandment. Finally, we close this conversation in Chapter 6, Kaleidoscope Man, with a suggestion of how to understand Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in this new light.

CHAPTER 3

3,628,800 Commandments

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A worldview, a belief system which provides an integrated lens through which to make sense of life’s experiences, is far more than a sum of individual