Bridging Gaps: The Bible and Preaching for a Season of Renewal in Mainline Churches
Much has been written about decline in mainline churches and denominations. Membership across mainline church denominations from Anglicans/Episcopalians to American Baptists have witnessed steady decline for more than two generations. (I use Anglican, Anglicans, and Episcopalian to describe both the churches of the Communion and those who call themselves its members).The ability of mainline churches to shape individuals’ views and opinions on today’s moral issues has increased divisions within the pews, rather than enhance unity among its worshipers. It can be argued that mainline churches, to their detriment, share an uncritical openness to Enlightenment sentiments that eventuate in a fervent wrestling with secularism. The place of mainline Christianity has withered, while the influences of rationalism and relativism have strengthened, yielding challenges to core beliefs and values of adherents of mainline denominations in recent decades.
How may the preacher make meanings that are life-transforming and proclaim the biblical message to worshipers in mainline churches who live in a season of materialism, secularism, and humanism across a landscape populated by rationalism, relativism, and religious pluralism? What daily or routine practices can be taken up by congregants to prepare them for an authentic encounter with God’s Word? What does the Bible offer to help renew mainline churches in such a time as this?
Thesis
At the worship hour, the preacher is an ambassador of the Bible. She has prepared herself for conversations with the worshiping congregation by listening to the text and negotiating its message in-between the borders of subjective self-knowing and objective rationalism. In the proclamation, she offers that conversation to listeners, inviting them to enter similar spaces of dialogue between the biblical text and their daily affairs. The joining of beliefs, viewpoints, and understandings among preacher, text, and listeners is a form of “intersubjectivity.” When this happens, the biblical narrative becomes a common reference of dialogue for shared faith, a common witness, and continuous renewal.
The nature of decline in mainline denominations may be perceived as a church in a crisis. Yet, crisis for the Christian community is neither new nor always negative. Membership counts in mainline denominations continue their decline as reported in the 2012 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches (Lindner, 2010, pp. 11-13).While these and other indicators (such as dollars raised) are commonly used indicators of health, vitality, and success of churches, they may not be the best measures of faithfulness. Hendrik Kraemer, a lay missiologist and leader in the ecumenical movement from the Dutch Reformed Church in the Netherlands wrote in The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World: “Strictly speaking, one ought to say that the Church is always in a state of crisis and that its greatest shortcoming is that it is only occasionally aware of it” (1947, 24).
When it comes to the religious life of individuals and congregations, there are multiple ways of being religious and depicting the health and vitality of a church. David Bosch argues, “It is not necessary for Christians from different backgrounds to become carbon copies of one another” in order to live out faith in Jesus Christ (1991, 136). Different religious orientations need not lead to judgments of antagonistic opposites. They are merely different (Bonhoeffer, D. (1953); Niebuhr, H. R. (1963); Tillich, P. (1951). It is daily activities and routine associations of persons–interpersonal and social contexts–in which meanings are made and faith is embodied, expressed, and lived in varied and diverse ways. Diligent attention and authentic connections by the preacher to the lived faith of worshipers can help mediate the cultural and social worlds of the biblical narrative and interpersonal and social-cultural contexts of worshipers in ways that foster intersubjectivity–the space in-between subjective self-knowing and objective renderings of the other, where an overlap of beliefs, viewpoints, and worldviews emerge. This is the transformative aim of engaging the Bible in the proclamation of the gospel (See Martin Buber, On Intersubjectivity and Cultural Creativity (1992), S. N. Eisenstadt, Editor).
Mainline Churches
According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey (2008), nearly eight of ten adults (78.4%) belong to some form of Christianity, five percent belong to other faith traditions, and sixteen percent are not affiliated with any particular religion. A little more than half (51.3%) of Christians are Protestants and almost one in four (23.9%) of Christians are Catholics.
Churches in the U.S. may be understood in ways other than by labels such as mainline, evangelical, or historically Black denominations. H. Richard Niebuhr (1951) presents a model for discerning more substantive distinctions among Christian religious traditions. In Christ and Culture, Niebuhr examines how religious entities’ beliefs and practices express their relationship to and involvement or non-involvement in society. Niebuhr identifies five distinct ways Christians relate to the world: Christ against culture, Christ and culture, Christ above culture, Christ and culture in paradox, and Christ transforming culture. Most, if not all, Christian religious communions live out a mixture of these ways of being involved or not involved with culture and society. Still the typology is helpful for capturing distinctions and uniqueness among the various traditions.
Apostle Paul comes to mind as an example of one whose aim on his missionary journey was constant while his approach to witnessing to the truth of Christ varied. It is an “inescapable necessity” for Paul to proclaim the gospel to the Gentiles of the Roman Empire. “Woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel!” (1 Corinthians 9:16). Paul’s aim is to prepare the world for God’s coming glory when all creation will render praise to God (Bosch, 1991, 135). But Paul’s methods for taking up the mission are varied and diverse. Paul is fervently clear that his “mission is neither the Hellenization of Jews, nor the Judaization of Greeks.” Paul writes to the Church at Corinth about his right as an apostle: “To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some” (NRSV, 1 Corinthians 9:22). Paul’s approach is “one of flexibility, sensitivity, and empathy” (Bosch, 1991:136). The most basic reasons for proclaiming the gospel for Paul, then, are gratitude (indebtedness) to Christ, a concern for the lost, and a sense of responsibility for the triumph of God (Bosch, 1991: 133-139).
Analyzing the data by the use of Niebuhr’s typology, mainline denominations may be understood in terms of “Christ of culture” and a “Christ the transformer of culture” involvement with civilization. Adherents who demonstrate a “Christ of culture” approach to Christianity, according to Niebuhr, “…hail Jesus as the Messiah of their society, the fulfiller of its hopes and aspirations, the perfecter of its true faith, the source of its holiest spirit… They seek to maintain fellowship not only with believers but also with unbelievers.” (Niebuhr, 1951, 83).
Our purpose is not to be overly concerned with the typology, descriptions, and labels, as much as to recognize distinctions that may provide insight when trying to mediate the message of the gospel to a people in a culture that is very different from that of the early church–the first interpreters of the Christian redemptive story (Kuhn and Tracy, 1984). To engage worshipers and listeners in a genuine dialogue with the biblical narrative, it is advantageous to recognize that one is participating in a cultural exchange as the preacher mediates between the life-world of present hearers and the life and worldviews of people of a different time and social-cultural milieu. For each audience the socio-political, economic, and religious context of their time shapes their perceptions, perspectives, worldview, hearing, and understandings of the Bible proclaimed.
Bridging Interpretive Gaps
In the qualitative study of the Anglican Communion project on the “Bible in the Life of the Church,” members who sit in church pews indicated disparities in their attitudes, perceptions, interpretations, and ways of making meaning. One might be led to ask: “How do we account for such differences within a group that we too often assume hold common–if not identical–views on matters of faith and life?” Contrary to such a common assumption, “people’s ‘belief systems’ are not necessarily as ‘systematic’ or conceptually coherent” as we may desire to believe (Drew, Raymond, and Weinberg, 2006, 101).While Christians share common views and beliefs, those understandings “interact dynamically with other elements of the social environment” and are seldom, if ever, identical (Goodwin, 2000).
From the Anglican Communion’s research report (2010 – 2012), we learn that some variations in beliefs and apparent inconsistencies may be framed in terms of “gaps.” From the interim report of the “Bible in the Life of the Church” project, examples include the gaps that exist between:
• Understanding “the fruits of study”–what the Bible means to the reader–and that of the process of study–the interpretive tools used to discover these fruits;
• Topics where the church gained understandings from Scripture and topics where the church relied on other sources for understanding; and,
• Engagement in a particular Bible passage, allowing that passage to inform other passages, and putting the passage in its larger biblical context.
Such diversity in interpretations, understandings, and beliefs raises questions about the Bible as a source of our preaching and teaching as we hope and assume that worshipers are making meanings and connections between what we preach and how they live. Questions like:
• If the Bible is central to our life as Christians, then why are there topics and issues where we do not draw on its insights?
• What Scripture passages do we privilege in our selection and interpretation of other passages?
• Are there sections of the Bible we never or rarely encounter that limit our understanding of what Scripture might be saying to us?
An equally pertinent question for the preacher and the proclamation of the gospel for the renewal of the church is “How do we bridge the interpretive and understanding gaps that beset us?” There are many ways to analyze the work and craft of preaching. From my own experience as pastor, four elements stand out as indispensably requiring diligent, deliberative attention. They are the preacher, the text, the people, and an often overlooked component of proclamation– “transitions.”
First, the preacher comes to the task of preaching with both known and deeply held but often unrealized views and values of the text, the people, and the aims and tasks of preaching. Preachers, like all of us, approach our work from a particular social location. Race and ethnicity, education and economic status, gender, and social class are common indicators that contribute to the composition of an individual’s social location. Of equal importance are the values and deeply held convictions about God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Church, and the world the preacher carries forth in preparation, delivery, and dialogues about her or his proclamation rendered. These treasured views and values represent the socially embedded nature of the preacher who stands in the shoes of John to utter her “Thus says the Lord.” The same views and values express the fondly embraced sentiments that make up her temples of meaning (Seymour, Crain, and Crockett, 1993).
As a preacher prepares, proclaims, and lives out the preached word in dialogue with others, self-awareness about her social location is important. The ability to recognize, and, if possible, bracket one’s embodied values, views, and theological orientations help the text represent something other than one’s own experience and worldview. There are texts that require interpreters to wrestle with understanding passages that may not confirm our values or conform to our lifestyle or cherished desires. What habits and practices does a preacher use so that the counter-cultural voice of God is heard and not silenced? How does one adjudicate sayings of and insights from the sacred scriptures that do not fit the proclivities, dispositions, or interests she or he is entrusted to proclaim on behalf of God?
Second, the Bible is the central text of the Church. The Hebrew-Christian Scriptures as a sacred text is the Word of God–a divinely revealed set of communications. These sacred texts may be thought of in three distinct, but interrelated forms: the revealed Word written, the revealed Word incarnate, and the living Word embodied and passed through traditions to subsequent generations (Allen, 2008). In all three forms, the Word is “other”–it represents worldviews starkly distinct from the post-Enlightenment minds of contemporary speakers and hearers (Kuhn and Tracy, 1984). In a study on Bible use in the USA, while 34% of mainline Christians view the Bible as “inspired Word of God” at least on concerns of faith, still more than 6 out of 10 (61%) hold understandings of the Bible that reflect sentiments of the Enlightenment (American Bible Society, 2012).
This understanding places certain demands on preachers as they converse between ancient texts and contemporary worshipers. Preachers must clarify for themselves and then communicate to their listeners their understandings about the relation between these words and the worldviews they represent. How does the preacher facilitate and permit the text to “speak” out of its worldview? If silence is an attribute of genuine communication (Buber, 1958), how does the preacher allow the Bible to be silent and express appreciation for that silence? Discovering other ways the sacred text and contemporary worshipers relate to each other may contribute to mainline churches’ season of renewal.
A third key feature of preaching is the audience. Some of the descriptive characteristics of the mainline church audience are presented above–in the discussion on Christ and culture and mainline churches. It is commonly assumed that members of mainline denominations’ worldviews are influenced by the Enlightenment. Thinkers of the Enlightenment promoted beliefs that include the following: individuals are autonomous; knowing can be value-free and neutral; people can reliably understand the observable world in terms of cause-effect relations; progress is inevitable; and all problems are solvable (Bosch, 1991, 262-273). People who accept various constellations of these assertions often hold worldviews that are rationalistic (over-confidence in an individual’s reasoning abilities) or relativistic. Relativism refers to a belief that there is no absolute truth; that all beliefs and truths are culturally situated. Both rationalism and relativism challenge the preacher to understand and incorporate meaning, and to incorporate interpretive strategies in the work of biblical proclamation.
A fourth aspect of preaching that I have grown to appreciate (painfully at times) is the “transition.” Katie Geneva Cannon is the first African American woman ordained in the United Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). In her book, Teaching Preaching: Isaac Rufus Clark and Black Sacred Rhetoric (2002), Cannon devotes an entire chapter to the topic of “transitions,” a term used also for “change,” as in the transition from childhood to adolescence. Looking at data across a number of quantitative and qualitative studies, it becomes increasingly clear that there are transitions that produce more fog than clarity when preaching. Questions about interpretive transitions–the crossing of cultural borders–seem to bring greater variations of insight and understanding, but less growth and development on the part of listeners and worshipers as measured by the span of beliefs and disbeliefs in faith and practice (ABS, 2012). There are gaps in interpretations, variations of faith and belief, and openings between perceptions of Christian adherents, even within mainline denominations.
To a greater or lesser degree, all four of these elements have influence, potentially, at various stages of preaching; during preparation, proclamation, and the dialogues and encounters that follow. How might the preacher navigate in-between the borders of such worldviews?
I suggest that the preacher’s diligent attention and authentic connections in proclamation can help mediate the cultural and social worlds of the biblical narrative and hearers of a worshipping community. One of the ways and means this happens is through intersubjectivity: the bridge that blends and transforms the borders of demarcation between subjective self-knowing and approximations of the objective other and its renderings of reality. It is the space between subjectivities in which overlap of beliefs, points of view, conceptual schemas, or frames of reference that result from a dialogical exchange of ideas, values, and/or experiences occurs. Preaching that demonstrates genuine dialogue, “the meeting of the souls,” involves persons turning toward one another with intention of encountering a mutual relation (Buber, 1947, 19). In the preaching and proclamation of the gospel, intersubjectivity is the transition that facilitates and permits language meanings to cross boundaries and result in shared understandings (Drew, Raymond, and Weinberg, 2006, 100-101). By transporting meanings across time and cultural boundaries, intersubjectivity bridges gaps between the biblical narrative and the life-world of worshipers.
Intersubjectivity is the in-between space for making meaning that is created when preachers preach and worshipers hear the sacred Scriptures. Together, meanings are made and senders and receivers in the communication process grow toward shared understandings of the biblical message. Such movement is change. The preacher’s use of transitions–the technical, grammatical words, signs and symbols used to smooth and connect sentences and points in the presentation–also help to create a dialogical encounter between the distinct and varied worlds of past and present Christians. When preaching becomes genuine dialogue, the mutual cultural exchange of ideas, values, and sentiments between early church witnesses and present-day respondents, intersubjectivity happens. That is, preacher, hearers, and worshipers are moved from subjective states of self-knowing and/or objective realities of “otherness” to borders where beliefs overlap, points of view merge, and frames of reference are held in common. These transitions can transform an individual’s and community’s character in redemptive and reconciling ways. Preaching, at its best, fosters an intersubjectivity that shapes and changes the worldview of worshipers and hence, transforms the world in which they live. The faith preachers proclaim needs to be the truth they are willing to live by; however, it should not be assumed that proclamation of God’s Word will make up an individual’s mind for them (Eisenstadt, 1992, 65). A modest aim of preaching in a world of cultural and religious pluralism may be to orient listeners to God’s love for the creation and for all the people of the world.
Conclusion: Renewal in Mainline Churches is Happening
Renewal in mainline churches cannot make churches more faithful by refashioning them into something other than what they are authentically called to be as people of faith responding to their experience of the present, shaped by their knowledge of the past. A season of renewal for mainline churches must include broad and deep, varied, and vibrant opportunities for individuals to connect with the Scriptures in ways that foster intersubjectivity so that understandings may be informed and interpretations enriched for lived religion–embodiments of truths upon which people will dare to base their lives.
May you preach and teach until the day comes when the whole church gives voice and witness to the redemptive and reconciling works of God as understood in the light of God’s Word incarnate in Jesus Christ.
