o1mnikent

It’s almost cliché to say that denominations are on the way out.  They’re criticized by many for being too institutional, bureaucratic, polity-driven, hierarchical, and inefficient.  Sadly, this criticism is often justified. 

Sam Hamstra wrote an interesting article in last month’s edition of the Banner that is generating a bit of controversy in our denomination (including this response in Kerux last week).  In his article, Hamstra forecasts the death of the Christian Reformed Church (my own denomination).  He writes,

“Denominational loyalty wanes as one generation dies and a younger one rebels. Congregational financial support for the denomination, while stable, falls behind expectation. Congregations now shop for services that may or may not be provided by the CRCNA. Church members have been exiting Christian Reformed congregations for non-Reformed versions at alarming rates. CRCNA agencies struggle to generate support for their programs and initiatives. In short, the CRCNA, as we know it, is dying.”

In fact, Hamstra predicts that the demise of the CRC will be realized in less than fifty years.  It will

“…die and give way to a new, emerging post-denominational form of congregational collaboration that differs significantly from its predecessor.”

How will this look?  Hamstra is not wholly clear on this point, but he does advocate a kind of de-centralized organization that thrives on localized ministry.  This ministry model counters the current model where the money and resources of the denomination are thrown into a pot and then redistributed to various ministries, organizations, and congregations.

In part, I agree with Hamstra.  I do think that the best ministry happens locally (which is why churches must be very discerning about short term missions projects, but that’s another post for another day).  I also agree that centralized models of ministry become dangerous when they start to resemble franchised businesses.

Yet I disagree with Hamstra that denominations in general and ours (the CRC) in particular are inherently bad.  Denominations, despite their shortcomings, have the advantage of pointing us outside ourselves to places, times, and perspectives that we cannot easily see or quickly grasp.  This point cannot be emphasized enough.  Denominations correct our tendency toward congregationalism and individualism, where churches exist only as localized governing bodies that are only loosely affiliated with one another. 

Denominations also link us with brothers and sisters in Christ from decades and centuries ago, and remind us that the body of Christ transcends our temporal experience. We should, at the very least, recognize that the Church (and particular denominations) in its current form is the accumulation of countless individuals and communities who discerned the will of God in their particular contexts.  Our polity – for all its faults – is inextricably linked to these deep and profound expressions of their faith and ours.  It was not born in abstraction, but in the belief and piety of real people, which extends to our own present moment. True, their experiences may have been quite different from ours, and we’ll naturally have to make a few modifations.  But their place in the church makes them no different from us and makes their expression of faith no less significant.

We are not called to take the sum total of God’s revelation to the church, evaluate it, and then reject it in favor of something entirely different. Instead, we are called to contribute our voices to theirs.  Our own voices in the present constitute a very small participation in a conversation that began long before our own pithy existence.  We cannot interrupt this conversation or ignore other voices.   It is wrong to stop listening to those who have gone before simply because they are not around anymore.  The church is cross-temporal, but we are quite finite. 

Should we evaluate our current church struction?  Critique our denomination?  Evaluate and test our actions against the will of God revealed in the scriptures and through the Spirit?  Absolutely. 

But we should first evaluate our attitudes about our denominations before we evaluate the denominations themselves.   We should diagnose our motivations for critique before we advocate complete change, regardless of how good or bad change might be.  I suspect that, in the end, advocating change in our denomination is far easier than first examining ourselves.

Many readers of this blog appreciate the beginning of a good season.  Some folks enjoy New Years’ Eve more than others.  Others like the beginning of summer.  And still others count down the weeks until the beginning of the liturgical calendar and proclaim “Happy New Year!” on the last week of November.  You know who you are.

For those of us who are the vernal equinox types – which, by now, should be every reader of this blog - we’re starting our season with a bang.  And Thor, god of thunder (incidently, never the correct answer to a question in meteorology class), will be making an appearance in about half an hour.  This means that you still have a few minutes to enjoy the pre-frontal convergence before the main event hits Grand Rapids at 8:00 this evening and Lansing at 9:00.  Enjoy the show.

I was walking through the mall the other day and ambled past the Gap store. I noticed a large poster that said, “Do the (red) thing.” The poster advertised a clothing line called (red), “designed to eliminate AIDS in Africa.” A portion of the profit will be donated to the cause of fighting AIDS.

I was a tad shocked. I’ve had moments in stores where I’ve wondered whether or not I really need those jeans, that shirt, or this life-size stuffed buffalo. Sometimes I’ve purchased the item at hand, and other times I’ve walked out of the store, knowing that my money could be better spent elsewhere. But Gap has come up with an ingenious marketing strategy where consumers can buy what they want without worrying about whether their money would be spent for a more worthy cause, and they’ve branded it with the most crippling and dangerous disease on the planet.

EDIT: Sean reflects further.

Last week Tuesday, Jean Baudrillard died, becoming the second-most awesome person from France name Jean to die (the first, of course, being Jean Chauvin).  He spent the early part of his life attacking the superficial nature of consumer culture and conspicuous consumption.  He mused about why we buy products not for their practical or useful purposes.  Instead, he showed, we consume in order to buy a certain reality that we feel we cannot get elsewhere.

In his later years, he claimed that we have been duped into embracing a simulation of reality – a world where symbols and signifiers take on more meaning than the things they are meant to represent.  He wondered, among other things, why more adults visit Disneyland (completely fake, by the way) than children, or why casinos with fake interior decor reap more money than those that don’t.  These realities aren’t actually real.  We seek to escape reality by flocking to these fake representations of it, leaving behind the parts of our existence we don’t seem to like.  (I suppose that this is why websites like Second Life are so popular, where users pay real money for their status in a fake world.)

Baudrillard was a tad eccentric.  He claimed that the Gulf War did not take place with his aptly titled essay, “The Gulf War Did Not Take Place,” and he lamented the lives of those who died in the twin towers, claiming that “the horror for the 4,000 victims of dying in those towers was inseparable from the horror of living in them.”

I was on a Baudrillard kick last spring, when I read three or four of his books.  I decided that I had had enough when I was standing in front of my parents’ washing machine musing at the existential implications of pushing buttons on the washing machine instead of actually washing clothes.

I suppose that the church has much to learn from Baudrillard.  When people say that they’re looking for something real in church, or looking for authentic relationships, or community, I wonder if they’re making an implicit statement about the nature of reality as they know it.  My own opinion is that they are describing the kind of reality – or hyperreality – that Baudrillard identifies.  It is ironic that the segment of North American Christianity that prides itself in identifying and encountering the reality that Baudrillard describes also employs these terms as a kind of marketing strategy.  A tad self-defeating, I think.

Conservapedia was recently launched to counter the alleged liberal bias of wikipedia. They lament wikipedia’s tendancy toward that which is “anti-Christian” and “anti-American.”

I’m not exactly sure what this means. Wikipedia is not run by an oligarchy of liberals, but by hundreds of thousands of contributors who – by consensus – have established norms that have evolved as the site has grown to 1.6 million pages. Everyone gets a voice. In my own brief tenure as one of those few hundred thousand, I’ve edited articles and created an article that was swiftly deleted, probably for good reason. So I’m not exactly sure who these liberals are. (And there are enough wikipedia contributors that it wouldn’t matter anyway.

One of conservapedia’s examples of wikipedia’s bias reads thus: “Wikipedia’s entry for the Renaissance denies any credit to Christianity, its primary inspiration.” Those (what makes this a conservative or liberal issue?) who disagree ought to make the appropriate changes, provide cogent arguments supported with ample evidence, and cite as many sources as possible. Contribute to the talk page, gain support of your fellow wikipedia contributors, and behave politely, and you’ll get to keep your change.

Conservapedia also favors American spellings, such as “labor” instead of “labour.” But what exactly makes “labour” a liberal spelling?

But enough complaining. Don’t like something you read on wikipedia? Then change it. This isn’t the New York Times or the Nation. You have the power to edit wikipedia to make it better.

People might be created equal, but ideas certainly aren’t.

God seems to love some people…

“Summer arrived today, briefly, as unseasonably warm temperatures reached into the 70s in places and broke several records, The National Weather Service reported.”

…more than others.

“February 2007 will be remembered as being the snowiest February since official records began in 1904 in Grand Rapids and one of the coldest Februaries [sic?] across much of southwest lower Michigan.”