Transforming Acts. Bruce G. Epperly
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mystical experience. He believed that God was alive and moving through our lives, guiding people through dreams, visions, and unexpected ecstatic experiences. He saw God’s hand in the ever-expanding circles of the Jesus movement, beginning at the Jerusalem Pentecost and embracing Rome and beyond. As he penned the manuscript we now know as Acts of the Apostles sometime between 70-80 CE, Luke believed that he was part of a never-ending story of divine call and human response, unhindered by ethnicity, geography, or sociology. He visualized a faith with a moving center, initially revolving around Jerusalem but eventually embracing the whole Earth. He might even have imagined Christians like us, centuries later, telling and retelling the stories of Jesus and he wanted to give us a glimpse of how a small group of people were able to transform the world.
Luke saw the Jesus movement emerging in his own “postmodern” world, where old spiritual certainties were being challenged and people craved experiences of the divine to help them face the inevitabilities of aging and mortality. Consider the following descriptions of the first century Jesus movement as they relate to our own particular time. Do they seem familiar? Do they describe some of the challenges we face in our own pluralistic age? The technology differs, and so does our understanding of the universe and the nature of global communication, but we may have more in common with Jesus’ first followers than we previously imagined:
The early church emerged in a pluralistic and multi-religious society, where it had to compete on equal footing with many other religious traditions. Today, we can no longer claim to be a Christian nation, we are multi-religious nation in which anyone with internet or cable television can become a global citizen. Christianity is just one option among many for the majority of young adults and many of their parents.
The first Christians had to deal with their poor reputation. They were accused by outsiders of misdeeds such as: undermining Jewish identity, teaching lax morals, and worshiping a strange deity whose character was vastly at odds with the Greek and Roman deities. Today’s Christians need to respond to the perception, especially among young adults, that our faith is intolerant, reactionary, backward looking, anti-scientific, sexist, and homophobic.
For Jesus’ first followers the world was in flux. Rome was at its pinnacle but soon would be declining. Signs of its ultimate demise were beginning to surface. The old order was dying, not unlike the economic and global transformations which foretell the eclipse of the American empire and the dream of “American exceptionalism.”
Without fully formed doctrines, creeds, or structures, the early church – guided only by their experiences of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, stories about Jesus, and the Hebraic scriptural witness – made it up as it went along, creating new pathways where none had existed before, trying out new ways of leadership, spirituality, and mission. As Christians today, we have a tradition of two thousand years of doctrinal reflection, but may need to be just as creative in our theological reflection to be faithful to Christ today. There is no clear orthodoxy to guide our path and perhaps there never was a fully orthodox faith affirmed by all Christians, but many orthodox alternatives among the Christian stories about God, Christ, Spirit, atonement, and salvation.
These are exciting, but ambiguous times, for active Christians and spiritual seekers alike. The future we planned on thirty years ago, maybe even five years ago, no longer exists – technologically, economically, globally, or spiritually – and we must make plans for surprising and emerging futures, not knowing where the paths ahead will take us. To some observers, we are on the edge of a Great Awakening, the emergence of a global Christianity, integrating the best spiritual practices and philosophical insights of other faith traditions, science, and non-Christian media and literature to form “a new kind of Christianity.” Following Bishop John Shelby Spong, they know that “Christianity must change or die.”2 In fact, there is no alternative: change happens and shapes our lives and faith traditions even when they deny or denounce it. In spite of the challenge and discomfort of change, our sense of disorientation may be good news, for it calls us to honor the past and venture creatively toward the future with Christ as our companion. Beyond disorientation and dislocation, surprises of grace await as we lean forward to new horizons of faithful adventure.
Living in the Areopagus
In the mid 1970’s, when my teacher John Cobb penned his classic Christ in a Pluralistic Age, his vision of a growing Christianity, inclusive of multiple spiritual and theological paths was revolutionary.3 Today, Cobb’s imaginative vision has become commonplace, especially in urban areas and college communities. Peoples of all faiths and none at all are discovering that they live in a spiritual Areopagus, the marketplace of spiritual practices and competing religious systems. In the age of internet and cable television, this is just as true for Williamsport, Pennsylvania, Bozeman, Montana, Victoria, British Columbia, as it is in Manhattan or Washington DC. Not too long ago, peoples’ religious options were more or less limited to various varieties of Protestant, Catholic, or Jew. Even agnostics and atheists framed their objections to God’s existence in Jewish or Christian terms, and used the language of the Bible and theological reflection to challenge the existence of God and traditional moral standards
In this second decade of the twenty-first century, many people feel comfortable sampling the varieties of spiritual delicacies available in the spiritual smorgasbord. The possibilities are almost endless for the religious adventurer. There are few signposts to help the pilgrim find her or his way.
Despite its numerical, political, and historical advantages Christianity no longer can command the sole allegiance of twenty-first century persons but must compete on an even playing field with Scientology, A Course in Miracles, The Secret, the Dalai Lama, and Tai Chi.
The spiritual landscape is rapidly changing and the congregations and religious institutions that expect to flourish in the future must make it up as they go along, embracing the flow of life and the fluidity of doctrines and spiritual practices while affirming the wisdom of their traditions and founders. Consider the following statistics on North American religion garnered by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life:
Whereas thirty years ago, less than a quarter of Americans noted that they have had mystical experiences, today 50% of Americans admit to having transcendent spiritual experiences (near death experiences, encounters with spiritual beings, or a deep sense of God’s presence).
30% of Americans state that they practice multiple spiritualities – they go to church and practice Hindu-based yoga; they join Zen Buddhist meditation with congregational leadership; and they practice reiki healing touch and other energy work and participate in Christian healing services. Traditional religious boundaries no longer apply to many of today’s spiritual seekers. The quest for authentic and sometimes ecstatic experiences of the divine drives them away from traditional worship services to experience God in embodied spiritual practices (for example, yoga and Tai Chi), silent meditation, and lively dance, movement, and music.
The fastest growing self-described religious group is not the Mormons, Pentecostals, or Evangelicals, but the “nones” (not the religious order!) but people who are unaffiliated with any religious tradition, but still claim to be spiritually-inclined. Nearly 20% of the American population describe themselves as belonging to no religious tradition; the percentage is much higher among young adults, many of whom have attended church only for weddings and funerals and see the high holidays of Christianity primarily as opportunities for celebration, consumption, and family reunions.4
More significant for the future of Christianity, a variety of studies have noted that Christianity is viewed unfavorably by the majority of youth and young adults. Whenever I teach classes in theology – and theology simply involves our vision of God, the world, human life and its goals – I often ask the following question: “What would you think of Christianity, if all you knew about Christianity were headline stories about Qur’an burning pastors, preachers who inaccurately predict the end of the world, televangelists who blame the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina on God’s punishment of America for its immorality, and activists who protest the teaching of evolution in public schools?” My students typically protest: “I don’t believe those things; that’s not my religion!” Then I remind them that for