"The greatest persecution of the church does not come from enemies
on the outside but is born from the sin within the church."
Those are
the words of Pope Benedict XVI, reflecting on the continual disclosures
in 2010 of the deep sexual abuse crises within the Church over the
past five or six decades.
In spite of the continued institutional failings of the Vatican
in regard to these crises - problems which arise from a culture
of secrecy and unaccountability within its structures, hierarchy
and ideology - the Pontiff's analysis about the true nature of
the challenge to the Western church, in particular, is, we would
say colloquially, 'spot on'.
As the Epistle of Peter puts it, "Judgement begins with the
household of God" - that is, with those who profess and seek to enact
the life-giving of God shown in Christ and who are accountable to the
standards of the Gospel. It does not begin by casting stones or ready
accusations at others.
Of course there will be particular moments in specific contexts
when "those who are not with you are against you", sometimes in
extremely harsh and unyielding ways. The plight of Christians and
other minorities in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East is more
than testimony to this. Amnesty and other organisations regularly
document such abuses of human and religious dignity.
But more often, especially in Europe and other parts of the
world where there is freedom of expression, we ought to be perfectly
able to work on the basis that (to employ the alternate aphorism of
Jesus, the two occurring in Matthew and Mark's accounts), "those who are
not against us are for us."
The Christian task in any era and setting is (bearing in mind
the specificities of culture and social formation) to live, speak and
act with authenticity from the standpoint of seeking to be the
reconciled and reconciling Body of Christ for this time and place.
That means (among other things) looking out the good for and
in others, opposing injustice, being peacemakers and demonstrating
our conviction that the world gifted by God is receptive to what is
true, beautiful and fruitful, in spite of the brokenness, decay,
wrongdoing and death-dealing that continually mars it. Part of this, as
the Quakers put it, is "seeking the light" everywhere and in everyone."
This approach contrasts significantly with the self-focused
victim mentality which is being perpetuated by those who see
discrimination and persecution in every corner of British life, now that
the previous and imposition of Christendom ideas and institutions is
being eroded. This loss of power over others is being interpreted by
some as darkness and threat.
But as the Pope intimates, in spite of his own tendency to
blame secularism and other belief systems for the predicament of the
church, it is in fact our own failings as Christian communities that are
being so painfully exposed in a cultural climate where (some of us
would add) deference to religious codes and bodies is disappearing,
and those outside the church see so much within its deepest fabric that
is deplorable - division, acrimony, prejudice,
self-righteousness, meaness of spirit, judgmentalism and lack of
consistency between words and deeds.
At the heart of the Christian message is not abstract proposition
or written prescription (as 'religion' is usually taken to involve) but
a living person who, fully inhabiting and yet always
transcending (exceeding the limits of) the here-and-now, encodes within
the flesh and the heart a picture of who God is and what God is truly
like - giving, loving, forgiving, reconciling
and justice-creating.
This way, truth and life disclosed in Jesus Christ is
massively demanding, of course.
It highlights our own significant
shortcomings as well as the gaping wounds given and taken in the world
around us, but it also provides us with the resources and disposition to
tackle these problems, both internal and external.
The Gospel does this by pointing us towards the need for location in
a community and a narrative capable of nurturing the attributes
of Christlikeness in practical action, peaceableness,
neighbourly solidarity and political orientation towards those pushed to
the margins.
This inherently requires the attitudes of wisdom,
humility, perspective, gratitude and attentiveness brought about by
learning, prayer and worship.
In this sense, as Stanley Hauerwas and others ranging from
Anabaptists to Catholics have said, the church rightly understood does
not "have" a social ethic (something imported from outside for utility's
sake). Rather, it is, a social ethic, and for that matter a
political reality, in the sense outlined above.
The difficulty is that
'church' has been hijacked over the years for many ideological purposes,
has been distorted or abused by controlling elites or degenerated
traditions, and has "covered a multitude of sins" (as Benedict might
have put it).
None of these opportunities and problems is adequately addressed
by the 'Not Ashamed' campaign launched in the UK by Christian Concern
and others.
The rhetoric of this initiative appears to be aimed
at generating pride and defensiveness (neither of them qualities
that create positive ecclesial regeneration) towards a mythologised
notion of 'the Christian nation' (the classic Christendom trope)
residing in certain legal and constitutional privileges which put
Christians in a determinative position and make them exempt from the
prevailing standards of non-prejudicial justice that others who are not
Christian are required to observe.
Indeed, the vocal and accusatory demand for the 'right' to be able
to exclude LGBT people (especially) from equal access to those
public goods and services provided wholly or partly through
Christian agencies in a mixed 'welfare economy' strikes many outside the
church not so much as a desire to be treated fairly themselves, but
rather as a wish to be allowed by common law to treat others
unfavourably.
This is, to many people not persuaded by the ideology of the
campaign, plainly unChristian as well as non-humanitarian in its ethos
and impact, assuming (as we should on good theological, let
alone 'secular', grounds) that treating others, regardless of
their condition or standing, with justice is a clear requirement of
the Gospel.
The question of what moral standards and behaviours should be
upheld within specifically Christian communities is not one which should
be - or needs to be - confused or conflated with the law of the land
or with the rules required to mediate access and goods fairly in a
plural society.
Those Christians or others who are unwilling to receive
or serve certain groups of people in sections of the public square
are free to choose other employment or to use their own funds rather
than seek recourse to public ones in pursuit of their aims - whatever
we may think of them.
To make this distinction in no way amounts to discrimination
or persecution, and it is disingenuous to claim otherwise,
or contradictorily to suggest (as some appear to be doing) that it is
"discriminatory" to be told that you should not publicly discriminate on
religious grounds!
This is a distortion of language and values which
enables one group of people to treat another group in ways which they
would (rightly) object to if they were subject to such
treatment themselves.
Once again, the requirement is for Christians first to consider
their own sins and the impact and character if those failings,
before railing at those around them who are seeking to live by their
own values and without the political dominance of any one creed.
Indeed, history teaches us that just as there are emancipatory heroes
(ranging from Bartholeme de la Casas through to Desmond Tutu) who
personify and exemplify the liberative dynamic the Christian message
can offer the whole of humanity (when it is absorbed by goodwill rather
than consumed by grievance), so many mobilisations for change outside or
on the margins of the church - the environmental and women's
movements, for example - have enabled Christians to clarify, rectify
or rediscover liberating elements of their own inheritance which
have been lost or sidelined by the "church of power".
This double trajectory of repentance and learning, combined with
a renewal of service, prayer and political action alongside
"the wretched of the earth" (Franz Fanon), is what constitutes
the challenge of radical reformation for the church today.
Pope Benedict, undoubtedly, sits atop an ecclesial tree which,
along with Christian communities of all kinds, shapes and histories,
stands in need of the tough but necessary 'shaking process' (Bishop
Colin Winter, echoing the Letter to the Hebrews) we are experiencing
along the path to a post-Christendom remaking of the church in the
pattern of God's domination-free kingdom.
Even so, we can hear in
the pontiff's words regarding the roots of the current church's dilemmas
a deeper echo of the future than is often expressed by its
present institutional reality and response.
My own hope and prayer for 2011 is that more and more Christians,
however small in number overall, will act on the impulses of reformation
in the spirit of the peace churches and the emergent strand within
global Christianity, rather than heed the siren voices of fear and
reaction.
SIC: Ekklesia/UK