Followers Become Leaders in a Time of Change

Imagine that doctor of an earlier age who treated his patients by the prescribed method of bleeding but noticed them getting weaker and weaker. Perhaps in the back of his mind he was thinking, “this isn’t working,” but he feared saying so. After all, this was the method his superiors taught in medical school. I tend to think it was some family members who finally stepped forward and said, “wait a minute doc, every time you visit he moves closer to death.” Maybe the professors had seen this too, but to dispute accepted practice might have cost them power and position. So they stayed silent.

Or imagine the religious leaders of Jesus’ time, or Martin Luther’s. Men who heaped rules and responsibilities, forms of discipline, on the people. Young teachers like Jesus and Luther could see that these methods brought the people no closer to God. In fact it drove the people from God while bringing benefits in prestige and wealth to the religious leaders. How reluctant the establishment must have been to give up its advantage. And there's Jesus and Luther being asked to go along with the charade. Thank God, they didn’t.

Now imagine the Christian elite of today, watching the church shrinking and their leadership being directly questioned by the people. How will our leaders react? Will they voluntarily change to save the church, or will they insist on being right as the people turn away to search elsewhere for the face of God?

This past Monday a study was released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life which showed once again the people are leaving the leadership in the dust. If religion was like Parliamentary government we’d be emptying our seminaries of professors with a vote of no confidence. Most democracies recognize that leaders can’t lead when the people won’t follow. According to the Pew research, many of our leaders are getting a vote of no confidence, but refusing to listen. To be fair, the wise ones are already ahead of the curve on what the people are saying.

According to Pew 70 percent of Americans with a religious affiliation believe their own faith is not the only path to salvation, defined by Pew as “eternal life.” The number was even higher for Jews and most Christian groups. Even Evangelicals and Muslims topped the 50 percent mark at 57 and 56 percent respectively. In a sense, the Pew researchers showed themselves to be a bit behind the curve by using “eternal life” as their measure. Many people of faith are already redefining belief in terms of spiritual enlightenment in the present lifetime. But that’s an issue for another day.

If 70 percent of believers feel there might be ways other than their own faith to reach God, it’s not surprising that 68 percent said there’s more than one way to interpret the teachings of their own religion.

These numbers reveal fractures in the twin pillars of conservative Christian belief: Christ as the only way to salvation, and an absolutist, literal interpretation of scripture. (And by the way, we’ll tell you what it is.) If those pillars fall, can the fundamentalist, authoritarian strain of belief survive -- whether in Evangelical or Roman Catholic churches?

With such a threat facing them it’s no surprise that some theologians and church leaders reacted with disdain or hostility to this tolerant attitude among the rank and file. As reported by the Associated Press, Roger Oldham of the Southern Baptist Convention said, “If by tolerance we mean we’re willing to engage or embrace a multitude of ways to salvation, that’s no longer evangelical belief.” And Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput rejected nonconforming opinions from so-called Catholics as uniformed. “Being Roman Catholic means believing what the Catholic church teaches,” he said.

Not surprisingly, a day after the Pew story, an article by the same AP writer, Eric Gorski, described the hostile reaction of Dr. James Dobson to the religious thoughts of presidential candidate Barack Obama. Dobson, most know, leads the conservative Christian organization Focus on the Family. He is uncomfortable with Obama’s attempt to do what the Pew research shows most Americans are already doing -- hoisting a big tent when it comes to spiritual belief.

Obama had questioned the literalist’s approach to the scripture by pointing out that if we followed Leviticus we would approve slavery and prohibit eating shellfish. If we followed Jesus’ teaching in Matthew, we would be compelled to make peace and not war. This may have chafed a little since Dobson’s organization has taken a pro-war stance. At any rate, Dobson accused Obama of “… dragging Biblical understanding through the gutter.” He said Obama was “distorting the traditional understanding” of scripture by speaking of Old Testament and New Testament passages as if they were somehow equal. Of course, Dobson has no problem using Old Testament verses to condemn homosexuality. I guess that’s different because he says so.

It seems that whenever a cleansing of the faith community comes due, it comes from below and not above. That was true for Jesus; that was true for Luther. If the research is right, it’s happening now. Eventually the church will catch up or it will perish.