Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 21, 2007

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Earlier this past week I sent a pastoral letter to those of you on the church’s e mail list with the subject line “bad religion.” Copies of it are available in the Fellowship Hall for those of you who didn’t get it. For those of you who have read it, some of this sermon is going to be a bit repetitive; but the point I want to make, or better, the vision that has grasped me this past week, is so important, or at least I think it is so important, that I can’t say it too often. Religion in general and Christianity in particular are under attack today, and the fault lies not with the critics of religion but with the religions themselves, Christianity most definitely included. I could do essentially the same critique of Islam and Judaism; but we’re Christians, so I will limit my remarks to our own faith. Something I saw in last Sunday’s Everett Herald prompted this particular outburst of mine against bad religion. Right below the New York Times crossword puzzle—the main reason I subscribe to the paper at all, frankly—the Herald runs the New York Times bestseller list. Last Monday, as I was doing the crossword puzzle, I glanced down at the bestseller list, and something remarkable caught my eye. The list of the ten bestselling nonfiction books contained two titles by popular authors who have made a living attacking Christianity. Two out of the top ten! The first, at no. 4 on the list, is a book by Richard Dawkins, a biologist and prominent proponent of evolution (on which I agree with him) who reduces human life basically to biological processes (on which I disagree with him). The name of his latest book is The God Delusion. What a title! The little description in the Times’ list says: “The biologist criticizes religion for intolerance, rejecting scientific truth and threatening nonbelievers with eternal damnation.” The other book, at no. 8 on the list, is a new book by Sam Harris, who made a name for himself a year or two ago with his book The End of Faith. The New York Times’ description of his latest book says that the author “chides religious dogmatists for rationalizing violence and fostering human suffering.” His target here maybe “religious dogmatists,” but if his earlier book, of which I have read a bit, is any guide Harris pretty much thinks all religious people are religious dogmatists. That these two books are currently on the New York Times bestseller list tells us some important things about the status of Christianity in our country today. It tells us some bad news, and it tells us some good news.

First the bad news. The popularity of these two books and of many other books of the same ilk today tells us that the primary reason why Christianity is under attack among us today is that the only Christianity that most Americans know—Americans outside the church as well as to a considerable extent Americans inside the church—is very, very bad Christianity. The public face of Christianity in America today has made the faith a laughing stock, an easy and obvious target of ridicule for intelligent, sensitive, caring people, who quite rightly see nothing intelligent, sensitive, or caring in the only Christianity they ever see.

Think about it for a minute. Who are the most prominent faces of Christianity in America today? Jerry Falwell. Pat Robertson. James Dobson. You all know about them. You’ve all read about them in the newspaper or seen them on television, calling children’s cartoon characters gay, calling for the assassination of foreign leaders, endorsing American wars abroad and denying the equal humanity of gay and lesbian people at home. How many of you know who John Thomas is? When was the last time you read anything about him in the newspaper or saw him on TV? You probably haven’t, but if you had you would have heard him calling for peace in the Middle East and for marriage equality for all people at home. (For those of you who don’t know, John Thomas is President and General Minister of the UCC and a real prophet for peace and justice among us.) What is the image of the church in America today? Mostly it is the Roman Catholic church covering up sexual abuse of children by priests in order to protect the power of the church. The public face of Christianity among us today is the face of bad religion. It is the face of religion that is anti-intellectual, bigoted, misogynist, socially reactionary, and supportive of violence in American foreign policy. No wonder Christianity is under attack!

That’s the bad news. There is, however, also good news in the popularity of attacks on religion by people like Dawkins and Harris. The fact that their books become bestsellers is evidence, I think, of a hunger among us for something better, for better religion, better Christianity. If the American public truly cared nothing about religion in general or Christianity in particular, these books would not have a large audience. People don’t buy books that deal with subjects they don’t care about. I am convinced that there is a spiritual hunger in our culture today for good religion. Bad religion gets to much press that we might believe that popular Christianity is meeting the spiritual needs of Americans generally, but it is not. Especially here in the Pacific Northwest, most people have nothing to do with any church. The evangelical community churches may look successful, but they are in fact not reaching most of our people. That’s where we come in. We are the ones who can offer good Christian food to satisfy that spiritual hunger among us.

We know that the anti-intellectual, bigoted, misogynistic, pro-violence Christianity which is the only Christianity most Americans know is not true Christianity. True Christianity doesn’t require those things and indeed rejects those things. We catch a glimpse of true Christianity in today’s Gospel reading, where Jesus is reading from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue in Nazareth. Luke sets the scene at the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, immediately after he has been baptized by John the Baptist and has wrestled with the temptations of the devil in the wilderness. Marcus Borg believes that this passage is a thematic statement that sets the tone for Jesus’ entire ministry in Luke. Be that as it may, here Jesus reads words taken from various places in Isaiah that Luke has put together to read:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Luke 4:18-19 NRSV

Then Jesus says: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Luke 4:21 NRSV. It is fulfilled because those things are what Jesus is all about. They are fulfilled in him.

Jesus then, and Christianity too, aren’t about denying the accomplishments of the human mind, or denying the equal human dignity of gay and lesbian people, or keeping women in subordinate positions in society and the church, or lending religious sanction to foreign wars of aggression. Christianity isn’t about any of the things that it is most associated with in the public mind today. Christianity is about social justice, here expressed as bringing good news to the poor and letting the oppressed go free. It is about freeing the full human potential of all people, here expressed as proclaiming release to the captives. It is about opening the mind to the wonders of creation and the wonders of the word of God, here expressed in the metaphor of recovery of sight to the blind. It is about freeing all people from whatever holds them in bondage into the limitless love and grace of God, expressed here in the ancient Jewish symbol of the year of the Lord’s favor. When was the last time you heard that kind of Christianity in the mass media? I don’t think I ever have.

I can’t really explain how Christianity became so corrupted in the American consciousness that it has become an easy target for atheists and those who reduce all of human life to the physical and the biological. I have some theories about how that happened, but they don’t matter here. The issue for us is less how it happened than it is what are we going to do about it. We have a better Christianity, and I am sick and tired of hearing that better Christianity described as “the best kept secret in American religion.” We really haven’t taken an oath of silence about our faith, although sometimes you could get the impression that we had. It’s time for us to blab. It is time for us to tell the secret of better Christianity.

And my great frustration these days is that I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know how we spread the word in our communities that there is a better Christianity that can bring people the fruits of the spirit without requiring them to deny the fruits of the mind. So I am asking you to help me discover how to do it. We are currently engaged in an ecumenical project with three other churches here on Lewis Street that will, we hope, raise the profile of all four ecumenical partner churches; but for us that cannot be enough. Raising the profile of our church is important; but raising the profile of better Christianity is more important, and we are the only ones in this area who can really do it. We are the only ones who are Open and Affirming. We are the only ones who can be more concerned with spreading the Good News than with denominational issues because we are the only ones whose denomination puts no strings on us.

So this year let us devote ourselves to discovering new ways of spreading the Good News of better Christianity. Let us be vocal in saying no to bad religion. Let us leave no public expression of bad Christianity unchallenged. Let us have no opportunity to spread the Good News of God’s love for all people pass us by. We have a clear theology. We have lots of new energy. So let’s get on with it. With the help of God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we can do it. Amen.