A Church That is Not a Church

I want to begin a church that is not a church—at least not one that most would recognize. In today’s world, few churches exist in ways that I can respect. Many churches adopt literal interpretations of scripture without considering either historical context or the Jewishness of first-century Christians. Many churches ignore scholarship and modern-day knowledge in order to preserve “faith” in manifestations which most would call ignorance. Many churches abandon scripture in order to re-frame a powerful movement in such a way as to effectively reduce it to a feel-good movie-of-the-week. Many churches disregard rituals that have linked Christians in community through history and throughout the world.

Put bluntly, today’s communities exist as a dichotomy—Communities of closed-minded people clinging to an ignorant interpretation of perhaps the most layered and complex collection of literature in human history --or-- communities of liberal-minded modernists who have managed to reduce a politically-charged, radically inclusive, intense movement of fearless, self-sacrificing individuals to a loosely-interpreted and loosely-followed philosophy which holds no more merit or inspirational quality than a Berenstein Bears book. I believe this is a false dichotomy. I believe there is another way—one which religious scholars have been screaming for for decades.

It is not an easy path—it requires the zeal which seems reserved for the Evangelical movement. It requires a community deeply committed to educating its congregants and freeing scripture from centuries of misinterpretation by not only promoting biblical literacy in new ways, but employing the resources which have been available to students of secular universities for some time. Truly walking the path of the Jesus movement requires commitment to religious education that most churches are afraid to ask of their adherents, but lest we are prepared to lose Christianity to the backward lunacy of the Religious Right, we need to be prepared to challenge ourselves in new ways to restore Christianity to an educated, informed, biblically-literate movement which produces the kind of radically compassionate society that we can call a Kin-dom of God.

Anyone have several million dollars for me?