“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” [G.K.C] In "Voices" I alluded to the cacophony of voices that have (till recently) had me in a state of indecision (about which I will come to another time). In "When a church dies" I wrote "The church is not designed to be stuck in 17th century architecture with 18th century lyrics and 19th century organs using re-worked 20th century liturgy ... The church is made for change; we've clothed it in a straitjacket" However, as G.K.C. points out, tradition is the democracy of the dead, so who are we to arrogantly supplant their views? But think about that for a moment (this blog is about thinking, after all). A cursory response to G.K.C.'s point would be that we should not fight the traditions in church, instead we should embrace it with open arms. To that I cry a whole hearted "Yes", and with a loud "No", I reply. For there are two issues to consider: the permanence of the past and the fluidity of the future. The past is present in tradition, it is the very stone that forms foundations. But not all foundations are firm - we have to test them for their solidity - because foundations dictate the building on top. Is the Victorian tradition of child labour a firm premise? How secure are the values that give us the subjugation of woman's rights? Such foundations only dictate relative values of power and preference. They give us Trump'ism blowing whichever way the ego leans, deviancies insisting on normalcy, and every minority view clamouring for legitimacy. Solid foundations, on the other hand, are trans-generational, accepted as truths that can be trusted, and move us from preference to the practical. If firm foundations are a legacy from the democracy of the dead, and if these are to frame the fluidity of our future, then we need to say "how would the dead choose to vote?" A presumption that their vote today would give us the practices of yesterday is fallacious and dangerous. To explore this we need to think about how the dead voted. In the first centuries of the church they creatively developed structures and practices based of the creativity of Jesus' life. These helped ground the church in a world of divisions and desires. Then things went off the rails; dogma became dogmatic, and rigid power hungry popes turned the church into a rule of oppression; radical inquisitions and impositions that suppressed the vibrancy of the Spirit, turned woman into witches, thinkers into heretics, made the sun go around the earth, and turned sins into marketable goods to create a business out of belief. Then life broke through like a germinating seed, and pushed back these brambles to give birth to renewed expressions: Luther, Wesley, Finney, Murray, Edwards, Whitfield, and more. Pub tunes became hymns, decorum was disrupted, and theology revived. These outpourings became captured in the writings of thinkers and soon great works emerged on which the church as we now know it was matured. From this have emerged new tensions. As the church of today wrestles with relevance, what value does the democracy of the dead hold? We must differentiate first between the dead who voted for rigor mortis, versus the dead who voted for taking the church into the streets. If we allow the voices of the radically dead (versus the oppression by deadly radicals), what would they vote for today? I think it is clear: they would vote to turn the church upside down, inside out, and around and around. They would stand on the first foundations that are firm, and creatively construct a new expression that takes the church to where the people live. For those who still look for Christian community in the traditions of the institutional church, then "Not only are we all in the same boat, but we are all seasick." It's not the tradition of the institutions that makes firm foundations, is the foundations of a church alive that make firm traditions. That is: a tradition where the secular get sanctified. To do that requires the sanctified to drop the barriers that push away the secular. Who was it that said "be in the world but not of the world"? To be continued ...
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Why?
Probably the best therapy is to express yourself. Why do you think psychiatrists make you lie on the couch and talk, while all they do is murmur "hmmm", "uhuh", or "go on"? Archives
May 2017
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