In a post-Christian world are we being catechized by the culture or by the Church?

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

"Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (Matt. 6:21)

cat~e~chize - fr. Gk katechein to teach, lit. to din into, fr. kata + echein to resound. (Merriam Webster's College Dictionary)

 

I have been reading an article entitled "The Evangelical Church is Breaking Apart," by Peter Wehner, a self-described Christian. It is a rather devastating critique of the Evangelical Christian churches in North America and their heavy politicization, especially in the last year and-a-half or so. It sounds quite convincing, as the author has compiled his critique from very diverse sources, most of them from within the Evangelical churches, primarily from dispirited pastors. In fact, Wehner reports that "the Christian polling firm Barna Group found that 29 percent of pastors said that they had given "real, serious consideration to quitting being in full-time ministry within the last year." The following passage from his article can serve as an example of what Wehner is claiming about the effect of "politics" on various Evangelical churches:

 

The root of the discord lies in the fact that many Christians have embraced the worst aspects of our culture and politics. When the Christian faith is politicized, churches become repositories not of grace but of grievances, places where tribal identities are reinforced, where fears are nourished, and where aggression and nastiness are sacralized. The result is not only wounding the nation; it's having a devastating impact on the Christian faith.

 

Wehner summarizes the analysis of an evangelical pastor, Scott Dudley, as follows:

 

He’s heard of many congregants leaving their church because it didn’t match their politics, he told me, but has never heard once of someone changing their politics because it didn’t match their church teaching.

 

However, within this article, Wehner also raises the issue of what he terms "cultural catechism." He contends that Christians are being endlessly "catechized" through a seemingly vast network of social media. Catechized here means being subjected to a steady drone of provocative opinions that encompasses the "cultural wars" and social and political positions, many of which are characterized by fear-mongering, anger and rancor. 

 

 

 I would like to share just a few key passages from this article, because though directed to the Evangelical churches, we as Orthodox face the same challenges and temptations, as we are just as much a part of mainstream America. I am less interested in the more openly political issues that Wehner raises - and these are intense and divisive - but rather I want to briefly explore what he means by "cultural catechism." 

At one point in the article, Wehner writes that according to James Ernest, the vice president and editor in chief at Eerdmans, a publisher of religious books:

What we're seeing is a massive discipleship failure caused by massive catechesis failure. The evangelical Church in the U.S. over the last five decades has failed to form its adherents into disciples. So there is a great hollowness. All that was needed to cause the implosion that we have seen was a sufficiently provocative stimulus. And that stimulus came.

 

He then writes that according to Alan Jacobs, distinguished professor of humanities in the honors program at Baylor University: "Culture catechizes."

Wehner goes on to summarize what Jacob means, by saying:

 

Culture teaches us what matters and what views we should take about what matters. Our current political culture, has multiple technologies and platforms for catechizing - television, radio, Facebook, Twitter, and podcasts among them. People who want to be connected to their political tribe - the people they think are like them, the people they think are on their side - subject themselves to its catechesis all day long, every single day, hour after hour.

On the flip side, many churches aren't interested in catechesis at all. They focus instead on entertainment, because entertainment is what keeps people in their seats and coins in the offering plate. But as Jacob points out, even those pastors who really are committed to catechesis get to spend, on average, less than an hour a week teaching their people. Sermons are short. Only some churchgoers attend adult-education classes, and even fewer attend Bible Study and small groups. Cable news, however, is always on. So if people are getting one kind of catechesis for half an hour per week, and another for dozens of hours per week, which one do you think will win out?

This is true of both the Christian left and the Christian right," Jacobs said. "People come to believe what they are most thoroughly and intensively catechized to believe, and that catechesis comes not from the churches but from the media they consume, or rather the media that consumes them. The churches have barely better than a snowball's chance in hell of shaping people's lives.

 

At one point, Wehner quotes the distinguished Evangelical historian Mark Noll. This historian warns that, “…the broader evangelical population has increasingly heeded populist leaders who dismiss the results of modern learning from whatever source."

And Wehner summarizes this in the following manner:

 

What we're dealing with - not in all cases, of course, but in far too many - is political identity and cultural anxieties, anti-intellectualism and ethnic nationalism, resentments and grievances, all dressed up as Christianity.

 

Orthodoxy is about a lifetime of ongoing catechesis, which in turn imparts a worldview grounded in the Christ-centered vision of life that we call Gospel or "Good News." Our Orthodox Church is supremely equipped to provide the very ecclesial catechesis that Peter Wehner is desperately advocating for. The question then, is this: In a post-Christian world are we being catechized by the culture or by the Church?

As Christ said: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (Matt. 6:18) 

 

To be continued:  

What the Church offers (on a parish level) as genuine Christian catechesis and how we can avail ourselves of it.

 

'He is Life itself and, therefore, my life...'

Dear Parish Faithful,

We concluded this year's Fall Adult Education Class last Monday evening. It was one of our better classes, in my humble opinion, primarily based on Fr. Alexander Schmemann's For the Life of the World. The discussions were lively and helpful for everyone in the group.*

Of the group, we had many participants over the course of six weeks, and for the most part everyone was quite impressed by the range and depth of Fr. Schmemann's "vision" for Orthodoxy in the contemporary world. I have brought that vision to our parish for the course of almost thirty years now, and I hope it will continue well into the future. 

Fr. Alexander helped us understand the centrality of the Eucharist for each and every Orthodox community, and how that eucharistic experience is the foundation for our mission to the world. That ascension to the Kingdom on the Lord's Day is what sets us apart from being just one more "religious community." It is the very content of who and what we are.

One particular paragraph stood out for me from the final chapter, "Trampling Down Death By Death." I would like to share it with everyone in the parish:

To be Christian, to believe in Christ, means and has always meant this: to know in a trans-rational and yet absolutely certain way called faith, that Christ is the Life of all life, that He is Life itself and, therefore, my life. "In Him was life; and the life was the light of men."

All Christian doctrines - those of the incarnation, redemption, atonement - are explanations, consequences, but not the "cause" of that faith. Only when we believe in Christ do all these affirmations become "valid" and "consistent." 

But faith itself is the acceptance not of this or that "proposition" about Christ, but of Christ Himself as the Life and the light of life. "For the life was manifested and we have seeing, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us" (I Jn. 1:2). 

In this sense Christian faith is radically different from "religious belief." Its starting point is not "believe" but love. In itself and by itself all belief is partial, fragmentary, fragile. "For we know in part, and we prophecy in part ... be tongues, they shall cease, whether there is knowledge, it shall vanish away." Only love never fails (I Cor. 13). And if to love someone means that I have my life in him, or rather that he has become the "content" of my life, to love Christ is to know and to possess Him as the Life of my life. (p.104-105)

If you have yet to read For the Life of the World, put aside your other reading for the moment, and immerse yourselves in a "classic" of Orthodox writing that will open up all kinds of new insights into the meaning of the Christian faith and life.

_______

* Links to order the book, plus Fr. Steven's extensive class notes and discussion questions, as well as special resources on Fr Alexander Schmemann and related texts may be found on our parish website.

Announcing our 2018 Fall Adult Education Class

Dear Parish Faithful,

"Christ has inaugurated a new life,
not a new religion …"
 

                   ~ Fr. Alexander Schmemann

On Monday evening, October 22, we will begin our annual Fall Adult Education Class. And, as in the past, this class will be comprised of six sessions, thus ending on Monday, November 26. I am very much looking forward to this year's class because we will be reading a contemporary Orthodox classic, For the Life of the World, by the late Fr. Alexander Schmemann - of blessed memory we should add. 

This year will be the fifty-fifth anniversary of its publication in America, so it is most appropriate to read this book together as a group and discuss the seemingly endless stream of insights that Fr. Schmemann imparts through his inimitable style. (This year is also the thirty-fifth anniversary of his death in 1983). 

There is no doubt that this book has had an enormous impact on countless Orthodox - and for that matter, non-Orthodox - Christians since its initial publication. In fact, many members of the Orthodox Church today will point back to the impact this book had on them, thus leading them to the Church as a result. Although a "cradle Orthodox" myself, this book was a "life-changer" in my own spiritual development and was a key factor in my decision to enter St. Vladimir's seminary and study under Fr. Schmemann who was dean during my three years there. That in itself was an unforgettable experience.

The All-American Council in St. Louis just this past summer had as its central theme, "For the Life of the World." These are the words of Christ from the Gospel (JN. 6); but nevertheless this is a clear allusion to the title of Fr. Alexander's famous book that more than any of his others enables us to grasp his essential vision for the Orthodox Church in America: simultaneously sacramental, eucharistic and eschatological. And indeed, his son Serge addressed the entire body of assembled delegates and delivered a very moving tribute to his father. 

Further, Metropolitan Tikhon wrote a long extended essay of 60+ pages that was clearly linked to Fr. Schmemann's book, in that it was entitled "Of What Life Do Speak?" We will use this text as a kind of supplement to our main text.This very fine document is still available on the OCA website, and can be downloaded here. 

In addition, this booklet is now available in an attractively printed and bound form from St. Tikhon's Seminary Press. If you would like to have it in that form at a relatively inexpensive cost, here is the link to the website.

In For the Life of the World, Fr. Alexander opens us up to a renewed vision of the Sacraments of the Church - especially the Eucharist - revealing the depth of their purpose and meaning that had long been obscured by a kind of "theology of repetition." Although technically correct, such a theology was no longer inspiring. We will also read of his very trenchant critique of secularism, as he was really one of the first Orthodox thinkers to explore secularism in depth and point out its great shortcomings and inability to offer a meaningful worldview. And, surprisingly, we will also learn why Fr. Alexander said "No" to "religion."

There is a good chance that you, like me, have already read this book; and perhaps, like me, more than once. Now we will have the opportunity to read it once again, and this time within an informal group setting where we will be able to share a lively discussion. If you have never read For the Life of the World, here is a great opportunity to finally "treat" yourself to a great classic of Orthodox literature.

Please visit our special web page for this year's Fall Adult Education class — including our flier, links to order the book(s), and once we begin, our class notes —  and share it with anyone else that you may think would be interested.