Two weeks ago I talked about the encroachment of influencer culture into the formerly staid and institutional world of the Mainline denominations, which seems very bad but maybe inevitable. If it seems to me that my denomination (the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) and others like it are faced with the imperative to license our best content creators rather than force them to choose between being constrained by the form of parish and seminary or hawking supplements and chipper atheism outside the church altogether, I should probably think about what else we ought to be doing, or at least what those of us not talented enough to be full-time online people ought to be doing. Or, stepping back a bit from the specific choices wordy parish clergy like me have to make each day, to ask what purpose or function our church bodies can serve at this advanced stage of their decay?
I can’t find it now but I recently came across a graph from, as I recall, a seminary-affiliated institution extrapolating weekly worship attendance in ELCA churches forward to 2041. In this projection, we drop from about 900,000 in the pews each week in 2017 to about 15,000 twenty years from now. The trends may look slightly different in different church bodies and anyway projections are just that. But the retraction of our parishes, synods, and institutions is now an old and enduring enough pattern that we can reasonably assume it will just keep going. If there’s a vision, however far-fetched and fantastical, for this trend to be arrested, let alone reversed, I haven’t heard it.
There are exceptions, to be sure. And adjacent to us, the more “confessional” or, if you prefer, “conservative” Protestant bodies seem to have more children than we do and catechize them better (I’m not providing any data for this hunch--no social science in a free newsletter), which could plausibly give them a somewhat different, though by no means triumphant, trajectory. But generally speaking, the trend is, well, general. The evangelical world is dealing with decline, the Catholic Church is experiencing it rapidly, and we’re just ahead of the curve.
So what is there for us to do? I have some ideas, but first some stipulations:
I’ll take a deus ex machina revival off the table. In the Old Country (whichever one we want to think of), new bursts of evangelism or holiness or liturgical renewal could usually get folded back into the big official church somehow, some way. In America, these little surges are much likelier to result in permanent departures. We don’t have an ethic of evangelical poverty, so it’s hard to retreat to a church life led by calloused ascetics. I’m not sure that we have great zeal for saving souls from Hell, which, whatever you want to say about it, is at least a motive.
But anyway at any given moment, what matters is what we actually are doing in light of God’s commands and promises. The day of judgment is always now, and it’s more important to be found at work than speculating about twenty-year time horizons. If anything we do is good and true, that’s its own justification and 2041 will have to take thought for itself.
With all of that out of the way, a few possibilities for the function of the Mainline between now and whatever then crosses the x-axis of the graph:
Legator
Confession: I just looked this word up to try to get at what I have in mind. It’s the person who designates a legacy. We’ve been doing this in America for decades, maybe longer. Many church-related schools have been, effectively if not always officially, separated from any particular Christian identity or mission and have carried forward certain aspects of the culture, moral framework, and ethos that founded them. This may be sad but it’s not trivial. American Protestants built up vast institutional capacity, not just in big cities but in small towns all over the East and Midwest of the country. “Liberal arts college” is not strictly synonymous with “Reformed Christian college” but there’s a lot of overlap. And that’s not a bad thing to have given a society, even if we’ve lost the ability to really drive it toward the Kingdom of God.
The same thing could be said of hospitals, child welfare organizations, and other institutions that started out as mutual-aid or charitable endeavors and have found a lasting place in the world of governmental or non-profit business. Again, it’s not ideal but it’s a considerable legacy and something we should be honest about doing wisely and deliberately in the future. Even our parish buildings have been repurposed for condos or cultural centers or air rights. To me this is heartbreaking but it’s a real imprint on a world that doesn’t have to look like a 19th century German immigrant church but apparently, on some level, wants to.
How we supervise the repurposing and recasting of our still-impressive physical assets is an important task. And with some imagination, I think it applies to our less tangible assets as well: Our music, our doctrinal language, our forms of worship. “Would anyone want to keep this in any form if they weren’t an ELCA Lutheran/Episcopalian/etc.?” is maybe not the most important question or even a good question at all. But it’s at least worth entertaining as a way to look at what we do.
Point of Transit
Our history and culture have made it pretty much impossible for us to present ourselves as “the” “true” “church” whose doctrines must be embraced and whose discipline must be accepted for the sake of eternal bliss. Whether this is cause or consequence of us having a pretty lax attitude toward both doctrine and discipline is something I can’t answer. But either way, as a result we can be a place where people go if they are no longer persuaded by the increasingly contingent and politicized claims of evangelical and even Roman Catholic leaders. We have our own contingent and politicized jargon too, of course (our official documents sound pretty much like they were written by the Warren campaign, which I say as an admirer of Elizabeth Warren) and we are by no means as universally hospitable as we pretend we are. This goes the other way as well; if you want a comprehensive theological vision to stand against, say, climate change, you’re probably better off with Pope Francis and Laudato Si than anything we do, and if you want a searching and coherent critique of late modernity you’re likelier to find it in Catholic theology or, why not, the whole Orthodox chanting-and-smoke thing which is admittedly extremely metal. Of course you also have to put up with guys like the Bishop of Tyler, Texas, which brings me back to the premise of this section: not everyone will put up with that crap and they will need a community where they can be Christian in a different way. That’s part of our job.
And if we’re open enough to the possibility, this could be the ground for creativity and the intermingling of traditions that might have a life beyond our walls. I don’t keep up with the “ecumenical movement” any more, but it seems to have pretty well stalled out or gone in reverse. We’ve drifted pretty far from where we were, culturally and politically, in the 60s and 70s when this was an exciting thing and even the 90s and 2000s when a lot of agreements got hammered out. Even where we got that work done and agreed that our differences of confession or liturgy were not “church-dividing,” we decided to just keep being separate churches anyway. This is frankly insane, but it helpfully takes off the board any possibility that we’ll merge into a new, united structure at any point before utter disaster requires it (and maybe not then).
But at the grassroots level, we can always try to learn from the people who bother to try being Lutheran or Anglican or whatever else in the middle of life’s journey. How have they overcome our barriers to entry? What drew them? What gifts do they bring? Having wisely or foolishly squandered our own inheritances, can we grasp what they have to share? New forms and new charisms could emerge and enrich the faith of people both within and beyond our own communities. We may not be able to serve as a terminus for all or many of these people, but I like to imagine someone wanting the Sacrament in the midst of a megachurch service or expecting--even demanding!--decent preaching while the Trad priest is doing an open-mic routine on women these days where the homily ought to be. Everything in American religion is, in some way, becoming a pastiche and we have the responsibility to do this well.
Eschatological Witness
I don’t want to be an amateur theologian any more than an amateur social scientist but I needed the terminology here. Or I could borrow the phrasing of Rabbi Kris of Brownsville, that “freedom’s just another word for nothin left to lose.” As the generation that came of age in the height of Middle American prosperity passes from leadership in our institutions, people who have gotten a much rougher deal will end up at the fore. And it will become obvious, where it isn’t already, that our denominational forms have generally preceded or followed the trajectory of the American empire, that we have by and large embraced it, and that we are living with the consequences. Our future cannot be separated from the failures of that larger order. There are no side deals to be cut with, say, climate change.
Seriously, on this point: here in dry, inland North Texas we look set to see multiple overlapping waves of climate refugees every year now. We can ignore this or we can try to engage with it on one or more levels, but it’s a way our world is being significantly and permanently altered in front of us. For those who have no choice but to steeply discount their future security, there’s not so much of a downside to addressing climate, inequality, military adventurism, and migration directly and honestly in a prophetic and eschatological voice.
Now I mentioned above that Laudato Si is better on this than most of what we do, and that coherent critiques of modernity are easier to find and embrace in Catholicism or Orthodoxy. But things don’t go as the parson or the Pope preaches, and I’m skeptical that these traditions will have the resources to witness frankly and fearlessly to the reality of our situation. They have too much, as it were, left to lose. Moreover I just think we’re right that Jesus did not create a men-only leadership and sacramental structure and they’re wrong about that. And that’s not the only fact that could inhibit a full reckoning.
Then again it’s far from certain that we will do better. My experience with theological and practical formation in social issues has been standard, management-technique Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion trainings. This sort of thing is at best a harmless waste of time and at worst a cruel miseducation. I have never heard the word “capitalism” in an ELCA training, but I have learned that I possess as many “power points” as Bill Gates because he’s rich but I am not divorced. Perhaps this will be our last turn, as heavily-indebted 20 and 30-somethings lament their cultural and social power until there’s literally no one left to surrender it to. But I don’t think it will. This stuff is profoundly (in a bad mood I’d say “deliberately”) corrosive of normal human solidarity, but we’re not going to get by without normal human solidarity so the ideology will have to be reverse-engineered to allow for it.
The Trump voter and the Warren voter on our church council are not just pledged to visions that are inadequate in the light of eternity. They are inadequate to the weather patterns of 2050. Trying to get everyone to think the right thoughts or use the right words “around” this or that issue before we can embrace the demands of the moment is not going to work. So we may as well start with the basic animal need for community and protection and speak the truth from there. Our dominant secular ideologies really are doomed and the Law and Gospel of God really are true. Will people listen? Who knows! That is not our problem.
So there are three things for us to do: leave a legacy, provide for shelter and experimentation, and bear witness. They’re not policies or exclusive choices. They’re just what I can see ahead with my own limited vision. The point is that the future is being made day by day and choice by choice and we are accountable for making use of the awesome gifts entrusted to our care.
Food: A Suburban Dad’s Pear Tart
I like to do an appreciation in each one of these letters, but the Criterion Channel neo-noir series will have to wait until next time when I have less to say at the top. So today I’m going straight to a recipe. This is a liberal variation on the late, great Marcella Hazan’s “A Farm Wife’s Fresh Pear Tart,” a true workhorse recipe I’ve made at the last minute more times than I can remember. It works with apples, too. If you want the real thing, you can make this without the cream, walnuts, baking soda, almond extract, or crumb topping. She tells us to dot the top of the batter with bits of butter and whole cloves, which is a great idea.
1.5 c all-purpose flour
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
two eggs
1/4 cup milk
1 c. sugar
2 T heavy cream (or just use an equivalent amount of half and half for the milk and cream, or however you want to get some extra fat into this thing)
2 lbs fresh pears, peeled, cored, and sliced 1/4 inch thick
1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts (or put them in the food processor, this recipe isn’t picky)
1/2 tsp. almond extract, or the pear-compatible extract of your choice.
Crumb topping (about 3T flour, 3T brown sugar, and 2-3T butter, cut together to a breadcrumb-like consistency)
1) Sift and resift the flour and baking soda. Keep on sifting if you have the time. Make a well in the middle
2) In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, milk, cream, extract and pinch of salt until smooth and yellow. Beat in the sugar, gradually if you have time.
3) Pour the wet ingredients into the well and incorporate the dry ingredients until they’re all wet. Don’t over-mix. Add the pears and the walnuts and stir until evenly distributed.
4) Pour into a buttered and floured 9-inch baking pan (I used a springform pan with a latch last time, worked great) or a casserole or really any oven-proof baking device that fits. Probably great in cast iron. Sprinkle the crumb topping on top, bake for about 50 minutes at 375F, until a knife or toothpick inserted in the middle comes out with your desired level of cleanliness. Remove from the pan and cool, at least a little bit, before serving. Eat with coffee or some kind of ginger-infused whipped cream or pretty much anything at all.