Sunday Night Live Focus- October 28, 2001

Karen Armstrong is one of the leading religion scholars today in this world. Her work has been published in Time Magazine and many newspapers. She was something of idol to me having read her work. This summer I had the opportunity to go on a retreat to Chautauqua where I met her and had a little bit of time with her.  When I got the chance to sit down and talk with her the only thing I could think of to ask her was, "Karen, do you think there'll be a church in the 21 century? Is it going to survive?" And without batting an eyelash she said, "Yes, I'm absolutely positive there will be, but it won't look anything like the church does today. It's going to undergo a lot of change. But this time the change will not be done by a Martin Luther; it'll be done by the people. It will be a grass-roots thing." And that really excited me. I have to tell you honestly that before going to Chautauqua and talking to Karen I wasn't sure that it wasn't time to "grab the cat and dog" and leave the church to the fundamentalists. I had felt like I needed to get out on the street, get out from under the umbrella of the church and do what I felt like I needed to do. But I am wondering now if the church as an institution is something we can work on.

The title of this focus is The Broken Phone Booth from the song, Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand. What the Primitive Radio Gods (the writers) meant by this song is hard to know. I think they could have been talking about any institution that doesn't work- that fails this generation. I want to look at it tonight as the church, because the church is an institution that is failing to connect with this generation. 

I want you to enter this picture, this metaphor with me and think this way for a few minutes tonight. . 
The Phone Booth, what is it? And institutionalized thing set up on street corners so that people can make calls. The church is like a phone booth; it's something that's been set up to help us make that call, make that connection. The Call is that connection. That call is that thing that connects us to that feeling we have that there is something else, something more. And the song says they have money in their hand- they are ready and willing to invest something. 
But they say it is broken- at least for the user it's broken. The interesting thing is that they are standing outside the broken phone booth with money in their hand- they're still there. They want to make the call. 

Is the institution itself the problem? For those of us that grew up in the sixties we know what a favorite target that was - the institution of this, the institution of that. Institutions- the big evil. Did Jesus even intend the institution of the church? Who knows? He more often talked about a direct line. He taught us how to pray. He said, "What I do, you can do." He said the kingdom was within us.  He said, "I am one with God and you can be one with God just like I am." Since his death we have created an elaborate hierarchy of bishops, priests, seminaries, creeds, litanies, and lots and lots of doctrine. Did he intend all that? We could argue no. 

But it is human nature to institutionalize. Religion is the institutionalization of the spiritual. Every culture did it with their prophets- they die and a religion springs up. In theory, religion, or any institution, should make it easier for us. Just like there's a phone booth sitting on most every street corner-- so there's a church. And it says with its spire: The church is here! Its how you connect with God: We will get you there! We'll get you to God, right here! This is where you make your call. It stands for the connection. It always has. Where did we go after September 11th? We needed a phone booth- we looked for it. Where do we go in crisis, or in death? 

Human beings need this stuff: a place to go. We need the boxes, the framework. We especially need to put a box around what has no shape or form because we so desperately want to hold it, get our hands around it, understand it. But the spiritual doesn't have a form to it, so we have doctrines and creeds and rituals and that makes it tangible.

In nearly every religion the spirit is compared to the wind. What a beautiful metaphor. Think about it: You see what the wind does; you can feel it on you. But even if you come at it right after you feel it, you can't grab the wind.  You see its effects but you cannot tie it down. The phone booth, in effect, tries to capture the wind. It's our box.  We put a phone in it and a slot for your money and numbers clearly marked for you to punch. Why, there's even a book, the Bible, to make it easy for you: direct dial. It's all there to help us. But sometimes the phone booth is flawed and broken. And then you have a lot of frustrated people standing outside with money in their hand.

Lets talk about the people that are standing "Outside." Now, some of you feel very comfortable in the phone booth; you don't feel like it's broken.  I'm happy for you. But is that enough? That you and yours are happy in a phone booth? Have you opened your eyes? Do you see all the people standing outside that can't make a call? We've got to open our eyes. I challenge you to look outside and see all the people with money in their hand for whom the Phone Booth is broken.  Most of the young never even make it into the booth bëcause the word on the street is: "It's broken! Don't bother." 

So who are the disenfranchised from the church?  Who's not getting a dial tone? I've thought a lot about this and I've come up with four groups. I'm sure there are more, but these are the four that just break my heart personally:
1. The young
2. The gay community
3. The exiles
4. The sleepers
Let's look at all four.

The Young. They're not even trying the phone booth because they've grown up seeing it broken. They're looking for all kinds of different ways to call. It's like the line in the song: I've been downhearted, baby, ever since the day we met. Since the day we met. From the beginning the thing has been broken. They see the Phone Booth as antiquated and unnecessary, which is why I asked Karen Armstrong my question. I said, "There's a great spiritual inquiry amongst the young, but I don't see them going to the church for answers." 

Let me read you something I wrote once about this generation.
 You and me, our god was small and died of insignificance in the sixties and- frankly- that god needed to die. These young people came into this world after all that, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. They have the honesty of a Galileo and the spiritual queries of a Plato. And they have no limitations to their idea or definition of God. A god with limitations would not be God.

It is true that not many young people will give credible consideration to organized religion. That credibility was lost either while studying the crusades and inquisitions in history class, or while following the bumper sticker war going on between Darwin and the fish. And if that didn't lose them, then it was the Televangelist they bumped into while channel surfing. But I believe this is not an altogether bad thing- their disinterest in the church. In fact this spiritual longing that they manifest in by-passing the church may lead us all to a revival of real faith in our times.

I believe the old ways will not reach this young person. But hear me: Nor will a buffed up version of the church. It amazes me that we think we can lead them back to the pew with a few video screens and loud guitars. Not that this does not work for some youth, for there will always be those that prefer answers to questions and entertainment to learning. But the vast majority of young critical thinkers today are looking for a God and truth that is big enough- that encompasses the enormity of an expanding universe and the diversity of the global community. And sadly, the church is really not ready for these seekers. They are serving up the same small dish but with the insult of giving it a contemporary spin, thinking this will fill their bellies. The church is trying to answer a big appetite with a small menu.

I still believe the "way of Jesus" is a meal. Unfortunately, many in the contemporary Christian church are still tied up in dogma knots, trying to extricate themselves in time to catch the 21st century bus that is leaving (or has left). And while the church debates homosexuality, this generation only shakes its head in disbelief that there is ever a debate. 

There is more compassion and spirituality present in the musical RENT than you will find in most Sunday morning sermons. And while the church argues about the gender of God and feels pretty progressive using inclusive language in their hymnals, the movies these kids watch are contemplating angels and a God that looks like Alanis Morissette and likes to play ski-ball. There is a major communication gap here- and one that cannot be bridged by a few slick marketing techniques.

The bottom line is this generation won't putz around with church. There is money in their hands; they are willing to make an investment but only in something that works. They are not wasting quarters in a phone booth that's broken. It is not predicted for this generation to fill our pews in the future.
 
The Gay Community. Now, I know a little bit about whereof I speak on this. When I was divorced 7 or 8 years ago I didn't know up from down.  I was in heavy-duty therapy and basically my therapist thought I had one of two choices: I was either damaged by some sexual abuse in my past or I was possibly lesbian.

While reading, learning, working- in counseling- I went to several Gay functions in this town: poetry readings, book shares, lectures, and a few parties. And you know, it really was not what you might expect-or, I should say what I expected. I saw my daughters' schoolteachers, I met doctors, and lawyers; I met painters and authors, professional women, poor women, mothers, daughters, grandmothers. And I was overwhelmed with sadness. I can't explain why. Such wonderful people I met. Some of our city's best in hiding. These are the people you won't see in the Gay Pride parade. I got to see just how "outside the phone booth" these people felt -- because they would ask what I did and I would tell them I worked in a church. And the dialogue that would follow was full of the pain, the sadness, the alienation, and their own memories of the church, and memories of why they left.

One of my best gay friends had studied to be a nun. I got her to come to Trinity to hear Sonlight once and she had to leave right after they sang. Just being in the building was very hard for her.

I would come home from the poetry sessions I went to and not be able to sleep. The poetry was so spiritual. Many times they were poems to God. They were so sad, filled with such longing- like they felt like some ugly step child left out on the back porch waiting for God's dinner scraps. Or their poetry was full of anger and a militancy that said, "I'm gonna reject the church before the church has a chance to reject me."

Maybe sadder still was my experience going to the MCC church here in town. Do you know what that is? It's the Metropolitan Community Church. It's a church just for gay people. I was sad at the idea that they all need to go to some separate church, like drinking from the colored water fountain. I saw couples praying together, taking communion together, holding hands together in the pew. 

Another memory I have- a year or so ago at Trinity when homosexuality was explained in the "hate the sin love the sinner" Methodist position. And I looked out frantically from the choir life scanning the place for two women- a lesbian couple I knew that came to Trinity every week- feeling for them. They both worked at my daughter's school. I looked out to see their faces for a twinge of reaction. Stoic. 

If a gay person comes to the phone booth at all he or she is going to be very good at coming in costume.

At the end of my therapy I was not gay, just damaged. I moved out of the gay community but I still feel great compassion for the people and friends there. I don't think it's an accident that I spent a great deal of time with this community. I'm embarrassed to say I got better treatment at gay parties being straight and working for the "phone company" than most of them get at the "local phone booths" in town.

This is not about your personal comfort level with homosexuality. Enough with this thinking! I was uncomfortable the first time I saw two women holding hands. But this is about people- real people.  It's about loving your neighbor as yourself. When you get close to somebody and hear their story and know them it is difficult to not love them.

I also want to say, "Read the gospels!" And don't read it with a handbook beside each chapter, giving you commentary on it. Read it like a non-trained, non-seminary person. Read what Jesus said. Read what he did. I can't believe there would be any doubt in your mind what Jesus would do with regard to this subject in our times. 

The third group on the outside is what Episcopal Bishop John Spong calls the Christians in Exile. These are the masses of people who have given up coming to church but are still people of faith. You know them. Some of you ARE them! Or WERE them until your kid got you up and out of bed because they were singing in Sonlight. 

This summer I visited with a Sonlight grad who has since moved away, a very spiritual and sensitive young man. He is a Christian in exile. He sat on my front porch and told me, "Rebecca, I just can't go to church. I can't find a church. I feel like it's either asking me to park my brains at the door or I get assaulted with praise band music and raised hands, or it's a church service that's all slicked up and modernized with PowerPoint and high-tech presentations- and that's not what I'm looking for." And I could tell he thought there was something wrong with him. And then after a pause he said, "You know, there was that Episcopal Church when I was in college where at a Good Friday service they had a large, rough, wooden cross that was laying against the altar. And I remember the priest actually lay down on the cross." And he could still remember the smell of incense and candles, and the sense of the sacred. I didn't know why, but for some reason that was meaningful to him. He said, "I still feel like I am a Christian- I believe in God and in Jesus, I just can't buy some of the things the church is trying to sell. It isn't honest. It doesn't ring true." He was sad, not arrogant when he said this. He really wanted to make the call- He had money in his hand.

This 27 year old is a Christian in exile. He is young enough and honest enough not to play at church, but mature enough to admit that he longs for the spiritual in his life and isn't finding it. He is standing outside a broken phone booth with money in his hand. 

The fourth group: The Sleepers. These are people whom I think have forgotten they were supposed to expect anything out of the Sunday morning experience. They're the ones that say to me, "Ah Rebecca, it really doesn't need to be meaningful. It's just church- relax." For them church is the "right thing to do." It's the right way to raise your children. It's just a sixty minute trifle that is part of being a good person.  Parking their brains at the door does not offend them- it actually helps them sleep.

So the routine is: you park the car, get the kids off to Sunday school, grab a cup of coffee, leave your brains in the usher's closet with your umbrella, put on your best church smile, mosey over to your favorite pew or seat, and put all body functions on automatic pilot- which means you're awake enough for the courtesy laugh in the appropriate places in the sermon, but asleep enough to not really hear what's being said.

Sleepers have given up trying to get anything meaningful from the church. Instead of wrestling with the doctrines, the creeds, and the outdated theology they just tune out. Now the interesting thing is these people are not intellectual wienies. They're not even sleepers in their regular life. In fact, some of them are intellectual giants, but they are walking into a church and deciding, "I can't be thinking in here because some of this won't make sense." So they approach church differently; they've come to expect less from it. And rather than get "worked up" they get in a mindless groove and zone out for 60.

Well, sleepers can wake up. Something can happen, something can touch you and you suddenly remember that this could be something awesome in your life. That once upon a time you did make a call in this phone booth or another one. A sleeper that wakes up is a person to reckon with!

Now, I have thought many times in the past 17 years that maybe it was time for sending this institution, this phone booth, off to the Smithsonian. But then this funny feeling comes over me- I live in the country and when I come home at night I look at the sky. I think about the early humans and the relics of those first altars we have found. And I think: We have been trying to make a call since we knew we had a soul! And doing it in a religious way, an institutional way. 

So maybe it's stupid to put a box around the wind because you can't capture the wind. But it has helped us give it form. Is that so wrong?  Maybe Jesus wouldn't recognize Christianity. Maybe Buddha wouldn't recognize Buddhism, but such is the nature of religion. We build boxes around the wind because we can't hold it any other way. And anyway, there was wind in that box once- in that creed, that ritual- and someone trapped it because he or she felt it. It may have gotten lost in the translation, but once it held the real thing.

Karen said it won't be a Martin Luther; it'll be the people. Well, who was Martin Luther? Just one name in a sea of names of people that worked in the phone booth since Jesus left. It is not a name that screams "special," except to us now in hindsight because we know what he did. He was just someone that saw it was broken and said so, and did something about it. His name was Martin Luther- what's your name? She says it's gonna be the people this time- us.

Can you get up and speak your heart, or speak for those standing outside? Can we go back into our churches and ask for what is needed, or stop filling space and sleeping in the ones that aren't listening? Do it for all those standing outside, if not for you! Do it for the next generation. 

It's not about adding flashing lights to the booth, or putting in a more comfortable chair, or piping in better muzak. Because if you pick up the phone and there isn't a dial tone all the PowerPoint in the world is not going to make you stay. Sonlight wasn't a slick marketing technique. Sonlight worked in the same way good religion always worked. 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The church has got to help you make that call. It's got to help you connect with God and understand life and the world you live in, with the scientific truths you live in, with the other world cultures and religions you live (and die) with, and the other people- period. And if it can't help us with that it won't be here in fifty years- or less. 

We long for the transcendent in our lives- we're made that way. If church doesn't help us connect then it will become a relic- a memory of how we humans once made the call. And if you don't believe it look at Europe. 3% of Europeans attend church. And they truly have the relics- the monasteries, the cathedrals, the huge pipe organs. But it wasn't the architecture or the pipe organs that drove them from the church. It is that the church did not change with the times. It stayed stuck in old dogma- up to its eyeballs in creeds and papal renderings. Stuck in rituals that were no longer meaningful and litanies that did not help explain to them the world they lived in when they left the place- and what a world they lived in! They needed help understanding two world wars and a holocaust.

There's a story I read recently. It said that the month of October in 1917 was when the Russian Revolution took place. Do you know what the Russian church was doing during that month? They were in closed, sequestered quarters in deep debate as to whether the liturgist's garments should be white or purple! 

Good religion has always helped explain our world. The first scriptures, myths, stories, and rituals helped to explain that world to us. It's all we needed to know then. The Creation story in seven days is a beautiful picture. But it's like putting a kid's jackets on a grown up world, now. We need a larger spiritual context- this jacket ain't fittin'.

The view of life from the Phone Booth and that from outside it had become wildly different. No effort was made to bring sacred and secular truths together and a schizophrenic dualism resulted. In fact, the two declared war on each other and the phone booth (playing on science's turf, may I add) stayed stubborn, unchanging and stuck in love with its own interpretation of truth and lost big time to science, starting with Galileo and ending with evolution. That's not what the church was supposed to be telling us about- the rocks. That's like an alligator instructing an elephant. 

The church needs to help us do what it can do and only it can do well: it needs to help us make the call, and help us relate to our world. Science is telling us all the truth we need to know about the rocks, about chemistry, about our physical world. Science and Religion don't need to be at war with each other.

In this century we lost faith in two things. We lost faith in God and institutional religion. But we also lost our faith in secular humanism. There was a time when we believed education, rational thinking, and technology would make a better human being. Well, we aren't getting better and better. We aren't more moral. In fact, the 20th century gave us a picture that was frightening. Science cannot make a better soul and science isn't filling our spiritual bellies at night. It does what it does with excellence and precision. But it cannot help us catch the wind. It cannot help us make the call. And that was the reason we built the phone booth. And believe it, we built the phone booth. Just like they made they first altars. God didn't drop one down out of the sky. We built the phone booth. Don't let that scare you. It's actually an energizing thought. We wrote the dogma, the doctrinal statements, the creeds, and the rituals. People like us argued for 300 years after Jesus left about all kinds of doctrine. People like us can work through this stuff again. Dogma and doctrine are human stuff- human stuff meant to help us. It may have at one point, but there's a lot about it that's not helping us now. It is human made and it can be human changed. We made the stuff of the phone booth and we can change it with courage, conviction, and out of love for God and for our neighbors as ourselves.

Karen said the church will most definitely be here but it won't look like it does today. And it won't be a Martin Luther; it'll be the people. 

His name was Martin Luther.
What is your name?