In high school I looked normal enough – outstanding scholar, athlete, and musician.  At home I was the eldest child of a disturbed man, in a family held captive by his distortion of Christianity.  He had a Duke University education and two masters degrees, but something had gone awry after college.  He said he “got saved.”  It seemed to me he got lost in the dark underworld of neurotic fundamentalism.  I flew from childhood as one might a house on fire, hoping I did not smell like smoke or give away my dark experience by squinting in the light.  I wrapped myself in a blanket of bitterness and self pity, clutching my lost opportunities like consolation prizes - the Juilliard scholarship refused, the three academic awards stuffed in the closet, the National Merit bypass.  Mine was a life derailed. 

Today I am applying for admission to seminary - a life reclaimed 27 years later, as I return to the education I could not have.  Still, these have been years well spent, learning to love light, truth, and a different ‘way’ of Jesus.  I am now a woman well-read in theology, with a Bachelor of Music Degree and numerous musical accolades and  compositions, with 25 years of experience in church work, and with a success story to tell of my work with Gen X and Y.  I plan to add the credentials and academic foundation to my experience, so that I can teach what I have learned.  We are in exciting times for the church in America – a time when mainline Christianity will find its voice and the courage to speak.  I believe we must and will achieve a new paradigm for Christianity! 

My life journey has led from a room with no view, to moderate mainline Methodism and its own identity crisis, to seventeen years in the trenches with American teenagers.  The Christian Right today has improved on that room with no view by adding entertainment, video games and even rock stars, but it still has no window, no door.  The Methodist church, like most mainline churches, has a door and a window, but is all tied up in dogma knots, hoping to extricate itself in time to catch the 21st century bus that is leaving (or has left).  Meanwhile, the middle-class American young person, “the Columbine kid”, is growing up spiritually starved at the table of the most religious nation in the world. 

The old ways will not reach this young person, but neither will a buffed up version of the church.  We won’t lead them back to the pews with power point presentations and loud guitars.  Today’s young critical thinkers are looking for truth that comes in the size of an expanding universe and the diversity of a global community.  The church is not ready for these seekers.  We are serving up the same paltry dish, but with the insult of giving it a contemporary spin.  We answer their big appetite with a small, slick menu.

In the 25 years of my employment at Trinity UMC I watched the church grow from Fellowship Hall, to large sanctuary, to mega-church.  The unconventional youth ministry I started (150 high school youth yearly – half from outside the church) was a major contributor to the exponential growth of this church.  It drew the largest service on Sunday mornings (1000 people) and regular attention from the community, newspaper, high schools, and national Methodist church.  My premise was that truth is not a house divided against itself, and that the healthy mind needs the integration of secular and sacred truth, for God is in everything.  We were as likely to use U2 and Thoreau as the Sermon on the Mount.  Intentionally bypassing the Christian publishing houses, I arranged all the secular music we sang (600+ songs) and wrote all the educational materials that accompanied the music.  My sources were varied and eclectic:  from Hafiz to Joseph Campbell, from Thich Nhat Hanh and Vine Deloria to Christian pluralists like Diana Eck, Thomas Merton and Anthony de Mello, among others. Through discussions we explored questions, celebrated mysteries, and sought a spiritual complement to the unison of science.  We pulled our truths from mainstream rock and roll, with the Bible in one hand and Bob Dylan in the other.  The teenagers came in droves – not for five years or ten, but for seventeen.   Sadly, I am leaving my work now because it cannot rest safely without increased conflict in this Methodist church.  The church’s theology grew more conservative and a separation was imminent.  Our divergent philosophies are the two most common responses to a pluralistic world at your front door. You either open or close. 

The progression of events – the birth of this ministry, its success in reaching so many disenfranchised youth and adults, and the ensuing struggles it had with the church has led me here – to learn, to write, and to teach.  I left the church at the peak of my success because I chose to open the door.  To love the way of Jesus’ does not imply the ownership of truth.  Jesus is truth but not exclusively true.  Jesus’ way is Gandhi’s way and the way of many others who do not use his name.  Still, fundamentalism is a part of us, and will always be a comfort to those who are afraid, but it cannot be the bearer of Christianity to the next century.  I believe our best response is a strong progressive church. 

We must understand each other or die.  September 11th made that clear.  In response, some in the church will batten down the hatches.  Some will preach tolerance, but from a distance.  Still others of us will step forward to help loosen the doctrinal knots that keep us from joining hands with other faiths.  American young people are waiting for this kind of Christianity.  So is our world.

Rebecca D. Brown
January 30, 2002