Emerging grace

Wow! I’ve just finished watching a 90-minute webcast organised by the Centre for Action and Contemplation in New Mexico, in which Fr Richard Rohr discussed Emerging Christianity. (Many of you know I’m a big fan of Rohr, a Franciscan priest, and have quoted him several times in this blog, most extensively here.)

It was the first time I’d heard Rohr speak, and I enjoyed his calm and relaxed presentation style with its wry humour and honesty. (I especially loved the cheerful black dog who joined him at the podium during the half-time break.)

I took some notes for you, in an attempt to share some of Rohr’s main points. (Please realise these are not verbatim, and are my paraphrasing. I hope I do not misrepresent anything he said.)

Rohr clarified that new understandings of Christianity are arising from all of the established Christian denominations. That one can be an “Emergent Christian” from within one’s own denomination. He talked about four main strands of emergent Christianity:

Ditching Churchianity

In far too many areas, we have Churchianity, not Christianity. We need an honest, broad and ecumenical scholarship and understanding of Jesus.

We do not know what Jesus’s exact words were. Even studies of the early Greek are a bit pointless, since he spoke Aramaic. We need to understand the message of Jesus at the level of life, of energy, of the person. To get behind the words.

If we studied cultural anthropology, we would realise exactly how revolutionary the teachings of Jesus were in the context of his times and his Judaism.

Contemplation

After the 14th Century, the Reformation took away from Christian practice the contemplative mind that had been so important before. Rational thought and scholarship - left-brain thinking - became the standard.

We need to reclaim use of the contemplative lens through which to see truth. Contemplation (he mentioned, for example, the Benedictine practice of lectio divina) does not need to prove or disprove, it has humility, broad knowing. We can have both ‘beginner’s mind’ and learn from tradition.

Rohr talked of a third way available to us through the practice of contemplation: neither fight nor flight but holding what we know together with what we don’t.

Not at variance with Christ

A recognition that several of the non-negotiables of the major Christian churches are at variance with the core teachings of Jesus, whose own clear non-negotiables are forgiveness, loving your enemies, justice for the poor, inclusivity.

I liked a phrase Rohr used here: “The major churches have always been more concerned with an evacuation plan for the next world”, rather than challenging the injustices of this world.

He spoke of Jesus’s continuous association with the poor, the marginalised, the sinners. He said he’d heard the theory that Jesus was crucified basically because of who he ate his meals with.

New structures

We need new Christian structures, new mechanisms, to lead new lives of faith. They cannot be in opposition to current structures because that will waste energy fighting. Don’t waste time being against, he said, just go ahead and do better.

He talked about ways in which individuals from different denominations are coming together:

• Prayer groups
• Bible study groups
• New monasticism

and many others.

He talked of the importance of lay leadership, the importance of asking if ordination is actually doing the job, of creating support groups that deepen, broaden and personalise the message of Jesus. A new kind of reformation in which we do not react, do not rebel, do not oppose, do not hate. We ask “What do you believe in? What have you fallen in love with?”

After discussing these four topics with great insight, there was a session in which Rohr answered some of the questions we had been invited to submit during the webcast.

Not just individualistic

Rohr clarified that he believes we do still need faith structures, to worship in common. We need accountability. That millions of individuals sitting alone reading their Bibles, no matter how thoughtfully, will not effect change. That we need to come together to broaden our understanding and deepen our critique.

He spoke of the verse from Matthew 18: “For where two or three meet together in my name, I am there among them.”

Other faiths

I was delighted that a question I had emailed through was selected for Rohr to answer (in fact my chest was all puffed up with unseemly pride when he observed that my question was “right on the money” or something like that!). I asked “How do we integrate the insights and practices of other faiths into our emergent Christianity?”

Rohr said that practices are powerful - they can force you to ask “where am I really going”. He observed that many other faiths put Christians to shame in terms of the practice of faith, for example Muslim fasting.

He quoted St Thomas Acquinas: “If it is true, it is from the Holy Spirit”; and Rohr said we should ask if the practice is transformational.

He observed that religion (i.e. the institutional church) had substituted form for the experience of formlessness which we find in meditative and contemplative practices across many faiths.

Young people

In response to another question, Fr Rohr talked about a teaching visit he is making next year to Australia, to one diocese (sorry, Sue and other friends from Oz, I didn’t catch which one) where in every congregation they are encouraging the practice of contemplation and a contemplative expression of Christianity.

In an over-stimulated world, they are teaching everyone from young children up practices that under-stimulate. So groups of small children lie down with their eyes closed and are led through guided meditations. I thought this was amazingly hopeful.

A modern parable

There’s a lot more I could try to share from this webcast - my mind and spirit are buzzing with it. But I’ll end with what Fr Rohr actually began with - a parable about the institutional Church:

Once, on a dangerous stretch of coastline, was a small life-saving station. Although small, the station was filled with dedicated people who risked their lives and saved almost everyone whose ships were wrecked on the treacherous rocks.

The reputation of the small life-saving station grew, money was raised along with its reputation, and new boats were bought, more lives saved.

The building itself was crude, and poorly equipped. The growing number of volunteers there through it would be more welcoming for those they saved it if was better equipped, so they built a warm space with comfortable furniture.

Over time the volunteers became less interested in going out to sea themselves, so they hired crews to man the lifeboats.

One day there was a terrible storm in which a great ship foundered. Many people were saved and brought to the station. There were people with black skin, red skin, yellow skin, and many of them were very dirty and wet, and dripped on the new carpet in the life-saving station.

So the life-saving station committee built shower facilities outside the building so those who were saved could get cleaned up before coming into the station.

Not long afterwards, the station committee decided that they would put a stop to the life-saving side of things, because it got in the way of the social activities and community life of the station, and some pretty disreputable people were spending time in the building after each shipwreck.

A few individuals objected to this, saying that the whole purpose of the station was saving lives. And they left and started up their own small life-saving station a little way up the coast.

The new life-saving station, although small, was filled with dedicated people who risked their lives and saved almost everyone whose ships were wrecked on the treacherous rocks. And then its reputation grew, money was raised…

Soon, the whole coastline was dotted with life-saving stations.

There were the same number of shipwrecks along the coast, but fewer and fewer lives were saved.