Re-Mapping Social Christianity in Canada - a Location for the Church State Conversation
Wendy Fletcher,
Principal & Dean Vancouver School of TheologyFebruary 6, 2008
LOCATION, location, location! Anyone who lives in the real estate world of British Columbia knows that location says it all- or at least becomes a significant beginning place for conversation. That is what I propose for us today- that we begin to explore the question of Church/State engagement in this Lenten series through some consideration of location…
What is our location? Just where does mainline Christianity sit these days in relation to…several key dimensions of our societal story: where does Christianity sit in relation to secular values? In relation to Power? In relation to wealth? In relation to government and corporate decision making? In relation to cultural meaning- making? In relation to ordinary people in ordinary time?
These questions frame the beginning place of wisdom in any attempt to locate our churches in the landscape of Church/State engagement. As both a historian and a theological I will invite us to enter this question through an exploration of the story- how did we get where we are? And where is here?
One evening some weeks ago, I was driving in the car with my two teenage daughters. The next day I was leaving for Toronto. “Why are you going to Toronto this time?” 13 year old Anna asked? “We’re having a conference on the future of theological education in Canada,” I responded enthusiastically. “Why?” Anna queried. “No one needs to hold a conference about that- everyone knows the future of theological education in Canada- there isn’t one!” “What makes you say that?” I asked. “Theological education is connected to the church isn’t it?” she countered. “Well the church is going down; over and done; gone baby gone”.
Who is this adolescent soothsayer? Surely she must be one of the un-churched, a cynic, someone with eyes not clear, no experience of God. And yet in fact this 13 year old has spent her entire life in the church. She is the daughter of two clergy- perhaps this explains it! She can talk enthusiastically about her experience of God and—more Presbyterian than her Anglican upbringing would suggest- she can easily articulate a conviction that God has a plan for her life. She would like to help change the world. She is thinking she can do it as a lawyer- definitely a prosecutor. But as for the church- there is not one in her imagination of her future.
If it were her mother speaking, we might hear a bevy of statistics arrayed for us at this juncture which point in Anna’s general direction. However, it is Anna’s voice which I bring to this moment, and so rather than statistics, we must consider the anecdotal. Anna’s research is anecdotal based on a life lived in the church, and her visits to many congregations over time. She prepares an impressive case. But she recalls one particular visit as her final argument. “Remember that church- about an hour away from here that we visited 4 years ago? The minister was very nice; he showed us around, but do you remember what he showed us? We went to the basement and there in the corner was a Sunday school room, with small chairs and tables and toys and books. It was very old but well cared for. You said to him- oh how nice you have a Sunday school. “Oh no,” he said, “we have not seen a child in this church for over 25 years. But we keep these things ready just in case one ever shows up.” “I wonder,” said Anna, “if a child ever showed up. Gone baby gone.”
Other kinds of data, some anecdotal and some statistical would indicate that Anna’s prophecy of the future is both valid and limited. We know from the statistical portraiture of these times—that rapid decline has become the norm for all of our mainline denominations. Did you know that although Statistics Canada lists approximately 900,000. Anglicans as residing in this country, there are fewer than 213,000 of us who are, through our gifts of money currently holding up the entire infrastructure of the Anglican Church .at the national and local levels combined? However, we also know that in places, there are healthy congregations, vibrant communities, endowments and even some children. We know that there are communities with the staying power in most mainline traditions to last several more generations, although most will not. We know that the umbrella infra-structures which have gathered and held communities across the vast expanse of this nation cannot be sustained in their current form. We know that trying to find a way to carry on in previous incarnations is not a possibility for our future.
Some of us live in the spaces of those communities which are thriving but most of us do not. All of us live in a church which is changing more rapidly around us, than we can control- even if we had a mind to. The question then for this moment is where to from here? What does it mean for churches of the mainline to move toward a future so fraught with uncertainty- as though any future ever was not….What lens shall we raise to illumine our sight, to re-frame our vision, to encourage our aging eyes? Over the course of today we will look through a plethora of windows opening out onto the pathways of our futures- that is the gift of these hours and of the post-modern age- the age which is ours. However, for these moments I invite us to raise an old lens framed in earlier world for an earlier time, and through that lens inquire as to the possibility of lessons from past experience, as in most cases earned the hard way, as teaching for future’s path and practice.
What old friend do I invite to our table this afternoon to engage the question of Church’s relation to power? I invite our old companion “Social Christianity”. For much of our history Social Christianity was the vehicle for engagement, the location of our relationships with power and place in this culture and so I invite us to revisit it.
What you say: that old has been, that broken down, aged car? Was it not that vehicle that led us down this path to disgrace, loss of place and marginalization? Of course in some ways, those critics of that old world way which argue that the mainline lost itself, with its focus on a social agenda are not wrong. Nothing succeeds like success- they sometimes say. And social Christianity in this country did it with a vengeance. All denominations of the mainline during the early decades of the last century, threw themselves behind the agenda of building a new nation- to build Canada was to build a Christian nation. Social gospel and Canadian nation grew up in the same generation. With unparalleled fervour, all of the Protestant mainline passionately embraced the challenge of weaving the work of a country-- which would be a Christian country. This drama unfolded over many decades culminating in the development in the first half of the century, in a social fabric in which the values of social gospel were deeply embedded. The Kingdom of God was coming and it would look like Canada. Ironically, the passion for social Christianity understood in the Canadian context as building the Kingdom of God on earth, led the way for Christian witness to loose itself in success. All mainline Protestant denominations signed on to this work which demanded the embedding of Christian values (however defined) as societal norm. This enthusiastic mission served as a point of coalescence for the diverse energies of both Evangelicals and social gospel devotees, both still held within the body of mainline Protestantism. However, by the late 1950’s with social goals achieved, the purpose of the mainline was less clear and had been further complicated by the trauma of two world wars.
At the opening of the 20th century Canada was a young nation. Through the efforts of first the French and then the British, we colonized a land held by prior peoples and attempted to make a world in European image. An assimiltionsist agenda with reference to First Nations peoples was enthusiastically embraced by our churches, as reflected in both the Indian Act and the development of residential schools. The determination that a civilized country was a Christian country was unquestioned.
The relevance of immigration to this task of nation making in the early part of the twentieth century also cannot be underestimated. Between 1898 and 1914 and then again between 1919 and 1939, massive numbers of immigrants joined the developing work of this new nation. All of the major Protestant churches of the time enthusiastically embarked on a mission to immigrants with a clear set of goals in mind, including recognizing and meeting the needs of strangers in a strange land; offering the gospel to those without it (Protestants generally assumed that Roman Catholics and members of the Eastern churches were all in need of the gospel); and imparting Canadian values, attitudes, ideals and lifeways as well as a strong sense of citizenship to the newcomers.
The desire to Canadianize new immigrants through religious and social assimilation moved to the front of the churches’ agendas prior to World War One. For Protestants, this was expressed through urban social missions embodying both charity and advocacy for new immigrants in their social dislocation ,as well as political action that attempted to introduce and then inculcate ethical norms reflective of British dominant culture (Woolverton 1984:86). The moral reform agenda, as expressed in efforts to protect Sunday as a day free from work, as well as those to curb gambling, prostitution and alcohol consumption, quickly rose to the top of the Church’s agenda, outstripping proselytization as a primary good. During this time, the Protestant churches understood their role to be a former and framer of culture as well as religion.
The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 also fuelled the dominance of the church voice on the Canadian landscape. Virtually without exception, the Protestant churches in Canada expressed enthusiastic support for that war. The few voices raised in support of pacifism were overwhelmed by this support throughout the rest of the Church (Grant 1998:76). For Protestants, the First World War became a holy war. The monarch had called his people to war and there was not a measurable separation between a call to secular war and to religious war in the minds of most Protestants on either side of the Atlantic Ocean.
Ironically of course participation in the war ultimately undermined the social reform agenda which had so dominated the Church’s self concept prior to the war (Hayes 2004:43). Soldiers returned from the theater of war having lived a life of relaxed standards with regard to alcohol, church observance and prostitution. They also returned traumatized by extraordinary violence and their experience of human evil. Disillusionment, loss of faith and loss of trust in a church that had summoned them to participate in war as an act of faith, all contributed to undermine both the social and religious agenda of the Church. From the end of the war, the demographics of church involvement and affiliation for Protestants began to shift demonstrably (Radner 2006:42).
The Second World War was not as enthusiastically supported by the Churches as the first one had been. That is not to say that the Church spoke against participation. Its members still participated – after all, the overlap between identification with one’s church, country, king and God were deep and substantial – but with a notable lack of enthusiasm compared to its support for the first war. Perhaps because the Church had not summoned people to war as it had in 1914, people were more open to allowing the Church to respond to its needs in the aftermath of World War II (Grant 1998:56). Notable nostalgia surfaced among veterans who wanted to make up for lost years. It appears that things such as church participation and Sunday school represented a normalcy they wanted for themselves and their children.
The culture of conformity so prevalent in English Protestant culture of the time was also fuelled by perhaps one of the most pervasive characteristics of the post war era in Canada – anxiety. The threat of the Cold War and its attendant atomic destruction, accompanied perhaps by residual guilt from the aftermath of war time activities, all appeared to have contributed to the nostalgic desire to return to a mother church. Of course, this nostalgia – both for the relative innocence of pre-war values and the idealized church that people began to imagine must have been intimately associated with these orderly and righteous ideals –never have actually existed in such pristine states. However, what is important is that in the imaginations and narratives of the people of the day, the popularity of these concepts was a crucial pre-cursor to the post-war boom in the church.
Whatever the reason, the churches made an effort to respond to the rapidly shifting demographics and social affluence that began to characterize Canadian society in the post-war period. They responded with enthusiasm to the desire for social conformity as a value and for a culture in some ways reminiscent of the turn of the twentieth century (Grant 1998:113). Social conformity according to values of a dominant English-speaking culture was something the Church was uniquely suited to provide. Unfortunately, these values were often articulated at the expense of other people and communities and evidence of burgeoning racism can be demonstrated.
Despite the appearance of a post-war boom, current demographic analysis shows that the growth in Church communities was more particular and not as universal as one might at first assume. The boom of Christianity was largely a phenomenon of suburbia, where families with small children were most heavily concentrated and where the effects of increased affluence were most obvious. Veterans returning from the war received veterans’ benefits to assist with the financing of both post-secondary education and homes, both of which facilitated movement into the middle class. Suburbia was born. It was in suburbia that communities built their new churches, halls and clergy residences. In contrast, in small towns, the number of mainline Christians grew only slightly and in rural areas as well as the inner city the Church actually declined (Grant 1998:122).
This epoch of suburbanization and growth left its mark on the character of church life. The culture of this era laid the groundwork for the roughly thirty to 40 year period of rapid decline in which Canadian Protestants are currently living. For example, a near obsession with material security led people to invest in pensions plans and save for the future. This attitude toward money and security transferred itself to the Church, creating a culture that valued security ahead of risk. There was also a notable shift from what can be called a “mission-based” to a “ministry-based” mind set in virtually all mainline Protestant denominations. In practical terms, this meant that in Canadian seminaries, ministry became professionalized and pastoral care became its primary focus (Berton 1965). Congregational adherents and their leaders paid very little attention to those outside of local congregations.
All of this was accompanied by growth in conservative theologies and attitudes within the most mainline Churches, even as evangelical denominations began to take hold. In their quest for stability, returning veterans asked for a theology which would mirror the stability they felt a world of warfare lacked. In this period we witnessed also the increasing popularity of Neo-orthodoxy, a theological movement which rejected the basic optimism of classical liberal theology and called for an explanation of the human story in terms of a radical doctrine of sin and grace. This movement interpreted theological questions in terms of classic doctrine and moved the Church away from its earlier relatively liberal discourse of social change. As well, as consumer culture and leisure time expanded, Christianity– became increasingly oriented toward individual needs and interests.
Each of these developments worked to shape church culture in ways that limited its inclination to be progressive, visionary or resistant to culture trends. Increasing demands on churches for personal services such as marriage, counseling, and baptism also contributed to its transformation. Paradoxically, as the church struggled to give people what they asked for, it found it could not keep pace with the surrounding culture (Berton 1965).
Noted Canadian author Pierre Berton studied the dilemma of church in Canadian culture in his work The Comfortable Pew published in 1969. Berton argued that the Church was in decline because its leadership had abdicated responsibility for grappling with the genuine issues of people’s lives in a way that spoke meaningfully to their experience. The religious establishment, he said, had become tyrannical, dominating church-life with its own agenda for survival and excluding the marginalized or different. The Church too often argued the rightness of its position and failed to listen to the struggles of those who were looking for answers, and it had failed to communicate its messages in ways which were meaningful to the culture. Finally, Burton argued, because the Church over-valued tradition and feared revolution it was stuck in the paradox of its own irrelevancy (Berton 1965).
The picture Berton painted in 1965 was a harbinger of what was to come. As we see, despite efforts to recover, the Church continues to lose its members at an alarming rate, and the underlying issues raised by Berton have persisted. The matter of identity has grown as a problematic across denominations. Why then would I suggest with this apparent paradox of success and failure, or success and loss of identity would I suggest picking up the tired has been-- of social Christianity as a way forward?
In the first instance, the theological integrity of mainline Protestantism demands engagement with the world. It demands a grappling with the dilemma of being in this world and not of it- but surely for the mainline always of it. There is no interpretation of incarnation possible apart from the context of our own societal dilemmas and ultimately sustainability. But here in lies the emergent wisdom---framed by an early biblical imperative- to be in the world but not of it- is a very different work than we in Canada have lived. Not only was their a protestant passion for remaking the social order, what is startling in the Canadian case is the extent to which we embraced the work of gospel as a work of hegemonizing everyone and everything that did not conform to a our own vision of a world. Social Christianity lived not only as mainstream, but as agent of socialization to an unprecedented degree- note the legacy of our social welfare state.
Of course, after the fact we see what happened. We see that in our efforts to make others in our own image we pursued assimilationist agendas which scooped up the cultures of immigrants and of First Nations communities. In our commitment to social gospel, we created chapters of harm and alienation which remained; in our commitment to social gospel we advocated war which created chapters of harm and alienation which could not be unmade. And so there the paradox: to engage the culture is not to make it. Christians as king makers are the unmaking of us.
We as the mainline church in Canada today, at one time thought we could be and should be the Big Story. But the living out of that presumption of big story has led us to this moment— a moment both of loss and opportunity. In this moment, most of us in this room know that the Big Story is not ours, that our story, in this moment of our history is a Small Story- a small but beautiful story of gospel good news, which summons life from every death and beginnings beyond every end. We stand in this moment and we see that our story has re-mapped itself. We have re-mapped and been re-mapped through choices complicated by our former insistence that faithfulness demanded that we write our story as the Big Story- that our story become everyone’s story. The opportunity of this hour is to live into the next chapter of the narrative which God invites-- differently. To live as though we understand that we are not writing the whole story. In fact, we are accountable only for holding that piece of the story which is ours. For social Christianity of the mainline to hold its piece faithfully- is to embrace the engagement of gospel with world, will releasing any claim to social hegemony. Never again should the imposition of our story as the dominant story be our guiding ethos.
Let’s return to Anna, my 13 year old prosecutor sitting in the back seat. Her analysis continues: “It’s not just Christianity that’s the problem. It’s the idea of organized religion generally. Lots of people know God; lots of people want to make the world a better place- but most of us in my generation don’t need religious institutions to try and force us to become a Self we are not.” Anna then went on to cite the example of her friends Farnaz and Hoori, two friends at school, who are Muslim immigrants from Iran. Their parents want them to wear a head scarf when they leave their homes. They refuse- because it’s “just not them.”
So we see the dramatic hermeneutical shift from the earlier pages of the story of Christianity’s engagement with the text Canadian culture. The project of mainline social Christianity for decades was to re-make the First Nations person and the immigrant. It was assumed that the church was a primary agent of social construction which would frame the context within which the Self was formulated. Today we see, whether it makes sense to us or not that for much of the population of this country, Christianity and organized religion generally do not frame a significant community of belonging entrusted with the project of the formulation of the Self. Certainly in this we see the success of the enlightenment intention- the freeing of the individual from the oppression of institutional structures which dominate the human being with the imposition of hegemonic intentions.
However, this does not mean that individuals are formulating themselves apart from communities of belonging. Far from it- one need only consider the impact of peer expectation on the formulation of any adolescent self to grasp this point. But in our context, especially for the young, religion has been de-centered as a necessary frame, within which the personal social construction of selves unfolds. But not for everyone. There is us—here we are. People of the by now small mainline Christian story, asking fundamental questions about how we should order the formulation of ourselves in relation to a larger social landscape in the becoming project of the story of creation. How?
My former grade 8 grammar teacher Mr. Mitchell, were he still alive to hear me say the following, would be proud. Here it is: the re-mapping of social Christianity as a viable expression of Christian meaning-making for the next generation, in the final analysis is a matter of punctuation. Yes punctuation. We have lived most of the Christ and culture story in this country ending our sentences with a declarative. Period. Our declarations linked to hegemonizing intentions have woven for us an adversarial cosmology. The other is someone to be converted. The society is something to be changed. The one who is not like us is not only different but wrong. Our mission within the synthesis of Canadian social Christianity has been to get it right- which means to make everyone and everything in our own image. When the Other one-- is One to be changed, the violence begins. When we approach the Other as partners with power, the opportunity for the corruption of our own intention is huge. History has taught us this. As such, we know that no matter what --to live the Church/State relationship in hope of being partners with power is to signal the loss of our Self in the becoming project of church and world. To declare…. is to open a old pathway which led us to here---which led us to now.
The interrogative, on the other hand invites engagement which does not manipulate the outcome of the conversation. The interrogative does not presume the other as enemy. To ask the other: What are the questions which your life is posing for you----is to invite engagement, rather than assimilation. To ask the other about their despair and their struggle, their joy and their delight is to open the possibility of a missiological discourse, around the work of life-making which is the gospel good news. So we conclude that to bring the meaning of gospel intention to the discourse of the meaning of our lives and the sustainability of our world as an open-ended work, is the project of our own and the Church’s becoming--- this is the work of social Christianity in this generation. How strange after the many generations of big work with big declaratives, that we should end here- with a question, with the interrogative as our beginning place for this beautiful, small story of our moment in history---- and yet how lovely, how laden with possibility, how fraught with the handprint of God.
