Fearless Sunday

A Day for Theological "Outing"

 

 

When will YOUR "Fearless Sunday" come?  when you preach to your
parishioners what you really feel, think, believe, and disbelieve -- about matters theological, political, and social?

 

(A good Sunday to do it:  the second Sunday in September - the start of many churches' "program year"....)

 

 

So, Reverend: how many more Sundays, how many more years, how many more decades do your folks have to wait before you tell them the truth about what you really do and don't believe?  Get ready: your personal Fearless Sunday is coming!  Your people will be asking questions.  Are you ready and willing to answer them?  (To prepare, see a list of ten questions for parishioners to ask their pastors. And also look at this list of 13 FAQ's for church-shoppers.)

 

Very many evangelical and fundamentalist preachers no longer believe everything (or even very much) of what they are preaching.  And untold numbers of parishioners pretend to assent to preaching that makes little sense to them.  This is true also in many "mainline" churches that are more theologically diverse.  Pastors and members are afraid to rock the doctrinal boat, for fear that some parishioners - and their pledges - will drop out.

 

But if they don't rock the boat, it will sink.  Dishonesty from the pulpit is taking Christianity down.  It is a major contributing factor in the steady decline in church attendance.

Hence the need for a new, annual tradition for churches of all kinds:  Fearless Sunday, the second Sunday of September.  The start of the "program year" of many churches is a good time for parishioners to hear preachers boldly share their truths about their theological and social perspectives.  It is a time for preachers to "out" themselves on matters of doctrine and practice, share the ways they have evolved spiritually, and to invite their listeners to do the same.  Doing so will accelerate the shift from a Christianity focused on belief to a faith focused on spiritual and social practice.

 

But Fearless Sunday can come at any time of the year for preachers who reach the tipping point of cognitive and spiritual dissonance between what their heads and hearts know to be true and what their mouths have been saying.

 

To prepare for Fearless Sunday, I suggest engaging in mindful contemplative prayer.  In words attributed to St. Augustine, to know yourself fully is to know God.  So take time in silence to observe your fears. By facing your fears directly, your relationship to them will change.  This will enable you to examine fearlessly your assumptions and beliefs - such as they are.  God, who is Love, will guide you to know and share the truth about what really is on your heart and mind, and what is not.

I am haunted by the time I preached for a big Congregational church in the Midwest, over a decade ago.  Arriving at the church, I was still a bit mystified by the invitation.  But after worship, the reason was obvious.  I was accosted after worship by a big cluster of people who were thrilled with my theologically and socially progressive Christian message.  "I waited fifty years in this church to hear what you said today!" exclaimed one older gentleman.  I realized that the pastor had invited me to come all the way from California to say what he wished he could say every Sunday.  As a visiting preacher from the "left coast", I was not so threatening to the subset of the membership that believed in supernaturalism and biblical literalism. 

 

I could give hope to the theologically progressive members that there was a place for them in that church.  But I didn't solve their problem.  They still needed their pastor to arrive at his own, personal Fearless Sunday.

I understand the fright that holds pastors back from admitting that they understand the resurrection of Jesus to be a life-affirming myth and not an historical fact.  I can appreciate their fear of openly supporting gay marriage and LGBTQ sexuality, and their reticence to preach that God is Love and not a Guy in the Sky.  The consequences of being fearless can be devastating, personally and professionally.  Truth-telling can end pastors' employment and ruin their already-precarious personal finances.  It can wreck their friendships and family relationships.  The recent film, "Come Sunday", illustrates the price that Bishop Carlton Pearson, protege of the fundamentalist preacher Oral Roberts, paid for his honesty about "getting the Hell out of Christianity".

 

Many pastors are influenced by the evangelical teaching that if you are having a hard time believing an important doctrine, you should have faith that God will help you overcome your doubts, confusions, or discomforts over time.  They are told to trust that the doctrine or teaching is true, even if it gives you difficulty.  But this is just a flowery way of saying that they don't really believe it.  On Fearless Sunday, pastors should get ready to let their parishioners know which doctrines they find clearly true, which ones they affirm only with the shaky faith that later they'll understand, and which ones they can't affirm at all. 

 

After waiting for years for God to reveal the truth of a doctrine accepted only on faith, a lot of pastors and parishioners face the fact that they never believed it.  The theological perspectives of many pastors are in flux.  That's why Fearless Sunday needs to be not just the particular Sunday when an individual pastor "outs" her- or himself, but also an annual event celebrating the theological evolution of all pastors and parishioners.

The consequences of lying and glossing-over are just as devastating as those of truth-telling, even if the havoc might play out over a longer period of time.  Dishonesty from the pulpit infects the church with deep spiritual malaise.  By continuing to preach stuff they don't think or feel, they may temporarily keep the "quantity" in the church, but at the expense of its "quality".   And over time, without real quality, the quantity shrinks. 

 

Happily, in many cases, pastors discover that being absolutely honest about what they do and don't believe results not in church decline, but in congregational renewal.  Some folks quit, but others join with enthusiasm.  Some churches with fearless pastors and parishioners shrink in size due to their forthrightness, but they adjust to their new reality with powerfully refreshed energy.  They become smaller but mightier.

Fearless Sunday may be a scary day of reckoning.  I understand the choices that pastors make when faced with the devil's bargain of being honest or being unemployed.  My friend Bart Campolo publicly told his truth as he left his national leadership role in evangelical Christianity, and then spent years in the wilderness before finally finding a stable income and life as a secular humanist community-builder.  Now he counsels other "recovering evangelicals" all over the country, via Skype, about how to "come out".  I lost a church job once as a consequence of speaking my truth, and spent a short time in the wilderness myself.  Truth-telling pastors deserve generous sympathy and support.  And so do those who are as yet unable to "come out".

If progressive Christians really care about the suffering that faces evangelical pastors who "come out", then we'll get serious about making room for them in our ranks.  This will require eliminating or bending outdated denominational rules regarding ministerial "search and call". In this era of quick online job recruiting, it makes no sense for denominations to place pointless impediments in the way of good churches and good pastors seeking matches.

Fearless Sunday is about rescuing the church from its delusions.  It is about saving Christianity from its enslavement to dead doctrines that block Jesus' Way of compassion.  It is about aligning Christianity with a critically-needed public commitment to telling the truth in an era when lies are undermining our democratic institutions and poisoning our public discourse.  It is about assuring the survival of a faith that is threatened with extinction through dishonesty.  And it is about the deep sighs of relief that pastors and parishioners will exhale once they've come clean. 

 

Christianity must transform or evaporate.  In fear it disappears, but in fearlessness it will serve souls, far into the future.

 

Send me stories of pastors and churches that celebrate Fearless Sunday with truth-telling!  - to share with the progressive Christian network --  [email protected]

 

(For an example of a group of young "recovering evangelicals" who are committed to fearless truth-telling, check out the St Thomas Collective.  This group aims to create chapters near fundamentalist colleges all over the US.)

 

 

 

Ten Questions to Ask Your Pastor

 

(and fellow parishioners)

 

on Fearless Sunday  (or any other time....)

 

 

1)  How do you feel about me asking you some questions that may be hard for you to answer truthfully?  Are you willing to tell me what you really think and feel and believe, even if it could get you into trouble with the church?  Are you willing to tell me which doctrines you truly and fully believe, which ones you only believe through "faith" that someday you'll understand or feel comfortable with them, and which ones you cannot affirm at all?  And how can I support you if you do get in trouble for being fearless and telling your truth?

 

2)  Who or what do you mean by the word "God" - if anything?  Do you experience God?  If so, how?  If you say you believe in God, what do you mean by "belief"?  (For a list of different understandings of God, from which your pastor can pick, see this: "Varieties of God".)

 

3)  Is the Bible the Word of God to humans, or is it humans' words about God?  What is your relationship to the Bible?  How literally do you take its miracle stories (walking on water, physical resurrection, etc, etc), if at all?  (Read "How to Read the Bible" to explore this topic with your pastor.)

 

4)  Who was Jesus?  Who/what is the Christ?  What is your relationship to Jesus and/or the Christ?  ("Varieties of God" addresses this question.)

 

5)  Is anybody going to an afterlife of hell?  Do people have to believe something religious in order to avoid ending up there, if you think it exists at all?  (Check out the story of Rob Bell, the evangelical megachurch pastor who stopped believing in hell.)

 

6)  Can people be "saved" without Christ or Christianity?  Are there ways to experience God/Ultimate Reality outside of Christ or Christianity?  Can other religions possibly be as good for other people as Christianity is for you?  (More at Pluralism Sunday)

 

7)  Do you think it is okay for LGBTQ people to have sex?  Under what circumstances?  Do you support same-sex marriage?

 

8)  Do you support a woman's right to choose whether or not to have an abortion?  Do you support women as leaders in all roles in church and society?

 

9)  Do you support universal access to health care?  Do you support a strong government social safety net to protect people from poverty, illness, and unemployment?  Does your faith lead you to take political action for economic justice and peace?  (Lots more on such issues at ProgessiveChristiansUniting.org .)

 

10)  What questions are you glad I did not ask?  What else do you think, feel, and believe that could get you in trouble with church authorities?  What other questions should I be asking you?  Are you willing to go public with all your answers?  And again, how can I help you if you do get into trouble for being fearless?

 

 

 

13 FAQ's for Church-Shoppers

 

(Progresssive Christian pastors and church leaders ought to be able to answer YES to all questions listed below.) 

 

(Ask other Christian churches and groups the same questions, and see what they say!)

 

 

1.  Can I make great new friends at this church?

2.  Does it have good worship?

3.  Does it offer Bible study?

4.  Will it help me grow in my relationship with Christ?

5.  Does it practice meditative prayer?

6.  Can it help to get me involved in activism for service and social justice?

7.  Do its members take the Bible seriously without having to take it literally?

8.  Does it take scientific and intellectual exploration seriously - for example, does it accept the validity of the theory of evolution?

9.  Are women given the same opportunities for leadership positions in the church as men?

10.  Does it fully affirm LGBTQ sexuality, and support same-sex marriage?

11.  Does it teach that how we treat others is the true test of our faith, rather than belief in a fixed doctrine?

12.  Does it respect and celebrate other faiths?  Does it teach that other religions might be as good for others as Christianity is for us?

13.  Does it teach that because God is love, nobody is going to hell?