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Hoosier United Methodist News Archives
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Hoosier United Methodists together |
September 2004 |
Duke theologian uncertain about church's future
By Sara Toth
SOUTH BEND, Ind. - When the Israelites were exiled from their homeland they developed skills to survive without being in control, theologian Stanley Hauerwas recounted in a speech July 31 that focused on the future of the Christian church.
It is back at the past, and to those Jews, that Christians need to look while "muddling through," the modern era, which, according to Hauerwas, may be the end of Protestantism.
"What that means for the future I am not sure," Hauerwas said at a symposium entitled "A Vision of the 21st Century Church," at Broadway Christian Parish United Methodist Church - the place he worshipped while teaching theology at the University of Notre Dame in the 1970s and 80s. Hauerwas, who TIME magazine named "America's Best Theologian" in 2001, now teaches ethics at United Methodist-related Duke University's Divinity school.
Hauerwas, theologians and former Broadway Christian Parish members Marjorie Procter-Smith, currently of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and Edward Phillips, now at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Ill., spoke along with five former pastors as part of the church's homecoming weekend.
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"For the church to survive, it needs to remain faithful to the politics of Jesus Christ." - Stanley Hauerwas |
"The very name, Protestant, denotes a protest movement, a reform movement, in the church catholic," he said. "When Protestantism became an end in itself, when Protestants became denominations, we became unintelligible to ourselves. Our inability to resist the market, our inability as Protestants not to become consumers of our religious preferences, is but an indication that we are in trouble."
An indication of Protestant churches' confusion is the current emphasis on the issue of homosexuality at a time when a war is raging. Protestant church leaders who should be talking about the moral issues of war "find they have no authority at all." And they "have simply not had anything useful to say about the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war," he said.
He said that the "Christian we" does not always overlap with the "American we."
He called the Christianity of the often-termed religious right "a pathetic form of Christianity. It is the individualistic kind of Christianity that a capitalist economy is so adept at producing."
For the church to survive, it needs to remain faithful to the politics of Jesus Christ, he explained.
After Hauerwas ended his speech with "God help us," Procter-Smith spoke about the need to view the world as a community gathering, the need to listen more and talk less, and the church's need to take up the task of "repairing the world." She said Broadway Christian Parish has helped repair the world around it by offering Sunday dinner to anyone who comes to eat, planting gardens and worshipping and having Eucharist every week.
Phillips spoke about the need for worship service to offer more than emotions. It needs to be an expression of inner faith.
Sara Toth writes for the South Bend Tribune.
Used by permission.
Last updated on 08/23/2004