At the Intersection #2: Hostages, Non-Churchgoing Evangelicals, Pastorless Churches, Homeless Shelters and the First Watch Night
News from the intersection of religion and modern life
Hello everyone!
I hope you had a great New Year. These are some of the news of note at the intersection of Church and Main.
Our Lady of the Hostages: I’ve been following an ongoing conversation between Methodist pastor and writer Jason Micheli and Rabbi Joseph Edelheidt. I actually know of Rabbi Joseph because he was the head Rabbi at Temple Israel in Minneapolis when I was at Luther Seminary in the late 90s. He would preach during chapel and I attended a dialogue sponsored by the seminary during Sabbath at the synagogue. This latest conversation revolves around the meme that went around during Advent from Bethlehem of the Nativity scene taking place in rubble signifying the ongoing war in Gaza. I will let them give the highlight here:
Jason: One of the things I've noticed, there's an artist who has done a rendering of the Nativity scene with the rebel of Gaza around the Holy Family.
Rabbi Prof. Joseph Edelheit: and the so-called Palestinian, the original Palestinians who gave birth to the Palestinian Jew.
Jason: Yeah. So I've seen that image passed around by clergy a lot in the last few days. And it's interesting, it just struck me that there is no Our Lady of the hostages.
It’s a challenging conversation, but do give it a listen. It ends with the good Rabbi sharing his views on LGBTQ persons as a person of faith.
Meet the New Evangelicals: I’ve noticed among progressives that there has long been this belief that if we became a more secular society where few people went to church, we would somehow become this enlightened society where we would spend Sunday mornings eating avocado toast and reading the New York Times. But this latest post by Daniel Bennett at his Substack Uneasy Citizenship shows that fewer Americans are attending church regularly and that is not leading us to the peaceful and secular promised land. Bennett, who is an evangelical, chronicles something that I’ve known for a while when it comes to Trump supporters: they are “faithful” but are not regular churchgoers. “Such an idea was once considered paradoxical or even nonsensical, but now, with developments in technology and a decreasing stigma of sitting out Sunday morning worship services, some people are holding onto their faith commitments—and even their evangelical Christian label—without walking through church doors on a regular basis,” he writes. What’s happening is that instead of religion driving one’s politics, the exact opposite is happening. Whereas being an evangelical was once defined with certain theological viewpoints and opposition to abortion, it now means the distrust of institutions and loyalty to Donald Trump.
Pastorless Churches: “A church doesn’t need to have a pastor to be a church. A church without a pastor is a viable church,” says Presbyterian Pastor Catherine Neely Burton in Presbyterian Outlook. She recounts her experiences in the Presbytery of Southern Kansas of churches that have learned how to be church without having a full-time pastor. The pastor isn’t left out in the cold, but it does require looking at the church differently and for pastors to be willing to step into different roles. “Pastors are some of the hardest people to convince that a church does not need a pastor,” Burton writes. “But if we embrace it, we can learn from it. I find it inspiring to see people lead the church — and to know that people in those churches that currently have pastors can pivot to this model if necessary, too. This model is not about putting pastors out of jobs; it’s about empowering and equipping disciples.”
How do Christian Shelters handle homelessness? Do you have a lot of rules or few or even none? Are you upfront about your faith or not? Writing in the Dispatch, Marvin Olansky shares his experiences of three shelters in three different parts of the country and how the help people find a place to call home. “Homelessness is complex and outcomes are hard to predict, so we’ll know better in a few years which programs work best,” he writes, adding that in our polarized times its good to see different approaches to such a growing problem.
Finally:
Watch Night: As a kid, I remember going to Watch Night Services on New Year’s Eve at my Baptist Church in Michigan. I knew it was a tradition among African Americans, but never knew the background. This AP story explains the origins of the Watch Night service and it has to do with the Emancipation Proclamation.
See you soon!
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