Re-releasing Christianity 101

When Martin Luther challenged the Catholic Church 500 years back, the hierarchy argued that it had a fixed corpus of data from the early church that justified its interpretations. Luther’s argument became, essentially, that God always does a NEW thing, and the Scriptures themselves call for new openness and new questions for faith. In effect, Luther said

‘Who wants to build a faith on a frozen corpus?
Newness and openness to questions of a new era will constantly change the way we view the words of the Bible’.

All the early, or “mainline” Protestant churches lived Luther’s slogan “semper reformanda” … the church is “always reforming”. So we revisit issues as the Spirit calls, whether of women clergy, or married clergy, or birth control, or the validity of other faiths, and therefore big releases of spiritual energy and wisdom occur.

Now we live in a time of deep historical ignorance. The new “Protestant” evangelical and fundamentalists portray their job as identifying the frozen corpus of Christian Biblical interpretation!! In these churches, for example, women pastors are not allowed, birth control is suspect and abortion is absolutely condemned, and churches attack each other for their beliefs. Sex for pastors will probably head for the chopping block within a century (although that might cause people to reconsider this whole trajectory!).

Now mainline Protestant churches are struggling with new understandings of homosexuality, how to view other religions, and healthy responses to politics of oppression and violence, as well as environmental destruction. Evangelical and fundamentalist preachers attack mainline churches, frantically assail gays and lesbians, condemn followers of other faiths to hell, and seek to force their ideas on governments from the USA to Uganda.

What do you think? I think you can tell where I come out. I am a very happy United Methodist mainline Protestant, trusting God always to surprise us and to give us new insight into how to love and receive and bless everyone we meet. Church history waxes and wanes from healthier to unhealthier to healthier understandings. As to the way to live out Protestant faith, I see the mainline Protestant Christian understanding as hope for the world. I see the other as the way backwards to faiths that war and destroy.