<< Back 6/19/02 Christianity is about restoration, not submission By David Teague A couple of years ago I bought a book titled On This Day, a collection of 365 readings drawn from the history of the Christian church. Editor Robert J. Morgan included many stories I found inspiring for what they revealed about the character of missionaries, saints and martyrs through the years. Other readings called to mind some of the more horrifying incidents in church history, and some events that are just plain strange. The book seems particularly insightful to me lately as the mounting revelations of sex abuse and clergy misconduct have brought such close scrutiny to the church. I don’t know if On This Day is still in print, but I think many folks could benefit as I have from thinking about faith and the problems of the present through the lens of some of Christianity’s best and worst moments. I would especially like for Jeff Minick to read it, given the intense anger and thinly veiled hatred he expressed for certain types of Christians last week in the column and book review printed in this newspaper. In the book review, he suggested that an appropriate response of the bishops charged with making new policy regarding priests and sexual abuse was for them to lead the church back to its “essentials.” He also suggested they get tough with the liberal theologians whose ideas and teaching, specifically their attitudes toward homosexuality, had allowed Catholic seminaries to play a role in this mess. His ultimate solution was for these bishops to take their staffs and “beat the hell out of a few wolves.” I’m not suggesting that Minick was advocating violence, and maybe he didn’t even mean to go where that statement seemed to lead. But reading some church history might be in order, anyway, because, if the revelations of clergy sex abuse and the other kinds of immorality he referred to represent a form of collective sin in the Christian community, what he seems to advocate certainly represents another — the church’s horrible history of beating sinners into submission until they do what righteous church leaders tell them they should do. Take, for example, the story of Methodius, a Medieval monk, one of many caught up in a controversy over the role of icons, or images, of Christ, Mary and other saints, in worship. Over time, some worshippers had started to kiss the pictures reverently and offer prayers to them. In 726, Byzantine emperor Leo III outlawed image worship and ordered the destruction of icons everywhere, which spurred an uprising known as the Iconoclastic Controversy. Many people died. Methodius was one religious leader who vigorously advocated for the use of images and icons, which resulted in his being condemned, flogged and imprisoned in a tomb with two thieves. When one of the thieves died, officials refused to remove his body, and Methodius remained confined with the rotting body for seven years. When he was freed, he was all but a skeleton himself. On Feb. 13, 1633, the Italian astronomer Galileo was called before the Inquisition on charges that his scientific discoveries, including the idea that the earth moved around the sun, violated church teaching. He was forced to confess his findings as “errors and heresies” and was kept under house arrest until he was blind and feeble. Or take July 15, 1099, toward the end of the First Crusade, when Christian warriors defeated Turkish Muslims to reclaim Jerusalem. Jubilant Crusaders are said to have sung hymns as they waded through blood up to their ankles from the bodies of the people they had slaughtered. If you’re looking for strange, On This Day offers a reading about the wedding night of Martin Luther, the great Protestant reformer. It seems his biographer, Richard Fridenthal, and other members of the wedding party, were present when Luther and his wife, Katherine von Bora, consummated their marriage. Katherine was one of several nuns at the Cistercian Convent of Nimbschem, Germany, who came to consider themselves imprisoned against their will. Relatives were unable to speak to her and she was forbidden to speak to her fellow nuns. Katherine managed to smuggle in reading material written by Martin Luther and she began hoping for another life. In 1523, she and several other nuns hatched an escape plan and sneaked word to Luther. He recruited a merchant who made deliveries to the convent to smuggle them out in barrels. Luther succeeded in finding husbands for all of the nuns except Katherine, who was strong-willed. Finally, he proposed to her himself. Friedenthal wrote this account of their wedding night: “On the evening of 13 June 1525, according to the custom of the day, Luther appeared with his bride before a number of his friends as witnesses. The Pomeranian [Johann] Bugenhagen blessed the couple, who consummated the marriage in front of the witnesses, [Justus] Jonas reported the next day: ‘... I was present yesterday and saw the couple on their marriage bed. As I watched this spectacle I could not hold back my tears.’” Hmmm. Maybe consummating a marriage had a different meaning in those days, but whatever Friedenthal actually witnessed, the marriage created a storm of controversy. Henry VIII, known for beheading some of his many wives, called it a crime. Double hmmm. The church has not necessarily set a better example of leadership for some of its most cherished observances. Take Christmas, for example. In the first century, Christians not only didn’t celebrate Jesus’ birthday, they didn’t celebrate anyone’s birthday, believing that such celebrations were a custom of the pagans. In the United States, Christmas was at first banned by church leaders, who preached against the “heathen traditions surrounding this sacred event.” In 1856, Massachusetts became the last state to make Christmas a legal holiday. Now, Christians around the world trumpet that “Jesus is the reason for the season,” and it is one of two times in the year when church leaders are virtually assured the pews and offering plates will be closer to full. No one knows exactly when Jesus was born, it was the Romans who set Dec. 25 as the date for the celebration. So what is the right Christian response here, holding out against the practices of the pagans as the early church leaders did; or taking over the holiday, so that no one even remembers it used to be a pagan celebration? While I can appreciate the deep frustration Minick conveyed toward church and society, I don’t believe there is a golden age to harken back to, when the church was remarkably better at carrying out God’s will and faithfully holding to the “essentials,” whatever Minick deems those to be. Instead, the church, much like the rest of society, has spent thousands of years seesawing between tolerance and intolerance, and there have been plenty of painful consequences on both ends of the spectrum. I have spent most of my life in the church and still look for it to be a place of inspiration, hope and worship, but I also recognize that as much ridiculous fighting occurs in the church as anywhere else in society. I’m sick to death of the words “liberal” and “conservative,” and the way variations on those themes have split the church through the years. I don’t believe God ever expected the church to be one or the other, nor am I even sure God expected the church to have more “right” answers than any other human institution. But I do expect it to be a place where restoration occurs when we humans break each other. When Jesus was asked to name the greatest commandment, his answer was to love God first and love others second. He did not say live by the Scriptures and do exactly what they say. He did not say honor and practice church traditions as taught to you by church leaders. While he often preached on the consequences of sin, he did not say the greatest commandment was to live without sin. He could have said any of those things, but he didn’t. What he said was most important was to love God and love each other. It was a call to relationship, just as we enter into relationship with our spouses, friends and children. Christians are often encouraged, when they face difficulties, to ask themselves what Jesus would do. When it comes to what the church should be, I think it is also helpful to look to Simon Peter, one of Jesus’ most trusted disciples, yet someone who turned out to be quite human, too. For most of Jesus’ ministry, Peter was the one who showed the most zeal and passion for what they were doing, all the way up to the moment when Jesus was on trial and simple human fear got the best of him. At that point, he couldn’t even admit he knew Jesus. The realization of how he had failed broke Peter, but he went on to be one of the most prominent leaders of the early church. If Peter could be in Jesus’ presence for three years, and still fail so miserably and quickly, why do Christians today believe we can do better? I believe the church is supposed to be a place of restoration, so that any of us, like Peter, can find a way to recover from our deepest failings and share our deepest joys. It should never be a place where those who see themselves as more righteous can beat others into shape. (David Teague is a free-lance writer who lives in Waynesville. He can be reached at bestteague@aol.com)