On Hoarding and Including

I have a problem. It is not a debilitating problem, but it is one that does impact my life. I feel I have to read all of my subscriptions. All of the journals/magazines that I get I need to read. Cover to cover. This means I have issues of Harpers that are more than a year old, I have American Academy of Religion Journals from over two years ago, and my stack of Christian Century’s are piling higher and higher. Like I said, it is not a debilitating problem but one that may make a very interesting issue of “Hoarders": 

Host Psychologist - Jonathan, do you really need this 2004 copy of The Atlantic?

Jonathan - Yes! I’m going to read it! I’m going to get to it! Leave it there in that pile!

HP - What about this American Baptist Quarterly from 1997?

J - There is a very important article about different Baptists in upstate New York and how they were instrumental in starting churches in Utica and Westmoreland. It is very important that I read that article. It will make me a better pastor. Why can’t any of you understand this, it makes me a better pastor to read these things!

(I catch someone taking out a stack of Journals)

Hey! Put that down. Get the f**k away from my journals! I didn’t agree to this! I don’t need this!

(in the corner of the house my wife and children are crying – I look at the camera, swear out-loud, and storm away)

That will be an Emmy-winning episode. I’m calling the producers right away.

The periodicals pile up and I will not throw the old ones out until I read them cover-to-cover. See, I have a problem. Pray for me.

While reading a Christian Century from July, 2013 (not too old) I noticed two articles about the Southern Baptists Convention (SBC). One states that the SBC decided to agree to disagree over Calvinism (big sigh of relief) and the other notes the dropping membership and baptisms in the SBC in the last couple of years. I don’t normally comment on other people’s homes. It is not really my place to critique the Methodists, Lutherans, or Presbyterians (but given the opportunity I will), so on the one hand it may not be my place to comment on the house of the Southern Baptists. Yet they are cousins of a sort so I feel I can make some statements about such articles. In the article about membership drop is the following statement:

“Ed Stetzer, head of LifeWay Research, has suggested that the “Conservative resurgence” (in the 1980s and ‘90s), while affirming the convention’s commitment to the Bible’s truthfulness failed in the area evangelism.”

Probably because in the 1980s and ‘90s the SBC and other conservative evangelicals were busy drawing lines in the sand and making it clear who was welcome and who was not welcome. Other groups (the American Baptists included) were trying to figure out if they were going to let women preach and if they were going to accept gay men and women (or if they were going to fellowship with churches that accepted gay men and women). There were arguments, debates, and fights over hospitality and grace. In the SBC there were not arguments about grace and hospitality but instead sin and exclusion. So it is no wonder that Calvinism rears its head in the SBC.

Calvinism, as it is being experienced in this context, is primarily referring to the notion of predestination. In other words, some people are predestined for salvation and others are not. If you live a sinful lifestyle then it is very likely that you are not predestined for an eternity of bliss with God and there is nothing you can do about it. Isn’t that a happy, cheerful theology?

With Calvinism the perfect people end up being the chosen people who are predestined for salvation. There is not a lot of room for hospitality and grace when slogging through the mire of such theology. The SBC has spent a number of years drawing lines, throwing people out, making sure they are only made up of pretty, perfect Christians, that such an notion of salvation and exclusion was bound to emerge. Now there is tension because the Calvinists do not advocate evangelism (because if it is God’s plan for someone to be saved than that person will be saved so we should not get in the way and bring people to faith only to find that they will not be a part of God’s divine elect), and yet the numbers are decreasing.

SBC folks may look at other denominations (American Baptists included) and note the mess that they have had over homosexuality (it was not pretty) and women in leadership positions in the church and how there still is a very alive tension around such issues and say that they are better for simply taking an exclusionary stand. That may be the case, but I rather be in a messy house that strives to let others in and looks to live in the tension of a broad grace and welcoming hospitality than one that is pristine, organized, and stale. I believe grace flows in ways that we cannot know or understand and it is job of churches to help people experience that grace any way that they can. And while we sit in the mess of a house that tries to bring in all of God’s children I have some journals that people can read.