OrganicJesus.org

[This is an extended bit of my speech given at Saturday's Faith and American Values Summit. I'll follow up later this week with part two, which attempts to build a theology to buttress the directions of this article... --BDR]

As many of you know, I work for an environmental-Christian non-profit. Our goal is to foster a cultural shift in American Christianity by making it culturally and theologically safe to love, serve, and protect God’s creation.

In our work, we find that some Christians affirm that creation-care matters biblically, but say it cannot be second to mission and evangelism, or are afraid to take it to the political step because of preexisting political allegiances. We try to correct both of these positions.

[On Monday I talked about the next generation of evangelical Christians becoming increasingly "politically ambidextrous." This is underscored, but not contingent on, some bigger re-evaluations of the faith. Please bear with me as I submit some of my own theological musings to bring into clarity what shift is really going on in the Emergent Church movement. Some of this is what the Emergent Church is waking up to, and as someone in that movement, it’s particularly what I am waking up to. For more on what I’m talking about, I’ll now point you toward the writings of N.T. Wright, Brian McLaren, Shane’s book, and the online community at www.opensourcetheology.net. -- BDR]

This generation is reconsidering what the gospel is, exactly, and from there, how we “do” the gospel or “be the church”. The consensus has been growing for many years now in theological circles that the gospel isn’t only “how to get into heaven after you die,” but more prominently how to share little bits of heaven here on Earth before you die. To put it in the vernacular of the Lord ’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven.” So we’re realizing that the gospel of Jesus is that the kingdom or reign of God is at hand, among you, among us. For those who have been raised to believe that “the gospel” or “evangelizing” is all about fire insurance, preventing people from going to hell, this is a pretty radical shift. The gospel suddenly becomes much, much, much bigger. It’s now also about getting hell the hell out of God’s Earth.

There is no target more fun for evangelicals of my generation to take potshots at than Organized Religion. We're sick of it, and yet our love for Christ and community keeps us in a local congregation.

And to be sure, Organized Religion is nothing new to me. I was raised attending charismatic churches of moderate size, until in third grade I attended a mega-church of several thousand. I won't exhaustively catalogue its shortcomings, except summarily that I was not well nourished there, and left it in 2002 nearly undiscipled in the Way of Jesus.

So now I float around in youthful angst, wondering where the Way became the Church, when God's people became God's sheeple. And what in the world am I doing at a bloody evangelical seminary?!

Yet I cannot escape that we know that our God has instituted Organized Religion, that it could be counted among the Principalities & Powers, and that though even God tires of it, He has instituted some formality and organization to his Saints. But what should or could that look like?

There has been some curiousity as to the meaning of this site's subtitle, "Imagining the Kingdom of God in an age of Less". The peculiar phrase is in reference to the kind of future that many prominent politicians, former presidents, world-class financial gurus, physicists, geologists, the Department of Energy, military analysts, intelligence officials, and prominent thinkers have been telling us to expect: one charactarized by less of everything -- beginning with less oil.

It spirals out from there to meaning less food, less money, less driving, less cool stuff, less geopolitical strength, less security, less water, less growth, and (most germane for this blog) less of the kind of Christianity that contemporary Americans have been raised in. Indeed, the way we do church and kingdom business these days has been dramatically defined by the age of cheap and abundant fossil fuels.

Confused? Think this is all just wishy-washy Chicken-Little fearmongering? Dare to take the red pill with us as we crawl deeper down the rabbit hole of Peak Oil and its consequents. Let's take a closer look at "the age of Less."

(now may be a good time to grab a little extra, ehm, "communion wine": you'll need it!)

For my final summer living in Eugene, Oregon, I started bicycling to church. It is a great blue-collar faith community, but was seven miles away. I went to the 9am service, so it was never too hot by the time I got there. Still, my decision to do this got some attention from fellow churchgoers. Their responses were never mean or discouraging, but they were certainly varied. “Hard ride, huh?” “It isn’t that hot out there already is it? Oh, you biked, I see.” “Why in the world…” “Good for you!” “Sure you don’t want a ride next week? I have room in my truck.” “Sweating already? Worship hasn’t even started yet!” I didn’t mind it, and thankfully it wasn’t a continued point of discussion or anything. I don’t particularly hate living without a car, and this was no different.

Still, it wasn’t too long before I decided I’d much prefer to attend a church closer to home. As much as I loved that church, if I had to bike that far year-round, I’d get pretty tired of it and want to attend somewhere closer. Especially as the Pacific Northwest’s de facto weather, rain, comes back into season this fall and winter. Unfortunately there aren’t many churches that are any closer that I like. They’re too big, or I don’t agree with their theology, or they’re not missional enough, or too Pentecostal, or not Pentecostal enough, or they’re too old, or they get really weird about certain parts of the Bible. Since I knew I’d be moving soon, I easily resolved to continue biking to that church.

But all this got me thinking: the 20th-century American church has been radically changed by the tremendous convenience of the automobile.

As we've been talking about, the era of affordable automobile use and all its amenities is about to end – including the Commuter Church and Ringtone Christianity. The era of cheap oil, it seems, is rapidly coming to a close, and we're now entering an age of Less.

Everything will relocalize as our easy-motoring way of life persistently constricts after Peak Oil, including how we do church. Just as motorization fundamentally altered how we get to work, get our food, and get our entertainment, it has also changed church. As outlined in my last post, I believe this has done more bad than good. Whether my criticisms are correct is of little importance, though. The bigger question for the faithful is, how will a church thus conformed respond to Peak Oil? What will the Post-Carbon Church look like?

God, of course, has seen Peak Oil and all its consequents coming for a very long time. He has a plan for His children through all this, and has had plenty of time to begin preparing His church for it. There appears to have been a stirring of the Holy Spirit among those who listen, and it has sparked a couple trends in Christianity which seem to anticipate petrocollapse. God’s purposes are, as St. Paul wrote, being fulfilled “in the fullness of time.”