United Methodist Bishop Will Willimon of the Alabama Annual Conference has a message for Christians who lament that mainstream American culture and mainline Protestantism have parted ways in the past half century: Enjoy the adventure!
Daily, televised struggles about school prayer and displaying the Ten Commandments and Nativity scenes may discourage believers who remember the days when Judeo-Christian values were openly acknowledged for their formative roles in American government and society. Pondering the Christian response to diminished mainline influence in a December interview with Dean Sam Lloyd of the National Cathedral, Willimon observed: “I think it’s a shock for American mainline Christians to wake up and be strangers in the very culture we thought we owned. We thought we had devised a way that you could be Christian in America without anybody ever getting hurt for following Jesus. Well, that’s never happened.”
The Rev. William Willimon, Bishop of the Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. (Photo courtesy UMNS.) |
Willimon said that particularly for the mainline denominations, “It’s an interesting time… We’ve been through a period of decline in membership. And I think we’ve been through a period of denial and then sort of floundering about which path to take next.”
The bishop mused, “There’s a sense in which the world restored to the church the sort of adventure of following Jesus rather than [Christians] just agreeing with nine out of ten Americans.” He recalled that, in his time as the dean of Duke Chapel, he encountered students who would complain about being unfamiliar with the hymns. Calling attention to Christianity’s counter-cultural nature, Willimon would respond: “Where … would you hear any of these songs? It’s illegal to sing this kind of song on MTV; this is music you’ve got to get dressed and come down here to hear. This is weird stuff.”
According to Willimon, younger Americans’ unfamiliarity with Christianity may bring freshness to their engagement with the faith and with society. But it will also require a more intentional response from pastors and their congregations. Previously, he said that Protestants had the attitude that everyone “gets Christianity by breathing the air and drinking the water and that’s okay. Well, we woke up sometime in the ‘70s and the ‘80s and realized that if that were ever true, it’s not true today; that if our young are going to grow up embracing this faith, we’re going to have to form them in the faith.”
Rather than softening the Gospel to be culturally relevant, Willimon reminded his audience that Christians have something unique to offer. “I would submit God is the thing we do that others don’t do,” he said. The bishop cautioned that culturally focused sermons are even more problematic because: “Very few preachers anymore are addressing a culture. You look out at an average congregation and you may have dozens of cultures. And so, which culture are you going to talk to?”
Willimon stated that with past attempts to play to societal fads, “it was always the culture telling preachers what could be said and not be said, and what you were interested in and not interested in.” Challenging the idea sermons should be reassuring, he suggested: “I think we’ve been far too deferential to talking to what people are interested in…. One reason we come to church, maybe, one of the reasons is to pay attention to what is important and what we’ve been avoiding.” For parishioners seeking more comforting sermons, Willimon counseled: “I’d say to that person, Try therapy, get a psychotherapist….’ Sometimes preaching is a comfort, but Christian preaching is about Jesus.”
Beyond being culturally distinct, argued Bishop Willimon, Christianity’s controversial nature has affected its interactions with government. He posited, “Christianity has tended to clash with every form of government with which it’s lived, including the very first form of government with which it lived, and still does.” Referencing the Matthew passage where Christ instructs his followers to “Render unto Caesar…,” Willimon urged caution to believers looking for the boundary between political and religious issues. He said, “Maybe we Christians would be making progress if we were just uneasy [about which things belong to God and which belong to Caesar].”
The bishop expressed approval that many presidential candidates are openly discussing their faith, remarking, “I think it’s great to mix it all [politics and religion] up.” But he was careful not espouse any specific political views. When Dean Lloyd asked, “Is there a Christian [political] agenda?” Willimon stated: “Christianity is this rich, bubbling, thick, faith…. So therefore, the Christian agenda can be a more complex thing. So I’m reticent to talk about that … [but] my opinion is informed, I hope, by the fact that I’m trying to worship Jesus Christ.”
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