c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) What could be better than this?

Eating fish and chips in a seat behind home plate. Two dozen young violinists leading us in the National Anthem. Families settling in for an evening of swapping seats and ignoring the game.

Ancient rituals like umpires and coaches in solemn assembly at a newly striped batter’s box, the leadoff batter rubbing away those stripes, towering flies caught nonchalantly, fans groaning at a called third strike, base runners defying a left-fielder’s arm.

Teenagers wave at each other. Young techies talk business. Immigrants and longtime citizens get along without walls. Darkness settles in, a freight train whistles by, and “Lucky the Wonder Dog” jumps over a bat.

In the seventh-inning stretch, my wife, son and I stand with arms around each other and sing baseball’s anthem to the “old ball game.”

In the 1950s, when American Christianity was at its numerical height, church felt like this.

Families filled favorite pews, children performed, clergy did whatever they did, a certain tribalism took Lutherans here and Catholics there out of habit, not hostility. Trains and traffic sped by our hushed preserves, and we stood close together and sang.

Then we began to fight over details. We dissected every ritual. We fought over words, songs, motions, furnishings.

Some of our fighting had meaning, such as broadening the assembly to include racial diversity and women in leadership. But most, in retrospect, was inane, self-absorbed, as if we were fighting like kids just to see who could win.

Laity fought clergy for control, and clergy fled to other occupations. Denominational gatherings became shouting matches. When the wise abandoned such war zones, those left behind seized an opportunity to blame, rather than rethink, the enterprise.

Players wearing different uniforms became villains, as if we felt duty-bound to reinvent the horrible religious wars of European Christianity’s demise. Then we got in bed with politicians, our positions hardened and got blurred with patriotism. Now we offer our struggling nation the bizarre assertion that the fate of America and of God’s enterprise to save humanity are inextricably bound, and depend entirely on whether liberal or conservative Christians win bragging rights. Such hubris!

I’m not pointing any fingers. I took my part in these dreary fights and, at the time, considered them important. But it now feels like Major League Baseball’s strike in 1994, when greed, stubbornness and disregard for customers cost professional baseball a century of momentum and good will.

This is what happens when right opinion becomes a god and being wrong is never an option, especially being wrong about the need to be right.

Now comes the new victor: religious showmanship coupled with a simplistic, people-pleasing message. “I love Joel,” exudes a fan of Houston preacher Joel Osteen, “because he makes everything so simple.”

But think about it. If zeal for mission means enduring the Southern Baptist Convention’s Bible-justified calls to hatred, who needs it? If theological subtlety means enduring the bickering of mainline Protestantism, who needs it? If the Paschal mystery means an aloof German pope lecturing passionate South American liberationists on their dissent from oppression, who needs it?

What will save us from ourselves? The same people who rescued us from the last Gilded Age: immigrants, Lou Gehrigs, Jackie Robinsons, Roberto Clementes, young violinists, common citizens willing to sacrifice, believers willing to serve and families singing anthems.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest in Durham, N.C. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project. His Web site is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com.)

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