c. 1999 Religion News Service
UNDATED _ A few years back, Easter presented an annual dilemma for Ann Lewis, a self-described devout Christian and lay leader of her Presbyterian church in St. Paul, Minn.
The most important day of the Christian calendar did not sit well with Lewis because of her misgivings about the truth of the bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Simply put, she no longer bought the traditional belief.
Today, however, Lewis, 54, looks forward to Easter, which falls this year on April 4 for Western churches (Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate it April 11). For Lewis, the traditional belief that Jesus’ body literally rose from the dead has ceased to be a roadblock to her faith.
Along with many in her church, she says that whether or not Jesus cast off his burial shroud and left behind an empty tomb makes very little difference. What’s more important to Lewis _ who calls herself a”revisionist Christian”_ is the concept of Jesus'”spiritual”Resurrection, a reference to belief in Jesus’ ongoing spiritual influence.
For 2,000 years, belief in Jesus’ bodily Resurrection has been the cornerstone of traditional Christian faith. In recent years, however, a significant number of Christians _ as well as some who thought intellectual integrity precluded them from calling themselves Christians _ have adopted revisionist beliefs similar to those of Lewis.
Those beliefs have been championed by many of the liberal theologians and others associated with the academic movement known as the search for the historical Jesus.
Supporters say the movement has enabled them to worship once again without making them feel like hypocrites. However, traditional Christian critics dismiss revisionist Christianity as”liberal heresy,”or, at best, simply misguided.
Lewis attends the House of Hope Presbyterian Church in St. Paul, where this Easter about 1,500 people will gather in the traditional Gothic church of gray stone to hear a rather untraditional message.
The Rev. John M. Miller, a minister for 35 years and the church’s interim pastor, plans to preach that”without a doubt Jesus was raised from the dead.”But he will also say that”it does not matter at all to me if he was `physically’ raised from the dead.” That’s an eyebrow-raising message, even in the liberal Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) denomination. But it’s part and parcel of revisionist Christianity and the larger historical Jesus movement. Boosted by the high-profile work of the Jesus Seminar, a media-savvy group of liberal Bible scholars and others, churches such as Miller’s have began to sprout across the country.
The crux of the debate lies in a central question: Is belief in the bodily Resurrection of Jesus a requirement of Christianity?
Marcus Borg, a religion professor at the University of Oregon and one of the Jesus Seminar’s best-known participants, believes the answer is a firm”no.”To Borg,”the truth of Easter is grounded in the continued experience of Jesus through the centuries, not in what did or did not happen on a particular Sunday 2,000 years ago.” Borg has become a kind of hybrid missionary, preaching a blend of scholarship and Christianity, often to sold-out audiences and overflowing churches.”To this day,”said Borg,”people continue to experience Jesus as a living reality. If we were to find the skeletal remains of Jesus, it would be very odd to say, `Oh, we have been wrong this whole time.'” The distinction may seem trivial, but not to Miller, for whom it is extremely important.”There are a lot of people who need to hear that,”he said. We”are not obligated as Christians to believe in a physical resurrection.” Just off the campus of Illinois State University, in Normal, Ill., a church was founded several years ago to reach people struggling with fundamental issues of Christian faith, including the Resurrection.
Co-pastors Bob and Susan Ryder, who are married, describe New Covenant Community Church as a”congregation for people who value spiritual searching over religious certainty.”The congregation is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
About 85 people _ many of them university professors and students _ will gather in a small chapel adjacent to the university on Easter Sunday for New Covenant’s holiday service. It will not emphasize Jesus’ death, but ways in which his life remains an example for today.
In his sermon, the Rev. Bob Ryder, 36, will preach about grace, saying the message of Easter is that Christians must strive to live fully in the experience of God. He will not mention what most traditional Easter sermons focus on: that Jesus bodily rose from the dead, proving incontrovertibly that he was God.”We are celebrating in the Resurrection the continued presence of Jesus’ spirit and the effect that Jesus had on people’s lives, both then and now, but not the actual physical Resurrection of a dead body or a corpse,”he said.
Susan Ryder said,”I don’t follow Jesus because of a possible physical Resurrection. But I follow him because of the life that he lived. I celebrate the life.” At least six different books by Jesus Seminar scholars have made Publisher’s Weekly’s Bestsellers List in the 1990s, testifying to the interest in revisionist theories and the historical Jesus movement.
One of them is”The Meaning of Jesus”(HarperSanFrancisco), a book addressing the subject from the opposing viewpoints of Borg and Christian traditionalist scholar N.T. Wright, a leading British Anglican. Some 35,000 copies of the book are in print _ an impressive number for a volume about theology.
Historical Jesus studies have actually been taught extensively at seminaries for several decades, even if their conclusions are not mentioned all that frequently in church.
In interviews with progressive ministers, many said withholding this information from their congregants has made them feel dishonest. But conventional wisdom, they said, has long held that the average person is not sufficiently educated in theological matters to understand what for most Christians are radical concepts.
For the Rev. Marianne Neison, a former Franciscan nun turned United Methodist minister, the honesty is important.”There have been a whole lot of people who have been hurt by traditional religion,”she said.”The historical Jesus quest takes seriously the internal quest of ordinary folk.” To Neison, the ideas advanced by the historical Jesus movement are respectful of the intellectual grapplings of those in her spiritual care, the 1,100 members of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Helena, Mont., which she pastors.”We are committed to being honest to people about what we see in Scripture,”she said.
Neison called the Resurrection”a promise that death does not have the final word. It happened, but what we don’t have are the details _ and the details are where we get hung up,”she said.
Even as they gain popularity through best-selling books and media hoopla, revisionist Christianity and the historical Jesus movement continue to face staunch criticism. Wright, dean of Lichfield Cathedral, located some 150 miles northwest of London, England, is one of the best known of those critics.
If”progressive”Christianity means that”you can, after all, hold a post-enlightenment world-view and still be some sort of Christian, I think that is a pretty low view,”said Wright.”My work has shown that you can maintain a robust intellectual integrity while maintaining, in some form, at least a much more full-blooded orthodoxy than the revisionists are offering.” Wright sees the revisionist movement as age-old liberal theology repackaged for the 1990s, and destined to come”to an end of its natural life”on its own.
But Borg _ Wright’s good friend as well as his theological opposite _ heartily disagrees. Borg believes the future of liberal Christian denominations depends upon how well they incorporate revisionist theology”not as a passing fad, but as something that will be integrated into mainline congregations.” Among those most open to these ideas so far are the United Church of Christ, the United Methodist Church, certain Roman Catholics circles, the Episcopal Church, some Lutherans and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), said Borg.
Three decades as a priest at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., has convinced the Rev. John Adams that Borg’s idea of Christianity is here to stay.”Organized religion has declined,”he said.”Yet there is a rise in what is called `spirituality’ because the longing is still there. Churches who allow their members to explore offer a great service.” Adams heads the Center for Progressive Christianity, a Massachusetts-based organization dedicated to”encouraging churches to welcome people who find organized religion irrelevant, ineffectual and repressive.” The organization’s web site _ http://www.tcpc.org _ maintains a list of”progressive”churches across the country, as well as several abroad. With a few mouse clicks, spiritual seekers can navigate a list of some 70 churches, from St. Paul’s Cathedral in San Diego, Calif., to St. Dimas House located in Tyler, Texas.
But at least for the near future, the number of revisionist Christians is likely to remain small. Moreover, even the movement’s most outspoken fans admit revisionist theology is not for everyone.
At least for now, the movement appears likely to remain largely confined to academia, Borg and Wright agree. It’s also mostly a mainline Protestant movement that seems to appeal primarily to middle-class whites, they added.
Supporters readily admit these limitations. At New Covenant Community, the Rev. Susan Ryder said,”if people come to us and we are not their cup of tea, we have no problem steering them to somewhere where they might be more comfortable.” But Ann Lewis is right at home in the movement. She happily calls herself a revisionist Christian. At the same time, she admits it’s a term”meaningful only to (Christians) who feel that they have had a size eight foot in a size four shoe.”
IR END ROCKWOOD
