These days I doubt there are many Witness readers in the U.S. whose daily excursions into the world aren't lit by a galaxy of stars and stripes and punctuated by insistent entreaties that God bless America. For the most part, this display signals a heartfelt sense of solidarity with those who grieve the loss of friends, family members and colleagues in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon -- and with those who are endeavoring to shore up our homeland's security and put an end to global terrorism.
But I find myself feeling wary. Because while God Bless America may be intended as an every-citizen's prayer, if we're honest with ourselves we suspect that it is at heart an exclusivist declaration that the Judeo-Christian God favors an Anglocentric, capitalistic U.S. above all other nations and if you've got problems with any part of that, the U.S. has problems with you.
This between-the-lines message, however unconsciously delivered and received, bespeaks stubborn, perhaps fearful, resistance to the fact that this is no longer an Anglo-Saxon, "Christian country." In fact, as Diana Eck writes in A New Religious America (HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), "The United States has become the most religiously diverse nation on earth."[I commend Eck's book as a must-read in these times.]
What the churches do with this information is crucial. A reactionary case in point is the "20/20" proposal (its proponents call it a "movement") to finance a concerted effort to double average Sunday attendance in Episcopal churches by the year 2020. While the 20/20 report issued in October 2001 forthrightly admits that "Christianity is no longer dominant in our culture" and that "the formerly mainline churches may have a much more modest place in the scheme of things than has historically been the case," its authors also emphasize that "we will be living in a society where a multiplicity of faith groups and religions are in aggressive competition with us, and that we are called to answer the challenge with both grace and enthusiasm" -- by, as the report makes clear, reframing mainline [white, privileged] Episcopal Christianity to attract new converts of other races, ethnicities and cultures, and by promoting "a fresh, new understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ."
I would be glad for the church's deeper understanding of the racial and cultural diversity it has long resisted. And for its deeper appreciation of the radical nature of discipleship. But the 20/20 "movement's" take on both topics appears both superficial and "retro." A smug us-versus-them mentality cast in "Father-Knows-Best" terms, deftly packaged for a diverse array of consumers and gesturing vaguely in the direction of a never-spelled-out goal of "sacrificial Christian service." The clearest proposal in the 20/20 report, in fact, is a recommendation that the Episcopal Church "establish a Research and Analysis Unit under the direction of a skilled statistician and researcher," who can make sure we're collecting appropriate data so that we can know as accurately as possible just how many worshipers there are in Episcopal churches from year to year. We'd be "building a church of disciples who make disciples," we're told, with the numbers to prove it.
Is this the dream we have of the church's future?
Competing for market share of our country's pluralistic population is more my idea of a nightmare.
As I write these words bombs are being dropped with ferocious and relentless urgency on Afghanistan. This country's welcome to refugees and asylum seekers is being dramatically curtailed. Legislation continues to enforce a trickle-down economy. And Congress is frantically passing "patriotic" security measures that abridge many of the freedoms our government says it is attempting to defend.
At the same time, news reports say, U.S. citizens are grasping for a way to make meaning of the events which have brought them to sudden consciousness that life is real and earnest -- and immensely, diversely, sometimes shamefully, complicated -- even in America the Beautiful. Many are showing up in our churches clutching life's crucial questions to their breasts. I cringe with embarassment to think of how confidently many in our pulpits will, with 20/20 enthusiasm, offer definitive answers in myopic hope of keeping the pews full.
The moment is alive with possibility. But saving the Episcopal Church, or even Christianity, from marginalization is not the goal. The strangers we are suddenly recognizing as fellow citizens of this nation and globe will, if we embrace them in an open-hearted spirit of radical hospitality, certainly change us all. This is very good news. Because in the process, I believe, Christianity has the chance to become more fully itself. A chance to become radically new. Radically deep. Radically of the creator.
Most importantly, I say with all deference to the statisticians, a stance of radical hospitality, not aggressive competition, will give Christianity a chance to become radically immeasurable.
Julie A. Wortman is The Witness' editor/publisher.