Diana Butler Bass based her new book Christianity for the Rest of Us on a a three-year research project assessing 50 congregations in six ‘mainline’ American denominations: United Church of Christ, Evangelical Lutheran, United Methodist, Presbyterian, Disciples of Christ and the Episcopal Church. She was trying to discover why, contrary to common assumptions, all of these churches were flourishing. She recently spoke to Neale Adams, editor of Topic, published by the Diocese of New Westminster.

Neale Adams: What do you mean by saying a church should not think of itself as a gathering of saints?

Diana Butler Bass: When churches think of themselves primarily as gatherings of saints they have a tendency to become very insular and self-centred. They forget that the church exists for the world and not the other way around. And they also will tend to elevate their interpretation of Christianity as the best above everybody else’s. Churches that have that as their primary image tend to be churches that get into very complex arguments over minutia and tend to kick people out when they disagree with the pastor or disagree over different kinds of doctrine or theological issues.

NA: Do you reject the claim that conservatives make, that in liberal churches anything goes?

DBB: Well, conservatives may make that claim, but that doesn’t make it so. The churches as a gathering of the saints is best contrasted with another very deep image of the church that comes out of the tradition – St. Augustine used it– the church as a hospital for sinners.

Even the most liberal of churches realizes that there is sinfulness in the world and that there is sinfulness that bedevils us, corporately and individually, and that those things need to be transformed. They need to be healed, or they need to be changed, by the love of God – toward goodness, justice and beauty.

NA: Can the neighbourhood church survive without viable neighbourhoods?

DBB: Our neighbourhood has transformed into the world – as it is connected by technology and in relationships that spread over vast numbers of miles . . . My neighbourhood exists as really a virtual neighbourhood, on the internet and by telephone . . . We need to think of ourselves not simply as the little church around the corner on the block, but as a church that exists as a virtual village of human kind.

NA: How does the embrace of diversity that you advocate relate to that?

DBB: When you live in a diverse neighbourhood you don’t assume that everybody thinks alike. Instead of telling people how to behave or what they should think, you begin to learn to listen to a variety of perspectives. There’s real wisdom that comes from different cultures and different ways of understanding God. I’m spending a lot more of my time trying to understand those things and integrate them into my world view than I am in telling them how to believe or behave.

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NA: In our diocese, we have some [people] of a more conservative theology, some [with] the understanding you advocate. How do we keep together?

DBB: That is actually I think the most difficult problem facing us today. It’s very easy for a lot of people to be in a room with great ethnic and racial diversity, even sexual orientation and other things, but theological diversity is really hard to deal with. It’s hard especially when people want to believe that they’re right and that everybody else has got it wrong.

I don’t have any corner on who God is and how Christians are supposed to act in the world. And I just need other voices in that mix and other wisdoms. I’m glad for that variety. But I do think that theological diversity is the toughest thing right now to create a real space for.

NA: Any tips as to how we Anglicans can stay the middle course between extremes and work together?

DBB: There is a wonderful story about  the 6th century Desert Father, Dorotheus of Gaza.

Dorotheus belonged to this particularly quarrelsome group of monks who actually hated Dorotheus . . . one time he lay down on his cot in his monastery that his brother monks had covered in glue. This was not a nice group of monks.

And Dorotheus said, when he got to this point with his brother monks, he realized this presented the chance for him to examine himself, and to see what he was doing wrong in his relationships – rather than looking at his brother monks and accusing them. Dorotheus wrote that self-accusation is the first practice of Christian humility.

The middle way, the via media, requires humility. It absolutely requires humility. I haven’t followed events in Canada quite as closely, but I can say from the perspective of the American Episcopal Church there has been precious little humility in the Episcopal Church.

NA: On both sides?

DBB: On both sides in the last six years. Lots of people have been running around the countryside, everyone saying that they are right and their opponent is the criminal, the enemy, is the one who is wrong. But there is very little looking at ourselves, and saying: “What is it about me? What sinfulness and incompleteness do I bring to this, that has made this rift deepen?”

Bass will speak February 2, 9:30 am to 3:30 pm, at St. Laurence Church in Coquitlam. Contact 604-684-6306, ext. 219.

February 2008