Intellectually disabled. . .

Although few would remember Rowan Williams as decisive during his time as Archbishop of Canterbury, an interview in The Telegraph has shown him to be something more than a parody of himself.  In fact, he seems spot on in his critique of the Church in the 1960s as having lost its nerve, sort of like St. Peter walking on water and then losing his confidence.  According to Williams, the Church looked down at the wrong moment and lost its footing -- perhaps when it should have looked up?!  He finds the Church bearing the fruit of its pervasive and paralysing anxiety about the role of the Church in society -- especially at a time in which the the tide of people and attention are flowing away from Christianity.  Perhaps he should have gone one step further and admitted that the same pervasive and paralyzing anxiety exists in churches about Jesus and not simply the role of the Church in society.  We have the creeds and he is thankful for that but do we believe them and do we believe they are still relevant and applicable to the world around us -- that is also the issue.

However, what I found most interesting is his treatment of our intellectual disability which, he says, is due to the way we acquire information today.  Instead of pursuing a curiosity that bears its fruits in a disciplined search of source material, we live in an age in which scrolling through a phone or watching a screen is about as far and as deep as we go.  It is incredibly dishonest as an intellectual pursuit.  Forgetting how it is that we learn, we presume that what you see on screen passes for teaching, for research, and for fact.  This is especially a problem for theological education but it is no less an issue for learning in general.  I wonder if he is not on to something here.

While I have little knowledge of the situation of the things he mentions in England, I know that here we find ourselves ever pressed to make pastors as quickly, easily, and cheaply as possible.  We have replaced the formation of community gathered as much in worship as in study with a solitary screen and somewhere along the way presumed that the two were close to the same process.  The challenges being forced upon the Church today require pastors with more training, not less, and with the ability to think and respond to an ever changing reality in the world around them.

It is remarkable to me how little time seminaries spend instructing and forming pastors to lead worship in the parishes they serve.  It is at one and the same time the most profound contact any pastor has with his people yet we find ourselves at a critical juncture in which the digital may replace the in person and the routine of weekly worship attendance has diluted down to monthly for many.  If anything, we need to expand the amount of time in the curriculum devoted to worship, liturgy, the church year, and prayer.  

In the wake of a pandemic in which churches willingly surrendered themselves to the judgment of the state that worship was non-essential or easily replaced by virtual gatherings, the burden fell upon the pastor to explain why this is not true.  Absent such serious and intellectual honesty, we were left with pastors who asked their people to set a cup of wine (or whatever) and some bread (or whatever) by the screen and receive communion at home or the pastors who sent Jesus to the home via the USPS (probably the same pastors who in another time would have objected to reservation!).

Instead of pastors who express confidence before doubting parishioners, we find ourselves in the terrible position of both pastors and people unsure and uncertain before a mountain of challenges and changes that seem poised to swallow up Christianity entirely.  The shape of sexual desire, gender identity, what marriage is or is not, what is family, whether children are good or non-essential and whether man is the reason for climate change and or an enemy of the environment -- these are not small issues faced on both sides of the pulpit.  Furthermore, the individual pastor will find himself pressed by a media and culture which has already decided that they know the Christian answers and judged them wrong.  

Part of the problem is intellectual dishonesty.  The screen on the computer or on the phone in your hand can transmit information but the person must decide if that information is reliable, relevant, and relatable to the issue and the moment.  That is an intellectual process and not simply the application of personal preference.  We have done little to help the pastor unless we have also taught him to think, to search the sources, to see them through the lens of Scripture, to focus on them through a Christian worldview, and to judge them.  This is certainly true for a pastor but it ought to be part of every discipline and station in life.  The whole Covid mess has pointed out what happens when opinion and fact and agenda and truth can no longer be distinguished.  Unless the pastors whom we train and ordain are able to help their people through the conflicting mess, our people will continue to be buffeted by every wind of change.  No, now is not the time to exchange the classroom, chapel, dining hall, and library for a screen -- unless you have already decided that truth no longer is relevant or matters.