Issue #3

December 18, 2006

There’s more to spending a winter season in Southern California than Bermuda shorts and flip-flops. A host of new opportunities for educational advancement present themselves daily. For instance, there is the didactic diversion that comes from attempting to decipher messages encoded on the plethora of personalized license plates that populate the premises. It can be seen as a kind of spiritual practice that helps to pass time spent idling in the massive traffic jams that are as ubiquitous as the sun and smog.

My favorite so far appeared on the back of a modest sedan that raced by me at somewhere close to 90 mph, the publicly determined speed limit out here. The plate announced: ERGO SUM2. As it quickly faded into the distance, I mused on the ecumenical hospitality contained in that statement. Binding yourself to others, all others apparently in this case, seemed a most authentically Christ-like endeavor.

Recently, a bumper sticker on a Mercedes Benz caught my eye with a similar, if less subtle, message. It was written out most distinctively with symbols from various schools of religious and non-religious thought. It looked like this:I was particularly taken by this clever and crucial message that offers, I believe, the only possible strategy for achieving peace on earth.

Progressive Christianity has aligned itself with the kind of deep ecumenism that is declared in this bumper sticker. At the outset, such sentiment seems self-evident. After all, any liberal worth his/her salt will willingly agree that all systems of belief deserve equal billing. But a closer examination reveals a number of problems inherent in this deep ecumenism. Progressive Christians must consider the ramifications of this alignment.

In worship practice, particularly in hymnody, references to the primary status of Jesus for all the world’s inhabitants, not just Christians, is problematic. Singing of Jesus as Christ the King or Lord of All will be offensive to advocates of this deep ecumenism. Creedal statements that place Jesus as the only son of God are equally complicated. But these difficulties pale in comparison to a far more fundamental issue that many Christians, Progressive or not, would just as soon avoid.

What happens when we honor a religious tradition that does not reciprocate our noble action? What happens when we place equal value on a religious tradition that actively seeks to annihilate our own tradition? Doesn’t this very real possibility make deep ecumenism unrealistic and deserving of its dismissal by conventional Christian thinking?

The life and teachings of Jesus do not allow such an easy release from deep ecumenism’s radical approach to coexistence. Before the mythologies and subsequent theologies surrounding Jesus’ death developed, there was the unassailable fact that Jesus did indeed die. A study of the gospel accounts reveals the disappointment the disciples felt in Jesus’ unwillingness to fight against the forces that sought his demise. The fundamental unfairness, both of Pilate’s decree and the religious establishment’s victory, surely must have tried the disciples’ commitment to loving one’s enemy or turning a cheek. And yet out of Jesus’ unwillingness to engage in the politics of violence, a powerful force for good was realized and a new movement was born, a movement that changed the course of history.

Jesus’ actions, in the face of those who sought to destroy him, serve as a deeply disturbing paradox for all those who claim allegiance to the life and teachings of Jesus.

It is a paradox that leads to the question: Are we willing to let our own religious traditions die in the hope of a resurrection into peaceful coexistence?

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Julia Sweeney, of Saturday Night Live fame, has just released a CD of her Broadway show, “Letting Go of God”. I commend it to you as a light-hearted way of dealing with some very profound issues.