Perceptions from a Pewboy

In about a month, a couple thousand United Methodist laity and clergy will gather on the beautiful campus of Grove City College for an important time that we call “Annual Conference.” We will sing and worship together. We will honor retiring pastors and ordain some new ones. We will study Scripture and hear presentations.

And, of course, we will discuss and debate legislation.

For some reason, my prayerful preparation for this year’s Annual Conference has taken my thoughts to Chuck Klosterman’s relentlessly entertaining novel “Downtown Owl” (published in 2008). The novel focuses on life in the mid-1980’s as it unfolds in the eccentric small town of Owl, North Dakota—a town where cable television is not available and where “disco is over but punk never happened.”

As the people of Owl proudly resist the narrative of popular culture, they invest their energies in those time-tested realities that seem to be woven into the DNA of the town’s lifeblood: high school football, hating the government, reckless sexual relationships, and the copious consumption of alcohol. In Owl, normalcy is impossible for outsiders to define, and even the lifelong residents have stopped trying.

Interestingly, church life is still important to a portion of Owl’s population. In fact, the local Roman Catholic church is very pleased with the arrival of its new priest, Father Steele, who is “a young, fat, affable, nebulously feminine individual who—in stark contrast to his predecessor—did not assume that all women were the intellectual equivalent of cows.”

In what I consider to be one of the most hilarious (and realistic) literary treatments of ecclesiastical decision-making that I have ever encountered, Klosterman takes the practice of Bible study (in a Roman Catholic context) and makes it the center point of a church-related controversy. The narrator in the story sets the stage in this fashion:

Traditionally, Roman Catholics are not big Bible scholars. Catholics focus on the Gospels; the rest of the Bible is what Protestants arbitrarily memorize for no obvious reason. Father Steele wanted to change this…[And so] five middle-aged women agreed to meet with Father Steele every Wednesday morning in the basement of the church rectory to debate the Word of God. That was September. By October, Vernetta Mauch hated Melba Hereford the way Nixon hated JFK. The feelings were mutual.

At the heart of this controversy is the question of what a Bible study should include. Vernetta Mauch believes that Bible study is best treated as an opportunity for individuals to relate the biblical stories to their personal experiences, and Vernetta has become quite adept at this practice. In fact, according to the narrator, “there was not a single anecdote from either Testament that Vernetta could not connect to specific dramatic events in her own personal history, or even to semi-dramatic events from the previous Friday.”

In short, Vernetta approaches Bible study as an opportunity to discuss the intersection of Scripture and her personal journey, much to the disdain of Melba Hereford. Melba, under the influence of a vastly different hermeneutical approach, resents what she perceives to be Vernetta’s efforts to use the Bible as a springboard for egocentric revelation: “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Melba interjected when Vernetta tried to use Christ’s damning of a fig tree as a means to criticize her husband’s insistence on buying a new lawn tractor. “Buying a lawn mower has nothing to do with the Son of God. You’re ruining the Bible for everyone.”

For Melba, Bible study is not to be a time of personal revelation and application. Rather, it is to be a context for intellectual discernment in which a safe and dignified distance can be maintained between Biblical truth and the people who are pondering it (preferably in silence). So passionate is Melba about this conviction (and her dislike for Vernetta) that she encapsulates her angst into an administrative point of order: “I want to make a new rule,” Melba says during a Bible study. “From now on, no one can talk about their own life during Bible study.”

Like all good church people, they put it to a vote. The final tally was 3-2 in favor. As a result, “Owl now had the only Bible-study group in America where it was forbidden to tell any story less than two thousand years old.”

Klosterman’s deft and creative literary exploration of this fictional (but wonderfully true to life) milieu brought me to simultaneous laughter and sadness. I laughed because I heard in Vernetta and Melba the voices of hundreds of my past parishioners, all of whom had passionate convictions about what should and should not be included in everything from Bible study to worship, everything from sacramental practice to church music. The laughter, however, was accompanied by a strange sense of sadness over my remembrance of the Vernetta’s and Melba’s I have encountered over the years who wound up hating one another because of their drastically divergent views of what the church’s ministry should and should not accommodate.

When I ponder the relationship between Melba and Vernetta, it is impossible for me not to think about two women in my very first appointment who were locked in a seven-year feud over whether the American flag was to be located stage-right or stage-left of the altar. (Interestingly, when I suggested to them that it may be best for the American flag not to be present on either side of the altar, since Trinitarian worship bears witness to a Kingdom that transcends nationalistic identity, both women found an unanticipated unity in their shared dislike for their pastor’s “newfangled ideas!”)

I suppose that my point (and, I think, Klosterman’s) is that church can be a tricky place. It is a place where great potential exists for mystical intersections between the eternal and the commonplace. And yet, given the eccentricities, passions, and personalities of the church’s people, it can also become a fragmented and compartmentalized environment in which people are either loved or hated depending upon which compartment they choose to occupy. In such an environment, it is often difficult to avoid jumping into a murky sea of distorted priorities—a sea in which the church’s people are far more interested in the school of red herrings swimming around them than they are in the One who walks on the water and invites his followers to join him there.

And yet, after all the literary dust had settled, my reading of “Downtown Owl” left me with a feeling of gratitude for the church and its ministry. Klosterman, perhaps unintentionally, helped me to remember that the Church, at its best, is the only environment in the world in which Vernetta’s and Melba’s can be confronted by biblical truth and challenged to live into the reality of making Christ-centered peace amidst divergent convictions. The risk of such an environment, of course, is that people might wind up hating one another if their desire to win the argument become more passionate than their desire for Christocentric koinonia.

But, every once in a while, I still find Melba and Vernetta sitting beside one another in the same pew (or in the same row at Annual Conference)—singing together, praying together, and allowing the cross of Christ to bridge the gap between their contrasting personal preferences. In those moments, I tend to be awestruck by the church’s holy potential that is occasionally and beautifully realized.

I look forward to seeing many of you at Annual Conference. Please pray for our time together at Grove City. Pray for our Bishop as he prepares to preside. Pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon that robust gathering of United Methodist Christ-followers. Finally, pray that all of our “Melba’s” and “Vernetta’s” will be drawn closer to one another and closer to the risen Christ, whose Lordship is always far more unifying than our differing viewpoints are divisive.

Are any of you fans of the writing of Flannery O’Connor?

Born in Savannah, Georgia in 1925, O’Connor spent her life as a devout Catholic. In her writing, however, O’Connor avoided the kind of Roman Catholic didacticism that might have made her an apologist for her faith. Instead, O’Connor chose to become more of a literary prophet, illuminating the hypocrisy and the cruelty that often manifest themselves within the organized church—particularly within the intensity of Protestant fundamentalism in the deep south.

O’Connor, who died from complications related to Lupus when she was 39, wrote many short stories, but only two novels. Her two novels were “Wise Blood” (1952) and “The Violent Bear It Away (1960). I would recommend both works. O’Connor’s prose is as deft as it is nimble. In her writing, she creates a literary world that is so compelling in its imagery and so mesmerizing in its happenings that, before long, the readers find themselves standing amongst the characters and seeing themselves in their faces. Reading O’Connor is a slow and deliberate journey, but is always worth the time.

O’Connor comes to mind because, just today, I found myself watching the 1979 film adaptation of her novel “Wise Blood.” (It was part of Saturday’s rotation on Turner Classic Movies.) The film, directed by John Huston, is a strong and faithful cinematic retelling of O’Connor’s important story about a young man named Hazel Motes whose bitterness toward what he perceives to be the hypocrisy of the church drives him to become his own preacher—a preacher of “the church without Jesus Christ.”

In the film, Hazel is brought to life by none other than Brad Dourif. Dourif’s name should be familiar to any of you who enjoy horror films. Dourif played the Gemini killer in “Exorcist III”. He played a mad scientist in “Alien: Resurrection.” He played a gas station attendant in the slasher film “Urban Legend.” And, lest anyone forget, he was the voice of Chucky in all of the “Child’s Play” movies about Chucky, the killer doll.

In “Wise Blood,” Dourif plays Hazel Motes, an angry young man (cue Billy Joel) whose choirboy looks and preacher-like mannerisms belie his internalized bitterness toward a church whose presence in the world he passionately resents. In a particularly stark diatribe, Hazel expresses his scorn for the church and the Jesus it preaches:

Every one of you is clean, and I’ll tell you why. If you think it’s because of Jesus Christ crucified, you’re wrong. I ain’t saying he wasn’t crucified. But I’m sayin’ it wasn’t for you. I’m starting a new church…It’s the church of truth WITHOUT Jesus Christ crucified. And it won’t cost you nothin’ to join my church…I don’t need Jesus. What do I need Jesus for?

Later on in the film, Hazel begins preaching in a courtyard (perhaps an unintended homage to John Wesley preaching in the open air). The sermon that Hazel preaches is even bolder in its rejection of the mystical and redemptive Christ that the church has historically preached:

What you need is something to take the place of Jesus. Something that would speak plain. Now, the church without Christ don’t have a Jesus. But it needs one. It needs a new Jesus. One that’s all man without blood to waste.

Hazel’s sermon caused me to pause and rewind (ah, the beauty of DVRs!). I spent several minutes reflecting upon the kind of “religion” that he was preaching—a Christ-less journey in which the need for atoning blood and mystical deliverance is replaced by an unadulterated humanism in which we become our own saviors. According to Hazel, there is no need for redemption because there was no Fall. Furthermore, there is no need for the shedding of divine blood because there is a far wiser blood than that—the wiser blood of humanistic truth and fulfillment.

It would be cheap and easy for me at this point, I suppose, to make a connection between Hazel’s “Christ-less” and “repentance-free” religion and the condition of denominational Christianity. “Sounds like United Methodism on some days,” I might say, “a denomination in which inclusiveness is often championed over repentance and in which personal fulfillment often takes priority over Christ-centered transformation.”

But, quite frankly, even more frightening to me is the thought of how frequently Hazel’s theology has manifested itself in my own personal ministry and discipleship. How frequently, for example, have I lived as though personal repentance were unnecessary, winking at my own transgressions and rationalizing my own iniquities? How frequently have I attempted to reduce Jesus theologically to a comfortable theological nicety instead of subordinating myself to the transformational power of his atoning Lordship? How frequently have I trusted the “wise blood” of my own proclivities and preferences (as though they were all acceptable) instead of allowing those proclivities and preferences to be washed in the far wiser blood of Jesus?

Here’s the point: Although I might blanch at the starkness of Hazel Motes’ rejection of Christ and his advocacy of a Christ-less church, I cannot shake the feeling that we—no, make that “I”—have been guilty of incarnating my own brand of “Hazel-ism” by practicing a Christ-less discipleship in a much more subtle fashion. My words are not as obviously blasphemous as Hazels. Neither are my actions. But, in my heart, I must be willing to confess that, like Hazel, I am prone to jettisoning Christ from his rightful throne so that some more palatable “messiah” might occupy it.

Here’s to Flannery O’Connor for creating a prophetic piece of literature that still has the capacity to bring a pewboy to his knees in a spirit of humble repentance.

I am currently reading an interesting book by Harvard professor Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr., entitled “Questions of Character: Illuminating the Heart of Leadership Through Literature.” Personally, I find many books on leadership to be far too punctilious and pedantic to be very helpful. This book, however, is different. Instead of preaching a particular style of leadership, the book simply invites the reader to explore various issues of leadership as they manifest themselves in portions of compelling literature. Badaracco, for example, uses Allen Gurganus’ “Blessed Assurance,” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Love of the Last Tycoon,” and Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons” as a literary backdrop against which to examine topics such as the development of healthy role models, the sustenance of a governing passion, and the balance of principles and pragmatism.

My favorite chapter thus far is the chapter entitled “Can I Resist the Flow of Success?” In this chapter, Badaracco uses Louis Auchincloss’ novel “I Come as a Thief” as a lens through which to explore several faulty definitions of success that is all too often embraced in contemporary leadership. In case you haven’t read “I Come as a Thief,” the novel tells the disturbing story of Tony Lowder, a forty-something New York lawyer with a promising political career who self-destructs by committing a “brilliantly undetectable” crime and then confessing to it. His self-destruction puts his family in great danger, both physically and emotionally.

According to Badaracco, Tony Lowder is a literary everyman who falls prey to the seductive and destructive “flow of success,” which, in Badaracco’s estimation, is little more than a consuming illusion, perpetuated by aimless busyness, chronic role-playing, and a debilitating commitment to facades. For Badaracco, in other words, the “flow of success,” illuminated by the character of Tony Lowder, is little more than a downward spiral into sociopathy. As Badaracco puts it,

Tony is living the life of a wind-up toy, going through the motions of being a good father, a loving son, a good husband, a charming politician, and a resolute friend. He can say just the right things in just the right way, but he often doesn’t grasp what he is saying…Tony is chronically busy…his life resembles the vaudeville act in which a juggler has a large number of sticks standing upright on a stage and tries to keep a plate spinning on top of each…His calendar is filled with meetings, and there are usually urgent phone calls to return. Tony is also accomplishing a lot, and success brings its own elation…By staying in perpetual motion, he is able to substitute a stream of successes and satisfactions for the hard work of grappling with bigger questions about his life. (pages 125 and 126 of “Questions of Character”)

Does any of that sound familiar to those of you who are involved in ministry leadership?

As I read the chapter, I was personally convicted of just how enamored I am of the “flow of success” that Badaracco describes. How often am I content with “going through the motions” of ministry (a particularly pertinent question as I make ready to “cram” for tonight’s sermon), instead of making myself available to the deeper meaning of the ministry that I am both offering and receiving? How frequently do I devote more energy to appearing busy (like a juggler with many plates) than I devote to discerning the spiritual value of the things with which I am busying myself? How many times have I been more interested in keeping my calendar well-padded than I have been in my own spiritual growth and the spiritual growth of the people I serve? On how many occasions have I said the right things without really meaning them?

I am not beating myself up here. I am simply repenting of my tendency to view ministry and leadership as an egocentric “flow of success” instead of recognizing the urgency of humility, servanthood, and Christ-centeredness in all areas of my vocation. I don’t think that I am in danger of committing any “brilliantly undetectable” crime. But, too often, I fall into the trap of losing my focus on the things that matter most.

I am finding “Questions of Character” to be a helpful read. Badaracco, though not writing from a specifically Christian perspective, helps me, as a leader, to refocus on the presence of the One who calls and sustains me. That, for me, is the heart of leadership.

The folks at Rolling Stone magazine recently interviewed Tom Wolfe, the eccentric author of compelling novels such as THE RIGHT STUFF and THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES (not to mention THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST). The interview appeared in one of the magazine’s recent issues.

As I read the interview, I was struck by Wolfe’s religious views. He describes himself as a non-believer and yet maintains (with some degree of passion) that religion is a necessary portion of any healthy society.

Check out the following excerpt from the interview:

ROLLING STONE: You are lamenting the loss of God in our lives, but I don’t see in your writing any professions of belief. Are you a religious person?

TOM WOLFE: No, I’m not a believer. I was raised as a Presbyterian, and when I was about thirteen or fourteen, I just kind of wandered off…I never had this moment when I said there was no God.

ROLLING STONE: But as a non-believer, you still seem to be defending belief.

TOM WOLFE: Anyone who thinks that religion is bad for society is out of his mind. We are now beginning to see what happens when you don’t have it. People get depressed when they don’t have something to believe…This is my problem with the atheists, people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. They’re saying that there is no ghost in the machine, that it’s all physical. And if it’s all physical, it’s going to obey certain laws. And the endpoint of the argument is that there is no free will, that you and I are machines that have had a certain genetic foundation, and as soon as we know enough about that, we’ll be able to predict what’ll happen when you meet me. We just need the information. That’s a very depressing thought.

It is a very strange thing indeed to be saying “amen” to a non-believer. And yet, an “amen” is precisely what I am compelled to articulate in the aftermath of Wolfe’s comments. In the often-cynical literary world, where faith is regularly demythologized and demystified by articulate wordsmiths and storytellers and where religion is often reduced to little more than the superstitious rambling of unappealing characters, Tom Wolfe dares to acknowledge the possibility that faith—even a faith that he himself is not yet able to embrace—might have a social significance on top of its spiritual import.

Like Wolfe, I too believe that the materialists like Dawkins and Harris paint an ultimately depressing philosophical portrait of the meaning and purpose of life. Like Wolfe, I believe that a world that is nothing more than the sum of its physical processes and its accumulation of information is “a very depressing thought.” Like Wolfe, I believe that a holistic faith has the potential to be very good for the society in which that faith is lived out.

Even as I type these words, I find myself praying for Tom Wolfe. He has entertained and engaged me many times with his writing. I figure that the least I can do is pray for his soul. More specifically, I am praying that he comes to embrace the faith that he seems so eager to defend.