“What’s the worst scandal you’ve seen in your three decades in ministry?” she asked during an interview for the new book, expecting a celebrity pastor’s name. When we think of scandals, this is where we usually go—the dramatic fall from grace or the salacious story involving sex, money, or power.
I did consider a few. Jean Vanier came to mind—most heartbreaking of them all for me—the man I revered as a living saint, the founder of L’Arche. His picture hung on my office wall. I taught a seminary class with his name in the title years ago. That one hit hard, although I suspect fewer readers might recognize his name.
As I thought a bit more about my answer, I shifted uneasily in my chair. Can I say this out loud? Is this the space to name this kind of scandal?
The scandal I named was this:
The slow, widespread collapse of the way of Jesus into a form of religiosity that chose the way of power, relevance, supremacy, control, and wealth. Within a corrupted ecosystem like this, human scandals are not only possible but predictable.
I often talk of the reckoning we’ve faced over these past two decades, a reckoning Mike Regele and Mark Schulz envisioned three decades ago in their prophetic The Death of the Church—a book I read back in the late ’90s. Phyllis Tickle situated this upheaval within a recurring historical pattern in her 2008 book The Great Emergence. And this reckoning has been hinted at or even heralded in various ways and at various times by Michael Frost, Alan Hirsch, Philip Jenkins, Soong-Chan Rah, Andrew Root, Diane Langberg, Brian Zahnd, Jemar Tisby, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Randy Woodley, Raymond Chang, and many others.
As Tickle taught us, Christianity has undergone wholesale upheavals roughly every five hundred years. But this one feels different. Despite significant calls to spiritual, moral, ecclesial, and systemic reckoning and reform, we’ve witnessed an evangelical doubling-down—an overt rejection of critiques of racial injustice, spiritual and sexual abuse, ecclesial and political power with its entrenched and self-serving structures, and more.
It’s not that these calls to reform are somehow unbiblical, as some claim. Just page back through your Bible to Isaiah 1:10–17; Isaiah 10:1–4; Jeremiah 22:13–17; Jeremiah 23:1–4; Ezekiel 34:1–10; Amos 5:10–15; Micah 3:1–4; Malachi 3:5; Luke 1:46–55; Luke 13:31–32; Mark 11:15–18; Matthew 23:1–36; Luke 20:45–47. Again and again, the leaders of the day are called out.
It’s not that these calls to reform are somehow inconsistent with Christian tradition. Dust off your shelves or fire up your Kindle and read Augustine, Gregory the Great, Richard Baxter, Teresa of Ávila, John Chrysostom, Ambrose of Milan, Martin Luther, Catherine of Siena, Bernard of Clairvaux, John Wesley, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr., and many more.
I’ve been helped by many who’ve spoken boldly to various aspects of Christianity’s dangerous affair with empire, an idolatrous entanglement lamented in Scripture (Daniel 7:1–28; Daniel 11:31–36; Matthew 4:8–10; Matthew 20:25–28; John 18:36; Revelation 13:1–18; Revelation 17:1–6; Revelation 18:1–24).
But why do we not lament and repent? Why isn’t the more beautiful way of Jesus compelling to us?
I’ve been reading St. Gregory the Great lately (c. 540–604), the monk turned pope who brought his commitments to solitude, discernment, and humility into a position of immense power and influence. Gregory is complicated for me. He seemed more comfortable with imperial power than I wish he had been, more willing to imagine that Christian faithfulness and the purposes of empire might coexist. I find myself increasingly skeptical, even though I was trained early on as a Kuyperian (some of you will know what that means).
Yet what I’ve come to admire is that, because of his proximity to the centers of power, Gregory understood its spiritual dangers and limits. Again and again, he counseled powerful leaders toward humility, self-examination, restraint, and service. Those entrusted with authority, he wrote, should “rejoice not to be over men, but to do them good” (Pastoral Rule, II.6).
Like Jesus.
The deepest scandal is not that a few prominent pastors, political leaders, or powerful people have failed. The scandal is that we’ve been largely formed by something other than the way of Jesus, something other than love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22–23).
Perhaps our reckoning begins here: not with another political or ecclesial strategy for saving Christianity, but with the humble question of whether we are actually becoming like Jesus.
Before I go, if you’re curious to learn more, Who You’re Becoming releases two months from today—October 20! Here’s the back cover, featuring a quote from my dear friend and colleague and Eugene Peterson’s biographer, Winn Collier.
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Just using cruelty as a measure (shock gloves), technology is making visible things that make you speechless. This morning I read "Over 300 California Warehouses Sit Within 1,000 Feet of Schools. Residents and Lawmakers Are Fighting Back". Since silence is a major component to hearing God, consider the impact of a huge huge warehouse that operates 24 hours a day in your now quiet neighborhood. Bringing with the noise, you also receive light, traffic, pollution. Neglect. Neglect caused that recent emergency in Orange County because some old tank was not serviced regularly and some explosive chemical needed the fire department to cover it in water for days to keep the temperature down. Thousands of people evacuated.
What IF there is never silence. Ms Tickle may be right. THIS 500 year ending is different. Yesterday Ezra Klein was asking if AI has already crossed a no return line. Broken people write broken software. The recent mishap was "resolved" by Chinese AI software. But the interview ended on how many mishaps have NOT been discovered and are proceeding with what you and I might consider unethical, not Christ like outcomes. Empathy is bad???
I think what is showing up is just how big evil is. And how we have to deal with fear to do the right thing. Chuck, I'm not impressed with the people leading in religion communities. I wouldn't call most Christ followers. I think Christ followers are probably invisible and showing up in face to face encounters. They are not drawn to the spotlight. House churches without "leaders". People who understand how God designed humans. And how easily they can be seduced into slavery.
"The gate is narrow."
Ah, Kuyper, huh? The political leader of a country that used power and religion heavily blended — with Calvinism baked in. 😄