A few days ago, I was listening to an audiobook while I drove my 5-year-old grandson, Micah, home from kindergarten. The narrator was talking about A. Philip Randolf, Bayard Rustin and the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.
An insistent voice sounded from the back of the minivan, “How come they keep talking about Black people?”
I explained that, years ago, there were people and places that wouldn’t allow Black people to vote. The indignant response was immediate: “Why weren’t those people listening to God?”
The first thing that popped into my head was the old Crosby, Stills and Nash refrain, “Teach your children well.” I didn’t have to explain to Micah that restricting the vote to white folks didn’t square with the love of God. He had learned his lessons well.
Next, I remembered a 2021 Atlantic opinion piece by former Republican speech writer Peter Wehner. Shocked by white evangelical support for Donald Trump in the wake of the January 6 insurrection, Wehner asked a number of evangelical pastors and opinion leaders why their tribe had succumbed to the blandishments of a debauched huckster. Eerdmans publisher James Ernest spoke for many: “What we’re seeing is massive discipleship failure caused by massive catechesis failure.”
“Catechesis” denotes the process through which children who have been baptized as infants are prepared for confirmation and adult Christian discipleship. When most evangelical leaders endorse a full-blown insurrection, we must wonder what we have been teaching our children.
“When most evangelical leaders endorse a full-blown insurrection, we must wonder what we have been teaching our children.”
Charlie Kirk, the slain hero of white evangelicalism, believed the Civil Rights Movement was a “mistake” and denounced Martin Luther King Jr. as “awful” and “not a good person.” Kirk had undergone a process of evangelical catechesis that had nothing to do with the Sermon on the Mount and everything to do with white racial resentment.
In our day, the word “Christian” is commonly associated with hate, intolerance and tribalism. Ernest was right, we are dealing with “a massive discipleship failure caused by a massive catechesis failure.” How can we do better?
Here are five ideas:
We must become more biblical
A recent poll suggests only 32% of Americans express a great deal of confidence in organized religion. Some feel the church has capitulated to secular society; others resent the church’s refusal to embrace same-sex marriage, women’s ordination and the Black Lives Matter movement. When conservatives use the Bible to justify their opposition to social change, many progressives, inside and outside the church, come to view the Scriptures as problematic.
If Paul held retrograde views on same-sex attraction and the role of women in the church, why should we take him seriously on any subject? And if Paul got it wrong, the big black book falls under the shadow of suspicion. When conservatives insist every word in the Bible is literally true, the liberal tendency to downplay the authority of the Good Book intensifies.
“When conservatives insist every word in the Bible is literally true, the liberal tendency to downplay the authority of the Good Book intensifies.”
This reaction is understandable, even inevitable. It also is tragic. The Bible was written by hundreds of different people over a thousand-year period. It speaks with many voices, and the voices don’t always agree with one another. One can find biblical support for virtually any proposition.
Conservative, moderate and liberal Christians all have compiled lists of favored texts. Although some would deny it with a curse, we all have passages we could excise from the sacred word if we had our druthers.
While conservative believers “stand alone on the word of God,” liberal Christians settle for a lower view of biblical authority. We sometimes see the Bible as more of a curse than a blessing. People who have been beaten up by the Holy Scriptures can be forgiven for associating the sacred text with intolerance and oppression. It might not be the way we talk, but it often is the way we feel.
But the Bible is a precious resource. The fact that we possess ancient texts from a powerless people is remarkable. What would we know of Jesus without the Sermon on the Mount? What would we know of the early church without the book of Acts and the letters of Paul? What would we know of ancient Israel apart from Genesis, Jeremiah, the historical books and the Psalms? The Bible may be a muddle; but it is a glorious, miraculous, indispensable muddle.
We must teach our children to interpret the Bible with grace, humility and reverence.
We must shift from rigid doctrine to redemptive narrative
The Bible isn’t a theological textbook; it is a salvation saga. God’s plan to redeem the world begins with an old man and an old woman: Abram and Sarai. In the Christian New Testament, the story begins with a young woman who is great with child.
God plays small ball, but the ultimate goal is the redemption of the world: “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17).
“Jesus was a storyteller, not a theology professor.”
Jesus was a storyteller, not a theology professor. Specifically, he told stories about how the world comes together and falls apart. The focus always is on discrete individuals: a shepherd, a farmer, a persistent woman, a helpless beggar, a hard-hearted miser. In these stories, the grace of God confronts the folly of the proud.
Jesus didn’t talk about getting into heaven; he showed us how the world is infused with the glory of heaven. It isn’t about saving individuals from hell; it’s about building a beloved community.
When we teach our children the mechanics of “getting saved,” we erect walls between the elect and the damned. When we teach our children the Sermon on the Mount and the parables of the kingdom, the walls come tumbling down.
We must return to the ancient creeds of the church
When I was in seminary, conservative Baptists were using a cast-iron conception of biblical inerrancy to force doctrinal conformity on Southern Baptist Convention-related institutions. The logic went something like this: The Apostle Paul called same-sex attraction a sin and didn’t want women speaking in church. Since Paul was speaking for God, gay inclusion and the ordination of women are off the table.
In response, the liberal professors I admired complained of “creeping creedalism.”
“We have no creed but Jesus,” they said. Since I didn’t grow up repeating creedal affirmations in worship, I accepted this position.
Then, during a brief sojourn as a United Methodist pastor, I led my congregation in the Apostles’ Creed every Sunday morning. These ancient words blessed me and helped heal my sectarian estrangement from the church universal.
Of course, the traditional Christian creeds can be problematic. They leap from the virgin birth of Jesus to his death under Pontius Pilate as if what happened in between was of secondary significance. But the creeds never were intended to serve as summaries of doctrine, ethical teaching or the teaching of Jesus: they tell a simple story of God in Christ redeeming the world.
When I was a young man, liberal Christians made an odd parlor game out of quibbling with the details. Was Jesus really born of a virgin? Was he literally and physically raised on the third day? We approached the creeds like left-brained scientists scurrying about in white lab coats. We wanted to stick with what we knew for certain. We were happy to sign off on a list of ethical maxims rooted in the teaching of Jesus; but that was precisely what the creeds didn’t provide.
“We were happy to sign off on a list of ethical maxims rooted in the teaching of Jesus; but that was precisely what the creeds didn’t provide.”
You can’t get absorbed in a movie or a television drama unless you are willing to imagine yourself into an author’s narrative world. Once we start asking if there really was a Hobbit named Bilbo or a wizard named Gandalf, the narrative spell is broken. If you don’t accept the basic premise of the Bible’s redemption story, you miss the magic.
Most Christians accept the story with childlike faith. Others, to use Paul Ricoeur’s formulation, must wander through a “critical desert” of radical doubt before finding a “second naivete” in which faith and doubt become friends. The creeds work admirably for both kinds of Christian.
The creeds lead us on a whirlwind tour of the biblical salvation story: Creation, fall, death, resurrection, universal redemption. They bind us to Christians in all places and in all times. They don’t teach our children everything they need to know about Christian discipleship; but they lay a solid narrative foundation for mature faith. This is where catechesis begins.
We must reckon with the ethical implications of the biblical story
Historically, Christians have been tempted to reduce the Bible to a compendium of faith facts that must be believed to avoid eternal damnation. People who live in a slave state, or under an authoritarian regime, or in a rigid caste system have a hard time with the biblical bits about love, forgiveness, equality, radical repentance and care for the poor and disenfranchised.
“Unwilling or unable to deal with these contradictions, we teach our children that it’s all about you and Jesus.”
Unwilling or unable to deal with these contradictions, we teach our children that it’s all about you and Jesus, the rest of the world be damned. It’s nice to be kind to others, of course, but the Christian virtues, although important, have absolutely no bearing on your eternal destiny. Believe the faith facts and you’re in.
As a consequence, it is hard for many justice advocates to take Christianity seriously.
If we believe the church was created as God’s instrument of universal redemption, we can’t flee the political arena. Public policy must matter to us because it matters to God.
Teaching our children that the political realm is a dirty business Christians should avoid is one way of shirking our kingdom responsibilities. Suggesting that true Christians always vote for a particular political party is another avoidance strategy. The relationship between God’s vision of universal redemption and electoral politics is fraught. Christians never will agree on the particulars. But our children must see us struggling to relate the kingdom of God to the kingdoms of this world.
Because we all are one in Christ Jesus, Paul told the churches of Galatia, we must rise above the distinctions that divide us (Jew-Greek, slave-free, male-female). Did Paul always follow his own advice? Certainly not. Neither do we. But Paul was trying to wrap his head around the implications of Jesus’ victory over sin and death, and we must teach our children to do the same.
A shared sense of mission
A few days ago, I was part of an exploratory visit to the Rio Grande Valley. There were nine of us, five women and four men. Some of us were college students, others were nurses, property managers, educators, pastors. Some, like me, were retired. Some have been attending Broadway Baptist Church for decades; others have only been coming for a few months. We ranged in age from 18 to 72. Some of us came of age in conservative Baptist congregations and have the scars to prove it.
On Sunday evening, having just returned from worshiping in a Hispanic congregation in Brownsville, we gathered in the hotel lobby to talk about next steps. We all brought unique insights and perspectives to a “quick debrief” that went on for two hours. We had witnessed dozens of gunboats cruising up and down the river. Migrants no longer were crossing for fear of family separation and deportation to God knows where. We weren’t sure how a single Baptist congregation located 500 miles from the border could make a difference, but we were determined to try.
As one person after another contributed their insights, I realized we all understood that God expects us to serve as agents of the kingdom. We weren’t sure how to do it, but we were determined to get it done.
I have participated in the life of at least two dozen churches over the years, often as a pastor, but I never have witnessed the deep, mission-driven conversation we shared in that hotel lobby. It happened because, under the leadership of our pastor, Ryon Price, Broadway Baptist Church has worked hard to clarify her mission. We may not be sure how to do it, but we know what to do.
James Ernest is right. The American church has witnessed a “massive discipleship failure caused by massive catechesis failure.” If we get dressed up and go to church on Sunday morning because that’s what respectable people do, our children are unlikely to follow in our footsteps. If we care more about college football than we care about the mission of Christ’s body, our children will regard religion as a pro forma ritual they can well do without.
But if we know what God expects of us, and if we are searching for creative ways to make it happen, the young ones in our midst will want in on the action. That’s how catechesis works.
Alan Bean
Alan Bean leads the nonprofit Friends of Justice and lives in Fort Worth, Texas, where he attends Broadway Baptist Church.