Churchliness vs Christ

The security and cosiness of historic, everyday churchliness must be sacrificed to the heroic daring of creativeness.
—Nikolai Berdyaev

A New York Post article from last year noted that there has been a 78% increase in converts to Orthodox Churches in America. The same article highlights that men have vastly outnumbered women in these conversions. This is a reversal of the trend in prior decades when women made up a significant portion of church attendees. As an Orthodox Christian, I find these developments encouraging, but as someone who cares about the church’s role in shaping culture, I see issues that need to be addressed.

The typical pushback to this movement towards traditional Christianity is misandrist dismissal under the guise of concern—the kind that comes from hyper liberalized churches that are fixated on things such as women’s empowerment and LGBTQ rights. Such objection emanates from our materialistic culture and shouldn’t be taken as anything other than a knee-jerk mimetic reaction. A far more objective interesting critique lies in addressing the fascination with forms over the subject of Christ and, strangely enough, a refusal to acknowledge the anthropological effect of Jesus’ incarnation. The validity of this critique lies in the fact that it can be applied not only to the traditional churches but the mainline Protestants churches as well.

Young men hunger for order when they see undifferentiated chaos all around them. Undifferentiation—the absence of differences—puts society in a mimetic crisis where everyone chases the same object and ends up competing against all. Such is the nature of human beings: people need external mediators—unapproachable role models—from whom they can derive their desires without falling into rivalry. When men see traditional Christianity, they see hierarchies and rituals. They see a blueprint by which they can sharpen their faith through prayer and fasting. They see an ark of order amidst the chaos that has left them feeling nameless and unwanted. It is only natural that they gravitate towards tradition considering how ruinous, both politically and culturally, our secular order has been.

But what this movement (or certain aspect of it) gets horribly wrong is the intention to use their newfound Orthodox or Catholic identities to “fight back” against worldly culture. Such a notion is clearly contrary to Christ’s mission of creating man anew. We have seen far too often in Christianity’s historical trajectory the spirit of Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor—the willingness to subjugate the enemy and enforce morality through the sword. This spirit of coercion is as much a demonic perversion of the Gospel as the Left’s victim-garbed tyranny. It is demonic for two reasons: I) It robs Christ of His personhood and makes Him into an objectified banner, and II) it is highly delusional and ahistorical, displaying an acute lack of realization that theocratic coercion in today’s environment has about the same chance of succeeding as a T-Rex trying to play piano in Jurassic Park’s orchestra.

In Acts 11:26, we read about the first instance where followers of Jesus came to be known as “Christians.” What does Christian mean? It means follower of Christ. What does a follower do? The follower adheres to the teaching of the Master. What did the Master teach? He said:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?”
—Matthew 5:43:46 ESV

The foremost apostles of Christ also repeat this teaching:

Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.
—St. Paul in Romans 12:17 ESV

Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing.
—St. Peter 1 Peter 3:9 ESV

Non-violence has saturated those cultures where the Gospel has been preached. Concepts such as the presumption of innocence until proven guilty and equality before the law were born out of the Gospel. Western societies, in general, strive to eliminate mob rule. As a result, it has become almost impossible to impose morality en masse. Western emphasis on the pretense of consent and choice stem from a presupposition of sacred free will as described in the Gospels. The threat of violence, however, still lurks in the corner; one only needs to see the multiple assassination attempts on Trump from last year. Violence is entrenched in our collective memory, therefore we are tempted by tribalism and sacrificial resolution, often due to what Nietzsche called ressentiment. We are tempted to carry out violent actions, but we want to act within the safety of unanimity. And what better place for unanimity than the crowd?

The crowd offers disgruntled individuals the chance to throw stones (whether physical or metaphorical) at their oppressors. There is little chance of getting any accountability from a maddened mob. This is true not just for physical gatherings but also for collective identities. Religious identities are no different. The Christian identity, as presented by Christ, is a subversion of worldly identities, i.e. it calls for repentance and reconciliation as opposed to tribal, might-makes-right hostility. In light of this, we see today the embracing of religious identities in order to go after “degenerates” as a modern-day scapegoating phenomenon. At its best, it is a reactionary posture springing from rivalrous fixation rather than love of Christ. In John 8, Jesus dismantles this type of religiosity.

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.
—John 8:3-9 ESV

In the text following this passage we see Christ offering the adulterous woman freedom to repent—a freedom she previously did not have because she had been taken captive by the crowd. Today, we see many attempts within traditional churches to imitate the scribes and Pharisees rather than Jesus. We see frequent instances of pearl-clutching within our local parishes over the breaking of shibboleths. Canon laws are cited and anathemas are proclaimed all too easily—like shuriken thrown by ninjas from the 80s movies. It is as if external markers related to culture and religiosity have become the existential bedrock of the Church. One is not Christian enough if one isn’t like the Russian or the Greek. The form ends up taking the place of Christ; hardly any focus is given to the imitation of Jesus.

St. Paul writes:

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
—Romans 8:22-23 ESV

Paul implies that the Gospel is so radical the entire cosmos anticipates its transformative energy. Does your church have that transformative power? It is hard to believe, though some pastor or priest might convince me otherwise, that a church behaving like a primitive tribe guarding an antique in some remote part of the world will have any effect on Earth let alone the entire universe. Such a church will only invite an Indiana Jones who will sneak in and snatch the antique away.

The world does not value Christianity because Christians themselves don’t give serious thought to the message of Christ. The case has been made numerous times that correct theology makes for a moral and prosperous culture. Theology, however, cannot be divorced from correct anthropology, especially in light of Jesus’ incarnation. Worship of a disembodied and objectified Jesus is at the root of churches’ inability to exit sacrificial religion. The world cannot escape violence because the Church cannot escape violence. It is here where the main focus should lie, not the current obsession over neo-gnostic dogma. When churches properly understand the anthropology of the Gospel and care for it just as much as they care for the right creed, right jurisdictions, the correct number of solas, the proper way to do baptism, a cappella singing, etc. only then will she be able to fulfill her destiny of bridging heaven and Earth.

St. Paul writes:

For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
—1 Corinthians 2:2 ESV

At the time of writing this article, I came across a news story of a brutal massacre of seventy Protestant Christians inside a church in the Democratic Republic of Congo. At the same time, the ethnic cleansing of Gaza continues in the Middle East. Before that, we saw the brutal killing of Israelis at the hands of violent fanatics. What do these events tell us in light of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross? Rene Girard wrote that the Gospel unveils the scapegoat mechanism by telling us that the sacrificial victim is innocent. We make an awful lot of sound about being in the “right church,” so much so that we hardly pay attention to the truth of Jesus’ crucifixion and the countless re-enactments that have occurred ever since. The stones continue to cry out. The Christians who were massacred in Odisha, India from the 90s onward belong to all types of denominations. Why does Satan not discriminate between denominations, religions, and ethnicities as he attempts to undo what Christ destroyed two thousand years ago? Perhaps the answer lies in the crucifixion of Christ.