"The wall comes tumbling down," The Nation, 10/18/10 

"Farmworkers score again for justice," Ft. Myers News-Press, 10/18/10

"Victory long time coming for Florida tomato pickers," St. Petersburg Times, 10/16/10

On the Occasion of the Groundbreaking Agreement between the
Coalition of Immokalee Workers and Pacific Tomato Growers

Our Declaration as a Peace Church

The Deification of Americanism

I was very uncomfortable. I had just been asked a question about the land in which I had been born. I hadn't lived in the land of my birth for almost two decades and was out of touch with what was happening in America. I wasn't quite clear what the questioner was really asking. I didn't understand the context of the question.

I was serving as a missionary, in very rural villages, in Southern Africa. I had traveled a few hundred kilometers to the big city for a Church meeting. The person asking the question was a Bishop, in the denomination I was serving. Overcoming my uncomfortable feelings I began asking the Bishop some clarifying questions. He had spent an extended period of time in America observing a particular denomination in the Protestant Church, their various agencies and several Conferences. He was obviously disturbed and sad at what he had found. He was a kind; humble, but yet a person who had great discernment. His question was neither cynical nor critical. He asked me not because of any great knowledge that I possessed but I was the only American he knew who was living in Africa. He simply asked, "Can an American be a Christian?" He then went on to share some observations. He found the American Church, of our particular denomination, to be more about money, politics and power than about the gospel. He had attended some Church Conferences where Bishops were elected. He was appalled at the blatant politics of the process. Those experiences and others he shared were behind the question he asked. He stated, "I wondered if there was a dollar bill under every altar and an American flag in every Church."He perceived the Church as more American than Christian.

Having been out of the American Church and culture for a few decades. I had little data to answer his question. I thought it was more a reflection he was sharing with me rather than a question I could even begin to answer. But it stayed with me.

When I returned to American, some years later, I experienced all the cultural shock that many new residents must feel. I loved the grocery stores and all the food that was available, the many amenities like electricity and running water.

There were other dynamics, in the culture, that troubled me greatly. I observed activities and mindsets in the Church that caused deep reflections within me. I began studying this strange land and different Church that I was now participating in to better understand her. I had done the same when I moved to the Caribbean and later to Africa. It was a study to understand how people lived and what gave their life meaning, to understand the stories they lived by in life. It was a quest to determine how can a person like me, live in a place like this, with a people like I was experiencing? It was a "How do I fit in?" How does this culture fit into the work of the Kingdom of God? I became like a foreign observer studying the culture and the Church, not to find fault but to understand. The more I observed, read and researched the more the Bishop's question echoed in my brain, not only relating to that denomination but to Protestant Churches in general. I found, like the Bishop found, that the dynamics of Power, Position, Politics and Possessions had become the driving and motivating forces at work within the Church that both he and I knew.

Certain religious writers, in and of this culture, researchers and other returning missionaries began enforcing my observations and conclusions. There is far too much data to share at this point to include all the information. However there are some observations and data that might be of interest.

The purpose of this article is not to be negative or tear down but to raise an alarm. I do not have the skills or the gifting to be a prophet but hopefully there is something of the prophetic in what I write. The motivation is one of love. It is a deep desire for the American Church to return to her first love and to recognize the deception, the seduction of the culture and what it has done to her.

Over the years, George Barna, has been a great gift to me. He has enabled me to validate that what I was personally observing was more than my observations. He has also been a gift to the American Church. For those of you that do not know of him he is the founder and director of Barna Research. For over two decades George has carried on research through nationwide telephone polls. He is a professional Christian researcher. He has developed a research staff enabling the American Church to keep tabs on the pulse of Americans and American Church persons in regards to their views, attitudes and beliefs. Many of the leading denominational leaders use his research to formulate their policies, strategies and plans as a denomination. His studies reflect research he has done on both Protestant and Catholic Churches and their members.

One study, in particular, is important to give us a view of the spiritual health of the Church and of American Christianity in general. This study indicated that only 4 percent of Americans, Protestant and Catholic, had a "biblical" worldview. There was little indication that American Christians, in general, had integrated or had any desire to integrate biblical principles into their core being where they made their decisions about how to live life. The Protestant institutional Church also operated out of a cultural model rather than a biblical one.

I thank brother George for his excellent research. There are very concrete reasons for the "unbiblical" worldview dynamic. There has been a gradual, in one sense, rapid in another sense, shifting of the worldview of the American culture for the past eighty to one hundred years. In the late eighteen hundreds a philosophy of secular humanism began to take root in Western Culture. It was not really new but is as old as time. The Kings and prophets of Israel fought against it. Paul struggled with it in the Greek-Roman world of his day. It rose again in the eighteen hundred's with new wording but was really no different than older philosophies. It has become the worldview of the West, and America, for over ninety percent of the population. The Church in America, and her people, embrace such a view. It is from that point of view most decisions are made. The ‘biblical' worldview is not part of an individual's or an institution's thinking process. This is not a statement of criticism but rather a reporting of what most research in this area has clearly indicated. It has become the religion that Americans live by.

Secular Humanism is the ‘gospel' clearly promoted, believed in, and evangelistically promoted by, television, film, music newspaper, magazines, books, the world of education and even the institutional Church. Who could escape such a heavy influence? The answer is no one raised and living in this culture could or can escape. The theology of our culture is more a manology. There are some exceptions but let me leave that for later. The end result is we have a culture, and a "Christian" Church that operates out of a gospel of a god that I have called SHIM.

Life decisions, of individuals and institutions, are made on the basis of a secular, humanistic, individualistic and materialistic worldview (SHIM). There seems to be an abundance of knee jerk reactions to anyone or thing that smacks of authority. Put another way this culture sees rebelliousness as a virtue. The Protestant Church often gives the impression she is theologically uncertain, is ignorant of scripture, ethically eclectic and sounds like religion is a side issue in their day-by-day operation. Even the many models and programs for church renewal embrace and use the SHIM understanding of life to bring about transformation. More often than not such programs and models merely further reinforce a way of life that is counter to the Gospel. The God of scripture, traditions of the Church historic, reason and experience has been relegated to a peripheral place in making decisions and living life.

The spirituality that emerges, from such a dynamic, is more secular than sacred. It is a spirituality that is egocentric. In doing spiritual direction, this author has noted that, for some people in our culture, having a spiritual director is like having one's own physical trainer at the gym. It is status oriented and a status symbol. It is a spirituality that produces isolation rather than community. It is a spirituality that produces neurotic individualism rather than redemptive community. It is a SHIM spirituality that is neither sacred nor holy. It is a spirituality that produces further brokenness rather than healing or salvation. It is a spirituality that rejects scriptural holiness and replaces it with political correctness. It is a spirituality that is infected by a consumer society. It is a spirituality that is competitive and produces isolation rather than healing. It is a spirituality that wants to fix things and give answers rather than stand before the unfixable and the Mystery in life.

We have shifted from being a people under God to a culture that thinks we are gods. Following the god of SHIM has become the American way. Interestingly enough the viewpoint, philosophies and lifestyle of those who embrace SHIM are diametrically opposite of the values of scripture and the Kingdom of God.

As a result there has arisen an American Christianity that is neither scriptural nor Christian. Therefore we find many former Christians searching for a genuine spirituality among the Eastern religions. At some level they know that what the "Church" is selling isn't providing what the God of the universe is offering. The American Church, of any denomination or stripe, has become synonymous with the culture. Some people at some level know our culture or our cultural religion is not working. There is a God inspired hunger for God's truth. According to a very recent survey 26% of Americans suffer from some sort of mental illness. Rural Africa has a mental illness rate of 4.7%. One author commented that if the social scientists of the world sat down together for the purpose of designing a culture that would produce poorly functioning human beings they couldn't have done a better job than in what we have evolved in America.

There is some difference between the Protestant Churches and those of the Roman Catholic faith. It is dangerous to generalize but nevertheless the structures of the Protestant Church seem to have embraced a SHIM orientation and blend themselves into the culture thereby deifying it. The average American feels right at home. In the Roman Catholic Church with its universal orientation, at the ecclesiastical level, embrace a more scriptural and traditional orientation. However, the person at the pew level generally buys into the SHIM model and ignores the orientation of the Church universal.

I believe it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness. But one must first recognize that one is in darkness. We, in America, have been calling darkness light and light darkness and trying to spread our myth to "less developed countries." The we includes the American Church. Our first step, as Americans, and for those who call themselves Christians and recognize the problem, is to recognize the darkness and the depth of our apostasy and rationalizations.

Let me share some of the exceptions I have found in this land. It is usually found among those folks who, for whatever reasons, have been able to become detached enough from our culture and our society to look at our American Church and culture with some objectivity and come to the conclusions indicated above. I have had the privilege of knowing some Catholic and Episcopal Sisters living out their lives in a cloister situation. The monks, the monastic movement and religious orders, in many ages and in many cultures, have tried to address this problem by becoming a sign and a symbol of an alternative life style. Hopefully they are then encouraging the surrounding culture to evaluate the way the people in the culture are living. Those choosing such an approach see clearly the illness of our society and Church. Their solution is to live a life style that stands in contradiction to our culture. They work with people through example and presence. During the last fifty years there have been groups of Christians hungry for authentic Christian community. In response there arose such groups as E. Stanley Jones' Ashrams, the Lay Witness movement, the Cell group movement and the Walk to Emmaus. Indeed they provided opportunity for the hungry Christians to experience a deeper scriptural walk with God and a sense of committed Christian community. But alas they made little impression on the structures of the Church and her way of doing God's business. There are some priests and protestant ministers who see the darkness and are using the same approach, of an alternative life style, except they are trying to renew the Church from within rather than as a witness from without. Is that the same as putting a new coat of paint on a barn with dry rot? A good question to ask is, "If the system, the institution has a structure that is built on the wrong foundations and is thoroughly diseased in the marrow of its bones can some individuals bring about the transformation?" I do not know the answer to such a question. I tend to be a bit skeptical. I know what Jesus said about faulty foundations. I do not know what God has in mind. God can bring about a change and God can and does use whatever and whoever He chooses to use. But God usually wants folks to do it His way. History indicates that God rises up a new people and sends His Spirit to new arenas when people no longer are obedient to kingdom values. The old fades away and dies. His Spirit moves on.

Is the Church doomed? Of course it is not doomed. Its perversions might be doomed. I lived, worked and served much of my adult life in third world countries, in far different cultures. I experienced a Christianity and Church that acted out its life on Biblically sound principles. It believed the gospel and took it seriously. As a result the Church in some of these areas is growing, is meeting the spiritual needs of people and is transforming lives.

As I have talked with other missionaries, who have been out of this culture for a few decades, their stories are all the same. It reflects what I have shared above. Our culture is pagan and our American Church embraces those same values or lack of them. It seems the American Church has lost its way. I do not hear such people speaking words of condemnation or ridicule but from a deep pain within. It is a pain that I share. They were motivated to share the gospel in remote lands. They saw the gospel come alive and God's Church blossom. They returned to find a land that had become more pagan than the lands they went to serve and a Church that echoes those same pagan values.

Another exception I experienced. As a young man in the sixties I became part of a Protestant (mostly Methodist) group called the Ecumenical Institute. I was part of that community for a year. There were several such Religious Houses across the nation and later the world. One was in Atlanta, Georgia. We lived together in common in all things: living space, finances, community discipline and decisions. They stood as a sign and symbol over against a rapidly emerging secular culture and Church. The institutional Church saw it as a threat and as too heretical. It was neither. It was an attempt to live out the Gospel mandates in the world of the sixties. It did its work well. It was not for everyone. It was not generally popular. But it was a counter culture to the emerging god of SHIM. It was a sign and symbol that caught the Church's attention. Did it reform the Church? No! I think it was a good approach like the many communities that arose before and after it. It did foster a remnant that wanted to be faithful to a Church that was not cultural.

As we look at Church history we find many periods where the institution and leadership had the gifting of sin rather than scriptural holiness. It was out of some such eras that God raised up monastic movements to stand in sharp contrast to so called worldly Christians. The test of time has shown that the monastic movements had and have such a purifying effect on Christian Life and the Church. There are many such movements within and outside of the institutional Church. I see them as a gift from God. There are many such communities and movements I could mention but I do not intend to be comprehensive in my illustrations. But one brief example might be helpful.

The Brothers and Sisters of Charity, based in Arkansas, has attempted to blend together a monastic, in residence community, and a domestic community to bring God's gift by being a sign and symbol in a culture that has lost sight of God and His Kingdom. But all such movements are very clear, in their own thinking that America and the American Church have embraced the god of SHIM. These movements do not approach the problem, with a holier then thou mentality, but rather, "Here is the way we understand the faithful people of God are to live. We desire to be a sign and a symbol of those Christian values."

Regardless of the methodologies or movements God raises up there needs to be clarity that Americans and American Christianity does follow the god of SHIM. We need to be clear that God, His Kingdom and the Kingdom values proclaim a gospel that embraces what I have called, STED (Sacred, Theistic, Ekklesia and Detachment) as a way of life that is faithful to the Gospel of Christ.

Such a way of life states clearly that all of life is sacred. I am not referring to a pantheistic point of view but that our Creator God makes himself present to us. He reveals himself to us and is present in His Creation, within us, in other people, in the events of life and the very creation itself. No decisions are secular. God is to be perceived not ignored in every decision we make and every event in our life. As people of faith it is imperative to recognize that all of life is sacred from conception to natural death.

The person of faith is called to focus all energy, strength and resources towards God not man. The focus is on the Eternal not the mundane. We are called to be Theistic not humanistic in our understanding of life. We live in the mundane but with the call and the vision to be guided by and focused on God. Our hope is in Him not in man or man's schemes. This is one hundred and eighty degrees opposite of the secular and humanistic values of our culture and cultural Church.

We are called not to individualism, a perversion in God's sight, but to community: ekklesia. Who I am in God's Kingdom, and as a person, is directly reflected in those I relate to in community. There is an African saying that roughly translated states, "I am who I am as a result of those I relate to in my community." In America or in American Churches there seem to be few if any communities that exist in the scriptural sense of that word community. The only exceptions are those monastic type communities who have taken the call to be in community as serious. There is periodic interest in small groups, within the Church, that are signs of the God given hunger for such a community based understanding of life and the Gospel.

The call is also a call where I consciously detach myself from SHIM. Detachment becomes an intentional life style. It is where I investigate each cultural norm and measure it over against scripture and tradition. It is not an attempt to justify the culture but a serious openness to let the Holy Spirit in to inform me how one is called away from the SHIM Culture. By detachment I am not indicating I try to escape from the world, rather I make a conscious decision to separate myself from the life style and understanding of life that is cultural and cultural Christianity. I intentionally refute those values in my own life so I am freer to embrace and attach myself to the values of the Kingdom of God. It is to enable one to "see" the Gospel with less influence of the cultural lenses.

In sharing this article with friends I found some questioned my love for country. With some hesitation, I share that I served my country in the Korean War as a front line rifleman in three campaigns and still experience pain and suffering from my wounds and injuries. No, my motivation is one of love for country that it could be all God intends for this country to be.

All kinds of philosophies and man created ideas bombard our senses. Which one is correct? We are a synergistic people: a consequence of blending together a lot of strange thinking. We have become a SHIM people. The Old Testament prophets, Jesus and Paul clearly warn us such a concept of life is a dead end street.

Our choice is clear. If we have come to know the living Christ we will be a people who live and love under God not man. We embrace STED as a way of life, live in a world of SHIM people but are not of it.

Perhaps the renewal of the Church will come through many monastic communities springing up throughout this land. Perhaps they will call people to tend the holy and not be conformed to this world but be willing to be transformed and indeed show and exhibit what is the perfect and acceptable will of God for all of us.

Be not conformed to this world but be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds that ye might prove what is the perfect and acceptable will of God.

But my people have exchanged my Glory for worthless idols. Be appalled at this, O heavens, and shudder with great horror, declares the Lord.

What is your Vocation?