Still blind to the others

I have just come home from the Festival of Homiletics in Atlanta. I always find them very enjoyable. It is a chance to hear nationally known preachers and to be inspired by the magnificent power of five or six hundred males and a couple of hundred females who are all eager to sign the hymns. What a moving power.


But one of the nagging questions that remains is what do we say to the world about all those who claim the same Bible, but who use it differently?  One of the presenters made a marvelous case for the current crisis in our mainline churches and culture is the competition of different narrative stories that explain life and the Biblical ignorance of the church so that it cannot present its story in a powerful and effective way.


I have no problem with that analysis of the situation. What I find disappointing is that he did not recognize and talk about that one of the competing stories is another version of the Christian faith that claims to be the answer.   The Christian narrative that he was promoting, and which I find myself in agreement with, is that God's love in Jesus calls us to seek to redeem and to minister to those who are ignored, abused and exploited by the world.  This narrative invites in all people, includes all people, and desires to free people from all of the things that keep them in bondage. That includes the wealthy and those who desperately want to be wealthy called to be free from the power of that wealth.


That there is another narrative that claims to be Christian that is much more elitist. In that it desires to separate the good and the just, themselves, from those they believe to be sinners: those on welfare (lazy), those who take certain drugs (but not the drugs they take), those who love different people than they love (gays and lesbians), those who make decisions that are contrary to their decisions (like abortion) those who believe that power and might are evil (gun control, less military spending).  There is a narrative of the Christian story that claims that God's will for all people is that they become wealthy and blessed with great material blessings forgetting that there are many more definitions of blessings that the American way of life.


What troubled me was that no one at the conference ever acknowledge that what was being preached here had to contend with the other stories that also claim the name of Christian. Nor did they talk about how to respond to that challenge or to separate the narrative of the Christian faith from the other narratives.