"The Church Crisis: WWJD"
Tom Smith-Myott
Sunday, July 21st, 2002

  1. Introduction
    1. Speakers told to begin with humor; hard to tell a joke about sex abuse and abuse of authority
    2. My stake: I’m a son of the church. 40 years of my life have been centered on the church and its ministry. Thus I have been deeply aggrieved both by the abuse and culture of secrecy going on, and by not knowing how to respond to it. I am part of an addicted, dysfunctional family, and it hurts. I’m partly giving this talk to help me name and respond to what’s going on.
    3. I have 2 goals this morning:
  2. What’s really going on in the church?
    1. Summary of situation: lack of ownership and accountability; an unwillingness to face up to the deeper issues involved.
      • cf. Joan Chittister’s article in July/August Sojourners: she analyzes the church leadership as a closed clerical culture that includes:
      • culture of silence
      • culture of exclusion
      • culture of domination
    2. The church has been a closed system, it’s living in a world of its own
      1. closed to wisdom and insights of anyone outside its walls - it’s not listening
      2. cf. Barbara Tuchman’s The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (1984)
      • she describes 4 closed power systems that, acting out of ignorance and arrogance, made decisions that led to failure, downfall, division:
      • (1)Troy, (2) church dealing with Luther, (3)British dealing with American colonies, (4) America in Vietnam
      • I would add: the Roman Catholic Church dealing with the 21st century
    3. The church is a sick system: holds pathological or schizophrenic views of authority and of sexuality
      1. the leader as servant is preached but too often actions are despotic & controlling
      2. there’s a deep ambivalence regarding sex, seeing it as holy & sacramental but mainly as dangerous, and has held sexual activity as of less spiritual value than celibacy
      3. In my 30 years of working in the church, I’ve seen a deep fear of women - and thus consistent attempts to control them
      4. conclusion: sexual abuse is just one form of abuse of power that permeates the system
      5. sexual abuse just tip of iceberg and reveals basic problem with current church structure and leadership
    4. Bishops’ meeting in Dallas in June did not take on these issues
  3. What’s the solution?
    1. The tipping point is here. The current church structure will either remain a closed, controlling system and collapse, or it will go through a process of reconciliation, open up it’s communication and decision-making, and work to foster a healthy system. This means letting go of:
      • a clerical caste system
      • privileges and power for a few
      • the controlling use of authority.
    2. The solution is growing an open system that includes
      1. a culture of open communication rather than silence
      2. a culture of inclusivity rather than exclusivity
      3. a culture of partnership and empowerment rather than domination
    3. You & I need to demand from church leaders no leadership without accountability to those they lead; you and I must do a better job of holding our leaders accountable, whether our bishops, the leaders at St. Joan’s, leaders in education and business and all institutions
    4. Present crisis is an opportunity to witness to the world how reconciliation, healing and transformation can happen in the worst of situations. Will the Catholic Church do less than the South African government has been doing by listening deeply to the pain of those hurt and fostering forgiveness and reconciliation?
    5. The gospel of Jesus calls us all to challenge all abusive, controlling, closed systems wherever we find them -- education, business, government, health care, non-profit, or religious --which allow persons in authority to misuse their power by controlling, dominating or abusing any other person for their own advancement or pleasure
    6. Finally, we need to demand and work for a church focused on the mission of Jesus rather than on maintaining clerical structures and power, a church focused on its mission of bringing hope and justice, joy and peace to the world rather than focused on survival
  4. A New Way of Being Church: a new ecclesiology
    1. People in the year 10,000 will look back and think of the church of 2002 as part of the history of the early church
      • they’ll see us still figuring out how to live the gospel vision of Jesus
      • they’ll see the 1st 2000 years as a dead-end foray into Christendom with the church too often more concerned about political and economic power than about the mission of Jesus
      • hopefully they’ll see the first years of the 21st century as a time of renewal and refocus, one that leads to a church more focused on the values and vision of Jesus
    2. The most recent biblical scholarship is clear that Jesus never intended to create a “church” or any kind of institution.
    3. What Jesus did is call people to a certain way of living together that includes
      • compassion, justice, equality and peace.
      • No one is to rank higher than anyone else.
      • No one is to dominate or control another.
      • No one is to be excluded for any reason.
      • Everyone is our neighbor to be invited to our table.
    4. The earliest church used a Greek word to try to describe this egalitarian partnership of the community Jesus formed: Koinonia.
    5. Koinonia in the Greek/Roman world described a membership association of peers who gathered as equals for mutual support. It was like a professional support organization where some were chosen temporarily to be leaders, but that did not put them above others. The leaders were there to serve the organization.
    6. We know from gospel texts that if Jesus envisioned any kind of structure for his followers, it was more like a koinonia than anything else.
    7. The church is a communion of baptized followers of Jesus, all filled with God’s spirit and gifted for the mission of the church. Jesus was very clear that leaders in this communion were to be servants of the life and mission of the community, not lord it over anybody. “Call no one father.”
    8. We at St. Joan’s are trying to grow an open, healthy church modeled on Jesus’ life and teaching, with accountable, empowering leadership. It’s not easy to be consistent in this because we’re all so imbued in the old culture of domination. It takes day-to-day effort and like in any relationship, as we make mistakes it takes a lot of “I’m sorry”’s and “I forgive you”’s. But I think that the larger church could learn about what a healthy church is from what we’re doing here at St. Joan’s.
    9. This effort to build a healthy church also takes critical study of Jesus and his vision, as our bible study, our SCC’s, our peace conversation, our justice work, etc. are doing, to keep learning more clearly how to live the justice, compassion and reconciliation Jesus calls us to.
  5. Conclusion
    1. I have hope because looking back over the history of the church, the gospel vision has survived in spite of church leadership and church structure.
    2. I have hope because throughout the history of the church small groups of people have always formed to support each other in following Jesus and living out the gospel.
    3. I have hope because we have a vision at St. Joan’s of how church should be, and we’re on our way to living it, not perfectly, but with commitment. Please join us in this effort.

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