A whole generation of women rose up and declared 'We will not be dictated to' - and they became typists (G.K. Chesterton)

There is a perennial fallacy that history has borne out for our perpetual study and reflection, but we are not getting it. It is that we can rise up against our oppressors and break free from their system of abuse. The classic example of this for the biblically-minded is the transition of Israel as a nation of slaves under Pharoah to a nation of slaves under Solomon, the man of wisdom adorned with almost the splendor of a lily. The transformation takes considerably less time than the length of Israel's servitude in Egypt: Moses, Joshua, a handful of judges, Samuel (the last of the judges), Saul (Israel's first king), David - Solomon. Shakespeare's dictum appears timeless: Power corrupts, etc.

I am particularly interested in how the church, God's people gathered, (mis)handle this dynamic. Ever since the Protestant reformation it has become customary to blame the Roman Emporer Constantine for the institutional accretions of the pure religion of the Jesus movement. I cannot comment on this myth here, only to say that the fact that we keep telling it to ourselves means that it serves a function in the present context. The function I submit is to distance ourselves from THAT kind of Christianity, and to define ourselves in terms which negate the deadness of Constantinianism.

There is only one problem with this picture: to assert oneself, or one's group as 'not them' in some essential way is to create a distance that is only created by the verbal or mental act itself. This is nothing less than an act of violence against our humanity in God's image, and thus is perpetrated as much against God as against our neighbor (or enemy!). Jesus narrated this kind of event between a Pharisee and a tax collector with particular clarity: the Pharisee used a worship event (praying at the temple) to inflict this violence, a time and space that was designed to bring peace between brothers precisely through acheiving peace with our one Father. Without reflection on the spiritual brotherhood of men in Christ we become the new Constantinians now looking around to pass judgment on those who do not or will not conform. We may not burn at the stake anymore, but this may be more a function of the bridles of civil law (as was the trial of Jesus) than the unbridled intentions of our hearts. We call them fools who are not like us and in doing so obey the law of sin and death.

I help lead a small congretation that is in its early stages of development. It seems that many things are going well, and that we are 'outside' a system that includes the professionalization of clergy, buildings that are costly both in terms of $$ as well as the potential loss of our missional focus - and thus budgets that serve those who attend rather than the poor of the world. (There is rarely any real physical poverty in an affluent church culture such as ours - if we lack the means to pay the rent it is a temporary problem and has little to do with the life-long poverty of developing countries). The question that faces our little flock is 'how can we remain faithful to the gospel and free from a Constantinianism disguised in the local attire of our informal setting?' Is it a matter of giving virtually all of our money away instead of using it to invest in the core disciplines of the church growth strategists? I estimate that a good deal of the problem is economic in nature, but perhaps this is only a symptom.

The real problem I think is that we still feel the need to build walls to keep the people inside that we want and the people outside that we don't. I think that it is no accident that an apt metaphor to describe the church's spiritual malady is our chosen architecture. This happens on three levels which I will only mention here and explore in future blogs. The first of course is the church building, with its distinct sense of self. Even the ubiquitous evangelical megachurch has not escaped a 'churchy' feel, however hard it tries to imitate community center or school architecture. Related to this is a second kind of wall, branding. If the church building situates our truth community vis a vis the lost world, then branding is a way of situation ourselves vis a vis other (usually inferior) truth communities. Having separated ourselves systemically from the non-Christ follower through physical archtecture, and our fellow Christ follower by carefully crafted branding, it remains only to divide our congregations internally.

This, the third mode is acheved by our adoption of marketplace and military leadership structures, which constructs a hierarchy with the experts at the top and much needed followers at the bottom. Middle management is the most troubled of the our lot, stranded between heaven and earth. This, also a function of Constantinianism, is due to the economics of a leadership wanting to retain doctrinal and methodological control and a followership who prefers it that way. I submit that most church splits should have been church plants 2-3 years prior if such a dynamic were not so firmly entrenched. The latest version of this is (as one friend put it) nothing short of nihilism: the multi-campus sermon-by-video method. Enter evangelical Constantinianism in full bloom: we have now overcome the problem of planting churches and losing control via technology.

The building of Babel is back in business.