Retired Pastor Ruminates

When writer Anne Rice recently said she’s done with church, the UCC Office of Communication in Cleveland started a Facebook page called “You’d like the UCC, Anne Rice.” But I am convinced that they are wrong, and here’s why:

1. We are not the Roman Catholic Church. Yes, we Reformed Christians do believe that we are included in “the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church” of the Creed, but don’t bet the farm that Anne Rice thinks that. When she says she is done with “the Church” she knows just what church she is done with. When Philosopher George Santayana said he didn’t believe in God, he clarified by saying, “And the God I don’t believe in mother’s name is Mary.” Anne isn’t looking for liberal Protestantism.

2. She would love all our social views, but hate our religious ones. Yes, we affirm science and tolerance toward women and gays, and affirm birth control, and other progressive stuff. She would like that. But she would hate our distrust of authority, our shoddy theology, our aversion to dogma, our rejection of the cross, our sloppy liturgies, our tortured language. She would do better to search the database for subscribers to the New York Times or the New Yorker or join a book group.

3. We use grape juice at communion. C’mon.

4. We’re a tiny franchise. The Roman Catholic Church has 1.1 billion members. We have 1.1. million members (about half what we had when I was ordained) and are shrinking fast.

5. We are afraid of the Dark Side. Anne is a writer of Gothic vampire novels. What would she think of our chirpy optimism. How the church of Calvin and the Puritans came to have such a sunny view of human nature is one of those great imponderable mysteries, but Anne would hate it.

6. She would have nothing to push back against. Anne likes to fight with authority, but we don’t have any worth fighting with. She would hate that.

7. She would miss the thick texture of the Roman Church for our trimmed down decaffeinated Protestantism. Think about it: no Veneration of Mary, no stations of the cross, no fasting during Lent, no confession. Anne wouldn’t like it.  She just wouldn't.

8. Our meeting houses have too much light. Anne is a “Gothic” novelist. Guess what kind of architecture she wants in her place of worship? Trust me on this one.

9. She would hate the New Century Hymnal. Why? Because she’s a writer and respects authorial intent and felicity of language.

10. She might get tired of hearing about how great we are because of our enlightened social views, and actually want some Christianity.

So Anne Rice, who was raised a Roman Catholic, but repudiated it and became a bestselling pop writer about vampires (as everybody knows), later decided that Christianity was, after all, pretty great, and wrote a bestseller in 2008 about her return to the faith. Cool. Everybody is entitled to change her mind. Glad to have you back, Anne.

I have lived in the Berkshires since 1982, but had never visited Olana, the spectacular home of landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church, until yesterday, despite it being only an hour away by car. We live just a few miles from the border of New York State, but for some reason it acts as some sort of invisible force field so that we go in that direction to see the sights far less frequently than those here in Massachusetts.

But I knew about Olana, because a few years ago I had heard an interesting paper given about it at the Monday Evening Club by Ron Trabulsi.  When the members came to comment on his paper I think I was the only one in the room who hadn’t been there, so I resolved to go.

And I’m glad I did, because Olana is well worth a visit. It is a fascinating place with a fascinating story.  Frederic Church (1826-1900) was a New Englander who came to the Hudson River Valley when he was eighteen to study with Thomas Cole, the English-born American artist who is generally considered the founder of the influential Hudson River School of landscape painters.

Church was able to be a painter because he came from a prosperous family. His father was a silversmith and watchmaker in Hartford, and his grandfather had founded the first paper mill in the Berkshire town of Lee, about ten miles south of where I write this.

Like Cole, Church painted lush atmospheric landscapes of the American frontier. These suggested something mystical about the young country’s land and water and air, and they were very popular. After a trip to South America Church painted a landscape of a scene in Ecuador he called “The Heart of the Andes” (1859, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.) He took this painting on tour and sold tickets to see it. Eventually he sold it for $10,000.00, the highest price for an American painting at that time.

But these big spiritual landscapes were in time to fall out of fashion to the, you guessed it, Impressionists, and Church put more and more of his attention to the development of Olana, which is itself a work of art.
He had the time, the talent and the money to make his home into a life project.

In today’s Stage 15 of the Tour de France, race leader Andy Schleck put a punishing attack on rival Alberto Contador on the final big mountain climb that Contador may or may not have been able to answer.  But we will never know, since Schleck dropped his chain and had to climb off his bike to put it back on. By the time he got moving he had lost precious seconds, and, it turned out, the leader's yellow jersey, since Contador, who was behind him by 30 seconds, gained 38 before the stage was over and is now in yellow.

Congratulations to George Hunsinger, who has been awarded the 2010 Karl Barth Award conferred by the Protestant Church in Germany. It couldn't have gone to a more deserving recipient. George is to my mind one of the outstanding “doctors of the church” in our time, and certainly one of the best teachers I have been privileged to have.  The Statement of the Jury cites his work as an interpreter of Karl Barth, his excellence as a theological teacher, his ecumenical commitments, and his political engagement, especially his campaign against torture.  The full text  is printed below:

In the past most congregations’ attempts to demoralize their ordained leadership have been haphazard and ad hoc, although still surprisingly effective. In the interest of bringing more rigorous and systematic approaches to these efforts here are some of my modest proposals:

1. Schedule a weekly meeting for your pastor to sit down with the treasurer (or, better yet, the assistant treasurer) to “go over” every business expense. Be sure to inquire if certain expenses are legitimate, such as the purchase of a Marilyn Robinson or Gail Godwin novel from the pastor’s book allowance (“Should we really be paying for your chick-lit?”) Or a long-distance call to a neighboring pastor friend from seminary. Do such expenses really profit the church? And what about this big expense for 14 volumes by this Barth guy? Do you really need all of these? And his title sounds so, well, dogmatic!

2. Plan a regular talk-back session after worship so that members can query the pastor about her sermon, or the worship service, or about anything else, for that matter. It is always good to question why the pastor chose scripture lessons that are so negative, referring to such old fashioned concepts as sin, unrighteousness and repentance. Suggest more uplifting themes in the future. “And, by the way, why don’t we ever sing Christmas carols in Advent?”

3. Make sure to have an annual customer satisfaction survey where every member of the congregation fills out an anonymous questionnaire about their views of the pastor’s performance during the previous year. Make sure all the negative (or ambiguous) comments are read aloud at several meetings, and publish them without attribution in the church newsletter.

4. Vote to hold all meetings in the living room of the parsonage during the winter as a way to save money on heat, but be sure to pitch the idea as good stewardship of God’s creation so your pastor will feel too guilty to protest.

5. Cut the mission budget to balance the budget. Better yet, ask your pastor to choose between a raise in salary or an increase in the mission budget. This would be a good subject for an extended conversation at a congregational meeting. You can never talk too much about clergy compensation at a congregational meeting.

6. Set up a pastoral oversight committee to regularly monitor the pastor’s performance. Focus attention on any negative (or ambiguous) comments from the questionnaire (see # 3). Make sure to put into place measurable metrics and target goals for new members received and money raised. Hourly work logs are always effective as well.

7. Whenever your pastor goes away and returns from denominational meetings or continuing education events never miss an opportunity to ask, “How was your vacation?”

8. Make sure the pastor is made aware of the two biggest complaints, namely, that he is never in the office, and he doesn’t make enough home visits. That the two cannot both be true will not diminish their use as morale crushers.

9. Tell the pastor that there are anonymous complaints that a. your sermons are too long; b. your voice is too soft to be heard (especially by the deaf); c. your spouse is not involved enough (or too involved) in the life of the congregation; d. your child shouldn’t have been given the lead in the Christmas pageant; e. your lawn needs mowing; and f. you were seen in shorts at the supermarket. This is just a sample list. Use your imagination.

10. Constantly compare your pastor to his long-tenured saintly predecessor, with special attention made to his never asking for a raise for himself or his staff.

If your pastor balks at any of these attempts, just mutter words such as “accountability,” “transparency,” “standards,” or “professionalism. Pastors are loath to appear to be against any of these concepts so cherished by the managerial class.