Jan. 28, 2007



By Harry T. Cook





The New York Times gave a lot of ink recently to a 60-member church in the west Harlem section of Manhattan, pronouncing it the poster-child of the up-and-coming charismatic branch of 21st-century Christianity. The Times linked its adopted church to what it called the 400-million-member worldwide phenomenon of charismatic faith, suggesting that it bids fair to eclipse the more staid and rational expressions of the Judeo-Christian religion.


Almost four years ago, Philip Jenkins, distinguished professor of hstory and religious studies at Penn State, brought out The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, in which he tells it by the numbers. The intensity of religious fervor in what Jenkins calls "the global South" is effacing the long-held picture of Christianity drawn by centuries of Euro-centrism. In 20 years, he insists, 80 percent of the world's Roman Catholics will be African and Latin American and will take the church in a radically new direction.


If we were to look beyond what he calls "the liberal West," Jenkins says we can see that Christianity is tending strongly toward supernaturalism and a rigid kind of orthodoxy.


It is also, Jenkins says, moving toward rather than away from central authority figures as the masses submit themselves to the ecclesiastical dictates of those whose leadership they have embraced. While the members of west Harlem's Ark of Salvation Church are far better off than their counterparts, say in Nigeria, some of the demographics are similar: people at the various social and economic margins who come to life praising the Lord and passing the evangelical ammunition.


A related phenomenon is visible in Anglicanism right now as a Nigerian prelate by the name of Peter Akinola is playing havoc with the most staid of all American denominations: the Episcopal Church in the U.S.A. Akinola is gathering to himself the fealty of a number of significant American parishes whose members, though by no means poor or socially alienated, will no longer submit to the episcopal guidance of those who embrace a woman presiding bishop and an openly gay bishop in the person of V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.


These American Episcopalians are not above praising the Lord, either. They tend toward biblical fundamentalism, and, while they are not inclined toward its more overt expressions, they do not look askance at charismatic fervor.


Jenkins seems to have no personal opinion about the state of affairs as he describes it. The Times' editors seem not to, either, but the Ark of Salvation Church - all 60 of its members - looms large for them in their understanding of what is happening to Christianity.


Both the Times and Jenkins may be right about the near future of Christianity if the parish of which I have been rector for nearly 20 years is any indication. A number of families have left the parish because of my secular agnostic approach and because I treat the Bible the way a Shakespearean treats Shakespeare, i.e., as priceless literature worthy of research and interpretation in appropriately useful ways. And while those who have left have been replaced by those who appreciate my approach, the numbers of the latter are nothing to write home about.


The church I lead is known far and wide for its rigorous approach to what other institutions might call "adult education" to distinguish it from Sunday school. But those members who participate in the seminars I lead and the classes I teach number fewer than 5% of the total congregation. I do not call that impressive. What I do call it is a sign of the times.


I have been told by at least one parishioner that if "we just praised the Lord around here a little more, more people would come." No, they wouldn't. They'd go - and do go - to one of two mega-churches just up the road, which were built for the precise purpose of "praising the Lord," speaking in tongues and showing off the various pieces of the evangelical apparatus.


I am content to let Christianity go in whatever direction the glandular secretions of its adherents take it. But I will not be going down that fundamentalist, charismatic path just for the sake of being where the masses are.


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.*


Robert Frost was probably not thinking about organized religion when he wrote those lines, but he might have agreed that they could be applied to such an argument as I am making. The traveler of Frost's imagination is unclear about what kind of difference it made to take the road less traveled by. I know what the difference will make for me. My choice of roads will allow me to be intellectually honest and respectful of reason. Put that on my tombstone.


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* "The Road Not Taken," The Complete Poems of Robert Frost, New York, 1957, Henry Holt and Company, p. 131.

© Copyright 2007, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.