A Dead Church: A Mission of Resurrection
The American Church is in a state of crisis, and is approaching a fast-paced and violent death. Memberships of the largest mainline denominations in America are declining fast, with the largest of them, the Southern Baptist Convention, embroiled in a horrific abuse scandal. The Roman Catholic churches are also seeing declines in mass attendance, and experiencing a shortage in priests.
While those on the theological right wing have married their churches and their faiths to autocratic and nationalistic politics, those in the theological center, or left of center, have married themselves to institutionalist, capitalist, and suburban politics.
Both the theological right and theological center, which dominate the corridors of power in most of America’s churches, have utterly failed in their collective Christian witness, and thus are experiencing an unprecedentedly hasty decay in one of the most religious countries in the Western world.
But while many scholars have written about the increasing secularity of America, and many sociologists and religious scholars have sought to shed light on the reasons why the Church is failing, hardly any of the Church’s own clergy and theologians have actually developed the boldness necessary to claim the truth that many in the pews and the pulpits have long known; the Church in America is not dying, but dead already.
When a human being fails to fulfill their purpose in life, they lose themselves, and when the Church fails to fulfill its purpose, it loses itself as well. The American Church has fully lost itself. It is a place of spiritual malnourishment on one hand and mediocrity and comfort on the other hand. It is, in James Cone’s words, a “chaplaincy for middle-class egos”, and it has become infatuated with the alluring temporal pleasures of wealth, political power, and culture war.
America’s poorest, most marginalized and oppressed people are crying out for a place of healing and spiritual restoration, for an assurance of the inherent and enduring worth of life, for a community that embodies hope, liberation and true freedom. They long for a God who is crucified, who feeds His people with Himself and immerses Himself in their joys and sorrows.
They will not find it in the American Church. Instead, they will repeat the steps of St. Mary Magdalene, and “look for the living among the dead”.
However, now is not the time for nihilistic thinking, it is not the time to embrace an ethos of resignation. Rather, now is the time for the American Church to exit its period of Passion and work toward Resurrection. Refusing to acknowledge the death of the American Church and refusing to be the hands and feet of Christ that will resurrect it are tantamount to abandonment, and will keep the Church perpetually dead.
Embracing the condition of ecclesial death that the Church now finds itself in, however, can begin the long and tedious work of transforming it, to be resurrected with Christ is not to be “reformed” but to be transformed. It is only through complete transformation; spiritually and materially, that humanity can embody fullness and it is only through transformation that the Church can represent fullness to the world.
There is no time for delay; indeed the longing of souls and the needs of bodies requires urgency as the Church pursues resurrection. The question before us, all who love the Church, is how we will fulfill that pursuit. That is the question that I seek to answer and reflect on throughout this book, and I pray that all who read it will join me in conversation and action to manifest the liberating God to a country and to a world that cries for liberation.
With love, and hope
- Talique R. Taylor
