Diana Butler Bass - Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening

THE END OF CHURCH AND THE BIRTH OF A NEW SPIRITUAL AWAKENING

DIANA BUTLER BASS

To Marcus, Marianne, Henry, and Abbey.
You have gladdened my heart along the way.

PART I
The End of Religion

PART II
A New Vision

PART III
Awakening

Saguaro High School, Scottsdale, Arizona 1976

I OPENED MY LOCKERIT WAS as overstuffed and unorganized as usualand out fell a copy of the New American Standard Version of the Bible. The Word of God hit the sandaled feet of a girl with a locker near mine.

Youre so religious, my high-school companion growled. A Bible at school? Are you becoming a Mormon or something?

No, I replied. Im not a Mormon. I had recently joined a nondenominational church, however, a church that took the Bible both seriously and literally. I was only vaguely acquainted with scripture through childhood Sunday school. But my new church friends knew the Bible practically by heart. I was trying to make up for lost time by reading it at lunch.

What sort of religion makes you bring a Bible to school? Are you a religious fanatic?

Im not religious, I responded. Ive got a relationship with God. I dont really like religion. Religion keeps us away from Jesus. It is more a I wasnt sure how to put it. Its a spiritual thing.

My answer did not register. She turned away, flipping her long Marcia Bradylike hair impertinently in my face, and walked off.

It would be at least another decade before I would hear someone confess to being spiritual but not religious. I was only trying to describe something that had happened to me, an experience I had with God. A few months earlier, I had started attending a new church, one where the pastor urged members to get born again. I wasnt entirely sure what that meant. But I listened to friends testify to Gods presence in their lives; they said Jesus was their friend and that they felt the Holy Spirit in their hearts. Although I had grown up in a Methodist church, I had never heard anyone talk about God with such warmth or intimacy. So, one Sunday during communion, as I ate Saltine crackers followed by Welchs grape juice, I actually felt Jesus. He was there. He showed up again a few days later at youth group at a backyard pool party as we all sang, I Wish Wed All Been Ready, a popular song about the Rapture and the end times. I didnt know how to explain it, but God had touched my heart, and I felt fresh and new, relieved that God was there. I figured this was what the pastor meant by getting born again.

I told a friend and asked him, Whats this religion called?

He laughed, saying, It isnt a religion; its a relationship.

At the time, I felt pretty special, that God had chosen me, or the small group of us, for this experience. What I didnt know was that millions and millions of other people shared our storyof growing up in a formal religion, finding that somehow chilly or distant, and rediscovering God through a mystical experience. Many of those people would call it being born again, but others would speak of being filled with the Holy Spirit or being renewed by God. They left traditional religion in search of new communities; they tried to reform their old churches by praying for the Spirit. They embraced all sorts of theologies, from fundamentalism to medieval Catholic mysticism, from Pentecostalism to doctrines of their own design. They got baptized (or rebaptized), formed alternative communities, wrote praise songs, and raised their arms in ecstatic prayer.

And it was not only Christians. Many of my Jewish friends recount similar experiences of finding God anew in those days, as do those who grew up in agnostic or secular families. Millions reconnected with their Higher Power in recovery groups. Religion morphed from an external set of rules into a vibrant spiritual experience of God. Somehow, the word religion did not seem quite adequate to explain what had happened. For those of us who followed Jesus, we had stumbled into a world of Christianity after religion, a spiritual space beyond institutions, buildings, and organizations, a different sort of faith.

With hindsight, it is a little easier to understand. The 1970s were a time of profound change, a rearrangement of social relationships, a time of cultural upheaval and transformation. There were spiritual aspects to that change as well as political and social ones. Institutions and practices that once composed what was normal in American life began a prolonged period of decline, a failure that happened in fits and starts and that continues even today. As the old ended, Americans began an extended experiment in reordering faith, family, community, and nation.

In 1962, only a couple of years after I was born, pollsters found that 22 percent of Americans claimed to have had a mystical experience of God. In 1976, the year my Bible nearly broke my classmates toe, that number had risen to 31 percent of the population. Back in those days, we thought we were in the middle of a revival. Apparently, however, it did not end. By 2009, 48 percent of Americans confessed that they had had a mystical encounter with the divine. This was not merely some sort of short-lived emotional outburst of renewed faith. Instead, the numbers indicate that, during the past thirty years, American faith has undergone a profound and extensive reorientation away from externalized religion toward internalized spiritual experience.

For much of this time, most journalists, historians, and theologians equated this change with a resurgence of conservative Christianity, believing that America had just experienced a massive evangelical awakening akin to the First Great Awakening in the 1740s or the Second Great Awakening in the early 1800s. In more recent years, however, something else has become clear. Not everyone who has experienced God afresh is an evangelical, fundamentalist, or Pentecostal. Indeed, they hail from many sorts of faiths, and many are not Christians.

And what is equally true, not all of those who first understood their experience of God in the context of evangelicalism stayed evangelical. Of friends from my high-school youth group, only a very few remained on the evangelical path. Othersincluding myselfmigrated back to the old churches we once deserted; some became Buddhists, Hindus, or Jews; more than a few became inveterate seekers, agnostics, and atheists. One experienced Allah in her prayers; another met God in nature, magic, and ancient Celtic legends. Along the way, we found plenty of other people who had met and experienced God and never called themselves born again. The 48 percent is, if nothing else, a theological motley crew, diverse and pluralistic in their spirituality, as ineffable as the divine itself. But whatever the differences between these people, it appears that a good many of them are traveling new paths of meaning, exploring new ways to live their lives, experiencing a new sense of authenticity and wonder, and practicing new forms of community that address global concerns of human flourishing.

Fundamentalist preachers look at this situation and shake their heads, warning against the devil appearing as an angel of light, decrying how easy it is to fall into heresy, and how the evil one roams about tempting Gods children. To them, the 1970s revival went on the skidsneither their converts lives nor their attempt to convert culture unfolded as planned. They are busily training new troops to correct the course and return America (and the rest of the Christian world) to old-time religion and Gods righteous path. They envision a global sawdust trail to convert the heathen masses and restore biblical inerrancy, family values, social order, clerical authority, theological orthodoxy, sexual purity, free-market capitalism, and Protestant piety.