Ecclesia Militans and Vacation Bible School memories.

Today in church the pastor disclosed a contention that had brewed within the staff over the last week. As I've mentioned, I attend a United Methodist church connected with the university where I'm employed. Today was the welcome-(back)-to-university-life Sunday, where freshman, returning students, alumni, faculty/staff, and assorted friends and family all attended. Apparently (I had missed this fact in previous such Sundays), "Onward Christian Soldiers" traditionally serves as the closing hymn. Long-time church members fully expect to hear it on Return Sunday.

My pastor, however, described how some of the church staff (including himself, I suspect) expressed reservations about a hymn that advances so militaristic a vision of the church.

With a pang of nostalgia/embarrassment, I remembered how central that hymn had been to my childhood. It was one of the first hymns I learned how to play, doing so in order to accompany the throng of children and teachers marching in every morning of Vacation Bible School. And I have to say, though I share my pastor's uneasiness with jingoistic spirituality, many of my favorite hymns from my Baptist past are in essence rousing calls to military confrontation. "Onward, Christian Soldiers," "Once to Every Man and Nation,"

Or take "Faith is the Victory" (here's a midi of the tune):
Encamped upon the hills of light
Ye Christian soldiers rise
And press the battle 'ere the night
Shall veil the glowing skies
Against the foe in vales below
Let all our strength be hurled
Faith is the victory, we know,
That overcomes the World.
Faith is the victory,
Faith is the victory
Oh, glorious victory
That overcomes the World.

It's quite rousing! I'm humming and grinning just writing out the words. And try as I might, I cannot deny that much of my Christian heritage mobilizes a battle imagery. Why, even the text my pastor used today comes from Ephesians 6:10-20, about putting on the "full armor of God" (the shield of faith, the sword of the Spirit, the breastplate of righteousness, etc.).

I mention this to trouble the line of criticism I've been leveling at hard-line, confrontational biblical inerrancy doctrine. I described, for example, how conservative-fundamentalists in the Southern Baptist Convention used the doctrinal litmus-test question "do you believe the Bible is the inerrant, infallible Word of God" as a knife to cut away those they viewed as heterodox. I've dipped into the history of evangelical (or even fundamentalist) "Bible-believing" to suggest that inerrancy doctrine, when forcefully emphasized, inevitably collides with the culture at large. My implication was that fundamentalism's (and by relation evangelicalism's) reputation as being anti-everything (anti-evolution, anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-abortion, anti-science, anti-intellectual, etc.) has largely to do with the abrasive nature of inerrancy.

But, as the militaristic hymns and warlike Biblical imagery suggests, some degree of friction with the non-Christian world seems intrinsic to my faith. A truism of sociological theories of community notes that, as touchy-feely-inclusive as a word like community may seem, communities exist thanks not only to their inclusivity but also of their exclusivity. A community that accepted everyone equally would cease to be a community except in the most vapid-metaphorical sense. Communities qualify as communities insofar as they are not other communities (or unattached individuals). Distinctiveness is vital to any community.

Onward Christian Soldiers Bible-believing calls not only for distinctiveness but for resistance, opposition, even fierce struggle. But, to be honest, so too do Christian movements I have less qualms about identifying with--movements of social justice and liberation. Abolitionists, for instance, preached a not-just-different-but-better message: slavery is wrong. It should be resisted, abolished. Ditto the Christian socialist movements that decried economic exploitation or fought against the idea that anyone deserves to die for lack of money to buy food or medicine (a view that I hope catches fire again).

Or take the mid-1900s civil rights movements, whose songs shared the rousing confrontationalism of "Faith is the Victory": "We Shall Not Be Moved" or "We Shall Overcome" are just as defiant, just as abrasive a call to arms, as any song of my childhood.

"For our struggle is not against enemies of flesh and blood," writes the author of Ephesians, "but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness..."

I would think it a poor faith indeed that sees nothing dark in this world, nothing worth fighting against. Whether racism, sexism, classism, xenophobia, apathy, selfishness, greed, and the like qualify as "cosmic powers" I am not sure, but such tendencies certainly seem adept at ensconcing themselves within human authority structures. And to that extent I hope my faith rouses me to battle with them in society, in my church, and in myself.

If, then, confrontation--forward resistance to aspects of culture--is not necessarily a flaw, where do I think the "Bible-believing" trend goes wrong?

More tomorrow,

JF-- Oh, yes: my church resolved the dispute over the closing hymn by choosing "Forward Through the Ages"--a hymn that puts different lyrics to Arthur Sullivan's "Onward, Christian Soldiers" tune. Just a reminder that the full armor of God includes shodding your feet in the gospel of peace.