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| Vanishing Act I just finished reading a couple of biographies of Henry James, including one, House of Wits, published this year, of the entire James family, including, of course, Henry’s older brother William, famous for his Will to Believe and The Varieties of Religious Experience. I was astonished at the intellectual renaissance of the last quarter of the 19th century, particularly in literature and education. The post-Civil War era in the United States was a remarkable period of creative fecundity as though the war itself had awakened new life in the country, like conifer seeds opening in the aftermath of a forest fire. (I wrote that sentence so I could use the word fecundity.) Harvard reinvented itself under the tutelage of its former chemistry professor, Charles Eliot — whom William James found incredibly boring as a teacher. Women were increasingly shedding Victorian ideals as they pertained to the mothering and wifely ideal, so much so that it was acknowledged as a “movement” in its own right and not at all appreciated by the Victorian men of the era, including Henry James. A number of women’s colleges sprang up, including Wellesley, Bryn Mawr and Vassar, as well as the Radcliffe annex at Harvard. So the late 1800s were a time of great cultural upheaval in the United States as well as in Europe. I find it quite compelling to think about the differences and similarities between that time and now. Clearly, people are uncomfortable when the culture is going through a seismic shift as it was then, and as it is now — a truth again reaffirmed as the Lambeth Conference, a once-in-10-years event for the worldwide Anglican community, draws to a close as I write. We find it particularly painful when we believe the world with which we’re familiar, and to which we’ve formed a strong attachment, is vanishing — unlikely to ever reappear. Often, we believe that the world that emerges from the clouds of change is considerably less desirable than the world it replaced. I was cogitating about this because I had just read an article, or series of articles, on walletpop.com called “The top 25 things vanishing from America.” It’s an intriguing list of things already gone or rapidly disappearing. According to Walletpop the top 25 are: pit toilets, yellow pages, classified ads, movie rental stores, dial-up Internet access, phone landlines, Chesapeake Bay blue crabs, VCRs, ash trees, ham radio, the old swimming hole, answering machines, cameras that use film, incandescent bulbs, stand-alone bowling alleys, the milkman, handwritten letters, wild horses, personal checks, drive-in theaters, mumps and measles, honey bees, news magazines and TV news, analog TV and the family farm. Some of this is alarming, like the farm, wild horses, honey bees and blue crabs. Other items on the list we’ll miss in a nostalgic way, like the milkman, handwritten letters, the old swimming hole and outdoor toilets. I mean, shouldn’t everyone have the experience of sitting in a pine one- or two-holer reading the Sears Roebuck catalog in peace and quiet? Still other stuff — it’s like, good riddance. Who wants to deal with a VCR anyway and who wants to run out to rent a movie? Unfortunately, you gotta wish there were other things that would vanish from America that are not vanishing and that show no signs of vanishing any time soon. Like a political campaign season that lasts for 24 months, stretch pants, reality TV shows and gravity-defying sagging trousers, to name a few. Fortunately, the community church wasn’t on the list. But within the church, some things are on the way out and may never be seen again, like the 45-minute sermon, the two-hour service, Sunday night service, the Wednesday night prayer meeting, pipe organs, chancel choirs and tithing. Perhaps you can come up with other things that are vanishing in the church. Some customs seem to have transgener-ational staying power, like potluck suppers, announcements, pledge drives, secret Santas, monthly board meetings and pastoral prayers that ask the Lord to remember “Clara’s ruptured colon and touch it mightily.” I gotta bring this to a close. Even the apostle was concerned about that which wasn’t disappearing — and should; and that which was disappearing — and shouldn’t. So he laments the ongoing presence of impurity, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, slander and abusive language in the communal life of the church. Likewise he argues that Christlike virtues should not disappear, things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, humility, forgiveness and meekness. See Colossians 3 and Galatians 5. I assume you’re with me in being distressed at some of the stuff that happens in the church. It seems to be most visible when the church decides to hold a conference or council or synod or confab. The very first such conference recorded in Acts 15 was no different. Then, as now, the conferees were faced with a religious and cultural world that, as one writer in the New Testament records it, was turning “the world upside down.” We wonder, how can this stuff happen? The answer is that we need to know where to look. Jesus didn’t seem to be too worried about the church. The gates of hell wouldn’t prevail against it, he said. If he’s not worried, then worrying about the church is so much wasted energy. So if you think, like Bernard of Clairvaux, that justice is missing from the church, you’re not looking in the right places. Evangelism vanishing? Prayer vanishing? Spirituality vanishing? People vanishing? Charity? Faith? Perhaps — in some locations all of this is true. But elsewhere, in the worldwide expression of the ChristBody, all of this and more is present and growing. But the wine today is poured into our parched mouths from fresh wineskins. Unfortunately, many of us prefer old wineskins, even if the wine has gone bad. We don’t need to worry about the church pulling a vanishing act. The church is the church. It’s here to stay.
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