Inspired by “Wrestling with Christianity, Pt. IV,” Featured at SENSESPACE
A tense dialectic community needs.
Christianity can emphasize “going out” and “spreading the Gospel,” and for most Americans that means building a church-building in a community and attending it weekly. When Paul was writing, “missions” would have been much more aligned with “pilgrimage” and “journey,” and we should see Paul as speaking to a group of people almost destined to be treated like aliens. If he was speaking to less mobile groups, they too were certainly aliens, likely believing in a strange God under Caesar. Paul warned Christians that the world would hate them, either because they were like immigrants entering hostile territories, or because they believed notions shared by few others. The world would no doubt reject them, as many societies even today struggle to treat immigrants and refugees well. When Paul wrote to Christians, it is not likely they resembled a middle-class family who was relatively fixed in their location.
The Early Church was often a traveling and moving people, and to be a Christian was almost necessarily to be engaged in “missions.” Even if we lived in Corinth, we easily lived more like undercover agents, which means early Christians were metaphorically akin to travelers, immigrants, refugees, spies — the line between “Churchgoer” and “Pilgrim” was much thinner. What about today? Well, the American Christian is more likely to be metaphorically associated with “faithful members of the community,” devoted, grounded — language that all suggests “roots.” This isn’t necessarily bad, but it also suggests risks that the Early Church may not have had to worry about. Originally, to commit to Christianity was to profoundly change the entire architecture of our lives. To be a member of the Church was to be a member of an alienation, a radical transformation. Church was Pilgrimage. We were surrounded by danger. We had to be sharp.
Where there is a harder split between “Pilgrimage” and “Church,” Christians can find themselves prone to pathology and neurosis. Churches support missionaries, but there seems to be a difference between “mission” and “pilgrimage” (not that “missions” are necessarily bad). Missionaries spread the message of “a home base” that they would return to and leave with a set objective, while Pilgrims have much less idea where they will return to or where will go. A Pilgrimage is a journey that unfolds not just linearly but also dynamically, and there might not be a way home, precisely because the quality of home has changed. Home can be surrendered in hopes of finding home in a new quality of being. Pilgrimages involve an inner change, and a question we must ask is if Church can provide that “inner change” so well in a world where a church-building is more like “a home base” than a “mystical body unified by a Holy Spirit?” There can be advantages and benefits with a base, yes, but what are the risks?
I
When Paul speaks of “where two or more are gathered,” we might envision that as over a church-lunch, but perhaps a better image is where two or three “secret agents” happen to find one another in a confusing and lonely world. Can we imagine the joy? The experience between those whose meeting was not guaranteed? Who perhaps even manage to meet again on the Sabbath when there was no guarantee they would still be alive for another week? In this circumstance, the action of “going to Church” and “being a Pilgrim” were profoundly connected and charged one another in profound ways. I think of this with “The Liminal Web” emerging online today, where people who have been on their own journeys and experienced rejection and isolation suddenly find people like them, creating a certain “spiritual quality” that some have called Dialogos and Circling. I do wonder if Church can have that “special charge” where “Church and Pilgrimage” are separate versus “Church as Pilgrimage,” and I fear that the answer is often “no.”
Church might become pathological without a deep connection with Pilgrimage, as Pilgrimage can become a more individual “journeying off” that never finds roots again and/or that mutates into a “new barbarism” which travels the world collecting new experiences but never embedding anywhere (a risk Hume speaks on). Many American Christians can speak to the feeling of being questioned and basically interrogated about going to Church, making it almost feel like a “surveillance state,” and I wonder if Church tends in this direction where it becomes “a community center” versus “a communal journey.” I’m not saying “centers” are bad, but there seems to be a dialectic between Church and Pilgrimage that, once lost, can lead to trouble.
If Christians don’t attend a church-building and miss “their weekly checkup,” their faith can be questioned, and overall the relationship of Christians to Church can prove anxious. Christians can deal with this tension by shutting down their minds, their critiques, etc., and “just going,” no questions asked. It’s a kind of ritual, and perhaps it’s a ritual with more good than harm, but I fear it might turn pathological. It’s sometimes as if a Church lacking Pilgrimage knows it is supposed to face more danger and uncertainty, and so will stress how “the world is going astray,” how leaders are corrupt, how sin is rampant, etc. It often feels like the Apocalypse is just around the corner (thank God), which is already stitched into the subconsciousness through notions of the Second Coming, and even if there is truth to this, something pathological can develop. The pilgrimage of the Church then is toward the Apocalypse (or so it can seem), and so stressing that “fallenness” and “brokenness” of the world can be heavily emphasized. I fear this can make the Church very prone to political manipulation, “strong men” thinking, and militarism, and furthermore there can become a need for the Church to stress its oppression and pain to justify itself as “going on a Pilgrimage.” Many Conservatives critique “victim culture” today, but I do wonder if Protestantism planted those seeds — as seemed needed for the American Church to do to “feel like it was an undercover agent,” just like historically Christians often found themselves.
Where the Church loses Pilgrimage, it can still try to gain the benefits of a Pilgrimage, but it seems to do so by depicting itself as oppressed and marginalized, which might prove unhealthy and lead to political “capture.” Furthermore, there is then little space for the Church to focus on beauty, truth, and goodness, because it can seem wrong to enjoy life and see wonder in it if we are supposed to be “in the world but not of it” like Paul says. But this kind of thinking makes a lot more sense when we really are Pilgrimages or venturing into worlds where we are immigrants and “undercover agents.” Under those circumstances, the condition and structure of Church itself made it clearer what Paul meant, for Christians were indeed hated and rejected, and so they could focus on beauty, truth, and goodness without feeling like they were suggesting Paul wrong in their daily existence. But today, where those macro-conditions aren’t there, we have to create for ourselves the conditions of oppression and marginalization in order to feel like we are being true to Paul. Wouldn’t we be bad Christians if we didn’t?
In America, where life can be comfortable, we can feel like we suggest, in our lives, that Paul was wrong. I mean, the world doesn’t hate us, does it? And what should we do with that? Well, we either engage in missions work to put ourselves in more difficult conditions (which doesn’t necessarily address the “Church and Pilgrimage” split, please note), or we interpret our current situation as evidence that we are actually in those conditions (and then those who don’t agree with our interpretation aren’t “real believers”). And so in this way the Church can slip into the business of “reality management,” which means it risks becoming oppressive. Instead of helping us experience beauty, truth, and goodness, the Church can filter reality in a manner to help us feel like Paul was right. We don’t want him to be wrong; again, after all, if we lived in a way that proved Paul wrong (and Jesus for that matter, for he also taught that we would be oppressed), how can we call ourselves Christians? And if Paul and Jesus were wrong about that, what else might they be wrong about?
To avoid this anxiety, there can be an emphasis in Churches to stress that Christians are “hated,” and yet since Christians in the West are rather powerful, this means an emphasis must be placed on evidence of oppression, which often is the State and Government, seeing as they must represent all people and thus will inevitably do authoritative things which Christians don’t like (it’s only probable in a Pluralistic society, which itself can be framed as a threat). And so Christians can end up politically involved, and the “pilgrimage” of the Christian becomes “a journey to power” to save the world from losing Christianity. Christians are thus then on a journey whenever they go to work (around people who hate them), whenever they attend school (around the secularists), and in their efforts to gain power — a dangerous recipe, but this is the direction the Church might wander into once it loses Pilgrimage. “Church and Pilgrimage” then turns into “Church and Mission,” and that Mission is then missionary and political. Pathology can follow.
To be true to Christ and Paul where “Church and Pilgrimage” are separated, Christians find themselves feeling like they need to be in “a world that hates them,” which means they need to see and interpret the world as hating them. The Christian is then (imagined as) surrounded by rejection as they go to work, attend university, debate in politics, etc., and this means the Christian is mentally, emotionally, and intellectually afraid and positioned to feel like an outcast and victim. Regular Western life is hence made holy by surrounding the Christian in their regular Western life with rejection, and that no doubt risks making Christians pathological in their relationships. Furthermore, the Christian is positioned to see themselves as loving while others are hateful, possibly giving the Christian in his or her eyes moral authority and even authority in general over others. And since those others are hateful, they are in need of correction. And as Christ loves us at any cost, we must be “like Christ” and help correct others at any cost…
II
“Did you go to Church today?” is a question Christians often ask one another, but what if instead they asked, “Where did you journey and what did you discover this week?” (the language of Pilgrimage). What if church-buildings housed this kind of inquiry (like the internet currently is for many of the Liminal Web) versus view it as a threat? Instead of the Church seeming like surveillance that defined itself as oppressed to avoid betraying Paul and Christ, the Church could then be a place to marvel at and honor the work which the Holy Spirit has been doing. And for the Early Church, there could also be celebration we were still alive (a celebration which suggests foreigners in a foreign land — pilgrims), which we today might emulate in asking, “Were you alive this week, and are you alive today?”
If God chose to enter history at a time where the Early Church would be like it was, then perhaps there is a reason for that — perhaps it’s because the Church is always supposed to be “Church as Pilgrimage” versus “Church and Missions” (the split changes everything) (a religion worshiping a cross and facing fear makes a lot more sense if it is “a religion of aliens”). If God came to history at x point versus y point, it might be because x point is full of symbolic and metaphoric resources which will help the Revelation “unfold” through history in a particular and optimal way — hard to say, but there’s reason for the Christian to believe that “looking back” is needed for grasping the “unfolding Now.”
Pilgrimage is what makes us alien, and we cannot be saved or human if we are not alien. “Church as pilgrimage” is what makes us alien and “new creation,” and Church is to be a place marveling at this and amazed by the change resulting from people going into shadows and difficult places. It is a place of marveling and fellowship not “surveillance check-up” that makes us feel oppressed so that we can feel like we are “living like Christ” in Christ being the oppressed. “The Church as Pilgrimage” is perhaps the only Church that isn’t pathological, but engaging in this kind of Church today might seem crazy. Indeed, Christ seemed crazy.
Where we don’t feel alienated and “off” because we are on our own individual and spiritual journey, we are still going to need to find a place that “scratches the itch” that we know we are supposed to be “odd” and “oppressed” following Christ, and so we will likely stress political oppression or seek something more radical like Pentecostalism (not to say Pentecostalism is bad, please note). We simply want to be sure that we are the least so that we are first, that we are rejected so that we are like Christ, and thus we are forced to depict ourselves as oppressed by the society or become strange to assure that we “in the right.” We might also try to describe our “career” or “climbing the corporate latter” as a pilgrimage, which might align with the “faithful presence” of James Hunter, and though this could be the case, it also will likely only prove fruitful to the degree it is accompanied by an inner pilgrimage as well.
These seem to be the only options available to us if we do not engage in an inner spiritual journey through questing and searching, which suggests that many philosopher types who feel alienated from the Church are indeed in the right. But in this circumstance, the Church itself cannot be “Church as Pilgrimage” unless everyone is such, and so the Christian Pilgrimage are alone. They can feel like there is something wrong with them, but the issue is they are participating in “Church as Pilgrimage” in a world that mostly knows and recognizes “Church and Pilgrimage,” ergo “Church and Missions.” This “inner work” is needed today where oppression isn’t in the structure of Church itself, as it was for the Early Church, or else we will likely fall into pathologies. Unfortunately, worsening the problem, where we believe that we aren’t “Saved by works,” the idea of taking a pilgrimage can be seen as an act of “trying to do a good work” and hence discouraged, a mistake which becomes possible where “Church/Pilgrimage” becomes “Church and Pilgrimage.” If this occurs, then there is no pilgrimage, just Church which might lose its power to change us internally. Proust tells us that today we must kindle new eyes, but a Church without Pilgrimage (which today might require philosophy, which can be lost where Revelation/Reason is divided into “Revelation and Reason” and then Reason seen as fallen) cannot readily be accomplished. We are stuck in a Church that then must still somehow see itself as oppressed, and so it starts creating “others” who oppress it. Pathology hence sets in.
III
The fate of the Church also seems connected to our notion of Sabbath, and where the Sabbath is one day a week versus a continual reality, it seems difficult to think “Church/Pilgrimage” and instead only “Church and Pilgrimage,” which then easily falls back into “just Church.” Paul was adamant that the Sabbath was not to be observed in the traditional way, for that would suggest Jesus was not Lord and that we were still waiting for his arrival (as N.T. Wright argues in Scripture and the Authority of God); instead, the Sabbath was to be a continual reality Christians were to participate in, which better aligns with a Church/Pilgrimage model. Where Pilgrimage is removed from our conception of Christianity, notions like Sabbath also become harder to understand, as do notions like “baptism by water” versus “baptism by fire,” the connection between works and faith, the need of the Holy Spirit, and so on.
Another change that can make the Early Church harder to understand for us is the fact that Paul wrote when few people (if anyone) had grown up in or with a Church, which is to say that those who were Christian were those who had converted. The Church then was not so much a “community fixture” in which people were raised or that communities formed around, but something more like an “undercover mission” of people dedicated to a shared telos (Sophia). Today, when Christians talk about attending Church, it can almost feel like a regression (in some cases), for Church means for most “going back to Church,” and often it seems to not be up to speed with Christians who have grown up and perhaps engaged in profound Pilgrimages of their own. Paradoxically, converts to Christianity today might be better positioned to understand the Early Church and Paul’s context then those whom have grown up attending Church. This isn’t to say that “growing up with Church” is a bad thing or that it doesn’t come with extraordinary advantages, but it is to say that “growing up with Church” might make Paul harder to understand.
In Paul’s day, we could say most people started in a Birthplace, Converted, and were part of a Church, which today might optimally look like Home, Pilgrimage, and then Church (as a community of Pilgrims and “lived experience of meaning,” as Ken Lowry put it). Now, Church is also a building and logistical space, not just “a shared spirit,” and so a question that hangs is if a church-building can exist with Church-Spirit or if the two must necessarily prove antagonistic. This is a big question, but we won’t even think to ask it (or might think its heresy to ask it) if we don’t understand the historical basis for this distinction based on Paul. It should also be noted that the lack of teachings by Paul on how people should be raised in a Church (beyond generality), the lack of teaching on how we might help people traumatized by the Church, and things like that, all suggest that the Early Church was more of a Spirit than a fixture. In a church-building, we as Christians present ourselves with new challenges and risks, but this means we also have new opportunities.
Church-as-a-place-we-grew-up-in and Church-as-Spirit (or even Church-as-Sophia, the bride of Christ, “the continual creative act” found in loving wisdom) can now exist in a tension, and Christians might somehow figure out how to live with both. If so, we might find ourselves with a form of Christianity that is “the best of all possible” (in a Hegelian sense), but that is only because there is a risk of failure and collapse. A Church is needed that is open like it was in Paul’s day but not fluffy, that could theologically reason according to new situations like Paul (who was responding to letters, please note, a conversation) versus laying down doctrine. I think the Pentecostal Church attempted this but has unfortunately not always been intellectually rigorous enough to avoid being controlled and manipulated by strongmen like Trump. It needs to understand better the methodologies of Paul, which require philosophy and rigor. The theological method of Paul is the methodology of a Pilgrim which we have tried to use to establish and run neighbors without reason, only Revelation, when Revelation does not speak directly on many of these things. And yet without Reason, we have no way to think the unexpected. The world becomes full of threats. We should retreat and hunker down in our military-base…
IV
Paul wrote in a time of Pluralism and difference, and Western Christianity was generally able to leave behind the (now latent) methodologies of Paul for centuries once Constantine converted and Christianity gained great power. Christianity came to define “givens,” and so most people in a society came to be Christian thanks to “givens” (as discussed in Belonging Again by O.G. Rose), meaning the need for “active discernment” and thinking was far less; furthermore, the negative consequences of removing Reason for just Revelation were less (seeing as the need for Reason is most pronounced where difference emerges). Now though, under Pluralism, where “givens” have eroded (as argued in Belonging Again), the need to “return to Paul” is significant, as is the need to realize the need for Pilgrimage if the Christian is to be Christian. To handle difference, we need great inner resource, which Pilgrimage provides and that wasn’t so needed where “givens” were Christian. The sociological reality has shifted, and with that shift arises a need for Paul. There is risk in this, yes, for Paul is “open” and people could fall into heresy, but not taking on this risk sets us up to fall into trouble with Pluralism. We must journey. We must be Pilgrims back to Paul. Let us go and see.
All of this suggests we must venture and face an Unknown, but isn’t “love” an act of “knowing?” Don’t we love someone if we know them? Isn’t the Christian called to be loving? And so due to a conflation of “love” and “knowing,” the Christians can be moved away from Pilgrimage and “living with Uncertainty” as the act of love to an act of avoiding Mystery — Christianity is converted into its opposite. This is a dire conflation, in my view, for Christianity can be pathological where “love” is “knowing” and thus cannot “love the Unknown.” A Pilgrimage requires a relation to an Unknown, or else it is just a trip. Before the world was mapped, many journeys across the ocean simply were Pilgrimages, but now with the ease of travel and presence of pre-knowledge, this is not so given. A journey might be a Pilgrimage, but it also might not be. We cannot so readily find an Unknown “out there”; now, it is much more “in us,” and so Pilgrimages which Christians need are likely to be psychological, philosophical, intellectual, and the like. And these will be hard, but if we don’t face that difficulty, we will still need difficulty to feel like we are listening to Paul and Jesus, and so we will likely search for some threat or enemy. And so Christianity can fall back into pathology.
“Love” and “know” are not similes: when we “know” someone sexually, we know them in light of a Mystery unveiled in consummation. All knowing must be of a Mystery, but we do not think of “love” this way, and so the capacity to think of Christianity as a Pilgrimage is far less. Love becomes an act of “knowing what we know” (poisonous certainty), and to “act in love” is to act to “defend what we know.” And so Christianity can become about “defending” the Gospel, and so Christians can ask one another militarily, “Did you attend Church?” to assure that everyone is defending the Gospel on their end (and front). We do not readily ask one another, “How did you see Resurrection this week?” “How are all things new?” But how different might Christianity be if that is what we asked one another, which speaks to how the Christian is to live a life of constant Sabbath, a constant “inhabiting of new time?” How then might all things be new?
As we discussed, “mission” is a military metaphor which has replaced “Pilgrimage,” and so Christians can metaphorically be soldiers fighting an enemy versus learning to see beyond influences of death. In Christ, our call has much to do with seeing, and so our challenge is a Pilgrimage, for a Pilgrimage is a journey of gaining new eyes. Where Church is not in the business of training new eyes, Church will run a risk of failing to engage in the “creative act” Christ would have of us, but to not so fail the Church must prove able to say to its people, “You cannot be here if you do not leave.” What does this mean? Is this not absurd? It is nonrational. It is necessary.
So, what should Church be? Much, but I think here about how the disciples ran to the tomb when they were told it was empty. They ran; they couldn’t help themselves. They flew out into the world to see. A Pilgrimage is an effort to go see, while a journey is an effort to go to, and the news that the tomb was empty began a Pilgrimage that the disciples raced out on — they couldn’t help themselves. In tears. In awe. In hope. To deal with God is to deal with mixtures, but the point is that they headed out at once. And so I think of how the Bible ends, with God telling us that “all things are new” — do we dash out then to see? To see how all things are new? To see how the tree we’ve seen many times is different in texture and unfolding? Can we not help ourselves but go? This is how I think we are to leave Church — Pilgrims. “Always already” unable to help ourselves in our racing out to see.
.
.
.
For more, please visit O.G. Rose.com. Also, please subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Instagram and Facebook.
