of the house to go to church. The rest of the minister’s week was taken up with preparing engaging Bible studies and planning an inspiring sermon.
For Golden Rule Christians, worship was the centerpiece of church life. Each Sunday, the order of the service was pretty much the same. The tone was quiet reverence and those who were up front moved with dignity, formality, and orchestrated precision. The worshiping body was usually fairly homogeneous with regard to class, race, and ethnicity.
The Golden Rule Church provided a social life as well as a religious life for its members. Classes, recreational sports leagues, and fellowship events filled the church calendar. Each week, a small army of volunteers kept those programs running by serving meals, teaching classes, leading youth groups and repairing the church building.
I grew up in the Golden Rule Church. My parents counted on the congregation where they were members to socialize me into middle-class American culture and to teach me to value moral character, good citizenship and polite behavior. In the Golden Rule Church, Bible verses and simplistic aphorisms were used to convey in short, pithy bits of wisdom the essence of the Christian life. “Be ye kind one to another” (Ephesians 4:32) was emblazoned across the wall of my Sunday School classroom, probably in hopes that it would inspire discipline. Almost every week, I heard the person giving the Call to Offering in worship remind us, “God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7). When a disheveled man smelling of alcohol showed up on the front steps of the church asking for a handout, adults often would cluck their tongues and invoke the quote they thought came from the Bible: “God helps those who help themselves.”
The Golden Rule Church made sense of the world by ignoring much of its complexity, viewing reality from a frame of reference that relied on dualistic categories of right and wrong, good and bad, insiders and outsiders. Although the insiders might help the outsiders with good works, it was important to maintain the social boundary between the two groups. Insiders were the ones who gave money and received services provided by the church when they were sick and when their families went through passages such as births, coming of age, marriage, and death. Outsiders were the object of the church’s charity.
We live in a time when religion in general and Golden Rule Christianity in particular have lost credibility with the public. People today do not look for an organization to join. They do not seek to add church activities into a schedule that is already too full. They do not want more things to do. They do not find much in positive thinking, polite behavior, simplistic aphorisms, or dualistic thinking that allows them to navigate the complexity of a global culture. They are not interested in acquiring a set of beliefs that assure them a place in heaven. They do not see the church as the authority with a monopoly on the truth. They do not find meaning in orchestrated formality. They do not have to come to church in order to connect with friends.
Adherence to religion in the United States is declining. Thirty years ago, thirty-eight percent of North Americans attended at least one religious service each week; today only twenty-five percent do.8 In 1970, thirty percent of the population worshiped occasionally; today only sixteen percent attends church or synagogue every so often.9 Although the decline of the church can be attributed, in part, to a decrease in the birthrate and population shifts from farm to city and from north to south, many of those who are no longer affiliated with a church say they left because Golden Rule Christianity became irrelevant.10
Responding to Cultural Shifts
How does the Golden Rule Church respond to such critique? Some congregations continue to carry on as if they are still living in the 1950s. They do not believe it is the task of the church to be relevant in changing times. They see the church as a refuge, a stable tradition amid the shifting sands of the world outside its doors. They stick to the old prayer book, the old hymnal, and the old rituals that provided comfort and constancy in the past, claiming the church must stand firm in the eternal truths it proclaims rather than allowing ephemeral cultural trends to shape its ministry.
Some try to take shelter from the changes taking place on the cultural landscape. They welcome only those visitors who look like them, who fit into the unspoken norms of church life, and who have the potential to replace the members they are losing. They try to protect themselves from the dangers of pluralism, diversity, and uncertainty. They build large worship centers that create an isolated environment. They listen only to Christian music, Christian radio, and Christian television. Some ultra-large congregations actually resemble theme parks where people can find one homogeneous brand of education, entertainment, literature, and social life, all without leaving the compound.
Some Golden Rule congregations actively work to reverse the changes that have occurred in the culture. They feel disenfranchised and angry about the church losing the power, prestige, and privilege by which it benefited in years gone by. Hoping to return to the way things used to be, they seek to reclaim the authority of the clergy, the certainty of scripture, and the social order of the past in which various segments of society accepted their assigned roles and stayed in their places.
Some admit they do not know how to respond in any meaningful way to the changes taking place in the culture around them. They do not understand why the creativity and joy that used to permeate the church’s life and work walked out the door. They do not know why their children and grandchildren choose to spend Sunday mornings sleeping in, reading the morning newspaper, drinking coffee, going to the lake or the ski slope, attending soccer games, shopping, or doing projects around the home instead of choosing to come to worship. So, they try harder, doing the same things they have always done with the wishful hope they will achieve different results.
Some try to make superficial changes in order to attract new members. They trade their pews for chairs, add espresso bars and information booths, and offer mid-week classes that range from aerobics to parenting skills to money management.
They install screens and projectors in their worship space, add drums and bass guitars to the keyboard that accompanies congregational singing, do away with worship bulletins in favor of PowerPoint slides more familiar to “seekers,” and proclaim an upbeat message packaged in the familiar and comfortable style of the pop-culture. They focus on offering an excellent religious product for the clientele that comes through the doors of the church.
Some Golden Rule congregations can see that the church needs to change but they do not have the will to lead the congregation to do the hard work necessary to adapt to the world of the 21st Century. Recognizing that doing nothing will result in the congregation’s demise, they focus on making sure there is enough money in the bank to keep the church’s doors open just long enough to host the funerals for its existing members. They do not have the energy to take another path.
Yet some congregations can see that Golden Rule Christianity has become obsolete. They relinquish it, even without knowing what will take its place by admitting that its view of reality, its values, and its strategy for living are no longer relevant in today’s world. It takes great courage to take such a step. At first, some churches feel disoriented as they realized that the familiar ground where they once stood has crumbled away. Some wonder if they will ever have a new place to stand. Others feel exhilarated by new learning; but over time, they too may experience anxiety, dismay, and even panic as they continue to navigate uncharted waters. Yet transforming congregations resist the temptation to clutch more tightly to what has been, to try harder, to exert more control or, conversely, to give up, to lose hope. Instead, they surrender themselves over and over to a future they cannot see; they step out into a unknown future, trusting the Sacred Spirit to show them the way.
They become students of the Christian faith, going back to its source: rediscovering who Jesus was, the wisdom he taught, and the way of life he called people to live. They become students of the changing landscape of the 21st Century: learning how technology has altered the perception of time, space, and authority. They become students of their communities: listening to the needs of their neighbors. They acknowledge that new realities create new questions
