Maplewood, Minnesota is a quiet bedroom community on the eastern
edge of St. Paul. Its claim to fame is the world headquarters of
the 3M Corp.; otherwise, it’s so small most Minnesotans whiz right
past on I-94 headed to their cabins in Wisconsin for the
weekend.
But some 4,000 of them stop on Sunday to hear Rev. Gregory A.
Boyd of the Woodland Hills Church. It used to be 5,000, until he
started telling his flock to check their politics at the door.
Maplewood, Minnesota is a quiet bedroom community on the eastern edge of St. Paul. Its claim to fame is the world headquarters of the 3M Corp.; otherwise, it’s so small most Minnesotans whiz right past on I-94 headed to their cabins in Wisconsin for the weekend.
But some 4,000 of them stop on Sunday to hear Rev. Gregory A. Boyd of the Woodland Hills Church. It used to be 5,000, until he started telling his flock to check their politics at the door.
Before the 2004 election, Rev. Boyd delivered a series of sermons that stunned his evangelical members discussing the corrosive nature of politics on the soul. He told them to stop moralizing about sex, stop glorifying war, and perhaps most shockingly, to stop referring to the United States as a Christian nation. The example of Christ, he said, was that we are to serve under others, not over them.
“When the church wins the culture wars, it inevitably loses,” Rev. Boyd preached. “When it conquers the world, it becomes the world. When you put your trust in the sword, you lose the cross.”
Now you might think Rev. Boyd is a liberal, but that’s not how he sees himself. He opposes abortion, and thinks God frowns on homosexuality. And with degrees from Yale Divinity School and Princeton Theological Seminary, Rev. Boyd is no fly-by-night tent preacher.
But he has come to believe that Christian evangelicals have sold their souls for power – and he sees nothing Christ-like in that.
“America wasn’t founded as a theocracy,” he said, confounding many of his peers who have come to believe the opposite. “America was founded by people trying to escape theocracies. Never in history have we had a Christian theocracy where it wasn’t bloody and barbaric. That’s why our Constitution wisely put in a separation of church and state.
“I am sorry to tell you,” his sermon went on, “that America is not the light of the world and the hope of the world. The light of the world and the hope of the world is Jesus Christ.”
Lately, genuine Christianity – not simply as a get-out-the-vote mechanism – has been making a comeback, thanks to Rev. Boyd and others.
He is part of a movement known as the “emerging church,” which challenges on spiritual grounds the political idolatry of evangelical leaders. He has even written a book: “The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church.”
Previously, the heavy-lifting in the saving of Christianity from itself had been done by liberal church factions laboring anonymously in the shadows of the more zealous. In a world riven by competing Apocalyptic yearnings and uncompromising religious claims to co-opt secular authority, Rev. Boyd comes along not a moment too soon.
Skeptics and non-believers have long resented the implication that not to be a member of the “faith-based” community – and more specifically, not to be Christian – is to hold views that lack a moral and ethical foundation. The “emerging church” can play a critical role in building a bridge between two parts of society that have clashed for a generation or longer.
Many of Rev. Boyd’s members have their own reasons for skepticism though, and they are not shy about asking tough questions. Many have left because they found his answers unsatisfying. Recently, the New York Times reported, Rev. Boyd held a forum so his members could probe his views more closely.
“So why not us?” one woman asked. “If we contain the wisdom and grace and love and creativity of Jesus, why shouldn’t we be the ones involved in politics and setting laws?”
“I don’t think there’s a particular angle we have on society that others lack,” Rev. Boyd replied. “All good, decent people want good and order and justice. Just don’t slap the label ‘Christian’ on it.”
This nonconfrontational approach – acknowledging that there are “good and decent” people who, regardless of their religion, possess social goals as laudable as those of people of faith – opens the way for a dialog between the faithful and skeptics to find common ground. It may even, if Rev. Boyd is right, succeed in winning hearts and minds instead of alienating them – surely Christ’s goal in the first place.
