Throwing out the Bible ...

Don’t get me wrong. I love people that go to church.

But I’m finding some of the most spiritually astute people I know outside its walls.

Take J, for example. J was brought up in the Episcopal church in the southern United States. For years, J's mother was actively involved in diocesan leadership and very active in the church as a lay minister. Unfortunately, church politics and back-stabbing within the church community took its toll … not on her, but on J who left the church years ago and went through life in a state of spiritual semi-ambivalence. J is done with church, but still looking for God. J writes,

“I have been turned off of the church. I hate that it's come to that. I still believe there is an almighty power somewhere around us and hope one day I will be able to give testimony to it.”

J is one of a fast-growing number of people who've been forced to make the ironic decision to walk away from the church in order to cling to a sense of the divine. J is done forever with “Christen-dumb”. But J isn't done with God.

And I don’t think God is done with J.

In fact, I think God is just getting started. As we round off the first decade of the 21st century, it's becoming apparent that God is about to revolutionize the church within by using the people without.

And this won't be the first time.

Take this story this first-century story, for example:

While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, "Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?" (Acts 10.44-47)

The seismic spiritual shift created by this event is easily overlooked, because we live on the finished side of change. But if you read closely, the signals are still there: the Jewish believers in Jesus were astounded that God was unmistakably present and visible in the lives of people who weren't Jews.

Which should have been impossible.

How could the Spirit of God be working in people who lived outside the covenant of Abraham and the law of Moses?

Today's typical warmed-over 20th century evangelical mindset would have attributed this Gentile tongues experience to demonic spirits mimicking the work of the Holy Spirit. If people don't line up theologically, then obviously God's Spirit cannot be working in their lives. If evangelicals had been heading up the apostolic church, they couldn't have got their heads out of their religious rear ends long enough to recognize that a revolution was taking place before their eyes.

The apostles, however, opened their hearts and minds to the seemingly impossible. God had poured out his favor on the unfavorable: uncircumcised, unclean, unbiblical unbelievers. Peter baptized the Gentiles -- the ultimate signal of inclusion -- and acknowledged them as more than equals in the fullness of God's grace.

And that was just for starters. Over the next few weeks, a backlash arose in the church: "Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved" became the rallying cry of the "true believers" (Acts 15.1,5). Scripturally speaking, they had a point. There is no abrogation of circumcision in the Hebrew Bible.

But Peter, and Paul and Barnabas, refused to deny the obvious. The Spirit of God was clearly present and visible in the lives of those who did not accept the biblical injunction to be circumcised.

So the Apostles tossed out the Bible. Peter went first:

And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us. Now therefore why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will. (Acts 15.8-11)

Paul and Barnabas echoed Peter's words. Then, James put it out there:

I have reached the decision that we should not trouble those Gentiles who are turning to God, but we should write to them to abstain only from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from blood. (Acts 15.19,20)

The language and conditions might sound strange to our ears, but the message couldn't be clearer: "We're throwing out the Bible. All 613 commandments - gone. The endless, extensive interpretations of those commandments - gone. We're done with all the rules and regulations. We're starting over. We're saved by the grace of Jesus. End of story."

All this leaves me wondering about the political and theological agendas the church has sponsored for the past 25 years. Equating those agendas with godliness. Demonizing those who didn't sponsor those agendas. We're in the 21st century, but it seems like we're right back where we started: a legalistic, conditional, exclusionist religion.

At least one scholar agrees. At a recent conference of journalists organized by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Robert Putnam outlined the conclusions of his upcoming book, American Grace. To the dismay of hard-core secularists, Putnam argues that religious people are three to four times more likely to be involved in their community. They are more apt than nonreligious Americans to work on community projects, belong to voluntary associations, attend public meetings, vote in local elections, attend protest demonstrations and political rallies, and donate time and money to causes -- including secular ones. The data also reveals that religious people are "nicer": they carry packages for people, don't mind folks cutting ahead in line and give money to panhandlers.

But there's a downside. According to Putnam, young Americans are "vastly more secular" than their older counterparts. "That is a stunning development," Putnam asserts. "The youth are the future. Some of them are going to get religious over time, but most of them are not."

Religion -- particularly evangelicalism -- bounced back in the 1970's and the 1980's, but began to drop off again in the 1990's after the political ascendance of the religious right, Putnam notes.

"That so-called politicization of religion triggered great hostility toward religion," leading to a "dramatic growth in secularism and none's" (sociologists' term for people who claim no religious affiliation).

As many as a quarter of young people would be in church -- many say they still believe in God -- but they're turned off by how political American religion has become.

Which brings me back to J. Which brings us back to the first century. Which brings us back to the radical belief that "we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus" (Acts 15.11). Why, a decade into the 21st century, is the church still "troubling the Gentiles" with political and theological agendas? When, in the true Spirit of the apostolic church, will we be ready to throw out the Bible and recognize that the uncircumcised, unclean, unbiblical unbelievers have been welcomed into the fullness of God's grace?

We know who they are. They know we know. God knows we know.

I don't know what's next. But I'm watching J. To quote Rick McKinley, I'm looking for Jesus in the margins and finding God in the places we ignore.

I'm preaching this essay on Sunday, May 17, at Central Baptist Church. (I'll let you know if I'm invited back to preach on the 24th.)