Thoughts on Rodney Clapp...

Well the last little while there have been many things going on in mind. I am not sure if that is always a good thing. I am in a time of questioning many things in life. Particularly the next step in life. This is mostly done by what I read. One of the books I just finished is A Peculiar People by Rodney Clapp. As I was wondering about the book I was struck by the sense that this book is 10 years old, but spoke so deeply and profoundly to this journey I find myself on in a post-modern age.

The idea that Clapp often works on is how the Church ceased being the Church when Constantine made Christianity the state religion. This thought seems so prevalent and truthful to me and our age. I often cringe at how the church in America and to a lesser extend in Canada feels they are the morality police. I find that simply makes the church more irrelevant(sorry i can't think of a more precise and less trite term). The way Clapp describes why some believers feel the need to be morality police or in a post-Constantine age becoming more distant from speaking anything pertiant or valuable to the world. I find this more true in very 'Right' sectors in the states. I find this solution not a real solution. I believe that the world has truth in it, and by the church attempting to distance them selves and showing others their faults of others is somehow not helpful in the journey of many people trying to understand what it means to live faithfully to God in a post-modern time.

I think Clapp gives me hope. He seems to make church important in this age that no longer sees anything the church/bible/ Christians believes as normative . I believe we are the first age that is confronting these issues since the early church. I believes these times are confusing and frustrating, especially for myself when we have certain sectors wanting to hold onto a Constantine worldview. When I read Clapp I just want to stand up and say 'Amen'! It lets me breath in the midst of my former evangelical worldview crumbling apart. Not that this crumbling is a bad thing, but i seem to have a hard time having conversation what i can do to restore hope or someways that all this crumbling isn't a bad thing.

Clapp and a lot of emergent dialogue give me hope. The only problem is that i find this dialogue to be almost exclusively American. Its funny i go to this 'emergent' type of church in Winnipeg. Ever week it seems that i run to that service every Sunday night at 7, since I need God and what this service holds that every week i need it to sustain my life. Maybe that is due to my ever evolving theology of communion. But I find that i enjoy dreaming of a post-Constantine church, because i sense that what the church gave away to Constantine, we can now take back.

Lastly, a bit of a radical thought( i think at least). In the last chapter, Clapp proposes that what the church/christian are meant to be at the most fundamental level is to be friends. I find this to be beautiful, true , and simple. I think we are all friends or have the capability of being a friend. I assume that many would reject the notion that being a friend can be the root of the christian life. But, somehow i believe it is true. I am sure some evangelical that would want to suffocate me with some misguided notions of pieity(sp?) as the root of authentic Christians.

I often find that we hear notions that people feel alone in this time. We are all looking for a group of people to share life with. This sounds simple/profound. But I feel that friendship encompasses what the world needs. I get the sense that is what Jesus did, he made friends giving them life in the process freeing them from the bondage of the purity system. Just a thought. If we struggle to be christian in these post-modern times maybe beginning at being a friend without an agenda to evangelize other would bring some beautiful that doesn't need more people pushing agendas.