Bumper Sticker Blues

I was driving to work this morning, and approached one of those cars that has bumper stickers all over it, making it look like a cheap NASCAR immitation. Folks who turn their cars into one big billboard come from all across the spectrum. But this one was a bit unusual. See, this car had religious bumper stickers all over it. Now this, in and of itself, is not terribly unusual. What was unusual about this particular car was that it had bumper stickers representing a variety of religions on it simultaneously. There were a couple of general pagan stickers, a couple of specifically Wiccan stickers, and a Buddhist sticker. But in addition, there was also a Christian fish sticker, and a sticker showing the ECUSA shield. As I passed the car, I also noticed that there was a necklace with a cross on it hanging from the rear-view mirror.

If anyone needs to know the state of things within ECUSA, this car will tell them all they need to know. While conservatives within and outside ECUSA lament the state of the denomination and predict mass fallout and defection over what has been happening, the sad truth is that they are in the minority. Most folks within ECUSA are much closer to the bumper sticker sentiments displayed on this car; all religions are equally valid, religion is at its best when we tolerate anything and everything as equally legitimate, there really isn't much difference between the religions of the world, the hardened and rigid dogmas of Christianity in particular need to go in order to make way for a supposedly more loving and accepting religion, etc.

Conservatives will likely shake their heads in disbelief at the notion of someone embracing both the cross and the pagan star at the same time as equally valid and complementary religious symbols. But folks, it ain't that hard to get there. All you have to do is make everything you don't like optional by appointing yourself as the final arbiter of what's true. And for every proud syncretist who does this, there are evangelicals who do it too. Scripture has more to say about loving and caring for the poor than it does about becoming born-again. Both are true; both are essential. But does our preaching reflect this? Do our lives reflect this? Only rarely. While all-out syncretism has been, is, and always will be a problem that the church must fight against, the much more subtle (and therefore, sinister) syncretism of picking and choosing which Christian doctrines and instructions to emphasize is not only common today, but accepted with little fanfare.

We can gasp and shake our heads at the bumper sticker syncretism of ECUSA all we want. The fact is that we aren't nearly as better than them as we think, and the full-orbed NT Christianity of radical personal conversion, unity in the Body, and tangible Biblical concern for the less fortunate all grounded in the Person of Christ is as rare a combination in our churches today as it was in the first century. We need to face the hard truth that one reason why syncretism is a real problem even within evangelical churches is because we have normalized a more subtle form of it in spades. When we do this, taking such syncretism to the level of formal incorporation of pagan ideas, symbols, practices, and beliefs is not a particularly big step. That's part of why it's such a problem; we (the people of the Book) are greasing the skids without even being aware of it. What's worse, we don't seem particularly worried about how God feels about the adulteration of His bride at our hands. In truth, there is very little that should concern us more.