Hilton Head Island, SC – July 21, 2024
The Chapel Without Walls
Amos 5 :18-24; Matthew 23:13-15,18-19,21-24
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.” – Amos 5:21 (RSV)
That may be an intriguing sermon title, provided you aren’t familiar with traditional Christian theology. I say that because according to the theological giants down through the centuries, whether any of the people in the Bible or Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Barth, Tillich or anyone else, God doesn’t need anything. God is above need, beyond need, outside need. Of all the beings who have ever existed, God is the only one who is entirely self-contained. He needs nothing. He is “Immortal, invisible, God only wise.”
You ask, “Well, if that’s so, why did He create the universe?” That’s a reasonable question, but it’s a question for another sermon. This sermon asks the question, Does God need religion? If it is true that God needs nothing (which I believe and I hope you too believe), then by an automatic inference we may deduce that God must not need religion. For what it’s worth, I believe that is true.
Ah, but can God use religion? In the great scheme of things, can God utilize a human invention and institution, namely, religion, for His own purposes? The answer to that is clear and unambiguous. Yes. And No. Yes, God can use religion if it truly enhances the kingdom of God on earth, but No, if religion impedes God’s kingdom, or is inimical to God’s kingdom, or is antithetical to God’s kingdom, religion is the last thing God needs.
Let us all admit that down through the centuries religions have made terrible mistakes: the slaughter of the Canaanites which is told about in the Book of Joshua and elsewhere (if it really happened as we are told), the Crusades of Christians against Jews or Muslims in the 11th through 13th centuries, Christians fighting Christians, Muslims fighting Muslims, Hindus fighting Muslims, Hindus fighting Sikhs, etc., etc. etc., as the King of Siam was wont to say (according to Messrs. Rodgers and Hammerstein). Religion has also done wonderful things (establishing hospitals, schools, colleges, orphanages, feeding the hungry, helping the war-ravaged, and so on), but without question it has engaged in some thoroughly reprehensible activities. Anyone who denies that is ignorant of both the grand and the awful sweep of religious history.
Furthermore, there are numerous instances in our own time in which God might say of religion, “With friends like these, who needs enemies?” There have been far too many pedophile priests in Roman Catholicism, both here and in other countries. The Vatican continues to reprimand American nuns, whom it considers far too independent for their or the Church’s own good. Mainline Protestant denominations in this country and abroad have been torn apart by the issues of same-sex marriage and homosexual clergy. Most conservative denominations so far have managed to forbid both, although in my opinion that is a losing battle, but other denominations are seeking to discover a way whereby justice may be extended to those who feel excluded while at the same time attempting to bow to the sensitivities of more traditional members and clergy. The attitude of many conservative Christians and in other religions toward LGBTQs is inexcusable. It is all a terribly vexing conundrum. However, it is not religion itself which is the real issue. It is small groups of extremists on both sides within religions who create most of the controversies.
As much as these matters affect American religious institutions, they are absolutely tearing apart British religion. Rowan Williams was the highest official in the Church of England, and he was the titular heard of the worldwide Anglican Communion. In 2012 Dr. Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, announced his resignation. He valiantly sought to hold things together, but in the end he admitted he had neither the strength nor the stomach to fight the good fight any longer. He tried to get Anglicans to sign a covenant which attempted to find middle ground between conservatives and liberals, but few on either side accepted it. His resignation was a tragedy. His successor has had an equally unsuccessful time in trying to hold everything together. A similar spat has split the Episcopal Church in the USA, and the two Episcopal churches on Hilton Head Island. Does God need religion? I suspect at times like this God surely must wonder.
Richard Holloway was the Anglican Bishop of Edinburgh in Scotland. He wrote a book called Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt. In it he decried the moralistic certainties of what he described as “the congregations of the disciplined and the good,” who look down their righteous noses at those people who disagree with them on matters theological or ecclesiastical. He tried to establish the Anglican Church of Scotland as what he called “the church for people other churches won’t take in.” What a noble cause that is! But many Scottish Anglicans would have none of it, and now Bishop Holloway is also gone.
So is Jeffrey John. Father John, a close friend of Rowan Williams, was elected a bishop of the Church of England. However, the Archbishop of Canterbury felt obligated for the unity of the whole Church to rescind the election of his friend. Now Dr. John, an open homosexual, calls the Church of England “the last refuge of prejudice.”
For 800 years Oxford University has been a center of what we now call “religious studies.” Since it was Oxford, and since England has purportedly been a Christian nation for 15 centuries or so, that meant it was a center for Christian religious studies. Countless thousands of English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, and other clergy have received theological degrees from Oxford, going on honorably to serve numerous denominations and congregations all over the world. But the Oxford Faculty of Theology voted that they now must offer studies in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism as well as Christianity. Does God need religion? Lots of it, apparently.
The Church of England is what technically is known as “an established Church,” and receives some financial support from the government, although not very much. Because of its establishment status, its priests are more or less obligated to baptize, marry, and bury anyone within the parish bounds, even if they are not members of the parish. In 1950 two-thirds of English babies were baptized. Now less than a fifth are baptized. Fewer and fewer people are being married or buried in Anglican churches as well. Between 1971 and 2020, the population of England grew by 10%, but membership in the Church of England declined by 49%. Such membership statistics somewhat reflect trends in American mainline Protestantism.
However, many people are asking: Does church membership decline indicate a similar decline of belief in God? Polls suggest that the percentage of agnostics and atheists may be growing, but if so, it is a very slow growth. What is definitely occurring, though, and other polls verify it, is that more and more people consider themselves “spiritual” but not “religious.”
What’s the difference? Up until the turn of this century, the two terms were virtually synonymous. Those who were spiritual were religious, and those who were religious were spiritual. But as religion has gotten itself into more and more hot water, which it has always had a remarkable talent to do, many people are disavowing organized religion, while insisting they still believe in God as firmly as ever. And it is they who choose to call themselves “spiritual.”
I can understand believers rejecting their ties to religion. As someone who has spent his entire adult life as a religious functionary, I can attest that religion can appear to drive sane people crazy and teetotalers to drink. There are many reasons to illustrate why that is so, but suffice it to say that the primary problem with religion is people. If human beings could just be stricken from Christianity, what a delightful institution it would be. But as long as there has been a Christianity – or a Judaism or Islam or Hinduism or whatever else – people keep thrusting themselves into the process, and sooner or later inevitably they gum up the works.
Spirituality doesn’t have that problem. Spirituality involves only me. You have your spirituality, and I have mine, and you stay in your own little spiritual shell, and I shall stay in mine. We can and should be kind to others, and we can and should do good. But we deliberately do it by ourselves. Spirituality is, by its own design, not “groupy.” It abhors organizations and institutions and membership rolls. The only people who can drive spiritual people crazy or to drink are spiritual individuals, each by himself or herself.
A woman named Diana Butler Bass had an editorial in USA Today. She is pro-spiritual and anti-religious. That is illustrated by the lengthy title of a book she published, called Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Beginning of a New Spiritual Awakening. She talked about how religion is declining in nearly all developed nations. Further, she said, “this narrative obscures a more significant tension in Western societies: the increasing gap between spirituality and religion, and the failure of traditional religious institutions to learn from the divide.” The problem, says Ms. Butler Bass, is that people are rejecting the top-down leadership of the churches in favor of the bottom-up, grass roots empowerment of spirituality.
There is much that is valid in her criticism of institutional religion. However, she fails to take into account that the only kind of religion that can exist is institutional. Religion requires structure of some sort. It may be good or bad structure, useful or dysfunctional, but structure there must be. Ms. Butler Bass seems to favor an institution-less spirituality which maintains faith in God. Were that possible, perhaps it would be better than what religion has done to promote belief in God. Still, the weakness is clear; spirituality works only for me, but never for us. Religion exists only in community; spirituality exists only in individuals. I cannot influence others with my spirituality. To attempt to do so would be to turn my particular set of beliefs into an individualized institution. But who would pay attention to any single individual, supported by no other individuals? If it’s your word against mine, who wins? I do, that’s who.
One of the problems of religion is that far too often “winning” has been the name of its game. It wanted to make converts, and expand memberships, and engage in more collective forms of ministry. But it didn’t and it doesn’t always do that wisely or efficiently. The spiritual folks correctly point out that deficiency. On the other hand, if the grass roots function only at the grass roots level, all that results is far more grass, but no structures of any sort. If grass is all you desire, then spirituality is the way to go, but if you want influence and change and improvements, then you must accept some religious structures, with all the plusses and minuses that implies.
Religion drove the prophet Amos round the bend. For all I know, it may also have driven him to drink. He put these words into the mouth of God: “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.” As far as Amos was concerned, the overt religiosity of the people of Israel was an enormous burr under God’s saddle. “Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and your cereal offerings,” Amos said God said, “I will not accept them….Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen.” And then Amos said God said the most famous verse in the whole prophecy of Amos: “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (5:21-24).
Without question religion often seems like so much meaningless ritual and bathetic (not pathetic, although it may be that too, but bathetic) going-through-of-motions. God doesn’t need any of that. Still, humans are very likely to engage in it anyway. Are Israelites better than other people when they worship, Amos asked. “Pass over to Calneh, and see; and thence go to Hamath the great; then go down to Gath of the Philistines” (6:2). Are the people of Israel – or by inference America or the UK or Germany or Scandinavia or Spain – better than pagan nations, Amos asked with undisguised acerbic disgust. Not on your yarmulke or rosary or worry beads.
Jesus also laced into his theological enemies, including a couple of days before his death, which may have hastened his demise. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of extortion and rapacity” (Matt. 23:25). Many religious people go through the rituals of keeping unstained by the world, in order that others may think them pure and undefiled. But inwardly they may be the epitome of spiritual filth. Anyone who supposes that religion cannot be a great impediment to healthy spirituality doesn’t know very much about religion.
Does God need religion? No. But most of us do. And by “us” I don’t mean most of the human race; I specifically mean most people who participate in religion to any degree. If we didn’t think we needed to be here this morning, why would we be here? Does any of us have so much spare time that we decide we need to fill up a little of our temporal surplus with a little religion each Sunday just to keep from getting bored? To sing to God “I need Thee every hour” is essentially an individual and thus spiritual exercise, but to do it in the presence of other people makes it a religious exercise. It is far harder to sustain faith in God by ourselves than in the company of others. Indeed, it might be a delusion for people to imagine that they can maintain faith in God by themselves. If it is possible, it is barely possible. And in any event, faith cannot be sustained individually from one generation to the next. Only an institution can nurture faith over the long haul. To think otherwise is not to think objectively, but rather purely subjectively.
God wants everyone to have faith in God. He doesn’t need it, but we do. Life is much harder and bleaker and sadder without God than with Him, and religion is the primary human institution which fosters faith in God. Religion is bound to make innumerable mistakes, but to be purely objective, for doing what religion does, it’s the only game in town.
The Chapel Without Walls was instituted for thinking people to think about what they believe. We don’t have much of an institution around here, and as all of us now know, we shall not last forever. But while we’re here, we’re here. And here is as little religion as you’re likely to find anywhere that is at all religious. Does God need us? No. But we need us. Or at least I hope we do.
We certainly need God. Of that I have not a scintilla of doubt. To God be the glory.