October 2021

Dear Gatherer Friends and Family,

The writer of Ecclesiastes famously sighed, “There is nothing new under the sun,” prefaced by a tried-and-true observation: “Whatever has happened—that’s what will happen again” (Eccl. 1:9). Lift the lid on today’s headlines and you’ll find centuries of similar stories. Every day brings another round of resisting our worst impulses in a quest to do what’s best. St. Paul put it plainly: “When I want to do what is good, evil is right there with me” (Rom. 7:21).

Every good idea, it seems, has an evil twin. Yet people often express shock when these vulnerabilities play out in the faith arena. Since church and theology are about God, many seem to think it’s God’s job to keep our work perfect. Yet people of faith are no less vulnerable to hateful ideologies and wicked practices simply because they’re human. When we want to do good, evil is right there, even in faith. Nothing new under the sun.

How did original biblical principles get re-packaged into unbiblical ideologies about race, gender, and identity? How is it that the KKK felt no conflict about carrying crosses? Why do current supremacist cults organize as “churches”? How can so many extremists calling for war and violence end their rallies praying “in Jesus’s name” (as happened on Jan. 6 and earlier this week at the Michigan capitol)?

None of this is new. Today’s white populist movements (in the US and abroad) are frothed in a toxic brew of Christian separatism and primitive tribal culture first seen in Dark Ages Europe. This week, as we continue our November study “Traces,” we’ll look at pre-Christian Europe to learn our present warrior mentality and clannish behavior are directly tied to a past long gone. It’s fascinating to note a lot of we hear today—not only in the public square, but also from many pulpits and religious media outlets—is rooted in primitive tribalism. Nothing new… Swing by this Thursday at 7:30pm CDT to learn more!

Join Zoom Meeting

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Meeting ID: 868 3638 6014

Or dial 1-312-626-6799 using same meeting ID.

Blessings,

Pastor Tim

Dear Gather Friends and Family,

We open a new study series this Thursday—a monthlong adventure we call “Traces,” as we explore Christianity’s slow movement through Northern Europe. As always, the Three Amigos—Gather’s own mythologist Tony Perez, our resident theologian Dr. Shea Watts, and I—will lead the search for meaning in a history whose importance and intrigue has long got lost in the mist.

Too often Christianity’s spread into the farther regions of Europe is framed simply, as a civilization saga. In church legend, these places are pictured as uncivilized nowheres. But Christianity didn’t spill into a religious void. On arriving in what we now call the Balkans, Prussia, Scandinavia, and the UK, monks and missionaries encountered people with their own sets of deeply imbedded beliefs and reliable faith narratives. Conversion had spiritual benefits, of course, but it also offered advantages that superseded spirituality and faith, since joining the church enabled many far-flung groups to consolidate greater territory and power. (Ask Charlemagne…)

Why should this matter to us? For starters, the Christianization process was not as one-sided as we may imagine. Along the way, certain “primitive” beliefs and practices leached into Christian life. Seasonal rites and customs embraced by pagan religion became liturgical mainstays in Christian worship. Ideologies about nationalism, ethnic supremacy, gender roles, along with distinctive types of mysticism brought new flavors and flaws to the Christian project.

There are reasons why the first Europeans to land in America imagined God as an angry white man, why they believed pinkness endowed them with divine right to murder, enslave, and impoverish people with darker skin, why they conflated evangelism and conquest to establish the bogus “doctrine” of Manifest Destiny. These same impulses explain how current supremacist groups call themselves “Christian,” how many sects persist in denigrating women and denying their freedoms, how violent language has become so common in churches and pulpits that so-called “worship” often sounds more like paranoid ravings about being “at war” and “under attack.”

In October, we’re Zooming across Europe with the missionaries We’ll pay close attention to how Christianity adapted as it spread to new communities and how they introduced ideas and assumptions many presume have been present in Christian texts and theology from the start. (Not so.) Don’t miss this Thursday, at 7:30pm CDT, when we begin our travels in second-century Persia and Greece, where new religion and nationalism collide. I’m very excited about this series and look forward to a lively discussion! See you on Thursday.

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86836386014

Meeting ID: 868 3638 6014

Or dial 1-312-626-6799 using same meeting ID.

Blessings,

Pastor Tim