Indeed The Emperor Has No Clothes.

Andrew Tatum says what I’m saying about “there is no spoon” slightly differently by asserting that the emperor perhaps has no clothes. He’s observing all of this ruckus the last few weeks from a perspective that is still inside a traditional model of church. So I’m not sure whether this quote is relevant because of that or because he says I might be right. 

Maybe Josh Brown is right – maybe church as we know it in any institutional form other than the “institution” of family and friendship is dead.  And all of this is terribly ironic because I’m preaching this Sunday on the Trinity – on community and relationship, on justice and peace.  I’m preaching this in a very traditional church and I’m pretty sure I know what will happen.  The people will listen, they’ll either like or hate what I’ve got to say, and then they’ll all file out of the building we call the church and say, “nice job, preacher.”  And I’ll be screaming inside, “the emperor church has no clothes on!”

I think that is a better and more understandable way of saying what I was attempting to say with my confusing no spoon analogy.

“Maybe church as we know it in any institutional form other than the “institution” of family and friendship is dead.”

I think that is much closer to the truth of what I was attempting to say. I think if we are practicing family and friendship and simple ideas like throwing parties and living locally then church becomes unnecessary to a certain extent and for most people. And while Marx is a general all around weiner, I think we could rephrase his mantra that religion is the opiate of the masses into church is the opiate of the evangelicals, a soft lulling static that is beyond irrelevant to the problems of the world.

At the very least, it certainly becomes more irrelevant to a spiritualized, agnostic culture. Again, I reiterate that this is what Europe already knows and every American who has little to no ties with evangelicalism already knows to be true.