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Monday, April 11, 2005 Volume VII Number 14
by Ken Kemp
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week later, the impact of the deceased Pope on the world extends further still. It is a stunning development, really; a turnabout of the highest order. Not even a year ago, perhaps months, the Roman Catholic Church seemed to be drowning in a tempestuous sea of controversy, scandal and a general sense of irrelevance in the modern world. One would think, from the universal acclaim and media preoccupation with St. Peter’s Square and all the pomp and symbol and tradition, that the world, at least for a week, embraced Catholicism as its own.
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Maybe the cynics are alive and well. Perhaps there are still skeptics who remain detached, aloof. But they were in hiding this week. Their voices will be heard another day. It was a week when point-counterpoint went absent. There were no talking heads in raucous, noisy debate. The world went reverent. Even hardened news anchors made no attempt to disguise the awe factor.
Now, as the Cardinals turn to the manual and select a successor according to the strict mandate of tradition, speculation abounds. There is only one scenario that appears certain. The new Pope will not be an American. Why not? Well, “America already runs the rest of the world. No way that the Roman Catholic Church will become part of the ‘Empire,’” said one commentator. “America is a rogue,” said another. “America’s answer to the church’s dilemma is to modernize, liberalize and accommodate culture, you know, blend in, until there’s nothing remaining to distinguish the church from the rest of the social order.” Besides, the American church now barely holds minority status. The greatest growth continents are Africa, Central and South America and even Asia. There is even a hint of revival in Europe. Who would have imagined?
Who would have imagined indeed. Jane Fonda is certainly many things… but most of my generational peers would agree: she is something of an archetype for my generation. Her journey is a kind of roadmap of my generation’s evolution through the last half of the twentieth century on into the twenty-first. She’s now written a memoir – “My Life So Far” she calls is. Her three high profile marriages took her from liberated sexual woman to antiestablishment war protester and social activist to wealthy capitalist and now of all things, to single grand-motherhood and surprise - to Jesus. She told Larry King she’d become a follower of Jesus – and that “some smart, hip Christians” introduced her to a new understanding of the Gospels and a life of genuine spirituality. (She also admitted that while she embraces Jesus’ teaching with a whole heart, she’s having a little trouble with Paul.)
When Jane Fonda was in North Vietnam hob-knobbing with the enemy and many of my peers were in the streets protesting just about everything, I was a Bible school student in Chicago. We were quite aware that our testimony to faith produced little more than a yawn in most people because Christianity was just another one of those institutions that was on the way out. Harvey Cox, a Harvard Divinity School professor, wrote a book called The Secular City (1965) in which he predicted that secularization was the inevitable social trend that would ultimately devour most every religion, including Christianity. Religion would become hopelessly irrelevant in the secular city, he said. About the same time, Hugh Schonfield wrote a book he called The Passover Plot in which he claimed that the resurrection was the product of the fertile imagination of the disciples, who pulled off one of the most ingenious charades of human history when they conspired to propagate the absurd claim that Jesus rose from the dead. TIME Magazine (April 15, 1966) featured a cover story on the growing number of theologians who pronounced with the certainty of a county coroner – God is dead. “Is he?” Time asked.
What happened? This is the dawning of a new millennium. Harvey Cox missed it, wouldn’t you say? We may well be witnessing not the death of God, but the death of secularization. The humanists, the rationalists, the materialists, the atheists are all exposed for the intellectual poverty of their world view. This generation isn’t buying it. Look into their eyes. See the tears form. Listen to the longing in their voices. They want more. They see more. They know there is more than the empty, rudderless, aimless promise of secularism.
This humble priest, elevated to such prominence as a religious leader modeled something that the world clearly longs for. Is has something to do with his simplicity, his devotion, his spirituality, his moral anchor, his goodness. People are not content with churches that have become museum pieces. They are longing to know the God who inspired their soaring architecture and enduring art. They are wondering if it is possible to know this God, and if, perhaps, knowing him can make for a life of meaning and purpose.
Jane Fonda, of all people, is studying everything she can find about this Jesus.
And I’m wondering, too. Are we prepared?
Because these millions who gathered in Rome last week are quite right: there is more.
On this Tuesday morning, you are a leader.
If you know this God who is quite alive and well, join me, won’t you? Let’s give an answer for the hope that is in us.
What do you say?
Posted in Placentia, California
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2005
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