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And Mr. Boyd has a new book out,
“The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for
Political Power Is Destroying the Church,” which is
based on his sermons.
“There is a lot of discontent
brewing,” said Brian D. McLaren, the founding pastor at
Cedar Ridge Community Church in Gaithersburg, Md., and a
leader in the evangelical movement known as the
“emerging church,” which is at the forefront of
challenging the more politicized evangelical
establishment.
“More and more people are saying
this has gone too far -- the dominance of the
evangelical identity by the religious right,” Mr.
McLaren said. “You cannot say the word ‘Jesus’ in 2006
without having an awful lot of baggage going along with
it. You can’t say the word ‘Christian,’ and you
certainly can’t say the word ‘evangelical’ without it
now raising connotations and a certain cringe factor in
people.
“Because people think, ‘Oh no,
what is going to come next is homosexual bashing, or
pro-war rhetoric, or complaining about ‘activist
judges.’ ”
Mr. Boyd said he had cleared his
sermons with the church’s board, but his words left some
in his congregation stunned. Some said that he was
disrespecting President Bush and the military, that he
was soft on abortion or telling them not to vote.
“When we joined years ago, Greg
was a conservative speaker,” said William Berggren, a
lawyer who joined the church with his wife six years
ago. “But we totally disagreed with him on this. You
can’t be a Christian and ignore actions that you feel
are wrong. A case in point is the abortion issue. If the
church were awake when abortion was passed in the 70’s,
it wouldn’t have happened. But the church was asleep.”
Mr. Boyd, 49, who preaches in
blue jeans and rumpled plaid shirts, leads a church that
occupies a squat block-long building that was once a
home improvement chain store.
The church grew from 40 members
in 12 years, based in no small part on Mr. Boyd’s draw
as an electrifying preacher who stuck closely to
Scripture. He has degrees from Yale Divinity School and
Princeton Theological Seminary, and he taught theology
at Bethel College in St. Paul, where he created a
controversy a few years ago by questioning whether God
fully knew the future. Some pastors in his own
denomination, the Baptist General Conference, mounted an
effort to evict Mr. Boyd from the denomination and his
teaching post, but he won that battle.
He is known among
evangelicals for a bestselling book,
“Letters From a Skeptic,” based on
correspondence with his father, a leftist
union organizer and a lifelong agnostic --
an exchange that eventually persuaded his
father to embrace Christianity.
Mr. Boyd said he
never intended his sermons to be taken as
merely a critique of the Republican Party or
the religious right. He refuses to share his
party affiliation, or whether he has one,
for that reason. He said there were
Christians on both the left and the right
who had turned politics and patriotism into
“idolatry.”
He said he first
became alarmed while visiting another
megachurch’s worship service on a Fourth of
July years ago. The service finished with
the chorus singing “God Bless America” and a
video of fighter jets flying over a hill
silhouetted with crosses.
“I thought to myself,
‘What just happened? Fighter jets mixed up
with the cross?’ ” he said in an interview.
Patriotic displays
are still a mainstay in some evangelical
churches. Across town from Mr. Boyd’s
church, the sanctuary of North Heights
Lutheran Church was draped in bunting on the
Sunday before the Fourth of July this year
for a “freedom celebration.” Military
veterans and flag twirlers paraded into the
sanctuary, an enormous American flag rose
slowly behind the stage, and a Marine major
who had served in Afghanistan preached that
the military was spending “your hard-earned
money” on good causes.
In his six sermons,
Mr. Boyd laid out a broad argument that the
role of Christians was not to seek “power
over” others -- by controlling governments,
passing legislation or fighting wars.
Christians should instead seek to have “power under”
others — “winning people’s hearts” by sacrificing
for those in need, as Jesus did, Mr. Boyd said.
“America wasn’t founded as a theocracy,” he said. “America
was founded by people trying to escape theocracies.
Never in history have we had a Christian theocracy where
it wasn’t bloody and barbaric. That’s why our Constitution
wisely put in a separation of church and state.
“I am sorry to tell you,” he continued, “that America is not
the light of the world and the hope of the world. The light
of the world and the hope of the world is Jesus Christ.”
Mr. Boyd
lambasted the “hypocrisy and pettiness” of Christians who
focus on “sexual issues” like homosexuality, abortion or
Janet Jackson’s breast-revealing performance at the Super Bowl
halftime show. He said Christians these days were
constantly outraged about sex and perceived
violations of their rights to display their faith in public.
“Those are the
two buttons to push if you want to get Christians to
act,” he said. “And those are the two buttons Jesus never
pushed.”
Some Woodland Hills members said they applauded the sermons because
they had resolved their conflicted feelings. David Churchill, a
truck driver for U.P.S. and a Teamster for 26 years, said he
had been “raised in a religious-right home” but was torn between the
expectations of
faith and family and the Democratic expectations of his union.
When Mr. Boyd
preached his sermons, “it was liberating to me,” Mr. Churchill said.
Mr. Boyd gave
his sermons while his church was in the midst of a $7 million fund-raising
campaign. But only $4 million came in, and 7 of the more than
50 staff members were laid off, he said.
Mary Van Sickle, the family pastor at
Woodland Hills, said she lost 20 volunteers who had been the
backbone of the church’s Sunday school.
“They said, ‘You’re not
doing what the church is supposed to be doing, which is
supporting the
Republican
way,’ ” she said. “It was some of my best volunteers.”
The Rev. Paul Eddy, a theology professor at Bethel College
and the teaching pastor at Woodland Hills, said: “Greg is an anomaly in
the megachurch world. He didn’t give a whit about church leadership,
never read a book about church growth. His biggest fear is that people
will think that all church is is a weekend carnival, with people liking
the worship, the music, his speaking, and that’s it.”
In the end, those who left tended to be white, middle-class
suburbanites, church staff members said. In their place, the church has added
more members who live in the surrounding community — African-Americans,
Hispanics and Hmong immigrants from Laos.
This suits Mr. Boyd. His vision for his church is an ethnically
and economically diverse congregation that exemplifies Jesus’ teachings
by its members’ actions. He, his wife and three other families from the church
moved from the suburbs three years ago to a predominantly black
neighborhood in St. Paul.
Mr. Boyd now says of the upheaval: “I don’t regret any
aspect of it at all. It was a defining moment for us. We let go of something
we were never called to be. We just didn’t know the price we were going to
pay for doing it.”
His congregation of about 4,000 is still digesting his
message. Mr. Boyd arranged a forum on a recent Wednesday
night to allow members to sound off on his new book. The reception was
warm, but many of the 56 questions submitted in writing were
pointed: Isn’t abortion an evil that Christians should prevent?
Are you saying Christians should not join the military? How can
Christians possibly have “power under” Osama bin Laden? Didn’t the
church play an enormously positive role in the civil rights movement?
One woman asked:
“So why NOT us? If we contain the wisdom and grace and love and creativity
of Jesus, why shouldn’t we be the ones involved in politics and
setting laws?”
Mr. Boyd responded: “I don’t think there’s a particular angle
we have on society that others lack. All good, decent people want good
and order and justice. Just don’t slap the label ‘Christian’ on it.”
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