- Garden parties
- Booze at garden parties
- Themes (i.e. as in for garden parties)
*is this just southern California? It might just be southern California. My research sample is limited and possibly inadequate.
Last summer I went to a gin party in the garden at church. This seems to support your thesis.
ONE of the most striking scientific discoveries about religion in recent years is that going to church weekly is good for you. Religious attendance — at least, religiosity — boosts the immune system and decreases blood pressure. It may add as much as two to three years to your life. The reason for this is not entirely clear.
Social support is no doubt part of the story. At the evangelical churches I’ve studied as an anthropologist, people really did seem to look out for one another. They showed up with dinner when friends were sick and sat to talk with them when they were unhappy. The help was sometimes surprisingly concrete. Perhaps a third of the church members belonged to small groups that met weekly to talk about the Bible and their lives. One evening, a young woman in a group I joined began to cry. Her dentist had told her that she needed a $1,500 procedure, and she didn’t have the money. To my amazement, our small group — most of them students — simply covered the cost, by anonymous donation. A study conducted in North Carolina found that frequent churchgoers had larger social networks, with more contact with, more affection for, and more kinds of social support from those people than their unchurched counterparts. And we know that social support is directly tied to better health.
Healthy behavior is no doubt another part. Certainly many churchgoers struggle with behaviors they would like to change, but on average, regular church attendees drink less, smoke less, use fewer recreational drugs and are less sexually promiscuous than others.
That tallies with my own observations. At a church I studied in Southern California, the standard conversion story seemed to tell of finding God and never taking methamphetamine again. (One woman told me that while cooking her dose, she set off an explosion in her father’s apartment and blew out his sliding glass doors. She said to me, “I knew that God was trying to tell me I was going the wrong way.”) In my next church, I remember sitting in a house group listening to a woman talk about an addiction she could not break. I assumed that she was talking about her own struggle with methamphetamine. It turned out that she thought she read too many novels.
Yet I think there may be another factor. Any faith demands that you experience the world as more than just what is material and observable. This does not mean that God is imaginary, but that because God is immaterial, those of faith must use their imaginations to represent God. To know God in an evangelical church, you must experience what can only be imagined as real, and you must also experience it as good.
I want to suggest that this is a skill and that it can be learned. We can call it absorption: the capacity to be caught up in your imagination, in a way you enjoy. What I saw in church as an anthropological observer was that people were encouraged to listen to God in their minds, but only to pay attention to mental experiences that were in accord with what they took to be God’s character, which they took to be good. I saw that people were able to learn to experience God in this way, and that those who were able to experience a loving God vividly were healthier — at least, as judged by a standardized psychiatric scale. Increasingly, other studies bear out this observation that the capacity to imagine a loving God vividly leads to better health.
For example, in one study, when God was experienced as remote or not loving, the more someone prayed, the more psychiatric distress she seemed to have; when God was experienced as close and intimate, the more someone prayed, the less ill he was. In another study, at a private Christian college in Southern California, the positive quality of an attachment to God significantly decreased stress and did so more effectively than the quality of the person’s relationships with other people.
Eventually, this may teach us how to harness the “placebo” effect — a terrible word, because it suggests an absence of intervention rather than the presence of a healing mechanism that depends neither on pharmaceuticals nor on surgery. We do not understand the placebo effect, but we know it is real. That is, we have increasingly better evidence that what anthropologists would call “symbolic healing” has real physical effects on the body. At the heart of some of these mysterious effects may be the capacity to trust that what can only be imagined may be real, and be good.
But not everyone benefits from symbolic healing. Earlier this month, the youngest son of the famed pastor Rick Warren took his own life. We know few details, but the loss reminds us that to feel despair when you want to feel God’s love can worsen the sense of alienation. We urgently need more research on the relationship between mental illness and religion, not only so that we understand that relationship more intimately — the ways in which they are linked and different — but to lower the shame for those who are religious and nonetheless need to reach out for other care.
T. M. Luhrmann, a professor of anthropology at Stanford and the author of “When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God,” is a guest columnist.
“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.” – Matthew 5:14-15
My college Spanish instructor’s theory seemed to have merit for me: “In the pressure of the moment, in the pressure of having someone look at you and speak to you in another language, you freeze.”
I was a struggling undergrad trying to get by with a passing grade in a language I couldn’t for the life of me speak or understand.
She continued, “In the moment when you are asked a question, your mind, which does actually contain the words, suddenly goes blank, and you become so flustered that you are rendered speechless.”
This is exactly what happens when you ask a mainline Protestant to tell you what they believe about God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit.
Suddenly, in that moment, we who have found our public voices, we who stand in Christian traditions that value teaching, prophetic speech, and intellect, suddenly we forget it all and sit there mute. Unable to talk about our faith.
Strange, isn’t it?
It seems like we can talk about everything else. The same mainline church members who pass resolutions on gay marriage and propose solutions to conflict in the Middle East and take on healthcare reform suddenly shrink in silence on the subject of their faith – and here’s the irony – lest they offend someone.
“What do you believe about God?”
“Well, I can tell you what I don’t believe. I’m not like those Christians who try to force their religion down your throat, so…”
“So, what do you believe?”
“Well, I believe everyone should be free to believe what the want to believe…”
“And for you that is…”
“Well I just said it.”
“Said what?!”
For too long, our honorable impulses toward inclusivity have turned us into spiritual illiterates, who, being out of practice, have forgotten how to speak the simple words of our faith. We who love to talk have a fear of speaking publicly on the one topic we should be most excited about: our experience of the living God.
And so I challenge you: how comfortable are you and your parishioners discussing your faith and your experience of God with another person?
The stories are there, to be sure. You can find God’s story in fellowship halls where the tables are old and stained with the sticky red punch of generations of church suppers, to the grand sanctuaries with glorious art, to the church gathered under a leaking roof with a crackling sound system. People are being formed and shaped by the gospel, to go out and be the light of the world.
When Diana Butler-Bass, author and historian, came to the congregation I served in New Haven, Connecticut, she witnessed members giving our testimonies and taking about our experience of God. WE were doing on a micro level what Diana did for mainline churches on a national level through her book, Christianity for the Rest of Us.
We were overcoming our fear of public speaking for the sake of the gospel. Or to put it another way, as Matthew’s gospel does, we were getting our light out from under the bushel.
And this is actually a common thread I see in mainline churches experiencing renewal and vitality – church members and pastors have learned to testify to their faith. They’ve learned to tell the story of how they experience God’s grace in their Christian community of faith, and to share that story with enthusiasm.
Twenty years after my college Spanish ordeal, now living across the country in Chicago, I found myself at a community college in a class terrifyingly entitled, “Introduction to Conversational Spanish.”
At the final class of the semester, we who had begun so nervously now listened to one another’s presentations.
Our little class seemed remarkable not for its lack of finesse, but the fullness of its witness. It soon became obvious that almost everyone who was struggling to conjugate verbs was there because of a church; some congregation had called these people to look outward, to look outside themselves.
No more fear of public speaking. The Holy Spirit had propelled fearful adults to get to the point where they could speak to the class in a new tongue.
Underneath it all, it could only be faith that got us in the door that first day.
“Como to llama, otra vez?” I heard my teacher ask.
And now, because the God of the second chances and new life keeps working n me, I could respond to this most basic question. What’s my name, again? “Me llamo Lillian.”
Night Prayer
Approach
The angels of God guard us through the night,
and quieten the powers of darkness.
The Spirit of God be our Guide
to lead us to peace and to glory.
It is but lost labour that we haste to rise up early, and so late take rest, and eat the bread of anxiety. For those beloved of God are given gifts even while they sleep.
Silence
My brothers and sisters, our help is in the name of the eternal God,
who is making the heavens and the earth.
Dear God, thank you for all that is good, for all our humanity, for the stewardship you have given us of this planet earth, for the gifts of life and of one another, for your love which is unbounded and eternal.
O thou, most holy and beloved, my Companion, my Guide upon the way, my bright evening star.
We repent the wrongs we have done:
Silence
We have wounded your love.
O God, heal us.
We stumble in the darkness.
Light of the world transfigure us.
We forget that we are your home.
Spirit of God, dwell in us.
Eternal Spirit, living God, in whom we live and move and have our being, all that we are, have been, and shall be is known to you, to the very secret of our hearts and all that rises to trouble us. Living flame burn into us, cleansing wind, blow through us, fountain of water, well up within us, that we may love and praise in deed and in truth.
Eternal Spirit, flow through our being and open our lips,
that our mouths may proclaim your praise.
Let us worship the God of love.
Alleluia, alleluia.
Psalm 23
Dear God, you sustain me and feed me: like a shepherd you guide me.
You lead me to an oasis of green, to lie down by restful waters.
You refresh my soul for the journey, and guide me along trusted roads.
The God of justice is your name. Though I must enter the darkness of death, I will fear no evil.
For you are with me, your rod and staff comfort me.
You prepare a table before my very eyes, in the presence of those who trouble me.
You anoint my head with oil, and you fill my cup to the brim.
Your loving kindness and mercy will meet me every day of my life, and I will dwell in the house of my God for ever.
It is the God who said, Let light shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show tha the transcendant power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our body.
(2 Corinthians 4:6-10)
Hymn
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am God.
I am the God that healeth thee.
I am the God that healeth thee.
I am the God that healeth thee.
In thee, O God, I put my trust.
In thee, O God, I put my trust.
In thee, O God, I put my trust.
Prayers
Into your hands, O God, I commend my spirit,
for you have redeemed me, O God of truth and love.
Keep me, O God, as the apple of an eye;
hide me under the shadow of your wings.
Preserve us, O God, while waking, and guard us while sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ, and aleep may rest in your peace.
Praise be to God, I have lived to see this day.
God’s promise is fulfilled, and my duty done.
At last you have given me peace,
for I have seen with my own eyes
the salvation you have prepared for all nations -
a light to the world in its darkness,
and the glory of your people Israel.
Glory be God, sustaining, redeeming, sanctifying,
as in the beginning, so now, and for ever.
Amen.
Preserve us, O God, while waking, and guard us while sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ, and aleep may rest in your peace.
Lord, have mercy.
Kyrie eleison.
Christ, have mercy.
Christe eleison.
Lord have mercy.
Kyrie eleison.
Eternal Spirit,
Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:
The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
sustain our hope and come on earth.
With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For you reign in the glory of the power that is love,
now and for ever. Amen.
The minister and people pray responsively.
I will lie down in peace and take my rest,
for it is in God alone that I dwell unafraid.
Let us bless the Earth-maker, the Pain-bearer, the Life-giver,
let us praise and exalt God above all for ever.
May God’s name be praised beyond the furthest star,
glorified and exalted above all for ever.
One or more of the following is said, concluding with the Sentence of the Day and Final Versicle.
Lord, it is night.
The night is for stillness. Let us be still in the presence of God.
It is night after a long day. What has been done has been done; what has not been done has not been done; let it be.
The night is dark. Let our fears of the darkness of the world and of our own lives rest in you.
The night is quiet. Let the quietness of your peace enfold us, all dear to us, and all who have no peace.
The night heralds the dawn. Let us look expectantly to a new day, new joys, new possibilities.
In your name we pray.
Amen.
Sentence of the Day
God bless us and keep us, God’s face shine on us and be gracious to us, and give us light and peace.
Final Versicle
The service concludes
The divine Spirit dwells in us.
Thanks be to God.
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The Enthronement of The 105th Archbishop of Canterbury
The newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is enthroned today, installing him as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Church of England, in front of bishops and religious of the Anglican communion from around the world, the Prime Minister David Cameron, The Prince of Wales and other dignitaries.
(Source: TheBritishNobility, via dmbliss)
View high resolution
This good-lookin’ group went down to San Luis Obispo this weekend for the annual Province VIII campus ministry gathering. Good times were had!
Hebrews 12:1-2 (via gothicchristian)
(Source: bearyourcross, via gothicchristian)
Rowan Williams
(though I would replace the phrase ‘the true criterion’ with ‘an experienced reality’)
(Source: gracethatfrees)
