Luke 9:46-49
Rollins Chapel
May 5, 2005
Richard R. Crocker
Earlier this week I attended the annual meeting of the Ivy League College Chaplains, held this year at Princeton. It is always an interesting gathering, and this year was no exception. The name of the game is "Who's the greatest?" That is, no matter what the topic of discussion is, the subtext of every discussion is "which college is really the greatest."
We met, as I said, at Princeton, which is always an impressive campus, and in the full lushness of spring - new green leafs, flowering trees, blooming flowers, pleasant temperatures - is really a hard place to beat. There is no doubt that the cathedral like Princeton chapel really is the grandest chapel anywhere, and its 6o voice paid chapel choir gave a concert just for our small group that simply blew us away. So I think Princeton really does have a claim to be the greatest. But then, the Yale people were pretty impressive too, as they spoke of their plans to build a new $40 million religious activities center. Columbia's chaplains spoke of the political crises that they mediate daily, with complete coverage from the New York Times. Brown reports, as usual, that they are cleverer by half than the rest of us, denigrating buildings, extolling ideas, and running the hippest services imaginable. Cornell and Penn have historically been more secular than the rest of us, and they are proud that they were always ahead of the curve. Harvard shows its leadership by not attending the meeting for the third year in a row. And then there is Dartmouth - represented by a stodgy old chaplain who reports that he has started a mid-week service in the corner of a drafty, clanky old building that is attended by a small group of people.
I hope you have recognized the humor - and truth - of my account. My strategy is to win the contest by being the most humble. It usually works.
This is the paradox of Christianity. The greatest is the least. The master is the servant. The wisest is an innocent child. So, as one of my parishioners said years ago - "I don't have much humility, but I'm proud of what I've got."
Seriously, the occasion for the ivy chaplains to gather and talk is helpful to us all, because we discover that most of the issues we deal with on our own campuses are in fact part of a larger trend that affects every campus. The issue that occupied much of our conversation this year is the great divide that we see occurring in the religious communities on our campus among all faiths- but especially in Christianity, between believers who call themselves conservative or evangelical, and believers who call themselves liberal or progressive. While this split is notable among Jews and Muslims and Hindus, it is especially pronounced among Christians. All of us have noted that the center of gravity has shifted, not only o campuses but in our nation. While liberal Christians may once have been said to be more numerous and more influential on campus, the pattern today is for conservative groups to have greater numbers, greater resources, and far greater zeal.
There have been, since the beginning, I believe, two identifiable strands of Christian discipleship. The first is what I would call the inclusive strand, symbolized by Jesus' statement to his disciples, in today's lesson, that "whoever is not against me is for me." According to this tradition, Christian discipleship embraces a wide variety of people with a wide variety of commitments and understandings. Bit there is another strand, symbolized by Jesus saying in Matthew's gospel (Matthew 12:30) "Whoever is not for me is against me." These Christians are more exclusive in their interpretation of Christian commitment. For them, people who are not born again, or who do not agree whole-heartedly with a standard of orthodoxy, are outside the bounds of Christian discipleship. These two understandings of Christian commitment have been in tension always. Sometimes one has been more commonly embraced. Sometime the other. Those of us who came to maturity in the Christian church in the 1960s are far more likely to embrace an inclusive understanding. We are not concerned about having people agree on every doctrine; we are much more concerned about a spirit of inclusiveness and harmony. But now a very different understanding - the exclusive understanding - seems to be more attractive to people of your generation. Thus many college chapels with chaplains like me find ourselves speaking to smaller and smaller congregations, while evangelical and conservative Catholics, with a much more exclusive doctrinal position, seem to be growing.
It is tempting for those of us who are older and more liberal to decry what is happening. We think that we have the more accurate understanding of what Christianity really is. Obviously, not everyone agrees. We are still arguing about which one of our understandings is the greatest. I guess the only way that question will ever be settled is for us to listen to what Jesus said: if you want to be great, then be a servant. So the race is on: which of our understandings actually leads to more humility? It's a question worth pondering. And it makes for a very interesting and unusual race.
Meanwhile, although every campus reports that the number of those who call themselves conservative Christians is growing, they are not the fastest growing group. The fastest growing group, by far, is those who claim no religious affiliation at all. Now I wonder what this could be? Do you suppose that there are lots of people who are just tired of hearing arguments about who's the greatest, and who have just walked away from it all?
copyright © 2005 Richard R. Crocker
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