Religion is ripe for cataclysmic transformation
We sat inside an arbor at the edge of Gaylord's Woods, a six-foot semicircle of vines and brush where my friends and I discussed important issues: girls, school, teachers, baseball and the year 2000. We didn't know about the millennium, but there was a sense of nervousness about the year 2000. One day we figured out how old we would be on Jan. 1, 2000, and it was a startling discovery that some of us -- perhaps all of us -- would be dead. But if we lived that long, we had plans. One buddy said he would go to Yankee Stadium to see a ballgame during the summer of 2000. Another thought he would take over the school and fire all the teachers, especially Miss Walpole, who paddled him the year before. Joey said he was headed for wealth, and on Jan. 1, 2000, he would give a million dollars away. But Joey died in an auto accident before he was 20, and the others, as you can imagine, didn't manage to hit their goals. As we sat submerged in the innocence of 10-year-olds, the thought never struck us that the world would change, and some of us would be agents of transformation while others would become unmovable barriers. Because we lived in a small town in Iowa, we were not a part of a diverse world. Sure, people of different nationalities lived in our town, but they had all become homogenized into a white mass of humanity. The only black person I ever saw before the age of 19 was a man who managed the city toilet in Mason City, Iowa. On some Friday evenings, when we were shopping in that small city, we would see him with his whisk broom, brushing snow off people, shining shoes and keeping the bathroom much cleaner than ours at home. As 10-year-olds, how could we know that someday African-Americans would rise up to demand equal rights, and that many of us would support and march with them and join the protests? Further, how could we know that someday an entire movement dedicated to promoting diversity and protecting the rights of every citizen would emerge? I can remember sitting in worship with my mother at the First Methodist Church in my hometown of Nora Springs, Iowa, and wondering how workmen ever got those huge beams lodged into the ceiling. Those beams were the most massive things I had ever seen, and some Sundays I would watch them, in case they might slip and crash to the floor. But they never did. In fact, the little congregation, much diminished in membership, is still there, sitting on Main Street and acting as a strong protector. It never occurred to me as I grew up in that small town that my church would someday be on the verge of extinction. Or that all religions would someday be in jeopardy as they faced the uncertainty of the next 1,000 years. Change has come gradually -- yet ruthlessly -- to religion. Transformations have come even faster in other areas. When I was in fourth grade, I won a ballpoint pen for correctly guessing the number of beans in a big jar at a school carnival. It was the first such pen I had ever seen, and when I took it to school the next day, every child in the class asked to write with it. I thought this technological advance would certainly carry us into a new era of communication. How could we know that computers would advance our communication faster than anything in history and change the world more than we could ever imagine? I have only one prediction to make for the future. There is no question in my mind that change will be the one constant that we will deal with in the year, decade, century and millennium that stretch before us. Your age doesn't matter because change will enter every facet of the world, every group of people and human institution. And the community of faith will be among those hardest hit because those people have resisted change so successfully over the years. To be sure, the time is ripe for a cataclysmic transformation. In the next 10 years, congregations will die, denominations will downsize, the trustworthiness of religion will erode, and the entire religious enterprise will be up for grabs. You may moan a bit when you read this, but good news follows. After the fall, a new creation will appear, and when it is fully a part of the people, the angels in heaven will rejoice. Clark D. Morphew January 1, 2000