Questions for understanding any Christian denominational problems, part I

A few years ago, the religion columnist and reporter Terry Mattingly shared three questions that he has used over the years to help him get the scoop on and then report on any Christian tradition or denomination in a fair and objective way. When I first heard him talking about these questions, which he jokingly always refers to as the "tMatt trio" or "tMatt 3", I thought that surely that was too simplistic. I have found, however, over the years of watching the American press lose the ability to even attempt any semblance of objective reporting particularly on religious issues, the more I have come to understand the sheer brilliant simplicity of these questions to ask to help you get your mind around what is going on in other denominations or Christian ecclesial bodies.

To quote Terry Mattingly directly, the questions are (source link below): 

"* Are biblical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus accurate? Did this happen?

"* Is salvation found through Jesus, alone? Was Jesus being literal when he said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

"* Is sex outside of marriage a sin?" 

       -Original source article can be found here. 

They seem simple enough, but upon reflection, one can immediately see the brilliantly insightful open ended way they are worded. They are not "sandbag" or "gotcha" questions, nor are they "leading questions" that are trying to presume an answer from the assumptions of the interviewer. They are very up front questions which pull no biased punches. Let's take a look at them in more detail, and you will begin to see what I mean. For purposes of this blog, I will only tackle the first question. I will tackle the last two in subsequent blog posts.

I will add one caveat before I continue. These are clearly for Christians or churches proclaiming to have some tie to Christianity or Christian doctrine. While you could use them with, say, Jews or Buddhists, that is not really their point, as Judaism and Buddhism self-proclaim to be outside the Christian framework. Clearly a Jew or a Buddhist would not adhere to any sort of teaching that affirms the Biblical accounts of the Resurrection or the belief that Jesus is the Way, etc. 

Having said that, how a denomination or a Christian religious leader(s), be it a pastor, bishop, presbytery, denominational hierarchy, etc., views the story of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ in the Holy Week Passion and Easter story is critical to their own practice and understanding of theology and ministry. For any pastor or denomination with any semblance of orthodox (small o) Christian creed or belief system, this would seem a softball question. Surely, Christians believe in the bodily Resurrection of Christ, you mind think, for as Saint Paul said in 1st Corinthians 15:

^"13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; ¹⁴ and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. ¹⁵ We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raise."

That would seem logical from a Christian standpoint that the Resurrection of Christ is pretty central doctrine. I mean, if Christ was not raised from the dead, then what's all the fuss about. I am sleeping in on Sunday mornings if God the Father is so powerless as to not be able to raise His only Son. Gods who can't raise the dead are dead themselves. 

Aye, but here is the rub: along came the Enlightenment. Reason became the altar of sacrifice. It became very kitschy in far too many religious circles to doubt and even reject the entire notion of a bodily Resurrection of the dead. Miracles don't actually happen, they said. God was like the great clock maker who made the world, wound it up, and then walked off to the bathroom for several eons, and will return some day only when the clock finally winds down (maybe). 

To people who strongly believe in the Resurrection, that seems crazy and heretical. But for children of the Age of Reason and Science, it seems logical to reject the Resurrection based on observable science. If everyone who doubted the Resurrection simply stopped pretending to be Christian, that would make the religious landscape pretty easy to figure out, but life does not often happen that way. Some left and became Theists or Unitarians or Atheists or what have you. Others, however, still claim to be some sort of Christian (or at least feel tied to the moorings of Christian civilization) but still reject the bodily Resurrection.   

That may seem odd, but there are more in Christianity of some stripe who believe, or are tempted to believe, that very postulate than one might think. Speaking from my own personal experience, the *worst* Christian sermon I ever heard was when I was in Anglican seminary. The seminary had a chapel. We were obliged, as was the custom, on Easter morning to attend the "sunrise service" in the Chapel before having a community Easter brunch before going off to our field parishes to help in the regular Easter morning liturgies as visiting seminarians. 

 The Dean of the Seminary was the preacher. As we gather in the darkness and processed in for the sunrise service, the Dean preached a whizbang homily which completely rejected the entire idea of the bodily Resurrection of Christ. He went on at some length about how it was a "spiritual resurrection"-whatever that was supposed to mean. He thought he was being very cutting edge intellectual and "relevant to culture" and other such platitudes, but really all he ended up doing was sounding like a heretical killjoy who was content on leaving Jesus in the tomb on Easter morning because that's what smart people do. (To this day I have no idea why that did not clue me into the fact at the time that my days in the Anglican Communion were numbered). The sermon was so bad that when the Dean finished and sat down, a professor who was sitting in the back, who himself was no theological conservative by any stretch of the imagination, in a deep booming mumble so that every could hear: "That...was awful." 

My point in regaling you with this story is to illustrate there there are powerful people or groups in the Church or in various denominations that openly reject the idea of the Resurrection of Christ, even as fundamental a proposition and central tenet as that is in most historical branches of Christianity, particularly in the writings of the New Testament. When you have hierarchy proclaiming or at least ambivalently avoiding one thing (i.e. the Resurrection), and Christians who ardently do believe in the Resurrection, you will have conflict.

There is simply no other way that plays out in a parish or a denomination. It's like if a Geology department at a major university has staff that don't believe that rocks exist and that the world is flat with professors who do, you are going to have an intellectual shootout. There will either be casualties or people will leave  or both. You cannot have completely antithetical core beliefs in the same belief system and expect things to run smoothly as a group. You can possibly agree to disagree on secondary and tertiary issues or beliefs, but not on core issues.

That is why the first question of the tMatt 3 is a good question to ask people in a Church, particularly the leadership. If they don't believe in the Resurrection, do their parishioners? Do they avoid the question altogether, and if so, why? When asked, no matter how they answer, it will give you a very interesting looking into what that church or parish believes and how it operates. If you don't believe in the Resurrection, then what exactly are you proclaiming in Sundays? How can you be an Easter people if you don't believe in Easter? If you don't believe in the Resurrection, who else do you reject from classical Christianity?

This question really does give you a glimpse into the health and belief system of a denomination, church, or parish, in a very quick amount of time. It is an invaluable question when investigating Christian religious traditions no your own.