Blog Posts
The Mystical Body of Zoom
Online church is a gift to be embraced.
This post initially appeared on Dr. Diana Butler Bass’ ongoing blog, The Cottage, and has been republished here with her permission. You can subscribe and receive regular posts from Dr. Butler Bass on her webpage here.
On Monday, a friend’s text interrupted my work day. It was from Jeremy Rutledge, the senior minister at Circular Congregational Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
He’d seen a couple of tweets I’d posted on Sunday night in response to a New York Times opinion essay. The article argued that churches should end online services and return to regular, in-person gathering. In some ways, it wasn’t terribly different than arguments for in-person school. But, in the process of making her case, the author managed to demean people who are disabled or suffered from high-risk conditions — and I pointed to that problem on Twitter.
Jeremy’s text read:
“Diana, as an immunocompromised and high risk pastor, I had a visceral response to that NY Times piece. If you’d like to chat, I’m around…”
I called him immediately.
“Hi Jeremy, what’s up? How are you?”
“Well,” he replied, “That essay in the New York Times felt like someone slammed a door in my face.”
He told me how his congregation had responded to the pandemic, especially with the challenge of having a pastor at high risk. “For almost two years,” he said, “I’ve seen people work tirelessly to be and bring church to each other in new ways.”
It was inspiring to watch a congregation that is nearly 3 ½ centuries old change how we do things overnight in order to meet the needs of the moment.
Our recorded services reached farther than we ever imagined. On a regular basis, I still receive letters from far away. People write who have been tuning in because there’s not a progressive church where they live or because what we’re doing resonates with them. I met a woman at church this month who was attending in-person for the first time. She told me that if not for our online services, she wasn’t sure how she would have made it through the last year.
We have learned so much about what it means to really be the church in terms of making a place for the vulnerable, the high risk, the lonely, and the left out. As we have become a church that is both in-person and live-streamed, we have widened the circle of our welcome.
Honestly, it’s all just love. We have done everything we can to care for each other, to stay connected, and to make church available to all in safe and healthy ways. I’ve never seen so many people work so hard for so long trying to make a place for everyone. I think we’ve all been changed by it, and I don’t think any of us want to go back.
A screenshot of Circular’s homepage
For Jeremy and the people at Circular Church, the pandemic opened a door. They’ve been a great church for a long time, a community who accepted LGBTQ people and worked on the front lines of racial justice in South Carolina. But COVID taught them that even inclusive churches didn’t really understand the wideness of welcome — for all their risky work for justice, they’d not seen those whom they’d overlooked.
The vulnerable, the high risk, the lonely, and the left out — including their own pastor.
Sometimes you can’t see until you can see. The people in Charleston got to work. They changed. And they don’t want to go back.
* * * * *
The contrast between Circular’s experience and the article couldn’t have been clearer. Although it made some good points about the importance of bodies and vulnerability, the central claim asserted: “Online church, while it was necessary for a season, diminishes worship and us as people.” It went on to state that “we seek to worship wholly” and insist that “embodiment is an irreducible part of that wholeness.”
Obviously both Pastor Rutledge and the essayist care about good church, the kind of gathering that embodies the presence of God, love of neighbor, and dignifies our full humanity. But where Jeremy’s congregation discovered digital gathering as an entry into wider and more just community, the Times article maintained that online church “diminishes” our humanness.
You might see this as a tempest in a theological teapot. You might argue this as an unnecessary dualism of an either/or choice when a both/and solution is probably the best way forward. But the crux of the matter might be deeper than that. Two questions arise from the tension Jeremy felt when reading the article: What is embodiment? Whose bodies count?
* * * * *
At first, the answers seem simple. A body is a body. And, of course, every body matters.
But it isn’t quite that easy. The Times piece defines “bodies” as material entities and “community” as bodies in the same room with other bodies. Aaron Smith, a podcaster, pinpointed a problem with this: “People have stopped using embodied as ‘taking shape’ and started using it as ‘physical proximity’ which misses the point entirely.”
That’s exactly right. Honoring bodies, embodiment, and vulnerable community are more than putting fleshly beings in a room together. It is about something “taking shape.” And Jeremy’s story hints at the other, harder possibility and work: that of shaping a body.
For as robustly as Christians should and must defend materiality, we also need to recognize that bodies are more than bones and organs. The New Testament uses two words for bodies: sarx and soma. Sarx, often translated as “body,” means “flesh,” literally the tissue and bowels of living bodies. Soma, also translated as “body,” means living bodies but it also has broader meanings that include dead bodies, spirits and non-material bodies, non-conventional bodies, heavenly bodies like stars and planets, and social bodies.
Embodiment doesn’t just mean living flesh in a particular place. But embodiment in a robust understanding extends from skin-and-bones particularity to the larger shape of things as a whole. Embodiment and wholeness are linked. We speak of “the body politic,” the family as a body, an economic unit like a union as a body, the social order in general is often seen as a national or corporate body. Christians speak of the church as a body — and very specifically the body of Christ — and the mystical body of believers. All the faithful are part of a body, “the communion of saints,” that stretches through time and space and knows no fleshly barriers. Bodies are specific and touchable (sarx) and, at the same time, universal and beyond physicality as we know it (soma). In the first sense, embodiment entails physical proximity almost as a necessity. In the second sense, however, embodiment means the shape of things — how we are connected, what we hold to be true, and how we work together for the sake of the whole.
When specific human bodies (sarx) gather together in particular places, they often (and unwittingly) define the communal, more transcendent body (soma) to be composed of only those who are near them. Indeed, throughout western history, people with disabilities, physical limitations, or illnesses were considered to be parasites, plagues, or cancers on the body politic. The social body was poisoned by certain fleshly bodies, leading to eugenics movements and genocides of those with “unfit” bodies. In the church, the mystical body could be polluted by doubters, heretics, infidels, and witches (always identifiable by physical deformities on their bodies) who needed to be exiled, silenced, corrected, or exterminated by any means possible. Understanding embodiment strictly on the terms of flesh and physical proximity has led to some of humanity’s worst episodes of exclusion and violence in both state and church.
Defining embodiment as “the shape of things” or the “shape that things could be” is harder. In this case, we fleshly, limited sarx-humans have to imagine what shape transcendent, communal soma-bodies look like beyond familiar people in familiar places. Creating a body politic or experiencing a mystical body or caring for the body of the Earth — these are hard. But all these bodies call out for consideration, attention, and compassion. They include that which we can touch, hold, and hug, but they also expand our flesh bodies toward the communal body — those we can’t necessarily touch, hold, and hug — as a reality in which we humans find real wholeness, healing, and justice.
And that’s what online church has done. It has challenged us to understand that body is more than sarx. It is also soma. We are individual flesh bodies (that matter greatly) AND are of a piece with the earth’s body, the body of creation, the body of humanity, all sorts of universal, truly “catholic” bodies we struggle to comprehend and yet constantly shape both intentionally and unwittingly. Particular and vast, touchable and transcendent — body, bodies, Body.
* * * * *
Although online church took many forms, I always enjoyed Zoom the most. Occasionally, it seemed weirdly “disembodied,” but Zoom actually gave shape to that more transcendent Body than is typical in a church building. It took us to a place where every single flesh-body was treated equally (we all got the exact same size box), had the same privileges on the screen, and where everyone could fully participate in the work of the people. If you stop and think about it for just a moment, Zoom (in particular) was surprisingly, unexpectedly, annoyingly real. A place where every fleshy body could enter* and every body mattered.
It wasn’t disembodied at all. Those are real people with real bottoms sitting in real chairs on the other side of those screens. We got to see into one another’s worlds, with disruptive children, barking dogs, messy bookshelves and kitchens, and unexpected wheezes, sneezes, and burps. Parishioners in pjs, preachers expounding the Gospel while muted, doughnuts and orange juice standing in for wafers and wine. We saw face-to-face with a kind of astonishing intimacy we didn’t know could happen, with every moment of sadness, shock, joy, silliness, and boredom close-up. Indeed, Zoom glories in our imperfection, invites mistakes and slip-ups, and makes everyone just as awkward and unpolished as everyone else. Online church didn’t diminish but instead magnified us all.
It reminded us that church is far more than what happens in a special building on Sunday morning in the most intrusive and personal ways, drawing our everyday lives into a communal experience that somehow defies the boundaries and walls that often protect our professional and private spaces. It opened up participation to all sorts of sarx-people — and gave us the ability to see our soma-community exists here and now, a truly diverse, inclusive Body that gathers outside of conventional space and time, and that isn’t just a theory, an utopia, or an after-death hope.
Yes, things are changing regarding the pandemic. Many people are eager to return to what used to be. We have better tools to manage the virus and are starting the journey toward whatever comes next. But wherever we go, we shouldn’t just go back. We certainly shouldn’t return to limited ideas of body and embodiment. Old church will happen once again, and perhaps we’ll do it better than we did. But online church wasn’t just a way to adapt to an emergency. It is a gift of opening our theological imagination to the shape of the spiritual community — authentic, meaningful human community — that is being birthed right in our midst. This wasn’t an accident of pandemic or a temporary solution.
Welcome to the Mystical Body of Zoom.
*There is, of course, an important conversation to have about access, broadband availability, and technological equity. Acknowledging problems of economic inequality should not be used to undermine the ways that online community has positively impacted the lives of disabled people, those with unconventional bodies, people isolated for various reasons, victims of trauma, those with long term illnesses, and the elderly — millions of whom have benefited by finally being able to participate in meaningful community because of changes made during the pandemic.
Diana Butler Bass
Diana Butler Bass, Ph.D., is a multiple award-winning author, popular speaker, inspiring preacher, and one of America’s most trusted commentators on religion and contemporary spirituality. She holds a doctorate in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of ten books, including Christianity After Religion and Grounded: Finding God in the World, A Spiritual Revolution. Click here information on Diana and her work.
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Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Religion After Pandemic
Lost means gone — it also means dislocated
During a Freeing Jesus event hosted by a Seattle church, a man asked: “What do you think is going to happen with churches after the pandemic? How is Christianity going to be changed by this?”
The question startled me. I was focused on my new book and not talking about the future of faith. I quickly pivoted back to Jesus. And the questioner just as quickly pivoted back to “What’s going to happen after the pandemic?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “Nobody knows.”
Since the publication of Christianity After Religion in 2012, people have asked me more questions about church, faith, and the future than I can possibly remember. I’ve learned a thing or two about conversations regarding the future.
1. No one knows what the future holds, not even the most intuitive historian, skilled trend spotter, or well-trained futurist.
2. Time is an odd thing. We experience it (mostly) in terms of change and chronology. But in sacred perspective, time exists differently. Indeed, theologically there is no past, present, or future. God holds time without reference to what has been and what will be.
In other words, I’ve become more modest when speaking of the future of faith. Even though I am happy to engage these questions, I think a more fruitful course (at this moment) is to focus on now.
Truth is, we don’t even know where we are in the course of the pandemic. Perhaps the best way to understand this moment is that we are nearing the end of the beginning. Millions of Americans are vaccine-hesitant (or vaccine-denying), and billions of people around the planet are suffering from resurgent strains, lack of adequate medical intervention, and no vaccines. COVID isn’t through with us yet, even while here in the United States, we see a bit of light on the horizon.
Instead of navigating all those unknowns, it seems a wiser course to focus on what we do know. And what we know is what we’ve been through – and how we are continuing to struggle.
* * * * *
So, what have we been through?
It is quite striking how people use the word “lost” and “loss” to describe the last fourteen months: we’ve lost friends and relatives to death, we’ve lost a year of our lives, we’ve lost income, we’ve lost a sense of security, we’ve lost our ability to move freely through the world. We’ve lost a lot.
My clergy friends speak of grief and lament — perhaps the post-COVID church will be one marked by that sad journey. But I think that “grief and lament” lacks specificity. It is hard to grieve millions of people (even when necessary to do so), and it is hard to grieve the hundreds of millions of lost years of our lives (even when the sadness of that is weighty). We need to grieve what is gone, yes. But that is not the only task ahead.
Lost doesn’t just refer to what is gone. It also means that which is mislaid, out of place, dislocated. Sometimes lost just means that we’re lost. And that is the other task for the post-pandemic world: to help others find what has been lost, to point the way beyond the thicket. We need to find ourselves again; we need to be relocated in the world.
* * * * *
We’ve been dislocated in four major ways:
1) Temporal dislocation
We’ve lost our sense of time as it existed before the pandemic. How often have you thought: What day is this? What time is it? Did I miss an event? What month is it? That’s temporal dislocation.
2) Historical dislocation
We’ve lost our sense of where we are in the larger story of both our own lives and our communal stories. History has been disrupted. Where are we? Where are we going? The growth of conspiracy theories, the intensity of social media, political and religious “deconstructions” – these are signs of a culture seeking a meaningful story to frame their lives because older stories have failed. That’s historical dislocation.
3) Physical dislocation
We’ve lost our sense of embodiment with others and geographical location. For millions, technology has moved “physicality” into cyber-space and most of us have no idea what to do with this virtual sense of location. Without our familiar sense of being bodily in specific spaces, things like gardening, baking, sewing, and painting have emerged as ways of feeling the ground and the work of our hands. We’ve striven to maintain some sort of embodiment even amid isolation. But the disconnection between our bodies, places, and other bodies has been profound. That’s physical dislocation.
4) Relational dislocation
We’ve lost our daily habits of interactions with other humans, the expression of emotions together in community. Have you worried you won’t know how to respond when you can be with your friends without distance, with no masks? How it will feel to be in large groups again? How will work or school feel back in person, with others at the next desk or waiting on customers face-to-face, or in the first in-person meeting? What happens when the plexiglass comes down, the mask is off? That’s relational dislocation.
With these dislocations in mind, the task comes into focus. Surely, religious communities need to be about the work of relocation – finding what has been lost, repairing what has been broken, and re-grounding people into their own lives and communities.
* * * * *
The word religion is believed to have come from the Latin, religare, meaning to “bind” or “reconnect.” Religare is about mending what has been broken, recovering what has been mislaid, and reconnecting that which is frayed.
What is the future of religion post-pandemic? Well, it depends. It depends if we continue to insist on the other definition of religion — as obligation to a particular order of things (like doctrine, polity, or moral action— a “bounden duty”). If nothing else, the pandemic has revealed that particular orders of things can be upset, overturned by the most unanticipated of things. If religion is about maintaining a certain order of liturgy, dogma, or practice, well, then, we can consider religion one more pandemic loss.
If we think of religion in terms of religare, however, the task of the post-pandemic church — the work of finding, repairing, and relocating — is clear. We must reconnect ourselves and others with time, history, physicality, and relationships. In this sense, the future of religion has never been brighter — our lost world needs finding. Pandemic dislocation calls for guides and weavers of wisdom. We don’t need to return to the old ways, we need to be relocated. We need to find a new place, a new home in a disrupted world.
And at the very heart of finding our lost selves is relocating our hearts in and with God. There is a journey beyond the pandemic, and we will find the way a step at a time. We haven’t been to this particular future before. And we will need one another to get there.
This blog is reprinted with permission from Diana Butler Bass's newsletter, The Cottage. It is published twice a week and covers issues of faith and politics, religion and culture, and spiritual practices. To read more or sign up, please click here.
Diana Butler Bass
Diana Butler Bass, Ph.D., is a multiple award-winning author, popular speaker, inspiring preacher, and one of America’s most trusted commentators on religion and contemporary spirituality. She holds a doctorate in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of ten books, including Christianity After Religion and Grounded: Finding God in the World, A Spiritual Revolution. Click here information on Diana and her work.
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Imagining Christian Community Post-Pandemic
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Forty Days
There are 40 days to the election.
I invite you to consider this election season to be like Lent, a time of prayer and practice.
1) Pray daily for some specific issue or candidate.
Prayer takes many forms - I often think of Anne Lamott’s triad: help, thanks, wow. This is a time for all three sorts of prayers.
Ask God for help if you are angry, afraid, despairing. Ask for help on behalf of others, intercede for specific issues and candidates. Honestly, the nation and the world are in a desperate state right now - don’t hesitate to pray “help, help, help” on behalf of yourself, for all those who are fearful and suffering, and for the healing of the planet.
Find gratitude in the midst of it all - for truth tellers, activists, courageous voters, politicians who care about the common good, for those willing to take risks. For exhausted campaign workers, brave preachers, overworked parents. Say thank you to God, to the universe, to your friends and neighbors. Remember these words of Maya Angelou: “Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.”
Open yourself to awe - you’re going to need the “wow” of birdsong and blue skies, of starry nights or laughing on zoom. Even now, especially now, praise is possible, and it is the song of life. Give yourself moments of wonder.
2) Take action every day.
Donate money, make calls, vote early, write postcards, encourage others, go to a Zoom rally, distribute signs. Light candles. Join a protest or vigil (safely, of course). Help others understand new voting procedures. Volunteer if you are to assist at the polls. Post smart, reliable information and important news stories on social media. Correct rumors and gossip. Be loud.
Pray. Act. Every day for forty days.
Your prayers needn’t be dissertations or polished liturgies. Your actions needn’t be earth-shattering. Heartfelt, even wordless, prayers speak magic into the universe. Small actions add up, daily acts compound goodness.
Invite others to join you in these 40 days.
Share your prayers and ideas for action.
This blog is reprinted with permission from Diana Butler Bass's newsletter, The Cottage. It is published twice a week and covers issues of faith and politics, religion and culture, and spiritual practices. To read more or sign up, please click here.
Diana Butler Bass
Diana Butler Bass, Ph.D., is a multiple award-winning author, popular speaker, inspiring preacher, and one of America’s most trusted commentators on religion and contemporary spirituality. She holds a doctorate in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of ten books, including Christianity After Religion and Grounded: Finding God in the World, A Spiritual Revolution. Click here information on Diana and her work.
INSPIRATION:
Prayer and action...can never be seen as contradictory or mutually exclusive. Prayer without action grows into powerless pietism, and action without prayer degenerates into questionable manipulation.
- Henri Nouwen
It’s unrealistic to think that the future of humanity can be achieved only on the basis of prayer; what we need is to take action.
-The Dalai Lama
You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. This is how prayer works.
-Pope Francis
I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer, until I prayed with my legs.
-Frederick Douglass
I've heard people say that God is the gift of desperation, and there's a lot to be said for having really reached a bottom where you've run out of anymore good ideas, or plans for everybody else's behavior; or how to save and fix and rescue; or just get out of a huge mess, possibly of your own creation. And when you're done, you may take a long, quavering breath and say, “Help.”
-Anne Lamott
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Return to Normalcy and Other Fleshpots
Don’t think that I’ve come to bring peace to the earth. I haven’t come to bring peace but a sword (Matthew 10:34, CEB).
In the current political environment, many Americans are hoping for a “return to normalcy.” Such a pitch plucks at the heartstrings of many who are ready to vomit after too many sharp turns on the 2020 roller coaster.
Many of us just want to get back to the way things were—when masks were just a curious feature of foreign travelers, when visiting family didn’t require risk assessment, when self-scandalizing tweets didn’t hijack our news cycle, when church participation didn’t require a Zoom account, when outlets weren’t so clearly fueled and funded by rage, and when we didn’t have to squirm under the constant accusation of racism.
The return to normalcy argument derives its power from the common (and often beneficial!) human impulses to avoid conflict, stabilize life when it gets knocked off balance, resolve contradiction, organize chaos, and believe that we are good and decent people with upright intentions.
On its long trip from Egypt to Canaan, Ancient Israel experienced a similar urge to return to a more familiar and comfortable past (see Exodus 16:3).
The only problem was that their memory of the past was distorted. They remembered the fleshpots but not the chains.
Ironically, the promised “return to normalcy” means that 2020—like 2016—will be an election about nostalgia. But one thing sets 2020 apart from 2016: clarity. 2020 has seen the sins of generations washing up on the shores of our nation in ways that are profoundly public and profoundly painful. 2020 has been a year of judgment, when sinful seeds planted long ago are coming into maturity in ways that have compounding effects.
If divine judgment does one thing well, it brings into focus what was previously obscured or even ignored, separating wheat from husk and sheep from goats (Matthew 3:11-12; 25:31-46).
The fire of God’s judgment allows us to see ourselves as we truly are before God’s law of love. We are in a painful process in which our national eyes are slowly and reluctantly opening to truths that some in our population have suffered under for ages.
2020 has brought clarity about many particular things: clarity about racial disparities, clarity about the dangers of poor leadership, clarity about the weaknesses in our social fabric, clarity about the importance of robust free speech and assembly rights, clarity about the deficiencies in our health care system, clarity about the disrepair of the international order, and clarity about how lines of discrimination can exist in reality, even if they don’t exist legally.
But clarity is painful and costly.
It stings the way Nathan’s words to David must have stung: “you are that man” (2 Samuel 12:7). It crashes down on us like the waters crashed down on Pharaoh’s armies at the Red Sea. And it brings us face-to-face with one of the most disturbing aspects of Jesus’ ministry: confrontation.
Jesus’ ministry was inherently confrontational, as Matthew 10:34 indicates: “Don’t think that I’ve come to bring peace to the earth. I haven’t come to bring peace but a sword.”
Matthew’s Jesus is an apocalyptic figure, whose conflict with the powers of sin, death, and the devil are borne out through the Gospels. He recognized that true peace, shalom, requires confrontation.
Like the late John Lewis, Jesus was a troublemaker. When Jesus came to town, the powers of sin, death, and the devil surfaced. The demons showed their faces—not because they were powerful, but because they were vulnerable.
As the apocalyptic sword of divine judgment sweeps through our own land, ancient demons are emerging from their lairs with the kind of ferocity that comes only from desperation. In the apocalypse, the last thing we need is a return to normalcy.
Americans face an important question: Are we willing to exchange the moral clarity of this moment for a distorted memory of the past?
Is a “return to normalcy” really what is called for?
We ought to be concerned when and if “return to normalcy” is heard as a summons to a time when we saw less clearly, when we more easily overlooked our neighbor’s weathered face and scarred hands. The precious gift of moral clarity at this time of judgment is utterly invaluable.
And we ought not substitute that clarity for a morally dull sense of comfort.
Dr. Michael J. Chan
Host: Gospel Beautiful Podcast
Assistant Professor of Old Testament
Luther Seminary
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Monday, August 17 | 10:30am-1:00pm CDT
Church Anew has gathered a diverse group of Christian thought leaders to ignite innovation and imagination for leading congregations in a time like this. These keynote speakers will amplify the voices of local leaders from the Minneapolis area, who will share stories of how the church is leading in our own context, particularly in response to systemic racism in our communities.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.