Cryptomnesia: How a Forgotten Memory Could Save the Church

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Endorsements

Praise for Cryptomnesia

Christine Chakoian has been thinking carefully about Christian faith, the church, and it’s interface with culture all her life. In this highly readable book full of historical resources, contemporary anecdotes, and compelling personal experience, she reminds us that from the beginning Christians (or ‘people of faith’) have had to respond to cultural change and that recovering our institutional memories (or ‘memory’) is one of the keys to a viable future. I’m grateful for this book. It belongs on the shelves of anyone who cares about the future of Christian faith.

—John Buchanan, editor/publisher, The Christian Century

Christine Chakoian provides the church a way forward grounded in lessons learned from the church’s struggle from its earliest days to serve faithfully amidst cultural change. This is an important book for a church standing between a past gone and a future not yet revealed.

—Lovett H. Weems Jr., Distinguished Professor of Church Leadership, Wesley Theological Seminary

"In her new book, Cryptomnesia, Christine Chakoian has done the church and its sometimes bewildered leaders an immense service. In an era of exponential change and huge challenges, she has invited us out of our nervous panic by reminding us of the gift of our 2,000-year history, a treasury rich in the wisdom of creatively and courageously navigating troubled waters. Chakoian teaches us how to negotiate the non-essentials of our traditions while reaffirming the essentials of our faith as the body and mission of Christ."

—Phil Needham, lecturer, author of When God Becomes Small, and retired officer from The Salvation Army

History does indeed repeat itself, and here Christine Chakoian tells us, pastorally but forcefully, why understanding and employing that fact matters so much right now in our lives as Christians and as church. This is a substantial book, as meaty and useful as it is an instructive pleasure to read.

—Phyllis Tickle, author and lecturer

"Cryptomnesia charts a path forward to help the church navigate the disorientation of our times. Rather than clinging simplistically to the conclusions of our past, this book mines our past for the early church's pattern of seeking unity in the midst of turbulence. For those with open ears, this book contains hope for the church."

—Dan Entwistle, Managing Executive Director, United Methodist Church of the Resurrection

"Chakoian patiently and persuasively encourages us to revisit the easy assumption that the church's faith is obsolete. She directs us toward the memory of who and whose we are—a memory we may have forgotten in our information-saturated culture—with the promise that the church was born into circumstances amazingly similar to those we face today. Cryptomnesia is a must-read for book groups, seekers, pastors, and all others who yearn to see ourselves and our world in the way that God does."

—Theodore J. Wardlaw, President and Professor of Homiletics, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary

"Cryptomnesia offers a hopeful reminder that the ‘post-Christendom’ challenges currently facing the church are not new but are reminiscent of the ‘pre-Christendom’ challenges experienced and overcome by the early church. Christine Chakoian offers practical encouragement for us to reclaim healthy practices of Christian community, engagement with our culture, and biblical conflict resolution, modeling Christian love for people in the church and the world who are watching us closely."

—Tim Catlett, pastor, Apex UMC Family of Faith Communities

Christine Chakoian has written a shrewd and suggestive book filled with fresh insight and teeming with rich probes of new possibility for the church. She argues by way of analogy from the early church to the contemporary church, both of which have been called to face immense circumstances of challenge. She articulates parallels between then and now, through which we can draw comfort that we have been here before, wisdom on how to engage faithfully, and assurance that we can cope effectively. Her exposition greatly illuminates our current situation in the church and points the way ahead with the deep challenges of pluralism and decentering.

—Walter Brueggemann, theologian, Old Testament scholar, Columbia Theological Seminary

Title

Copyright

cryptomnesia:

how a forgotten memory could save the church

Copyright © 2014 by Abingdon Press

All rights reserved.

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to Permissions, Abingdon Press, P.O. Box 801, 201 Eighth Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37202-0801 or permissions@umpublishing.org.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chakoian, Christine.

Cryptomnesia : how a forgotten memory could save the church / Christine Chakoian.

1 online resource.

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN 978-1-4267-9628-9 (epub) — ISBN 978-1-4267-9060-7 (binding: soft back / trade pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Globalization—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Christianity and culture. I. Title.

BR115.G58

270.8’3—dc23

2014025181

Scripture quotations unless noted otherwise are from the Common English Bible. Copyright © 2011 by the Common English Bible. All rights reserved. Used by permission. www.CommonEnglishBible.com.

Scripture quotations marked (NRSV) are taken from New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Dedication

To John, Annie, Karen, and Lora, who help me remember what really matters.

Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Cryptomnesia

Chapter 1

When Everything Changes: Life in America Today

Chapter 2

Religious Life in the Shrinking World

Chapter 3

Sifting Our Inheritance: What to Keep and What to Let Go?

Chapter 4

Authority and Community in a Flattened Age

Chapter 5

Taking the Message to the Masses

Chapter 6

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Chapter 7

The Path Ahead

Notes

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments

The cloud of witnesses" is how the writer of Hebrews described them: the vast company of faithful people who have gone before us with courage and strength. As I consider the challenges of our time, I stand in awe of those who have struggled in faith and left their imprint of courage on us all.

And then there is the cloud of witnesses with me now in flesh and blood. I owe a debt of gratitude to Constance Stella, my wise and encouraging editor, and Kelsey Spinnato. Thanks to Paul Franklyn and David Teel for their grace of inviting me to participate in the Covenant Bible Study project and to cohost Shane Stanford, whose humility, faith, and courage are astonishing.

A huge thanks to my college and seminary professors who inspired the love of history and biblical studies in me, especially Vernon K. Robbins and Gary Porton and to the Moveable Feast preaching colloquium, who keeps that love alive.

Thanks to the members of First Presbyterian Church of Lake Forest, who may never understand my nerdy scholarship but love me anyway.

Last but not least, thanks to John, Annie, Karen, and Lora, without whose encouragement I would never imagine that I had something worth saying.

Introduction

Introduction

Cryptomnesia

Cryptomnesia: crypto (hidden or secret) + mnesia (memory) = the reappearance of a suppressed or forgotten memory which is mistaken for a new experience.

—The Collins English Dictionary

We have all had that feeling: we have seen or heard something before but we cannot quite place it. A person looks like someone we know; a song sounds familiar. But then we discover it is just déjà vu: what we are experiencing is brand new. Our brains are tricking us into thinking we have been here before.

Cryptomnesia is the opposite experience: our brains trick us into thinking we’re encountering something new, when in reality we’ve been here before. We forget that we’ve witnessed or heard something, and then, later, we think it’s brand new. Individuals can experience cryptomnesia—for example, when we think we have an original idea, but we’ve actually forgotten something we read or saw earlier. Psychologists tell us that cryptomnesia happens when students accidentally plagiarize with no awareness that they’re doing it. They think their idea is original when, in fact, they are recalling a source they read or an idea generated in a discussion.

Groups can experience cryptomnesia too. Families might find themselves challenged by alcoholism or financial ruin and forget that their parents and grandparents faced the same stress. Family systems theory reminds us that forgotten patterns reemerge over and over again across generations. Similarly, congregations can fall apart over their leaders’ bad behavior, squabbles over money, or tensions over worship styles—and it never occurs to them that their predecessors dealt with exactly the same issues. I discovered this phenomenon as I researched the history of my 150-year-old congregation: the same challenges replayed over multiple pastorates. Sadly, no one remembered, so each generation felt alone in the struggle.

Cryptomnesia—forgotten memory—is exactly what we’re manifesting in the larger Christian community today. The twenty-first-century church is undergoing a crisis. Traditional faith practices are losing traction. Once-solid denominations are under pressure to survive. Alternative religions and secularism are pressing at the edges. Americans are rapidly becoming more worldly, mobile, and materialistic, and it feels like the church we once knew is being left behind. Growing numbers of spiritual but not religious people show disinterest in church, and mainline churches fear imminent demise.

1

And all the while, the world around is shifting at a staggering rate. The digital revolution rapidly accelerated what nineteenth- and twentieth-century telegraphs and rail, telephones and airlines began: bringing diverse people and faiths together in astonishing ways. It all feels new and unsettling.

But it isn’t new at all. Though Christians have never experienced this exact change before, the truth is that we’ve been through an uncannily similar crisis. In fact, the early church emerged in an age weirdly analogous to ours.

Just as the Internet is presently linking far-flung people, the ancient world found itself connected by a new engineering marvel: the massive Roman road-building enterprise. By the time of Christ, Roman roads traversed three continents, connecting people with unprecedented access.

Like our world today, Roman citizens were bombarded with new cultures, new commerce, new foods, and new ideas, as well as new philosophies, cults, and religions. Theirs was an era of massive disorientation, and at the same time, it was exactly the right environment for Christianity to emerge and thrive.

In the pages ahead, we will look at the challenges the earliest Christians faced and the rich possibilities they encountered. As we do, we will find ourselves on oddly familiar ground. We may even remember that we have been here before.

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

When Everything Changes: Life in America Today

My friend Gail cherishes her childhood memories growing up in Washington State:

I grew up at the foot of Mt. St. Helens. I was a child at her beautiful feet. The Fujiyama of the West, they called her; and there were untold family trips to her forest campgrounds. My grandfather taking me for visits at Spirit Lake Lodge . . . playing with pummy stone, the floating rocks left from some long-ago eruption . . . campfire nights at camp, gazing across the lake at the mountain’s luminous shadow in the midnight.

These memories are more than pleasant recollections to Gail. They are part of her family’s spiritual heritage and shaped her Christian identity:

By the time I was in college and director of our church’s summer camp, I had a spiritual relationship with that mountain. I hiked her surrounding hills, just as my daddy had in his Scouting days . . . the same trails, the same waterfalls, the same glimpses through shoreline trees. I thought of St. Helens as my mountain.

Though Gail knew that all creation was God’s gift for us to love, she was grateful that God, knowing the limits of our hearts, Ordained for each one spot should prove / Beloved over all, in Rudyard Kipling’s words.1 Indeed, Gail thought of St. Helens as "my spot, my most beloved place on earth":

Clearest in my memory after all these years is night upon summer night, when all the campers were finally in bed, sitting on a log gazing as the Orthodox gaze at the beloved face of their icons, praying . . . to God, to Jesus, to the Spirit, all somehow iconned in the glowing shape of that magnificent shadow in the darkness. In my memory even now, with Spirit Lake shimmering blue-green at her feet, it is still the most beloved and beautiful place on earth.

2

Every one of us has been shaped somewhere. Some, like Gail, are stamped by a single place, but most of us are shaped by a landscape of relationships