Last year, the New York Times ran an opinion article by Tara Isabella Burton titled, “Christianity Gets Weird,” describing a small, but recent trend toward traditional beliefs among younger Christians. Burton’s article intrigued me when I first read it and, in the months since, I’ve increasingly noticed the “weird” label online (#WAT = Weird Anglican Twitter, #WCT, etc.). Which is to say that her original insights have been largely validated.
This diffuse, unaffiliated group of what she terms “weird Christians” are disillusioned with the “spiritual emptiness” that defines modern America. They reject, “those churches, primarily mainline Protestant denominations like Episcopalianism and Lutheranism, that have watered down the stranger and more supernatural elements of the faith (like miracles, say, or the literal resurrection of Jesus Christ).” By rediscovering the historical roots of Christianity, one avoids the compromises made with modernity and its comparatively empty faith. The preference for pre-modern dogma mirrors their aesthetic fondness for antiquarian worship, whether this be a revival of the Latin mass, icons, incense, or Elizabethan prayers for the dead. For weird Christians, their quest for authentic faith seeks to bracket the trappings of modernity and return to an unblemished pre-modern religious era.
The notion of authenticity at work in this movement is quixotic (and, it should be said, distinctly modern). Like western appropriations of meditation or yoga, the cultural voyeurism of weird Christians promises to fulfill the emptiness of evangelicalism and mainline denominations. But while some practices of medieval Christianity might have much to commend today, other aspects of this relatively exotic faith may simply be ignored. Its asceticism may offer an escape from our increasing technological addiction — a gadfly of sorts that collides into our glowing white screens. But what of those practices we might deem to be unsavory, like its possible advice on romantic relationships, its rigid views of hierarchy, or purgatory and indulgences? The selectivity is difficult to ignore.
If I were to be categorized (which, as a millennial, I obviously distain), I’d probably fall somewhere within the weird Christian camp. Or at least I sympathize with the scorn for the emptiness of modernity and its tragic repercussions for life both inside and outside of the church. And yet I cannot help but view the budding movement of weird Christians with dismay and concern. The uncritical return to ancient faith runs the risk of an escapism that fails to address the totality of life today.
The weird Christian movement parallels the situation theologian Rudolf Bultmann found himself in during the late 1930’s One Christmas Day, he heard a sermon that spoke eloquently of grand theological themes, but he left “deeply disappointed and depressed.” The preacher had not translated his message to address the present.[1] It was thoroughly orthodox and yet ultimately impotent to change the heart. As Bultmann looked around at his contemporaries, he feared a chasm had arisen between the pulpit and the pew, leaving the people to figure out their lives for themselves as false gospels were propagated by the marketplace and the government. Sitting on the other side of the Lutheran renaissance, Bultmann sensed a creep toward a fossilized faith that sought to avoid the controversies of the day. The preachers rehearsed creedal formulations while the people were actually being evangelized elsewhere. In Bultmann’s view, failing to bridge the divide between the church’s doctrinal preaching and the viewpoint of parishioners results in either “schizophrenia or insincerity”[2], or as we might say, a disastrous disconnect between faith and works.
As it was in Bultmann’s time, one wonders whether a wholesale embrace of the weirdness of older versions of Christianity might paradoxically keep Christianity itself at arm’s length, a kind of ancient spectacle for modern, inspirational entertainment. The ancient rituals and beliefs sought cannot be said to be un-Christian, to be sure, but the connection between these and modern life remain nondescript. Trying to escape the trappings of modernity altogether, adherents become more akin to actors in a renaissance fair. The danger here — one that reflected in the selectivity of what might be deemed appropriately “weird” — is the divide between religious practice and day-to-day life grows accordingly. Orthodoxy is maintained precisely by its compartmentalization.
There is a difference between utilizing the past as a resource for answering present-day problems and retrieving the past to avoid the present. The gifts of history cannot be received without the refractions of time. Nor should they be. The past may be reconstructed to weakly mimic its former glory — a facsimile that disturbs those who closely gaze at its strangeness.
The issue here isn’t so much whether Christianity is weird, but whether its weirdness sufficiently preaches — whether it is good news, or a spectacle that undermines faith in the long run. Miracles are weird at face value, a celestial, eternal palace in the sky is weirder still. But Bultmann wanted Christianity to be weird for the right reasons, namely the foolishness of the cross (1 Cor 1:18), without also demanding Christians to become first century inhabitants of the modern world. Bultmann called attention to inexplicable weirdness of Christianity in order to maintain the essential offensiveness of the gospel and its life-giving address to the present.
More than praying the “right” words, espousing the correct version of orthodoxy, or even holding to the proper distinction between law and gospel, Christianity is at its weirdest when the word of the gospel speaks to the life you actually live: reorienting the most deeply held of beliefs and giving comfort to one’s pain and fears. Spirituality is weird; the forgiveness of sins is weirder. True weirdness holds that the benevolent God of all things died a gruesome death for the forgiveness of sins, that this death somehow rips apart the fabric of creation itself to create a newness unconditioned by the past. True Weirdness contends that our restless search for authenticity is laid bare and extinguished by the liberating word of unmerited grace.
So by all means, “Make Christianity Weird Again!” — the kind of weird that cannot be compartmentalized. Make it so weird, in fact, that everything else that claims to be true appears strange by comparison.
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