A venerable Protestant church along Boston’s fashionable Newbury Street was announcing its 150th anniversary as a church community. The attractive poster on the church door featured a head and shoulders photograph of the local minister (actually ministeress) robed in alb, stole and chasuble with an especially welcoming and hospitable smile on her healthy face.
In another era she would perhaps have been a kindergarten teacher in Wellesley or a children’s librarian in Dover. Beneath her comforting presence were words intended to be especially heartening to the religiously disadvantaged passers-by: “Believing is not a condition for beloving or belonging here.” Jesus once posed the question, “When the Son of Man returns will he find any faith on earth?” Well, Christ need not look for faith on Newbury Street if this anniversary poster is any indication. Belonging has squeezed out believing as the hallmark of this church’s life.
And our friend on Newbury Street is not the only one to have discerned that friendship is more provocative than faith in the 21st century. Researchers Robert Putnam and David Campbell have found that “communities of faith seem more important than faith itself.” Those same parishioners seen in the same pew each week are more re-assuring than the phrases heard from the pulpit each Sunday. Fellowship with neighbors is more endearing than communion with God. Secular authors are not alone in their observations. Pope Benedict XVI recently observed, “Often we are anxiously preoccupied with the social, cultural and political consequences of the faith, taking for granted that faith is present, which unfortunately is less and less realistic.” Sometimes the churches, parish halls, schools, rectories, chancery offices, convents, hospitals and social programs of the church can give the impression that the church and its faith are alive and well. But the structures and functions of faith are not the same as a personal faith in Christ as Lord and Savior. Perhaps in this day, the salt has lost its flavor, the pope notes.
“The heart of Christianity, the fulcrum and mainstay of the faith, the firm lever of certainty, the strong wind that sweeps away all fear,” the pope insists, is an informed belief in Jesus Christ, in him crucified and resurrected. The recent change in the Nicene Creed affirmed at Mass each weekend from “We believe” to “I believe” was effected precisely to underline the urgent need for deliberate, heartfelt, personal assent to the reality and revelations of Jesus Christ. Believing is, undeniably, a condition for belonging to the Roman Catholic Church. Faith is Catholicism’s very root and foundation.
In this coming Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus is encouraged by his disciples to promote the fellowship that has arisen between himself and the folk of Galilee. St. Peter informs Jesus that everyone in the locale is looking for him. Christ has become very popular and should not miss this opportunity to consolidate his achievements, to establish a firm community base. But Jesus resists the temptation to rest on previous successes and understands further evangelization to be his primary mission. “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come.” Jesus certainly knows that the maintenance of a strong community life will be vital for the continuation of the kingdom of God here on earth. Jesus never denies the need for fraternal solidarity and mutual support within the church. The “beloving” and “belonging” heralded on Newberry Street are certainly essential to the full Christian experience. But belief in the fatherhood of God, in the saving death and resurrection of the Son, and in the strengthening presence of the Spirit, is a priority outranking all other considerations.
“Faith comes through hearing,” St. Paul writes. “And how shall they hear if no one is sent?” he then asks. This is the task of the church. Like Jesus, preachers, teachers, catechists, missionaries and other men and women of faith must be sent to share the good news of salvation from their own minds and hearts into the minds and hearts of passers-by everywhere. Fellowship without faith is plainly a cheat and a disappointment. It is a promise without fulfillment. It is style without substance. The Evangelical churches are correct: Jesus saves. A church without explicit belief in Jesus is just an exercise in hospitality and neighborliness. A covered-dish supper is a sad substitute for the Creed and the sacraments.
