But before we get to the second voice, “the friend”, I want us to think about the time we live in as it relates to The Broken Heart. It’s intuitive in our age, when we stumble into the big question, “what if the church were the church”, to recognize in ourselves that this question comes with baggage. And if not ourselves, others we know and love. Hard stories of abuse, abandonment, corruption, betrayal, and the spiritual wreckage left in the wake.
We read about it all. We hear about it in the media. We watch it unfold before us in personal spaces. And shockingly, against all fear of retribution, people courageously name what they experienced inside religious places; under the control of leaders who took advantage of their age, their naivety, their trust, their powerlessness. Hearts broken, left alone, most ostracized by the group they used to consider home. In brokenness, they have chosen the costly path of truth over the false peace of complicity.
For St. Catherine, a prophet and reformer, her task was to call the church back to its role as shepherd and lover, back to care for its flock. The entire papal leadership and church infrastructure had fled the worst place in the worst time in history, secluded itself in luxury, to practice an out-of-site-out-of-mind existence. It was called the Babylonian Captivity of the Church.
Today’s students of the church have attempted to diagnose the times we are living in, and like they did in the 14th century, to give it a name. They address and describe institutional betrayal where there has been mishandling, ignoring or silencing reports of physical and sexual abuse. Journalists catalogue research on spiritual abuse, pastoral power and leaders’ connection to corrupt systems. Sociologists, historians and political scientists investigate the intersection of religious identity and political power. Global leaders, theologians and scholars take on the intractable realities of the systemic and structural sins of racism, classism, xenophobia and misogyny, which are baked into the very laws, doctrines, cultures, and structures of church organizations. Looking for a way to name[1] the times we’re in shouldn’t be that hard; for we are surrounded by books, lectures, podcasts, blogs, theologies, analyses, support groups, deconstruction conferences, and therapies.
Our “friend” and author, Dr. Elaine A. Heath, says simply, the church finds herself not in a Babylonian captivity, but in the Dark Night of the Soul. She says, "A dark night of the soul is descending on the church in the United States. The signs are everywhere..." (25). In her book and our text for this set, The Mystic Way of Evangelism, A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach, Heath attempts to look at the Western Church’s demographic collapse and diagnose the condition. It is her conviction, based on scholarly research and pragmatic pastoring, that the contemplatives, from the great cloud of witnesses, have taught us how to view our times with hope for renewal. She suggests we look at the church today through an ancient Christian mystical framework that reveals the path for soul transformation and spiritual growth; it is called The Threefold Contemplative Path.
[1] The credit for uniquely coining and popularizing the term "The Great Dechurching" belongs to pastors and authors Jim Davis and Michael Graham. They formalized the phrase in their groundbreaking 2023 book, The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?.
In Brian Zahand’s prominent 2019 book, Postcards from Babylon: The Church in American Exile, Zahnd explicitly diagnoses the Western church's current corruption as a "Babylonian captivity". He argues that the American church has been taken hostage by a political empire, trading the radical, sacrificial love of a crucified Christ for the nationalistic desire to wield political power and cultural dominance. “The church of empire”, is Heath’s choice.
