Page 5 - THE CHURCH BEFORE THE MOCKING WORLD

The simple fact is that whatever the Church once was, in terms of its categories, she is now passing into something else that is completely new. The problem is that the Church has not arrived yet at whatever this newness is to be, and the transition, the liminal state, is quite traumatic.
The implications for the individual Christian of all denominations are enormous. The rigid forms and practices that have been the boundaries of their religious lives are cracking and breaking.
A sense of being ?in-between?something seems to be effecting everyone. Very few people are immune to this unsettling.
Perhaps what is also interesting, but a subject for another study, is that this liminality effects the Church in every corner of the earth, with the exception of the very rural.
I live in central Europe and have done so for many years. I, along with my wife and team, work among the most despised and poverty- stricken community in Europe today, the Roma.
Some of us in our team are working on the concept of ?Eucharistic Socialism?as an authentic spiritual expression when working with the poor and the oppressed.
In simple terms, Eucharistic Socialism is taking the full message of the Cross and distributing its wealth to all of society; our particular group being the poor and the oppressed Roma.
Eucharistic stands for all that is embedded in the realities of the Cross, and Socialism is simply a common term for the redistribution of wealth.
This work is carried out in the midst of the complex religious context of Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant cultures. Each having a stake-holding in the communities they serve and compete for.
In recent years something has been shifting. Each of the traditions have been traumatised by their own shocking excess and madness. The Orthodox, and the Roman Catholics, have branded each other?s bodies and souls with nationalistic insanity, whilst Protestants have imported from the USA, Australia, Britain, and Scandinavia every conceivable neo-cultic and bizarre heresy known to Church history.
This chaos of religion has left many sensitive young people with a deep sense of confusion. It has led to many feeling an unease with the spiritual and religious definitions or labels that they have ownership of.
For the established Churches or traditions, the attempt has been made to somehow ?get back to normal?as quickly as possible; but normal no longer exists. Rather, it seems as if the Holy Spirit has driven the Body of Christ into the desert to be tempted by Satan.