The Church Is a Whore

"The Church is a whore, but she's my mother."

The first time I heard this quote (from St. Augustine), I was at first shocked, then extremely pleased.

All my life I've heard people accuse the church of hypocrisy. I would be the last person to argue with that. The church is full of hypocrites and sinners. The moment we stop believing that, we decide we can redeem ourselves, or worse, that we don't need redemption.

I just wrote a paper for my American Christianity class about how the church has always been embedded in its culture. I believe it is important for Christianity to be able to relate to its time and place, and as a lover of the arts, I am especially interested in how the Church interacts with and shapes culture and art. But the church must never be co-opted by its cultural setting.

Unfortunately, the Church regularly has been whored out (hey, I'm just quoting St. Augustine) to nationalistic, imperialistic, cruel and even idolatrous institutions and causes. Some theologians argue that the Church was ruined as far back as the 4th century, when Constantine made it the official religion of the Roman Empire. The easiest targets for accusing the Church of hypocrisy are the Crusades and Nazi Germany. These days, with all the anti-Islam sentiment, no one wants to talk about these things seriously; but even though these events are "in the past," they cannot be easily brushed aside. That's part of why I recently purchased an iron cross from 1939. An odd purchase, admittedly; but I never want to forget how easily we Christians can whore ourselves out to the peril of those around us and to our own souls.

We also cannot allow the church to be co-opted even today; I found this picture of the famous Last Supper painting Photoshopped with various trappings of Americanism while looking for a photo of a flag draped over a communion table, which I've heard about happening. The table is not America's table. It is the table of our Lord.

Back to the Crusades and Nazi Germany. We need to admit to these atrocities, to apologize, to make restitution. But we cannot put them behind us, and we cannot wash our hands even of things that happened before we are born. That Christianity has been used as a vehicle of genocide means that the Holocaust could happen again.

And yet. I love the second part of Augustine's quote. The Church is my mother. Regardless of what she may have done, or what we may have done because of her, she is all we have. All the anti-institutional talk floating around in Christianity these days forgets that the institution is all we've got. Yes, it's broken. Yes, it's hypocritical. And I'm not necessarily saying that's OK. We must mourn the brokenness of the church and seek to amend it, with God's help. But we cannot deny that brokenness, or else it will consume us.