I love Crash Course Religions because they do not shy away from topics that are very important to religious folks. The idea of where “authority” comes from in a religious setting was huge for me as a young Christian, just having been prayed over at a home Bible study when I was 15. Having been raised Roman Catholic I had been taught that only ordained priests could “speak” for God and we weren’t to trust others who would claim to speak for God without the Church’s blessing. But the Jesus Movement in the 1970s Southern California was all about God touching the untrained seekers and those who have turned from the drugs and hedonism of the 1960s and God using them to lead others to the “Good News,” just like the 1st Century Christians described in the New Testament. 

I know that my poor mom worried about me for many reasons, but especially because I went way overboard trying to understand what all of this stuff meant, continually reading my Bible, asking questions that she and dad couldn’t answer, not accepting that whatever the Catholic Church said as Truth and gravitating toward socializing with other weirdo teenage Jesus freaks. In typical teenage fashion I didn’t care about “outward appearance” as in cutting my long hair or wearing anything other than my t-shirts and jeans, but my understanding of the Bible was very conservative Protestant, with some pentecostal/charismatic parts. My conservative Baptist father never really accepted the hippy outside with the Bible literalist on the inside that I espoused, but he mostly stayed silent having agreed when he married mom that we’d be raised Catholic. So my whole religious rebellion was hers to deal with. 

And back in the day our whole thing was that the authority to say what was right or wrong was completely based on whether one could “prove it” from the Bible, using Martin Luther’s sola scriptura as our means of authority. While mom challenged the idea that one could choose for themselves what was right or wrong based on ones understanding of the Bible, she did practice a kind of Catholicism that some have called “Cafeteria Catholicism” in that she felt at liberty to choose to ignore certain teachings of the Church if she felt very strongly about it (such as the use of birth control… yeah, five kids was more than enough as far as she was concerned). But Catholicism was the only form of Christianity that she thought was True and was fearful when I switched allegiances to those crazy Calvary Chapel people and their part-time ministers. 

I know she was worried, but it could have been much worse. Over the course of my last few years in high school, my JF buddies and I crossed paths with a few Christian groups who were leaning in the cultish “we alone have the Truth” direction, or were way more conservative than the hippy-dippy Calvary Chapel folks. I was well into studying for my B.A. degree in Biblical Studies at conservative Protestant Biola University when the news of the Jim Jones massacre/mass suicide broke and mom made sure to call me partly worried about me and partly warning me that this is what happens when one deems to speak for God. Sadly, by then I began to notice that my academic theological/biblical studies were not held in high regard by my fellow Calvary Chapel friends. When attending the big Calvary in Costa Mesa I heard one assistant pastor in a sermon from the pulpit refer to those who study for their PhD.s in theology as “phenomenally dumb” and those studying for their Theology Doctorate (Th.D.) as “thoroughly dumb.” So, after I got my B.A. and started working on a Masters in Theology, I started experiencing some cognitive dissonance and really began to believe that this wasn’t going to end well for me, that sola scripture only worked if one stayed locked into reading the King James Version with the Scoffield reference notes and didn’t listen to all of those liberal scholars and their theories.

So, where does religious authority come from? It’s funny that the Jesus Movement that influenced me in the beginning, not coming from recognized religious authority, had the strength of “changed lives” and everyday “miracles.” But within a few short years it was completely swallowed up by recognized church structures and competing local organizations. It was like it was inevitable that what began as a rebellion against institutional religion within one generation became its own institutional religion or form of religion. 

After I abandoned my masters in theology program, I briefly started a second bachelors in Anthropology and very much understood that this process of “rebel movement to established institution” is just what humans do to perpetuate their school’s teachings. It’s the only way to preserve “The Master’s Teachings.” They have to either create an institution or be absorbed by a prior institution or failing at that, disappear entirely from human memory (unless some scholar stumbles upon an ancient text and a new debate is hatched…). 

As a student of the Bible and Religion and History, I get that different approaches to life’s ultimate questions will spark these movements and spiritual leaders over time. Again, this is what humans do. But like, two-thousand years ago, not fifty years ago, or last week… too many of the “modern” movements have proven to be not benevolent or renewing, but cultish, divisive and dangerous. I do appreciate personal stories of “spiritual discovery” or personal journeys of growth and renewal. I’m happy for you. Just don’t assume that this gives you some kind of “authority” to translate the wisdom of the cosmos or that I have to agree with your insights. I’ll listen to your story and celebrate your victories, just don’t expect me to sign up. I already gave over 30-years to my spiritual exploration. I love this part of what it means to be human but I’m done questing for something that’s not there (WoW reference). Where are you on your journey?  

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Tags: academic religious studies, Crash Course Religions, sola scriptura, spiritual authority, video Wednesdays 

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