Big Tent Christianity: Easy to Say, Hard to Do

This post is part of the Big Tent Christianity Synchroblog. All the bloggers involved in this project are answering a very simple prompt: "what is 'big tent' Christianity?"

In a word: hard.

Most of my life I have been called an idealist. Guilty as charged. One of my ideals is that all of God’s children really can find a way to live together in peace. We simply have to choose to do so. Easier said than done, of course. I’m not foolish enough to assume that everyone will actually choose that path, but I believe that they are capable of doing so. That’s the Arminian side of my theological heritage.

It is in the midst this tension between ideals and the tragic reality of human choices that I can’t find anything to say about what “Big Tent Christianity” means to me except “hard”.

It’s hard to make Christianity a big tent when there are so many groups of folks who don’t want to coexist. It’s very hard to keep everybody under the tent when we actively invite our GLBT brothers and sisters to openly claim their sexuality as part of their imago Dei bearing goodness while Fred Phelps and his crew are standing there under the same tent screaming and holding signs proclaiming who is and is not welcome under the tent.

It’s hard to maintain a tent that’s big enough for everyone when people whose passion outweighs their experience are dismissed by others for being too young and/or inexperienced, or for not having the right education or credentials, and are told that they’re second class citizens, if they’re welcome under the tent at all.

I could go on citing examples all day, but I think you get the point.

It’s not a matter of conservative vs. liberal, evangelical vs. emergent, or whatever other labels we attach to people. The real issue is the tendency we all have to stick with those that are like us, and to justify our own existence by putting down and excluding those that are different, whether we have an honest disagreement with them or not.

Practicing Big Tent Christianity means not only welcoming others that are different than us, others whose beliefs or practices might be offensive to us, but opening ourselves up to the possibility of being converted, in some sense, by our interaction and fellowship with them. It means Fred Phelps might have to learn something from the Gay Street Preacher. It means I might have to learn something from Pat Robertson. (that last sentence made me vomit in my mouth a little bit)

Big Tent Christianity is easy to talk about, but very, very hard to practice. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it happen outside of brief, isolated events. Have you ever seen Christianity truly be a big tent over sustained periods of time? If so, please share!

Hard, yes. But not impossible. There I go being an idealist again.