AUSTIN
— Nadia Bolz-Weber bounds into the University United Methodist Church
sanctuary like a superhero from Planet Alternative Christian. Her
6-foot-1 frame is plastered with tattoos, her arms are sculpted by
competitive weightlifting and, to show it all off, this pastor is
wearing a tight tank top and jeans.
Looking
out at the hundreds of people crowded into the pews to hear her present
the gospel of Jesus Christ, she sees: Dockers and blazers. Sensible
shoes. Grandmothers and soccer moms. Nary a facial
piercing.
To Bolz-Weber’s bafflement, this is now her congregation: mainstream America.
These
are the people who put her memoir near the top of the New York Times
bestseller list the week it came out in September. They are the ones who
follow her every tweet and Facebook post by the thousands, and who have
made the Lutheran minister a budding star for the liberal Christian
set.
And who, as Bolz-Weber has described it in her frequently profane dialect, “are
[mess]ing up my weird.”
A
quick tour through her 44 years doesn’t seem likely to wind up here. It
includes teen rebellion against her family’s fundamentalist
Christianity, a nose dive into drug and alcohol addiction, a lifestyle
of sleeping around and a stint doing stand-up in a grungy Denver comedy
club. She is part of society’s outsiders, she writes in her memoir, its
“underside dwellers . . . cynics, alcoholics and queers.”
Which
is where — strangely enough — the match with her fans makes sense. The
type of social liberals who typically fill the pews of mainline churches
sometimes feel like outsiders among fellow
liberals in their lives if
they are truly believing Christians; if they are people who really
experience Jesus and his resurrection, even if they can’t explain it
scientifically; if they are people who want to hear words from the
Apostles in church, not Thich Nhat Hanh or Barack Obama.
In
her body and her theology, Bolz-Weber represents a new, muscular form
of liberal Christianity, one that merges the passion and life-changing
fervor of evangelicalism with the commitment to inclusiveness and social
justice of mainline Protestantism. She’s a tatted-up, foul-mouthed
champion to people sick of being belittled as not Christian enough for
the right or too Jesus-y for the left.
“You
show us all
your dirty laundry! It’s all out there!” the Rev. John Elford of the
University United Methodist Church booms, as if he is introducing a rock
star, leading the cheering crowd into an impassioned round of
hymn-singing.
Bolz-Weber
springs onstage to do a reading from her book, but first she addresses
the language that’s about to be unleashed on the pulpit: “I don’t think
church leaders should pretend to be something they’re not.”
The crowd erupts into applause.
Bolz-Weber
pulls out a few kitschy items that she raffles off to raise money for a
local charity. She waves a gift certificate for a free tattoo. Then she
speaks to her
new reality:
“You ladies over 70 dig deep, because you know you want it!”
God without answers
Bolz-Weber’s
appeal is unquestionably part packaging: dramatic back story, cool
appearance, super-entertaining delivery. She launched a successful
church for disaffected young people and has headlined youth gatherings
tens of thousands strong. For a part of American religion that’s been in
a long, slow institutional decline, this gives her major credibility.
