As many people did, I picked up a hobby during the pandemic: trivia and quizzing. It started with an invitation to an asynchronous trivia league called Learned League, which, in addition to four league-wide seasons, includes user-generated one-day quizzes. (My hobby has expanded to also include one local pub trivia team, four online teams, and a live pop culture quiz - all with different mechanics. But I digress.)
Last week, one of one-days was about Christian Heretics; twelve questions ranging from the Arians to the Nestorians, from Martin Luther to Carlton Pearson. I was in heaven, as church history is one of my favorite lenses through which to examine history, and I soaked up the church history courses in seminary like a sponge. And of course, I went to Union Theological Seminary, who has its own historical connections to heresy, and I’m a Unitarian Universalist, which is a faith because of heresies.
As it turns out, I knew enough about the heresies that the quiz-smith asked about that I came first out of 732 fellow Learned League quizzers (nicknamed “LLamas” because of course we are). I texted a colleague - a fellow LLama, a fellow UU minister, and a fellow Union alum - the only one I knew would understand my first thought of dedicating the win to our church history professors.
The ensuing conversation led to her sharing with me an article from Alteria.org entitled “Did St. Nicholas Punch Arius at the Council of Nicea?”
For those unaware, Arius was one of the 4th century clerics who saw no biblical basis for the Trinity and argued this at the 325 Council of Nicea - the council where bishops and scholars gathered to once and for all determine the nature of being (ontology) of Jesus. And a story emerged that shows up every St. Nicholas Day on social media, that the argument got so heated that at one point, Nick punched (or maybe slapped) Arius.
Welp.
As it turns out, not only is the punch (or slap) a myth, NICK WASN’T EVEN THERE.
Now.
I tell you that whole story to raise this salient point for our religious communities:
We tell myths all the time.
I’m not talking about what may or may not be mythical about our sacred texts. I’m talking about the stories we tell about pivotal moments in our congregations’ histories. The story of the founding. The story of the split. The story of the bad minister. The story of the mean board. The story of the way we are perceived. The story of our culture. The story of our mistakes.
So many of these stories are, likely, based in fact, but get told in various ways that change the narrative - from who was involved, to what the issue actually was, to who did what to whom, to what people believe about you, to what you believe about yourself.
Sometimes those mythic versions are funny - like the foyer paint controversy that gets heightened for comic effect. Sometimes they are borne out of hurt feelings and cast well-meaning people on opposite sides of an issue as the villains. Sometimes they obscure the real problem, which festers and becomes the chronic unhealth of a congregation.
It’s those stories that get handed down, expanded and exaggerated, and more often than not, perpetuate some form of harm. And bucking against those stories then becomes the heresy.
What stories do you tell that may not be true? What is the truth behind them that no one talks about, and if you did, would blow things up? And what do you think points your congregation to health: maintaining the status quo of your myths, or coming to terms with your truths?
I know which I prefer.