Around 500 A.D., “barbarians” sought to subjugate Rome by wiping out its underlying religion. Christianity went underground. In abbeys like Iona, monks painstakingly copied Scripture and civilization’s great writings, in effect saving Western civilization itself.

Around 1000 A.D. came the “Great Schism,” when the Western church based in Rome and the Eastern church based in Constantinople fought over creeds and doctrine, political power and cultural hegemony. That split endures to this day between Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism.

Around 1500 A.D. came the Protestant Reformation, when nationalism born of exploration in the New World and new commercial wealth demanded an end to Rome’s domination of European life. That split, too, endures.

Now comes a new millennium, and Christianity wears so many different faces that it’s difficult to speak of a single “Christian movement.” We see more than 1,500 denominations in the U.S. alone, by one count. There’s a vast chasm between “First World Christianity” and the booming churches of Africa and Latin America; the virtual collapse of both Reformed and Roman churches in Europe; and now a relentless decline of institutional Christianity in North America.

Tickle calls this one the “Great Emergence.” One could also call it the “un-formation of Christianity,” or in Diana Butler Bass’ words, “Christianity after religion.”

Conservative Christians tend to blame a determined assault by outside forces such as “secular humanists” and atheists. As a result, they are pulling inward and demanding that the surrounding culture return to its Christian roots.

Progressive Christianity, meanwhile, searches for an explanation that looks forward, not backward, but its infrastructure is collapsing too fast for anything but stubborn clinging to old ideas that explain too little and new ideas that promise too little.

We aren’t likely to comprehend this latest 500-year transition until it is further along. But I think two things are clear:

First, Christianity in North America is being freed from its own roots. Roman Catholics in the pews are straining to find why Rome and the pope are relevant to their faith needs. Mainline Christianity is moving beyond the captivity of white, middle-class, property-owning, optimistic serenity. Conservative Christianity is discovering that right opinion leads nowhere and a combative countercultural stance merely makes its proponents seem angry and judgmental.

Second, Christianity no longer controls the flow. Its ideas no longer shape cultural dialogue. Its leaders no longer command broad respect. Its buildings no longer draw people in by simply opening their doors. Churches’ stubborn clinging to Sunday worship stopped working decades ago.

I don’t see this as an attack from outside but rather a collapse from the inside. The world changed — as cultures, economies and political systems always do — and the church thought it could stand still and avoid offending pillars and pledge payers.

Meanwhile, people began finding their own pathways to God, their own languages for accessing God, their own ideas about life’s purpose, and their own forms of faith community.

Stuck with inherited facilities that they cannot afford, with traditions that no longer resonate outside the bubble, with ranks graying and pews emptying, established church leaders seem ready to consider change.

Most will change too little and, once the immediate bleeding stops, will circle the wagons once again. But some will look outward and be moved to compassion by a nation lost in dysfunction and by lives being lost to our own mega-rich barbarians.

It’s an exciting and hopeful time. Faith communities brought to their knees by changes beyond their control will land in exactly the right posture: to confess, submit, pray and serve.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus” and founder of the Church Wellness Project. His website is www.morningwalkmedia.com. Follow Tom on Twitter @tomehrich.)

KRE/AMB END EHRICH

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Cynical politicians use them to attack enemies through innuendo, as in Sen. Joe McCarthy’s hunt in the early-1950s for suspected “Reds” behind every bush.

Conspiracy theories serve to make people afraid and to keep them afraid. Someone is out for their guns, their money, their health benefits, their children’s minds. Demagogues concoct conspiracy fears and feast on the dread they evoke.

When people are frightened, they tend to be more malleable. They willingly give up some freedom and civil rights in order to feel safe from the monsters. Relinquishing freedoms rarely yields any sense of safety, of course, just more fear. Inevitably, conspiracy theories lead toward oppression and division.

Conspiracy theories are a weapon that bullies use against the weak. When successful, they empower the bullies to even greater cruelty, and they leave the weak weaker, ready to join the denunciation of the target group.

Why do people fall for conspiracy theories? Some of it seems basic to human nature. “My sister got more than I did!” “Why doesn’t anyone like me?” The whining of childhood seeks an enemy.

Some of it renders the complex and confusing a bit easier to understand. The Benghazi hearings in Washington, for example, hunt for a pattern of official malfeasance, rather than grasp the chaos that many nations experience and the rage that crowds around U.S. interests.

They also serve to undercut one potential presidential candidate and to cloud the incumbent. The waving of papers by mock-angry legislators looks like McCarthyism all over again.

Conspiracy theories provide cover for truly destructive behavior. Major health care providers use threats of “death panels” as a cover for running up the cost of health care while trimming benefits.

Some of the worst excesses in conspiracy theories have come from my own backyard, the Christian movement. We have used McCarthy-like fear-mongering to justify pogroms against Jews, attacks on Protestants or on Catholics, and campaigns against whatever we didn’t like in society and our congregations.

Here in Texas, the air is filled with worried pastors lamenting supposed attacks on religious freedom, as if there were a gathering army of “secular humanists” out to destroy Christianity. Locking the door against an imagined enemy is always easier than going out to serve.

Jesus gave a consistent commandment: “Don’t be afraid.” But that doesn’t serve the interests of religious bullies. So they ignore the call to courage and to trust in God, and instead provoke fears of moral collapse and offer scapegoats for stemming that collapse.

In time, of course, fear feeds on itself, like a wildfire, and demagogues fan the flames, denounce calls to reason, and stand ready to harvest the benefits.

Then, unfortunately, along comes a shred of fact that justifies the dread. A few feckless Soviet agents were indeed prowling the bushes in the Cold War. The Internal Revenue Service was indeed snooping around the Tea Party. Demagogues pounce on those facts, blow them up and start high-glare hunts for more imagined enemies.

Fortunately, conspiracy theorists tend to overreach, and common sense sees through their extravagant imaginings — but not before lives have been ruined, urgent needs avoided and people rendered a bit more suspicious of their neighbors.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus” and founder of the Church Wellness Project. His website is www.morningwalkmedia.com. Follow Tom on Twitter @tomehrich.)

KRE END EHRICH

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Some sang the Hebrew text with ease, some with difficulty — a reminder that faith generally means learning a language other than one’s own.

After the synagogue choir sang in their other-language, we joined them to sing in our other-language: swaying to the beat, getting one’s body into the praise. They responded gladly, as our combined choirs rehearsed Richard Smallwood’s epic “Total Praise,” a setting of Psalm 121, which Christians and Jews share.

When two choirs from Park Avenue Christian Church and two choirs from Park Avenue Synagogue, plus some jazz musicians, performed Sunday, at a Psalms festival, we disrupted 2,000 years of animus between Christians and Jews. In the eyes of the creator God who made us all, we said, we are more alike than different, more connected than separated, more eager for shared faith than for separate and superior faith.

When the gospel choir did a piece written by our director and the soloist soared, in true gospel tradition, the congregation soared along with her, shouting, clapping, dancing in the pews.

Who knew that one of the largest and most influential Jewish synagogues in the U.S. could rock?

Those who have built careers and power bases on religious division will be offended. Traditions that don’t allow men and women to worship together will reject our happy blending. So, will those who separate the races, who pursue triumphalism, who consider gays and lesbians unwelcome in God’s house, who take comfort in using the hated “other” as scapegoat.

In fact, we offended on so many levels that God could smite us all — if God were anything like the harsh caricature offered by religious separatists. But the God I know was smiling, and wasn’t the least troubled when a gay black Christian male sang forcefully alongside a straight white Jewish female.

Religious leaders worry about the decline of religion in America, but I think their worry is misplaced. Faith is doing just fine. Faith communities are thriving when they focus on faith and not on denominational traditions, when they use contemporary tools to connect with people and reach across the divisions, when they turn outward to serve, not inward to gloat.

Yes, it’s a tough time to be a denominational partisan, to believe one’s own tradition is absolutely right and all others wrong. But that was never God’s desire. God has wanted oneness, not separation; and humble submission, not aggressive claims of superiority.

It’s a great time to be seeking God. A wide world is open to us, from synagogue to church, singing in a “thousand tongues,” finding the seed of hope wherever it has been planted, finding common ground and gleaning joy from what isn’t officially shared and yet is shared nonetheless.

Some see the “unaffiliated” as uninterested. I see them as not tied down. They move from venue to venue, from group to group, finding value in this faith community and that faith community, regardless of labels. Faith discussions among young adults are lively. Older adults are turning away from closed-off congregations.

The aim isn’t to be better or to be right, but to connect with other people who are connecting with God.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus” and founder of the Church Wellness Project. His website is www.morningwalkmedia.com. Follow Tom on Twitter @tomehrich.)

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President Barack Obama hugs Donna Vanzant, the owner of North Point Marina, as he tours damage from Hurricane Sandy in Brigantine, N.J., Oct. 31, 2012. Photo by Pete Souza/The White House

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All presidents try to rewrite history to burnish their brief place in it. And in his new presidential library, George W. Bush will have his turn.

Barack Obama’s legacy is still a work in progress, though even sympathetic commentators are seeing him now, in his fifth year, as too slow to act, too cerebral to brawl, and too little respected by his political enemies.

In one role, however, Obama has excelled: “Mourner in Chief” — not one of his constitutional duties but oddly important.

In the past several months, he has shown up — on the ground, in person, able to empathize and to grieve in coastal towns ravaged by Hurricane Sandy; in a Connecticut town ravaged by a lone gunman; in a proud city driven to eerie silence by two bombers; and now a Texas town where firefighters were killed doing their job.

As Mourner in Chief, Obama has left enduring images. While a smug speaker of the House chortles over out-maneuvering the president on favors to the rich, Obama walks into the crowds in New Jersey and looks shattered homeowners in the eye.

He does so again in Newtown, Conn., in Boston, and in Waco — wiping tears from his eyes, sharing the grief, and affirming their courage to keep on.

Such mourning won’t bring Congress into line. While citizens were mourning, Congress was catering to the powerful by smoothing out air travel delays that Congress itself caused. But in nurturing America’s soul, the contrast between ignoring citizens and sharing their pain will have impact.

Nothing in the Constitution requires a president to venture into the nation’s suffering rather than flying safely over it in a helicopter. But there is in America an implicit deal between White House and citizenry, in which presidents truly care for the American people. Not just those who give boatloads of money to politicians, but the ones who actually do the work that enables the precious 1 percent to have those boatloads.

In his own way, Obama is breaking that deal, too. He voices concern for victims of America’s bizarre socialism for the rich. But then he doesn’t get into the trenches to change it.

The searing experience of being an effective “Mourner in Chief,” might stir Obama’s appetite for political battle. I certainly hope so. The people need an advocate. Gun merchants have their strong advocate. Bankers and the super-rich have theirs. Special interests line up to grease the congressional palm.

Not so with police officers who actually keep streets safe, or firefighters who move toward danger, or military troops in harm’s way, or teachers stifled by a broken system, or families crushed by debt, or elderly citizens watching Congress steal their retirement funds, or the vast majority who live paycheck-to-paycheck while a few obscenely indulge themselves.

Americans have a surfeit of predators, but few in power who remember that we are people, we have hopes and dreams, we have sorrows, we want to do meaningful work, we want to care for our families and we want to be proud citizens.

Now that President Obama has looked the broken and courageous in the eye, I hope he will shed his reserve and become an advocate for the people.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus” and founder of the Church Wellness Project. His website is www.morningwalkmedia.com. Follow Tom on Twitter @tomehrich.)

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The older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was quoted as saying “I don’t have a single American friend, I don’t understand them.” One emerging theory is that, he dealt with isolation in America by seeking his heritage in Chechnya and there, some think, found purpose in violence against his unwelcoming home.

In feeling isolated, the alleged bomber isn’t alone. Isolation is the new normal in America.

More than one in four Americans have no friends for sharing troubles, a recent study of social isolation found. Those who do have friends tend to have only two. Just half of Americans believe they can count on anyone outside their home for support. Less than one in 10 counts the neighbor next door as a confidant.

Researchers blame television, long commutes and long hours at work to make ends meet. Other factors include aging in place and feeling isolated among new and younger neighbors; being immigrants and non-English speakers struggling to assimilate; feeling cut off from society by illness, physical abnormalities, race, gender and sexuality.

Give credit also to rampant sexual abuse and its lifetime consequence of shame and feeling different, as well as social disruption caused by lost marriages and broken families. Unemployment tends to drive people indoors or into part-time jobs away from their usual circles.

It takes an event like the Boston bombings or recent shootings for us to see how some angry, isolated people are taking refuge in weapons, and dream of revenge.

It’s a wonder that we don’t have more outbreaks of rage and violence. If isolation corrodes the soul and stokes the fires of self-loathing and resentment, we shouldn’t be surprised when some loners — from bullied teens to poorly welcomed immigrants to the jobless to desperately lonely elderly — take arms against their troubles.

It makes me sad when I see churches close their doors to protect their assets, when they could be opening themselves to the isolated, and easing the loneliness. Many social service agencies are cutting back because of funding gaps.

Yet it makes me glad when I see people banding together in women’s support groups, small faith communities, lunch buddies, church choirs, cycling groups, exercise circles — the many ways we are able to get outside ourselves.

Small steps can go a long way. For example, as our church prepared to bring gospel music legend Richard Smallwood to New York to direct singers from Park Avenue Church and Marble Collegiate Church, we knew it would sell out.

Three leaders of Lifeline, our recovery ministry, bought a block of 12 tickets for residents of Greenhope Services for Women, an extraordinary residential program in East Harlem for women seeking recovery from addiction. Several attend Lifeline.

We wanted them to feel connected with a world of sobriety and sanity, to know that life offers more than just the rough times and isolation they have known.

Not just by attending a concert, of course. There are no magic bullets in addiction — or in any of life’s agonies — and no single-shot events. “One day at a time” takes work all the time.

Few of us go to the extremes of building bombs or carrying assault rifles into schools. But the acid of isolation is still there, eating away at our social fabric.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus” and founder of the Church Wellness Project. His website is www.morningwalkmedia.com. Follow Tom on Twitter @tomehrich.)

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A Boston Athletic Association painting on the street near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Photo courtesy postcardjournal via Flickr (http://flic.kr/p/7uaryk)

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The answer, truth be told, is you probably don’t defend against terrorism. Like a deadbolt on a residential door, you can create deterrents that slow the bad guys down. But a determined thief will only be delayed, not prevented.

Although it isn’t yet known whether these bombs in Boston were a terrorist attack, questions like my colleague’s arise because we live in such an open and “target-rich” society.

School commencements, upcoming auto races in Indianapolis and Charlotte, N.C., July 4 parades, baseball games, Christmas parades, the Super Bowl — America offers a rich array of accessible and high-profile targets. Not to mention everyday targets like subways, airports and tall buildings.

People filled with hatred and guided by nihilism will always find a way to strike. Our best defense is what I saw in news coverage from Boston: first-responders rushing toward danger; soldiers in uniform pitching in to move debris; everyday folks turning instinctively to locate the wounded; strangers joining hands to rush victims to hospitals.

Plus the response I saw on Facebook: prayer, concern and resolve. Not rage, not calls for retribution, but prayer, concern and resolve. “Keep running,” said one post accompanying the marathon sponsor’s logo.

If an open society turns closed, the terrorists will have won. If violence is met with violence, hatred met with hatred, terrorists will have won. If frightened people allow fear to rule their lives in public places, terrorists will have won.

We do allow our lives to be changed. Security lines, for example, make air travel even worse than it could be. Entering a government building means more screening. Police have ramped up their presence in many schools and transit systems. But I always thank the screeners and guards for being there.

The way to defend an open society is to remain open. Determinedly open, maybe even brashly open. Keep running the marathon, keep working in skyscrapers, keep standing among the 1 million people in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

The way to remain free is to demand freedom and to defend it. The way to be a just society is to behave justly. The way to confront religious extremism run amok, is to remain people of tolerance, compassion and faith.

Vigilance matters. New York City subway passengers, for example, are being trained to spot stray packages in public places and to report them to authorities.

Humility matters. The United States isn’t blameless on the world stage; we deserve some of the anger aimed at us. When we ratchet down the bluster and acknowledge our shortcomings, we isolate the terrorists.

We need to do more. As long as we cling to a vastly unrealistic share of the world’s resources and wealth, we guarantee fresh explosions of rage.

Values matter. We need to remember that excessive wealth isn’t what we offer the world. Our virtue isn’t $105 million apartments overlooking Central Park or 105,000-seat football stadiums. Our gift to the world is freedom. When people come to our shores, that is what they seek. Freedom certainly is what my ancestors sought.

If some nihilists exploit that freedom to foment fear, our best response is to keep on being free, and to keep on defending the freedom of others.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus” and founder of the Church Wellness Project. His website is www.morningwalkmedia.com. Follow Tom on Twitter @tomehrich.)

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Facebook just started moving Google’s cheese with its launch of Home. An army of upstarts in Silicon Valley is challenging the hegemony of Microsoft. Nothing is staying the same; disruption is the path to prosperity.

The reason: the marketplace is highly dynamic. New needs emerge. New products stimulate new needs. New entrants want to make a difference right away. Problems and opportunities multiply faster than bureaucratic pillars can respond.

In education, new technology such as online learning is ramping up tension between bricks-and-mortar institutions and students seeking affordable education.

Many church leaders continue to believe that reinvention is an optional choice they can or cannot make. They think they can control the pace of change and shape its outcomes.

Those attitudes are delusional. The reality is: reinvent or die. The pace of change is driven by external factors, not by earnest deliberations and visioning exercises. As Jesus himself found, we have no control over outcomes.

What does a reinvented church look like? Take your pick. Depending on the constituency being sought, it can take many forms, thus confounding cultural stereotypes of organized religion.

The reinvented church can rent space in a strip mall, university or school. Not as a temporary way-station on the road to erecting an edifice, but as an ongoing solution to inflexible and costly overhead.

It can create satellite operations, such as the congregation in Manhattan whose 5,000 young adults meet in four separate locations at four separate times on Sunday.

The reinvented church can downplay Sunday morning altogether. Meet instead on weeknights and Sunday evenings, when young adults are more likely to be available.

Or don’t gather at all, in the sense of the whole congregation being together in one place. Focus instead on a network of small groups and house churches, which nurture strong relationships and are what Jesus himself envisioned.

Or focus on a tech version, like Oklahoma-centered LifeChurch.tv, which has 15 locations around the country plus an online church.

A reinvented church can go intentionally small. Some house churches have no desire to grow, to depend on clergy or to join denominations. They meet, talk, worship, pray, sing and provide mutual care.

Many traditional congregations are trying to reinvent themselves by going hybrid. They offer a standard Sunday morning service — but go way beyond it with additional offerings, alternative styles, small groups and satellite presences.

Even staid denominations are open to reinvention efforts. The United Methodist Church in Atlanta, for example, allowed and now encourages a start-up called Sacred Tapestry that meets in a strip mall and takes the form of a coffee house serving brunch.

Reinvention touches everything. Clergy become communicators and organizers. Small groups provide pastoral care. Worship has a leader walking the aisle or leading an on-stage combo, not an organist seated at a bench. Classes deploy online tools. Evangelism uses social media, not doorstep conversation. Mission projects matter more than parish history.

Communications promote networking, not institutional needs and offerings. Vestments that set clergy apart give way to jeans and sport coats — whatever says we’re in this together.

None of this is exactly new, but the willingness to experiment and to reinvent seems to have swept into most corners of the Christian enterprise in America.

Congregations that cannot push past an older generation’s loathing of such reinvention are likely to wither away.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus” and founder of the Church Wellness Project. His website is www.morningwalkmedia.com. Follow Tom on Twitter @tomehrich.)

KRE END EHRICH

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Gay marriage is a fact of life. Gay men and women have been forming partnerships for longer than anyone can remember. Those partnerships, while closeted until recently, have proven as durable and life-giving as heterosexual partnerships.

Even without the benefits of legal protection, gays and lesbians have found ways to follow their hearts, live together, create loving and welcoming homes and, more recently, to raise children to be all that they can be.

Some same-sex partnerships do join the 50 percent of heterosexual marriages that end in divorce. Some, like many straight partnerships, end up lifeless and sour. Death and grief touch gay unions, that’s as heart-breaking as that of any “legal” widow or widower.

Those who actually study child welfare say that children raised in same-sex homes turn out as healthy as children raised in heterosexual homes.

All around us, men are pairing off with men, women with women, men with women, and many not at all. In all households, the issue isn’t how intercourse occurs, but whether the householders are wise, loving, merciful, compassionate, able to listen, able to make good decisions, able to serve others, able to raise children, and able to make the world around them better.

Those attributes have to do with character, not sexuality. They require maturity and self-control. There is no reason to believe that these attributes are uniquely absent in a gay household, any more than they are uniquely present in a heterosexual household.

By any sniff test or common sense test, same-sex unions are no more or less likely to succeed or to be things of beauty.

The biblical argument against homosexuality is nonsense. It is based on a few verses of Scripture that are used as weapons, while many other verses regulating human behavior are ignored or subverted at will because they are inconvenient. Let’s start, for example, with the biblical prohibition against charging interest on loans.

The legal stakes are high in current Supreme Court deliberations. For one thing, money is in play here — federal benefits, estates and tax filing. Also at issue: recognition of marriage licenses issued by states. Some cautious church leaders are waiting for a legal resolution before they approve offering the sacrament of marriage to gays and lesbians.

The larger issue, it seems to me, is public respect. To the extent that the law confers respect, same-sex partnerships could gain or lose in these two Supreme Court cases.

But I wonder if, ultimately, the law has anything to do with respect. Respect comes from being worthy of respect. It comes from how we live, not from regulations.

We earn respect by how we treat other people; how we behave in the public square; how we serve the common good; how we pitch in when times are tough; how we stand up for the weak and insist on justice for all; and how we pursue lives devoted to something greater than self-serving and self-promoting.

We earn respect when we show up for work, follow through on commitments, tell the truth, help out with school fairs, build houses for others and protect children from danger.

Not a single one of those behaviors has anything to do with sexuality or with Supreme Court decisions.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus” and founder of the Church Wellness Project. His website is www.morningwalkmedia.com. Follow Tom on Twitter @tomehrich.)

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Every detail is well known, thoroughly studied and dramatized by Hollywood and homespun pageants — and the familiar story will reach across the divide and touch, or try to touch, every person who is listening and watching.

Many will get it, especially if they live in circumstances where people get falsely accused by the self-righteous; where the weak and vulnerable get mistreated by the powerful; where physical suffering is a daily occurrence; where death seems like the only next option.

That audience could well comprise the bulk of humanity — those who endure poverty, starvation and violence of epic proportions, those who live in more prosperous lands and yet are the oppressed, the ignored, the expendable.

For that audience, the gospel message is profoundly good news. God isn’t their enemy. Their suffering isn’t the will of some demonic God whose “plan” requires their agony and deprivation. Their suffering stems from humanity itself, from greed, power-madness, sickness and, sadly, from religious expressions developed by the few to sustain their sovereignty.

The Easter message means that God will win the victory over such evil. There will be no peace in the rich person’s home despite the accumulation of wealth. There will be no eternal comfort for those who prey on the weak and build their castles on human suffering. There will be no angelic choir singing the sweet music of the haves, while the have-nots stand by, even in heaven, wishing they had such good fortune.

In God’s victory, now or later, Easter bonnets will mean nothing. Massive pipe organs and professional choirs won’t control the singing. The swank and swell will receive no special consideration. Indeed, the rank and raw might be seated up front.

In God’s victory, trust funds won’t buy anything worth owning. Those counting on lucrative stock options will own dust, and that dust will have meaning only if God makes something of it. Fame will shine no special light. Youth and age, good health and ill health, beauty and plainness, good luck and bad luck, First World and Third World will all have the same beckoning: fall on your knees, chastened and thrilled, before the God who loves you and rise as a new creation.

Many, however, will hate that victory. They will want to dress well, go to church for an annual Easter tingle, and then go back, serene and confident about their lives.

Many who calibrated their preaching and music to please the haves will go home feeling slightly empty, knowing at some level that they failed their people once again. They didn’t risk preaching the actual Easter gospel. They didn’t reach across the chasms of modern life and speak as vigorously to the back pews as to the front pews, and not at all to those who remained at a distance, frightened and alone.

But there will be places where God’s people see the Son in agony and know a kindred spirit, and see the empty tomb as God’s victory over hubris, greed, power-madness, cruelty, smugness and self-serving.

In those places, “Alleluia!” won’t be a song to self, but a sigh and a shout of gratitude.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus” and founder of the Church Wellness Project. His website is www.morningwalkmedia.com. Follow Tom on Twitter @tomehrich.)

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By taking the name of a church reformer, the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio promised a better day for an ossified institution whose people beg for hope while hierarchs defend medieval power and pomp.

Pope Francis waves from the pope-mobile during his inauguration Mass at St. Peter’s Square on Tuesday (March 19) at the Vatican. RNS photo by Andrea Sabbadini

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In greeting the crowd, the new pope showed a common touch that could repurpose a global movement from being lost in scandal and self-serving.

By standing in silence and bowing his head for the crowd’s blessing, Francis showed a humility that could inspire believers grown weary of Roman arrogance.

In ways that world leaders rarely manage, Francis conveyed sincerity and commitment to a singular vision of servanthood. Whether that vision survives remains to be seen. But for now he read the moment: a vast constituency eager for something deeper than palace intrigue, something closer to Jesus than elaborate processions of old men wearing costly garments.

Perhaps he will read the rest of the moment: Women eager for the place that Jesus conferred on them but early male church leaders took away. Young people eager for faith in action, not encyclicals issued from above. Dark-skinned people eager for recognition. Homosexuals eager for a place at the table without having to seek ordination first.

To be sure, Francis will meet a firestorm of resistance at every level. The Roman Curia has faced down reformists before. But if Francis can continue as he began, there is hope.

That hope matters to all Christians. Each of our denominations and institutions struggles against the same demons: Mammon offering wealth as the ultimate measure of life, power seeking allies at the expense of fighting oppression and injustice, and hucksters promising magic. It’s the temptation of Jesus all over again. It always is.

• READ: Vatican defends Pope Francis’ actions in Argentina’s “Dirty War”
• READ: Pope Francis and the long shadow of Argentina’s “Dirty War”

But first things first. Just days after being elected pontiff, Francis is discovering what other leaders discover: Their past eventually catches up with them. In his case, it’s scrutiny for his possible role in Argentina’s “Dirty War” of the 1970s, when some church leaders curried favor with the military dictatorship by looking the other way when people were tortured and “disappeared.”

The church hierarchy calls it “defamation” to raise such questions. But as any penitent knows, a desire to move forward must be accompanied by candor about the past.

It’s the same issue we all face when we want to move forward. Reconciliation, restoration and renewal must begin in the swamp of needing to start over, not the gossamer of lofty hopes.

The first test of Francis’ reign, therefore, might not be his steel in reforming the Curia, but his candor about his own experience in Argentina.

This is especially critical for religious leaders. Religion tends to make compromises in order to preserve itself. The Jewish hierarchy chose Rome’s imperial favor over God’s promise of a Messiah. The early church sought the emperor’s favor and then allied itself with monarchs and dictators.

German churches remained largely silent during Hitler’s rise. Dutch Reformed leaders provided theological cover for apartheid in South Africa. White religious leaders in the South supported slavery and then segregation. Even today, churches invite bigots into their pulpits and call it patriotism.

To move toward God’s Easter Day, we must first acknowledge the darker days when we turned against God and each other.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus” and founder of the Church Wellness Project. His website is www.morningwalkmedia.com. Follow Tom on Twitter @tomehrich.)

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