"Resurrectioniness"

It's still spring so it's not too late to make a quip about how (some) mainline Christians mangle Easter.

I begin with Stephen Colbert's word "truthiness." The analogy to us mainliners is via my made up word: "resurrectioniness." Now, I don't hear people using that exact word but I do hear phrases such as "practicing resurrection." Practicing the resurrection sounds so odd to me, like "practicing dying." It's a one-time and final event, so how can you practice it? You can hope for the resurrection of the dead when Jesus returns -- or even prepare for it -- but I don't think you get to rehearse it.

The difference, of course, is in the definite article. "Resurrection" without it, instead of referring to Jesus rising from the dead or the day when God will raise believers, is a churchy way of saying "renewal." Since it's spring it sounds appropriate to speak of renewal and how we should all be cultivating it in our lives. My beef with this way of employing "resurrection" is that it obfuscates Easter by conflating God's definitive and supernatural intervention in the world (the Resurrection of Jesus and promised resurrection of his people) with the natural process of death and new growth (a sort of biological resurrection).

I call this conflation "resurrectioniness" because it parallels Colbert's "truthiness." Colbert meant to say that the Bush administration was not interested strictly in the truth but more in saying things that sounded like the truth. And so we mainliners (sometimes) are more interested in Christian-sounding pronouncements rather than the actual Christian proclamation of the Resurrection.