{"id":1032,"date":"2007-06-26T14:42:06","date_gmt":"2007-06-26T14:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godspolitics\/2007\/06\/diana-butler-bass-sock-puppet.html"},"modified":"2007-06-26T14:42:06","modified_gmt":"2007-06-26T14:42:06","slug":"diana-butler-bass-sock-puppet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2007\/06\/diana-butler-bass-sock-puppet.html","title":{"rendered":"Diana Butler Bass: Sock Puppet Church"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was a girl in the 1960s, one of my favorite parts of summer was Vacation Bible School at St. John\u2019s United Methodist Church of Hamilton in Baltimore. That, of course, makes me sound like a church geek\u2014as if I was eager to go to church five days running instead of only on Sunday. But it was not the five days I looked forward to; it was the weeks before when my mother prepared for VBS.
\nEvery June, she bought yards of oilcloth, pulled out a large collection of permanent magic markers, and created colorful signs announcing the upcoming VBS. She would draw all sorts of pictures, based on biblical themes, with playful graphics that came from her imagination. I was not allowed to touch them\u2014she said that the markers would stain my clothes. But I think she wanted full artistic control of the project, as these signs graced the neighborhood\u2019s main thoroughfare. Before she married, she wanted to be an artist, an ambition she sacrificed to a 1950s vision of motherhood. The VBS signs served as her yearly art show, with Harford Road as her personal gallery.
\nShe would, however, let me help with the crafts. We sat on the living room floor sorting through old socks, bits of yarn and fabric, old buttons, and pipe cleaners. From these scraps we would sew sock puppets of biblical characters. We made Moses and Pharaoh, David and Jonathan, and Mary and Jesus for our amateur productions in the church\u2019s handmade puppet theater. We cut up old Christmas cards for shellac projects and paper-mache collages. We made Bible map stencils to mimeograph and color. And we built the Temple at Jerusalem from sugar cubes.
\nPreparing for St. John\u2019s VBS took weeks\u2014with pieces of the Bible, in the form of yarn, paint, colored paper, and sugar cubes, scattered all over the house. It was a glorious theological mess and I loved it.
\nMy daughter is now nine. It has been a long time since I attended summer Bible school, and now it was her turn for the childhood ritual. As I investigated local programs, however, I was in for a big surprise: Vacation Bible School now comes in a can.
\nAll the programs were pretty much the same. Christian publishing companies have developed Disney-quality VBS weeks bearing names like \u201cThe Plunge,\u201d \u201cHoly Land Adventure,\u201d \u201cQuest for Truth,\u201d \u201cGreat Bible Reef,\u201d and \u201cSonForce Kids.\u201d Prepackaged, these \u201ccomplete Bible adventures\u201d come in large cans (admittedly, one arrives in a woven basket) advertising that they contain \u201ceverything you need\u201d for a successful Bible school, \u201cjust add kids\u201d!
\nClearly such programs entertain children\u2014while serving as an evangelistic tool to reach parents and gain new church members. No doubt they ease the creative burden of countless VBS teachers across the land. Buy Vacation Bible School online, then recruit some teachers (assuring them this will not take too much of their time), unpack the can, and invite the children. An easy, quick way to learn the Bible and grow the congregation.
\nLately, I have been reading Bill McKibben\u2019s fine new book, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future<\/em>. McKibben argues that growth\u2014based on \u201chyper-individualism\u201d\u2014does not create human happiness, health, and wholeness. Rather, local community and close connections make us happy. We must shift away from a Wal-Mart economy to what he calls a \u201cdeep economy,\u201d defined as \u201cthe economics of neighborliness.\u201d Less stuff, he suggests, will create more connections by transforming the human economy and makes a \u201cdurable future\u201d for the planet.
\nAlthough McKibben writes of economics, his argument carries over to faith. Successful American churches are Wal-Mart type congregations, built on the idea that bigger-is-better, hyper-individual faith, and entertaining programs meet an infinitely expanding religious market. That vision creates a culture of religious sameness across the country\u2014indeed, across the globe\u2014that subsumes local cultures in its wake. Want your church to grow? Attend the latest pastors conference offered by a celebrity minister. Do 40 days of purpose or seven steps toward mission. Put on a dazzling Christmas spectacular. Buy Vacation Bible School in a can. You, too, can have a successful church if you lay out the cash.
\nMy mother is nearly 70, has had two heart attacks, and is slowing down. When I think of her\u2014as I do a lot these days\u2014I remember sitting in the piles of scraps, creating biblical worlds together. I remember making the Virgin Mary out of a sock. I remember the deep economy of being Christian, of practicing our faith in the living room with scissors and glue, not the size or success of our congregation. I remember our neighborhood church, small and quirky, where we produced our spiritual lives with our hands and from our hearts.
\nI no longer want to belong to an efficient church, a big one, or even a successful one. I just want to be part of a good sock-puppet church. And, as I have traveled this year, and spoken to many thousands of Christians, I had heard them, too, longing for sock puppet church, a deeper congregation, a community that stitches memory from scraps, one that (as McKibben says) \u201crebalances the scales\u201d of our religious economy\u2014and, in the process, may well transform the world.
\nDiana Butler Bass <\/strong>(www.dianabutlerbass.com<\/a>) is the author of the award-winning Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith<\/a><\/em> (Harper, 2006). Her daughter is not attending Vacation Bible School this summer, but Diana is collecting socks to spring a puppet project on her in August.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a girl in the 1960s, one of my favorite parts of summer was Vacation Bible School at St. John\u2019s United Methodist Church of Hamilton in Baltimore. That, of course, makes me sound like a church geek\u2014as if I was eager to go to church five days running instead of only on Sunday.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nDiana Butler Bass: Sock Puppet Church - God's Politics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2007\/06\/diana-butler-bass-sock-puppet.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Diana Butler Bass: Sock Puppet Church - God's Politics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When I was a girl in the 1960s, one of my favorite parts of summer was Vacation Bible School at St. John\u2019s United Methodist Church of Hamilton in Baltimore. 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