Tribalism Old and New?
by J.R. Daniel Kirk
July 25, 2011
A few days back Andrew Perriman’s blog drew my attention to James K. A. Smith’s complaints about the state of theology nowadays.
Here’s the heart of his assessment:
It just seems to me that we have increasing “balkanization,” with everyone carving themselves up into smaller and smaller tribish enclaves, and then proceeding to both rail against straw men and preach to their own little choirs. In some ways, I think this is an effect of the loss of confessional and denominational identity. Instead of training to be Reformed theologians or Roman Catholic theologians or Lutheran theologians we have a generation who are training to become “ecclesiocentric” theologians or “apocalyptic” theologians or “radically orthodox” theologians, etc.
I cannot help but think that Smith’s assessment boils down to this: “People aren’t playing by the rules of the game that I learned when I learned theology, therefore their game is wrong.”
I find more than a little irony in the idea that a Protestant theologian wants people to get out of their “tribish enclaves” and return to their denominations.
News flash! Denominations are tribish enclaves!
Worse, denominations are ghettos. They are places where people become socialized to a certain way of thinking, a certain way of viewing the world, a certain way of articulating their theology, a certain way of paying their dues so as to ascend to positions of influence and power.
One of the ironies of Smith’s post is that he is writing in response to a graduate student who is upset about the ways that theological labels prevent conversation: if you like person x or don’t like person y, you are automatically celebrated or, as often, persona non grata.
News flash! This is exactly what happens in ecclesial worlds defined by a strong denominational identity. That “thick” theology, as Smith calls is, is nothing less than a thick door that enables us to keep out people who disagree with us. All you have to do is say, “Luther” or “Calvin” or “Barth” or whomever, and we know, without ever having touched the book, that they are to be celebrated or, as often, he is persona non grata.
Deep commitment to denominational identity and being a “churchman” does not produce better theology. It produces a more controllable tribe–one that can be policed by church bureaucracies, one that can be guarded by limiting ordination or snubbing theologians for academic posts should they associate too closely with those “others.”
I do understand the pull and strength of denominational identity. I’ve been there.
But the reason there are so many new tribes is at least threefold, it seems to me:
(1) a new generation is recognizing that those old fault lines are bad ways of splitting up the church;
(2) we recognize that people with whom we differ on “traditional” points of doctrine are nonetheless people with whom we share greater affinity about things that are much more important to the life of the church than what we think about church government or predestination; and,
(3) we see the less-than-Christian dynamics that control the power politics of our denominations and we’re over it.
There is nothing lost, and an infinite amount to be gained by the erosion of denominational identity.
What the power brokers and gatekeepers will continue to see as a fracturing and weakening of the church will continue, for new generations, to prove itself as the only strong and viable way forward.
My own field, biblical studies, is so strong in part because we do not divide and discuss based on theological identities that bind the hands of our exegesis and blind the eyes of our hermeneutics.
Allow the old tribes and their hundreds-of-years-old divisions to die.
Then come, open up your Bible and read with me. And take the bread with me. And sing to God with me. And theologize with me while we serve our One Lord together.
Ed. Note: I know that at this point you probably think JRDK has nothing good to say about denominations and that nobody should be in one. Tomorrow we will revisit the issue and work through why denominations have value for the church and even, at times, for the Kingdom of God.
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