Is Evangelicalism Ending? 4
I begin with this claim: the church, the local church as well as the church universal, is a politic. Instead of supporting a political party, which confuses the church into serving two masters, the church strives to be a politic. These are my words, not David Fitch’s, but I think they get to the heart of David’s section on how the church is to recover the core of our politics for mission. The problem is the Christian Nation vision, but the solution is to abandon that and to become a politic under the Lordship of Jesus, a politic of the kingdom of God. Fitch, in The End of Evangelicalism? Discerning a New Faithfulness for Mission: Towards an Evangelical Political Theology (Theopolitical Visions) examines four theologians.
David Fitch focuses on three groups in this time of discontent who are providing plausible, yet inadequate, visions for the “birthing of a renewed Christian political presence for our time” (179). He takes up his three themes again (Inerrant Bible, Salvation, Christian Nation) and sketches how seminal young post-evangelicals are proposing ideas: Peter Rollins, Brian McLaren, and Alan Hirsch with Michael Frost. (By the way, Fitch thinks James Davison Hunter’s proposal of “faithful presence” is a form of NeoAnabaptism, and I completely agree.)
Moreover, it is with hope - and not despair - that a new kind of emergent theology is arising to replace its more popular predecessor, evangelical theology, by both deconstructing the church's more recent Christian past, and reconstructing a postmodern version of itself that is more relevant and applicable for today's postmodern audiences.
That modernistic Christianity (whether evangelical, denominational, or some other "body politic") is failing to connect to today's postmodern generations requiring a newer presence of the Christian faith that would better accounts for:
by Scot McKnight
Jan 4, 2013
I begin with this claim: the church, the local church as well as the church universal, is a politic. Instead of supporting a political party, which confuses the church into serving two masters, the church strives to be a politic. These are my words, not David Fitch’s, but I think they get to the heart of David’s section on how the church is to recover the core of our politics for mission. The problem is the Christian Nation vision, but the solution is to abandon that and to become a politic under the Lordship of Jesus, a politic of the kingdom of God. Fitch, in The End of Evangelicalism? Discerning a New Faithfulness for Mission: Towards an Evangelical Political Theology (Theopolitical Visions) examines four theologians.
The questions we need to face are these:
How is your church shaping the politic of the church as part of God’s mission in this world? How is your church a “politic”? The gospel is performed as well as proclaimed. How does it perform the mission of God? Has your church been co-opted by political partisanship?
They are Henri du Lubac, William Cavanaugh, Nathan Kerr and John Howard Yoder. Here’s how he ties them together:
How is your church shaping the politic of the church as part of God’s mission in this world? How is your church a “politic”? The gospel is performed as well as proclaimed. How does it perform the mission of God? Has your church been co-opted by political partisanship?
They are Henri du Lubac, William Cavanaugh, Nathan Kerr and John Howard Yoder. Here’s how he ties them together:
Lubac’s focus is on the Body of Christ in his physical body, in the Eucharist and in the church, but the eucharist has become a place for spectating instead of embodying that Body. Cavanaugh, another Catholic theologian, contends the eucharist births a political presence and engages society for redemption and renewal. It is thus a subversive presence.
Nathan Kerr, however, subverts both of these ideas (and Fitch’s) by contending the church is the church when it is dispersed into mission. Missiology precedes ecclesiology. The church becomes a non-site place!
This leads to John Howard Yoder … who advocates the church as those who live under the Lordship of Jesus Christ — when the church embodies the “gifts.” It lives today what the world is to become. The church does this in binding and loosing, breaking bread, baptism, the gifts, and the rule of conversation. And the church does this as the body that extends the incarnation, by living the kingdom, and by having a porous boundary.
This leads to John Howard Yoder … who advocates the church as those who live under the Lordship of Jesus Christ — when the church embodies the “gifts.” It lives today what the world is to become. The church does this in binding and loosing, breaking bread, baptism, the gifts, and the rule of conversation. And the church does this as the body that extends the incarnation, by living the kingdom, and by having a porous boundary.
Now Fitch digs: “Evangelicals have put forth the church as Christ’s voluntarist army dispersing individuals into the world to do the work of Christ and his mission.” He says it is “the social body of His Lordship (His Reign) incarnating Christ in the world for God’s mission” (166).
The Sunday gathering is in order to be shaped together into his body for the world in eucharist, preaching the Word and re-entry into the world. Sunday gatherings are not to be distinguished from daily living.
David Fitch observes that the new forms of evangelicalism are a witness to some form of discontent. He includes the emerging church, the missional church, neo-monasticism and the organic house-church movement. These, Fitch contends, are the “contours of the post-evangelical landscape” (179).
The questions we need to face are these: What forms of evangelicalism do you think will be most vibrant in the next twenty years or so? Is evangelicalism itself changing, or are these splinter groups with only a few years to survive? Do you think the NeoReformed/NeoPuritan movement is another witness to discontent?
The questions we need to face are these: What forms of evangelicalism do you think will be most vibrant in the next twenty years or so? Is evangelicalism itself changing, or are these splinter groups with only a few years to survive? Do you think the NeoReformed/NeoPuritan movement is another witness to discontent?
David Fitch focuses on three groups in this time of discontent who are providing plausible, yet inadequate, visions for the “birthing of a renewed Christian political presence for our time” (179). He takes up his three themes again (Inerrant Bible, Salvation, Christian Nation) and sketches how seminal young post-evangelicals are proposing ideas: Peter Rollins, Brian McLaren, and Alan Hirsch with Michael Frost. (By the way, Fitch thinks James Davison Hunter’s proposal of “faithful presence” is a form of NeoAnabaptism, and I completely agree.)
With each of these young theologians, Fitch sees both promise and problems:
Peter Rollins: while Rollins clearly points us to the capturing of God in Bible and while he pushes us into apophatic theology to remind us that the infinite God cannot be contained by human words, and while he wants us to focus not so much on believing the right things but believing in the right way, Fitch says Rollins is in danger of de-incarnationalizing the Word of God. The Christian is called both to affirm the centrality of Scripture as the place where God has spoken and to land in particular ways in particular settings. For Rollins Scripture can become another Master-Signifier without content. He also thinks his liturgies run the same risk.
[Addendum. Realizing this, Relevancy22 both follows Peter Rollins for his postmodern insights, while continuing to provide here non-apophatic theological content that is both postmodern and emergent, as can readily be seen.
Furthermore, it is realized that Peter is continuing to shape his theology as a newer theolog to the practice of interpreting Scriputres, especially as it is being shaped by today's postmodern culture wherein the bible speaks specifically to the matter of faith's deep interaction to God Himself. Through our doubts, fears, disappointments, and disbelief. As such, his philosophical background continues to adapt to the incarnating material of the bible telling of God, His people, and mission. And whenever Peter is pressed to reconstruct his vision of Jesus and the church one can sense through the past influences of Rob Bell and others that he will continue to develop and expand in his theology in non-apophatic ways. - R.E. Slater]
Peter Rollins: while Rollins clearly points us to the capturing of God in Bible and while he pushes us into apophatic theology to remind us that the infinite God cannot be contained by human words, and while he wants us to focus not so much on believing the right things but believing in the right way, Fitch says Rollins is in danger of de-incarnationalizing the Word of God. The Christian is called both to affirm the centrality of Scripture as the place where God has spoken and to land in particular ways in particular settings. For Rollins Scripture can become another Master-Signifier without content. He also thinks his liturgies run the same risk.
[Addendum. Realizing this, Relevancy22 both follows Peter Rollins for his postmodern insights, while continuing to provide here non-apophatic theological content that is both postmodern and emergent, as can readily be seen.
Furthermore, it is realized that Peter is continuing to shape his theology as a newer theolog to the practice of interpreting Scriputres, especially as it is being shaped by today's postmodern culture wherein the bible speaks specifically to the matter of faith's deep interaction to God Himself. Through our doubts, fears, disappointments, and disbelief. As such, his philosophical background continues to adapt to the incarnating material of the bible telling of God, His people, and mission. And whenever Peter is pressed to reconstruct his vision of Jesus and the church one can sense through the past influences of Rob Bell and others that he will continue to develop and expand in his theology in non-apophatic ways. - R.E. Slater]
Brian McLaren points out the problem of a too otherworldly salvation and of a decisionism that does not lead to transformation. [He] also points to the need to focus on God’s mission in kingdom theology and to do all of this in the now. But [Fitch] thinks McLaren is in danger of de-eschatologizing the kingdom by separating it too much for a robust christology and ecclesiology [using] a future eschatology [here-and-now] parameters. He thinks Brian is too close to seeing Jesus too much as a guide and exemplar away from the ruling Lord and Christ. Kingdom too easily can become another nebulous Master-Signifier where advocacy for justice loses its trinitarian and eschatological bearings.
[Addendum. Having followed Brian McLaren I would suggest to Fitch some other model that may work. For Brian it is this rather than nothing at all - esp. as addressing the social issues of inequality and injustice. How many churches even dare this much!? - R.E.Slater].
[Addendum. Having followed Brian McLaren I would suggest to Fitch some other model that may work. For Brian it is this rather than nothing at all - esp. as addressing the social issues of inequality and injustice. How many churches even dare this much!? - R.E.Slater].
And he sees much of value in Hirsch and Frost in their pushing against the consumerist and attractional church, and their advocacy for organic missional work, and for a dispersed church but they run the risk of de-ecclesiologizing the church’s relationship to society. (Too much missional claims do this.) The practices of the church are too separated from the mission of the church. Which practices? eucharist, baptism, preaching, fellowship, gifts, etc.. Their claim that the proper order is christology, mission and then ecclesiology runs the risk of a Christ too separated from the church and its practices, and can suggest too individualistic of a soteriology and mission.
Thanks David. Good job. Much to think on here.
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Addendum -
"What
does it then mean to be
a
Postmodern Christian?"
by R.E.
Slater
December
27, 2012
I would
like to add to the above article that it is the stated intent at
Relevancy22 that each of the 3 or 4 areas addressed above be both
separately, and together, revisioned as we have been doing here these past 18
months at this website in reframing the church's
evangelic past with today's postmodern rise of emergent Christianity. This has
hopefully been done through a multi-disciplinary approach to both
modernism's,
and evangelicalism's, strengths
and weaknesses, as presented to us through the church in
its many Christian forms these past 500 years. And by admitting
to a more recent postmodernistic presence of the gospel of Jesus previously
unadmitted
within evangelicalism's many arguments and self-sustaining subcultural
perspectives, often found to be exclusionary, divisive, and
unloving.
Moreover, it is with hope - and not despair - that a new kind of emergent theology is arising to replace its more popular predecessor, evangelical theology, by both deconstructing the church's more recent Christian past, and reconstructing a postmodern version of itself that is more relevant and applicable for today's postmodern audiences.
That modernistic Christianity (whether evangelical, denominational, or some other "body politic") is failing to connect to today's postmodern generations requiring a newer presence of the Christian faith that would better accounts for:
-
the significance of Jesus' incarnational presence in time and history, especially in terms of an historical-religious circumspection requiring an all-pervasive perspective of God's redemption for ourselves, humanity, and the world/cosmos we live in (theism vs. agnosticism / atheism).
- the expansive mystery of God, His cosmos, and humanity itself (a "gentle" mysticism decoupled from its twin-brother of "mystical gnosticism" which generally devolves into various forms of Christian secrecy and cultic exclusivism).
- better contemporary scientific assimilation with that of a postmodern biblical literary analysis and interpretive hermeneutics which would dispel, and justifiably remove, non-scientific, literal church dogmas from their current ascendancy of Christianized folklores held onto by religious innuendo and theological ignorance.
- a fuller congruence between Christian faith and works, love and devotion, words and acts, in all that is said or done as followers of Jesus.
- the uplift of love and relationship over intellectualized rationality (narrative theology vs. systematic theology, creeds and confessions).
- an organic faith imparted into social involvement and interactive community service projects demonstrating the love and ministry of Jesus.
- the admittance to failure in past church practices and programs subjugating select people groups to prejudicial bigotries, social dehumanization, and judicial inequalities (minorities, slaves, women, homosexuality, etc).
- a renewed emphasis upon the value of our environment over that of humanity's environmental ignorance, destruction, and consumerist influences.
- the reinvigoration of the human touch and presence to a faceless, technological generation, offering in its place the selfless sharing and giving of one's kinetic energy to community members in interactive activities of joint worship, service projects, social comportment and innovations. From recreational opportunities to ecological projects and urban gardens. From housing renovations to community innovations in the arts and well-being. The opportunities to re-invigorate community are endless.
- the willing assimilation of one's personal background and beliefs into a pluralistic and multi-ethnic society where each member recognizes, and values, the contributions and presence of differently enabled community members.
- a recognition that decentralizes self-importance and engrossed personal perspectives by offsetting mono-cultural social barriers supporting biased ideologies and prejudicial beliefs over that of differently enjoined pluralistic perspectives of lesser-valued social segments within society. Whether expressed in terms of majority v. minority religious, political, or social parameters.
- etc.... Which means, that we add to the list above as we become better enabled to recognize the needs of today's postmodern generations; that we learn to recreate a Christian faith without personal-social barriers, resentments, distrusts, jealousy, envy, or pride. But which encourages a faith that uplifts Jesus in all that it says and does. In everything that it says or does. As is the will of God.
And
although this list might be continued in a number of ways, in its preliminary
forms it is enough to suggest key ingredients to the emergent Christian faith
that wishes to address today's generational postmodern angst and needs. It is
not a new perspective but one that is new to many
evangelical Christians belatedly realizing the dramatic depth of change that has
occurred between themselves and their faith.
To know
and understand that God is not dead, but is amazingly relevant in this dizzying
postmodern era of deconstruction and reconstruction. That the Christian faith is
as relevant
now as its was in previous historical eras, as each era subtended to the next,
in a generalized eschalation of salvific import (or salvific contract) between
God and man. Where both the divine and the human continue to grow in
community, and in relationship with each the other - God with man, man with God,
and man with man. This is nothing to be feared but to be wondered at and praised
in the magnificence of God's glory and wisdom.
That the
Christian hope is one realizing God's reclamation of all things God. That no one
person is beyond God's reach and claim. That either in life or death shall all
things be renewed both in this life as in the next; whether within the
boundaries of heaven, or within that of hell itself - for even hell itself is a
purifier (sic, the annihilation of sin and death). That God will be victorious
over a free willed creation unsubdued to His restitution and renewal by one
avenue or another. That He will not be defeated. Neither by wicked man, nor
principality and power, nor by sin and death. That God will be All-in-All, even
as He is the Great I Am.
That this
victory will be by God's divine love (but not to the exclusion of His divine
judgment as some would suppose claiming a form of undifferentiated
universalism). That in all things God does love with a love that is patient,
understanding, overpowering, and negating man's baser baser instincts and
nature. For God did thus create with purpose and power. And in that purpose He
reclaims with love. A love we do not understand. But a love which allows within
us the habitation of disbelief, faithlessness, distrust, and moral failure. That
looks beyond ourselves and sees
Jesus in
our stead as our atoning sacrifice and enabling power by His Spirit of
redemption.
And it is to this Jesus, as
the divine Incarnate God, who does evidence God's incarnational presence to
man both historically (2000 years ago), and even now - within our postmodern
generations - that gives to the Christian faith its historical bedrock and
existential reality. That Jesus, by
personal atonement and practical example, shared God's divine heart, love, and
vision for
redeeming humanity towards all things God.
Ultimately,
this is the unfolding story of a postmodern emergent theology. It is one of hope
and inspiration founded upon the personage and presence of the Incarnate God
founded upon His sacrificial life-and-death unto the restitution of all things,
both in this world, as in the next. Which refuses an opposing atheology
that there is no God, knowing this position is untenable in a world expressly
made, sustained, and governed by God. A world that is highly valued by God. And
which is highly desired by God to be inhabited by His personal presence,
fellowship, and rule.
For it is
God's love that has ever made this reality so - despite man's natural recourse
to reject God while disdaining His divine will. That by Jesus' atoning death and
abiding presence through the Spirit, that man's natural recourse towards sinful
arrogance, legalism, and pride, may be opposed and ironically subverted towards
an iconic restitution of divine recreation by the Lord God Himself. In an holy
act of continuing love and redemptive purpose based not only upon who God is,
but what He will be to His creation. This is the redemptive story and the divine
mission of the God of the Bible.
R.E.
Slater
December 27, 2012
January 3, 2013
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