My Faith Journey from Evangelicalism

 

"...In hindsight, my faith didn't require abandonment. No.

Simply a better resonance with what it wasn't hearing

in today's current generations of God's faithful."  - re slater

 

Years ago I began the process of investigating what evolution might mean to me as a Christian and found myself in the long process of re-thinking the fundamental progress that science has been making these past many years without my personal involvement and investment. However, about a year ago I began reporting on the Christian understanding of evolution and all the affects this understanding would have upon Christian doctrine if it were to be incorporated into a normalized view of Scripture (see the sidebars under "Science" on the right hand column) . I began by splitting articles up between anthropological and cosmological studies starting with what we know about hominids and the homo sapien genome structure and progressing forward towards Earth studies and studies related to the universe. Along the way I discovered a Christian organization by the name of Biologos to be deeply involved with the same concerns as I had and so, began utilizing their research and opinions to help more quickly form some basic ideas of what evolution means for the Bible and for the Christian dedicated to understanding the Bible's ideas about God as our Creator-Redeemer.

Having been risen in a culture of Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism requiring a form of biblical literalism and inerrancy, and holding to the more stricter view that evolution was fundamentally anti-biblical, I felt led of the Spirit of God to place these categories to the side and hold them in tension so that I could begin a re-investigation into what my faith might mean in light of all that we now know about ourselves and our world in evolutionary terms. From that day until this present I have undergone a radical change that has uplifted my reading of the bible and understanding about God. I have come away richer and more satisfied with the journey I've taken and now regard my past with some little bit of skepticism. The bible is no longer as literal as it use to be for me and in exchange I've come away with phenomenal spiritual insight to what God is presently doing in this world of ours. How I read the bible (cf. the sidebars Hermeneutics, Bible), how I understand Jesus in His many redemptive aspects (Gospel, Sin, Salvation, Love, etc), how I understand God (Theism, Narrative Theology), what I expect for the future (Kingdom, Eschatology), and for the church today (Faith, Church, Christianity) has become greatly enriched and fundamentally deepened. I did not expect this when I began. In fact, I expected quite the reverse (if not hell itself! according to disconcerted friends and family). But am amazed at how untangled I've become from the many binding cords of my more traditional faith heritage. An heritage which I can only have the deepest appreciation for, but one that I must transform away from towards  a type of one that I've been writing and describing as Emergent Christianity... which itself is in a similar state of transition. This is important to know as newer adherents like myself seek to gather into a broader space of faith acceptance, practice and worship. One more richly filled with an orthodox biblical tradition expanding outwards. But perhaps not spoken as well as it could be by some of our earliest emergent advocates.

In essence, I've evolved, or am emerging, into a Christian that is more open and freer of my more-restrictive, past traditional Christian beliefs and structures. And if you had started with me last April of 2011, when writing under the pseudonym of skinhead, you would've read of my dismay with Evangelicalism and my perplexity over a newer direction called Emergent Christianity that had gotten a lot of bad press and was being plied with a lot of misinformation. No less from the fact that I had to also sort out what my Emergent brethren were saying as they seemed to blindly stumble about the theological room examining differing parts of the same elephant and declaring "Aha, this is what faith means!" Or, "Oho, this is what it means now!" Each one using a differing non-rigorous structural, theosophic or philosophic, element to re-create a Christian faith that needed re-birthing, re-ordering, re-examination, and re-discovery. And it was this very thing that I felt I could do and had quickly become burdened to express. Driven by the Spirit of God as it were. Relentlessly. Tirelessly. Till I've arrived here in this present space tired and weary and glad for the burden to do what little I could in the area of Christian epistemology set within a postmodern framework. And since then have endeavored to take all the parts and pieces of my past training and understanding to reconfigure an expanded sense of evangelicalism that is more progressive. Less judgmental. More open to broader ideologies and methodologies. That is global. Transformative. Multi-generational. Pluralistic. And more attune to the postmodern cultures and societies of our times. Regardless of whether we call it Emergent or not. I needed a faith that saw Jesus in all His many forms and beauty. And this I believe is what God gave to me as my vision.

Thus, I have begged, borrowed and reconfigured every helpful idea that I could find among the brotherhood. And have dearly tried not to limit the power of God in this endeavor even as I've tried to recreate a more open conformity to Scriptures. Overall, I have first and foremost sought biblical direction and support for these newer (Emergent) ideas than simply stating mine own preferences and opinions. Or when I do, admit it while investigating these newer transformative ideas and insights. If ideas like evolution is true, or that God is closer to us today than He ever has been before, or that the essence of the Christian faith is Jesus, than I need to know how to arrive at these conclusions from a biblically supportive structure. At first this task was one of redefining Evangelicalism's ingrained "definition" of itself. I found those definitions self-limiting and fast becoming the very sacred altars of a church no longer living in this present world but in the past worlds of yesteryear's Christian endeavors, confessional commitments, and sanctified organizations. As such, it was no longer useful except for historic guidance and orthodox support. Otherwise, it seemed like all things Christian needed the probing scalpel of deep re-examination and re-orientation. This deconstructive effort was painful (both personally and corporately) but it promised a brighter re-constructive future. One that I've had the great, good joy of sharing however solitary its serpentine road of travel. There was no one road to follow but dozens of scattering bunny trails that went every which way requiring the sleuth of a detective to hunt out its main branches and estuaries.

And much like solving a Sudoku puzzle where one finds solutions to answers that are not there, so I began to examine my earlier Christian antecedents and theological structures for what they were not saying (not simply Evangelicalism this time, but denominationalism, and Christian traditionalism itself) to glean fundamental directions not earlier apparent to me. What I found was a space that was deafening in its silence and fearfully darkened to the willing traveller. But it was there behind the shut door (or doors in my case) and when pushed open, came upon a labyrinth of competing ideas and misdirections each requiring the lamp of discernment and patient examination. To venture into this mass of entanglement required a sturdy compass and the help of the Spirit, for without either I would be lost, and left either destroyed of faith or abandoned all together.

Consequently, my first 6-8 months of articles will speak to my dismay with the Christian rhetoric I was listening too. This then began the first part of my awakening. Part of that dismay was in Calvinism itself which I played off against with Arminianism to help re-balance my systematic heritage with a broader scope of heaven, hell, sin, and judgement. I needed to hear and see that God's mission of restorative fellowship to a broken creation is even now being remitted with His great, good love, and understanding of man in his human condition of pride and fallenness. From there I began to positively expand upon what a more progressive structure of Emergent Christianity may look like from topic-to-topic as I had time or insight. In the process I gained more confidence and began to use my own name for propriety's sake and in the great good tradition of journalistic ethics when doing the work of an essayist. At this point I knew I was moving in the right direction but that it needed further definition and structure as I could lend to it given time and information.

Where once I had been committed to writing poetry over the previous two years as a lifetime goal, and quite removed from the sacred worlds of ivory towers and flaming pulpits. Now my heart was burdened to lay my pen down for awhile and pursue, as I could, this newer task of re-igniting our Christian thinking imperiled by so many frailer (and untrue) epistemologies of what the Christian faith was traditionally considered. It had become a folk religion instead of a living faith. A divisive institution rather than a living fellowship. A political polemic rather than a compassionate faith ministering to the suffering masses around itself. A religion requiring too many rotten supports built upon the sinking sands of human idealism and disillusionment; and not upon the truer, time-tested bedrock of Christ Himself. As such, I began to write in prose using a combination of academic and devotional tracts. And before I could write I could only quote sympathetic Christian sources that were thinking aloud with me what I was thinking in my head. But speaking it much better than I could. And with much better background and information. From then until now I have been learning to blog my thoughts more openly, more intelligently, and hopefully, in a way that is helpful to other Jesus followers having the same questions, dismays and experiences as myself.

Eighteen months later I believe the burden of this webblog to have attained some semblance of transition and maturity that it did not hold when it first was begun. As marks of graduation, I can now read and listen to a wider branch of ideas and discoveries, and reconfigure them into a more helpful understanding of my faith, where earlier those same elements would've been ignored, discarded or heavily criticised. (But not all ideas or discoveries have been helpful, as in my experience of beholding the misdirectional, cultic expressions of New Ageism or Gnostic Mysticism of the Christian faith. Within them may lay some biblical truth that they have apprehended and made their own. But it is not the biblical truth that I recognize within my transformative Emergent faith based upon orthodox doctrine and biblical principle. To those groups my Christian faith will ever be at odds with, refusing to be waylaid along the highways of misguided inspiration.)

This journey is but a small beginning - but one that was necessary. And as encouragement, however imperfectly I may have written, I offer this blogsite as a source of direction into any-and-all areas requiring the postmodern care and acumen of Emergent Christianity. I have tried to create this blog as a wikipedia of sorts to theological questions. To my readers I give it away for comfort and guidance to be used as it can.

In hindsight, my faith didn't require abandonment. No. Simply a better resonance with what it wasn't hearing in today's current generations of God's faithful. These are my brethren, not my enemy. My brothers and sisters requiring better leadership and shepherding. And in its absence - constricted as it were by fearful judgmentalism and naive condemnation - I suspect that God is working diligently within the very rank-and-files of His body to help lead, guide, pray, and shepherd His fellowship until the church's pulpits and university staffs become more properly engaged with society's needs and advancements. At least this is my prayer.

Therefore, be at peace and know our God is great and will not be muffled by the ignoble speech and acts of men. Nor by his ignorance and pride whatever their positions in the church or in the ranks of men. God is great. And greatly will His works show forth both now-and-forevermore despite our best efforts to stop-up His voice. He speaks as a mighty river unbounded to the generations to come yearning for the sustenance of His gracious, compassionate, loving heart. No words of man may prevent His salvation to all men everywhere. This God is the God who will lead His Church unto salvation - by vision, by dream, by pen or by will. Sanctified in the blood of Jesus. Blessed by the power of the Word. Protected in the depths of the Spirit. May our almighty Redeemer be ever praised. May His glorious name be lifted up unto the high hills in shouts of acclamation. Amen and Amen.

 

R.E. Slater

November 13, 2012



 

The Death of Poetry by 20th Century Modernism, Part 1/2

Many of the ideas and comments contained in the following article are not new to this website. We have discussed each one at length and have so notated those discussions per the sidebar index to the right side of this site. This would include Deism, Darwinism, Augustine-Aristotle-Reformation, Creedal Development and Church History, the Literature of the Bible, and even Process Theology.

However, being a poet who likes to write with a prose style, I did find the last section contained in this article quite interesting... that poetry has died due to no small influence by that of 20th Century Western Modernism. It's an observation that I myself have felt these many years will listening to formulaic assertions about God, my faith, the church, our human societies, and just about anything else that our Western rationalism has affected and maintained to the death of our present modernistic culture.

In fact, through postmodernism's enhanced philosophic paradigms has come a (post)structural framework that can remove modernism's philosophical gaps and restore more of an integrative approach and balance (or symmetry) to all human and scientific disciplines. Some few of those approaches have also been discussed at length including:

• the gradual detachment of Christianity from Calvinism's more systematic forms of theology (as well as other forms of systematizing Church dogmas and creedal assertions);
 
• the assimilation of language and culture back into our reading of Paul (described as NPP, the New Perspective of Paul approach via Sanders, Dunn and Wright);
 
• the re-connection of science to faith, and faith to science;
 
• the heightened awareness of our human journey and its importance to the reading of the Bible giving back to it an authority and authenticity (contra the doctrines of inerrancy's rationalisms on the one hand and blatant Christian mysticism on the other);
 
• the re-absorption of human anthropologies, sociologies, linguistics into the text of Scripture;
 
• the re-awakening of our ecological responsibility to the care of both the Earth and humanity through ecologically sound practices;
 
• and finally, the renewal of justice and compassion as a general human endeavor as based upon the practices of Jesus' ministry to the poor, the oppressed, and the neglected.

Through postmodernism's promise we are being led towards a participatory and authenticating form of faith and worship to our Creator-God-Redeemer which thusly provides hope for humanity's dreams by enabling and empowering increasingly connected civilizations towards peace, good will among all men, many forms of consensus leadership, and a formative sense of responsible world citizenship.

R.E. Slater

May 16, 2012

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The Death of Poetry?
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/05/15/the-death-of-poetry-rjs/

by RJS
May 15, 2012
Comments

I was recently sent a copy of the new book by Harry Lee Poe and Jimmy H. Davis God and the Cosmos: Divine Activity in Space, Time and History. Harry Lee Poe (Ph.D., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is the Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture at Union University in Jackson TN, Jimmy H. Davis (Ph.D. University of Illinois) is University Professor of Chemistry at Union University.

In God and the Cosmos Poe and Davis explore the interaction of God with his creation. There are two parts to their approach. Part One explores ideas about the kind of God who interacts with the world and the ways humans have considered this across cultures, religions, and time. Part Two turns this around and asks about the kind of world that allows God to interact.

Part One: What kind of God interacts with the world?

This section of the book does not address this question directly – but rather asks questions about the way humans have conceived of God and the way this impacts ideas concerning God’s action in the world. Poe and Davis begin with a survey of the way that God or divinity is understood in major world religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam. This is an interesting survey – although the discussion of Judaism makes such a break with Christianity that it left me scratching my head at times.

How do we think about God?

How does this affect the way we think about God’s interaction with the world?

Turning primarily to the West and the development of science in Europe, Poe and Davis put forth a few ideas that drive much of the discussion in the rest of this section. The notion of a God who is rational combined with a break from the Platonic philosophical underpinning derived from Augustine gave rise to the reformation and the scientific revolution. Poe and Davis see the key developments and conflicts as more philosophical than theological.

Thomas Aquinas set the stage by breaking with Augustine and his reliance on Plato, turning instead to Aristotle. This allowed a view of nature more conducive to the development of science. But even Aristotle had to fall. Philosophical underpinnings that found the ground of knowledge in rational thought without [scientific] experimentation, not “the God Hypothesis,” had to fall before the scientific revolution could flower. The conflict over Galileo was not theological but philosophical – a rejection of Aristotle.

Question Authority

Poe and Davis also suggest that the reformation, including the cultural changes that preceded the reformation, led to the scientific revolution.

In the Reformation the principle issue at stake was one of authority.… The University was a monastic community. All disciplines were subdisciplines of theology. Theology was the “queen of the sciences” and philosophy was her handmaiden. The Protestant reformation was not only a debate about authority in matters of religion but also authority in politics and all areas of scholarship, including what we now call science.

Scripture and tradition. The change of mind that we call the Reformation began to take place at least 150 years before Luther’s posting of his ninety-five theses, and it would continue to unfold 150 years afterwards.… this way of conceiving authority had begun at least by the time of John Wycliffe (d. 1384) , long before the observations of Copernicus (d. 1543). (p. 60)

The revolution in the view of authority enabled the scientific revolution, which required something of an open view toward tradition and traditional authorities. This also led to a view of scripture as the authoritative foundation for faith [and not the state - res].

Either-Or

According to Poe and Davis, with the publication of A Golden Chain (1590) William Perkins (1558-1602) set into motion a process that led to an either-or dichotomy describing God’s work in the world. A Golden chain is a text that popularized the theology of Calvin with a famous diagram that outlined the causes of salvation and damnation.

The idea of conceiving theology as a massive dichotomy represents a major innovation by Perkins to the earlier theology of Calvin.

Like Plato’s hierarchy or Aristotle’s chain of being, Perkins’s Golden Chain provides his audience with a way to conceive of God’s causal involvement in the world. God is the King who issues decrees, and from these decrees there issues forth an unbroken chain of cause and effect. (p. 79)

The problem with Perkins and the theology that followed Perkins is that it keeps the Holy Spirit safely in heaven or eternity. There is no real role for God or the Spirit in the day to day processes in the world. This either-or mode of thinking became the dominant assumption as men thought about the nature of God’s role in the world.

By the end of the eighteenth century, William Perkins’s model of reducing things to two alternatives [dualism] had become the dominant way of thinking in the English-speaking world.… 

In the natural world observed by scientific investigation, scientists were faced by the two alternatives that their worldview allowed them: (1) phenomena occurred by the direct action of God, or (2) phenomena occurred as the result of the laws of nature. 

The idea that God could be active within nature was not an alternative allowed to them by their prevailing worldview. (pp. 87-88)

Poe and Davis trace this development through Newton, Boyle, Laplace and other early scientist to Darwin. In the thinking of Darwin, and in the way evolution has been thought of since Darwin, we see a full flowering of the idea. If there is a natural explanation then God was not at work. He is relegated to some deistic first cause or eliminated from the picture entirely.

The Death of Poetry

Poe and Davis see the loss of poetry as another major piece of the puzzle in understanding the modern conflict between science and the action of God. In fact they put it rather bluntly: “Modern Western culture is unique in world history for having lost its poetry. All cultures, except modern Western culture, appreciate poetry.” (p. 96) This they see as a unique development of the 20th century … and it is not only poetry, but the arts as well that we have lost: painting, sculpture, opera, ballet, classical music. These no longer belong to the broad western culture. The loss of poetry goes hand-in-hand with a literalism that permeates our reading of scripture and our understanding of God. And this devastates the ability to understand God.

Humans have no frame of reference for understanding God because the language of the bible uses analogy, comparison, and poetry. Only by using creative license in the form of poetic language can we even begin to describe God and his action in the world.

Without a sense of poetry and the way analogies work, people lose the ability to use models, whether in theology or in science. The model, whether scientific or theological, is not the reality. A theological system is never more than a human constructed model of God. It may be useful for understanding an aspect of God that it affirms, but it is always woefully inadequate as a total understanding of God. (p. 100)

The last two chapters in Part One consider with process theology and God-of-the-Gaps-thinking. These chapters delve more deeply into the question that frames this portion of the book – what kind of God interacts with the world – and how does he interact. I’ll turn to these two in the next post on this book – but today I would like to stop here and consider the scenario that Poe and Davis have outlined.

Do you think that Poe and Davis are right in the time-line they’ve sketched?

Does the either-or dichotomy represents the common view of the action of God in the world?

And perhaps most important of all:

Have we lost the ability to appreciate poetry and thus to think constructively about God?


If you wish to contact me directly, you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

Part 2 continues here -

The Death of Poetry by 20th Century Modernism, Part 2/2

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/05/death-of-poetry-by-20th-century_18.html

Repost: How Postmodernism has helped Evangelical Christianity

"...They have not known nor understood: for they have shut their eyes and cannot see;

they have shut their hearts and cannot understand." (Isaiah 44.18)

In this article Kyle Roberts shows the benefits of postmodernistic theology in its confrontation with Evangelic theology as he urges its followers to become more authentic in their Christian heritage; more engaged with minority theologies and suppressed Christian voices; more accepting and embracing of the richness of plurality within Christianity's global church groups; and more willing to show an epistemic humility when doing the work of hermeneutics and theology.

Furthermore, Evangelic Christianity have been given a tremendous advantage by postmodernistic Christianity's pronounced objectives of bringing to an end evangelicalism's absorption of modernity which needed destroying and replacement in its egoistic Age of Rationalism; its entitlement attitudes before all other Christian and religious groups; its oppressive posturings proclaiming restrictive fiats and dogmas in condemnation upon non-Calvinistic brethren; its over-confident proclamations of creedal and systematic propositions in apprehension of the Divine personage and mystery; and, its willingness to embrace a form of cultural supremacy that has led to idolatry among Evangelic Christians in this Age of Enlightenment known as Modernity. Accordingly, Postmodernism has restored a rightful and necessary re-balancing to the Age of Modernity as the Church enters into a new era in the 21st Century perhaps to be known as the "Age of Authenticity" replacing both modernity and postmodernity as their cultural equivalents.

Lastly, I would note that though Emergent Christianity has embraced postmodernism, it is not, however, fully defined by postmodernism. Rather, a broader definition of Emergent Christianity would be that of forward-looking Christians wishing to leave Evangelistic modernity and actively exploring fuller expressions of God and their personal relation to the Divine, to one another, and to the world at large, in the 21st Century. So that whether this new era is known as "Postmodernism," or as "An Age of Authentication" or even as "An Era of Participatory Community," it will have the following distinctives:

• it will have examined modernism in relationship to postmodern Christianity;
• moved to a more authenticating form of Christianity within its belief structures; and,
• centered its efforts in participatory communities celebrating the life of Jesus to both the world as well as within its own faith fellowships.

So that by whatever era or time period the Church is in (or, entering), Emergent Christianity is positioning itself to speak within that epistemic/philosophic period to bear Christ to the nations through ministry and proclamation.

R.E. Slater

September 12, 2011

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Postmodernism: Still Alive, Still Prophetic

http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Postmodernism-Still-Alive-Still-Prophetic-Kyle-Roberts-09-07-2011?offset=0&max=1

If we are really entering the twilight of postmodernism,

there may still be time for evangelicals to learn its lessons.

by Kyle Roberts

September 6, 2011

Every now and again, someone declares that this year the Vikings are going to win the Super Bowl or the Cubs the World Series. Eventually, given enough time and enough predictions, someone is likely to be right. (Well, perhaps not about the Cubs.)

Similarly, now and again someone declares the "death of postmodernism." Someone will eventually be right. Collin Hansen, taking his cue from a recent Prospect essay, "Postmodernism is Dead," is the latest evangelical to happily proclaim its demise. Hansen's piece raises a number of points for potentially fruitful dialogue, as church leaders consider whether or not the age of postmodernism is over and done, or whether it still has some prophetic and instructive work to do.

In the Prospect essay, author Edward Docx suggests that an upcoming art exhibit at London's Victoria and Albert Museum, "Postmodernism—Style and Subversion 1970-1990," signals the demise of an era. In the field of art, Docx notes, postmodernism was a flurry of subversive irony. Its energy couldn't last, as lesser lights sought to carry the torch and as criteria for aesthetic judgment gave way to the almighty dollar. On a grander scale, he notes, postmodernism was an intellectual and cultural movement that emerged in response to dissatisfactions with modernity. It was, Docx says, a "high-energy revolt, an attack, a strategy for destruction."

Words like "revolt" and "destruction" have captured the imagination of postmodernism's detractors, many who do not sufficiently distinguish between culture-making practices like art, cinema, and literature and their intellectual backdrop, postmodern thought. The cultural practices and the "isms" informing them are sometimes distinguished as "postmodernity" and "postmodernism," respectively.

Postmodern thought is an array of attitudes, objectives, and standpoints notoriously difficult to pin down, not so much because it is "fuzzy" but because it is complex and variegated. In the popular Christian imagination, postmodernism is rather simple (and as Hansen suggests, even "all-encompassing"): it's the deconstruction of truth and the exaltation of relativism, the abandonment of meaning and the glory of nihilism, and the loss of the word in favor of the amorphous image. For its admirers, postmodernism is the savior of authenticity, dialogue, and serenity; for its critics, it's the enemy of truth, biblical revelation, and of Christianity.

Hansen can't seem to decide, however, whether postmodernism runs against the notion of biblical revelation or whether it has aided in its recovery. On one hand, he says, "thanks to the effects of postmodernism, no longer do Enlightenment philosophies claim they can compile all human knowledge by means of reason apart from revelation." On the other hand, he warns, Christian advocates of postmodernism have lost the basis for truth. This basis, Hansen suggests, can be found in Scripture. Critics of postmodernism, however, often forget that it was Modernism that undermined trust in revelation; higher criticism, Rationalism/philosophical skepticism, deism, etc., were Enlightenment enterprises. While certainly not all postmodernists are Christians (or even theists), postmodernism on the whole has made room for revelation, paradox, and mystery.

For many thinkers and church leaders, postmodernism has been a friendlier cultural and intellectual context for Christianity than was modernism. Aspects and attitudes emerging from the postmodern turn include epistemic humility, tolerance of diversity and difference, hermeneutical richness and complexity. Numerous postmodern thinkers (if not the most radical ones) repeatedly argue that "standpoint epistemology," multiple discourses, and hermeneutical indeterminacy does not amount to relativism or lead to nihilism. Among those who have accepted the postmodern turn, the recognition of contextuality, epistemic finitude, and the significance of perspective enabled a breakthrough in engagement with minority theologies and formerly suppressed (and oppressed) voices.

Hansen glossed over a striking concession in Docx's essay: postmodernism, by de Marginalized and subordinate groups were given voice, in large part thanks to the postmodern turn. In this respect, it is not contradictory, as Hansen suggests, to find postmodernists seeking justice. For the patriarch of deconstruction, Jacques Derrida, "deconstruction is justice."

Hansen is certainly correct that it is, in the end, the Gospel that matters. The paradox of the God-man and the salvation he offers to the world is our central concern, our focal point as Christians. But if anything, postmodernism as applied to Christian theology has helped evangelicals remember that Christ is just that: a paradox who offers himself to be appropriated by faith (not by Rationality). And he offers himself first and foremost as a person, not a proposition.

Postmodernity, at least as it has been appropriated within evangelical Christian theological discourses and church practices (e.g., the Emergent Church), has aimed toward authenticity; patience with plurality; contentment with hermeneutical limitations and theological incompleteness; in sum, toward epistemic humility. These qualities are not inconsistent with a Gospel-informed life of Christian discipleship.

It is tempting for evangelicals to triumphantly declare that the wicked witch is dead, so we can go back to the Kansas we once knew. But dead, dying, or still kicking, the prophetic lessons of postmodernism should not be forgotten in the face of the inevitable increase of plurality and difference in our neighborhoods, towns, and urban centers. Postmodernism has given us conceptual tools with which to fight against our natural tendency to have the last word, to lean on our own presumed certainty of knowledge, and to subsume particularity under a totalizing homogeneity. If we have entered the twilight of postmodernity—which may or may not be the case—it would be a shame if it came and went without really understanding it.

Postmodernism will indeed eventually give way to something else. If it is, as Doxc suggests, the "Age of Authenticity," then it will be, at least in part, due to postmodernism's persistent critique of our natural tendency toward idolatry (cf, Peter Rollins, "The Idolatry of God, Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction"). In this sense, the lessons of postmodernity are consistent, as Hansen rightly acknowledges, with the teaching of the Apostle Paul: we see through a mirror dimly (1 Cor. 13:12). We are finite, fallen, and broken. And we are still not in Kansas anymore. But if we are really entering the twilight of postmodernism, there may still be time to learn its lessons.

For further resources geared toward Christians engaging and understanding postmodernity, see:

• Myron B. Penner, ed., Christianity and the Postmodern Turn: Six Views
• Merold Westphal, Overcoming Onto-Theology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith
• James K. A. Smith, Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard and Foucault to Church

Kyle Roberts is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology and Lead Faculty of Christian Thought, Bethel Seminary (St. Paul, MN). He researches and writes on issues related to the intersection of theology, philosophy, and culture. Follow Kyle Roberts' reflections on faith and culture at his blog or via Twitter.

Roberts' column, "Theological Provocations," is published every second Tuesday on the Evangelical portal. Subscribe via email or RSS.

Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design of God and the Cosmos

As an aside, I am currently re-reading Stephen Hawkings book, The Grand Design (2010), wherein he affirms the mechanistic, reductionist view of the form and frame of science. As a Christian, especially as one understanding the entanglement of the Godhead in our created world (sic relational/process theology: How Should We Read the Bible?), this type of assertion rings hollow for me. But one that I will allow from a non-Christian viewpoint because, in the case of natural scientific law, natural phenomena does run with a regularity unnecessary for a supernatural intervention as noted by the mathematician LaPlace to Napoleon when asking of God's necessity if physical laws run themselves (scientific determinism). Quipped LaPlace, "Sire, I have not needed that hypothesis." (pg 30, Hawkings).... And this on the heels of Sir Isaac Newton's earlier discoveries of the foundational classic laws of physics yet believing that God was somehow in the machine that He had built and now maintains.

Yet, this is the very method by which God had chosen to create in order to maintain His creation. In essence, God lies "behind" the process. And when these processes are looked into further, we see a "lively dance of chaotic, complex structure dynamically interacting with itself." That is, "there is an intrinsic openness in nature - seen in quantum phenomena, chaos, even [biological] epigenetics" to loosely quote from Poe and Davis. It is this very "freedom" within nature's inherent structure that testifies to God's imprint and interaction (sic, God's Role in Creation).

"If we were somehow able to fully explain the operation of the physical universe,

we would not have explained God out of the picture. Rather, we would have

explained the regular and repeatable sustaining activity of God." - Biologos

A "freedom" bent towards death and destruction (because of sin) that God has likewise enlivened (or re-invigorated) with a bent towards creative renewal and rebirth unto life and light. But a type of "freedom" that is a necessary consequence of creation's mystery that can allow for reconstruction from chaos (or, for that matter, evolutionary natural selection) by the intent and will of a God intimately involved in this re-creative process as Sovereign-Redeemer-Creator (sic, Evolution: Is God Just Playing Dice?).

Not only did God create, but even now creates, as He ever will - and always will - create until creation becomes one with His mind and will. Enmeshing the trinity of the cosmos, earth and world to the trinity of the Godhead (Father, Son, Spirit, three-in-one) till all becomes a rhombian fellowship in singular eternality (to put it in Hawking paradigm).

Consequently, though I have a very high respect towards Stephen Hawkings and his labor within the quantum physics world (besides being a favorite read of mine), a simple atheistic, reductionist/dualistic view towards science and the world is not satisfactory for a Christian holding a theology that is non-reductionistic/non-dualistic on the very same interpretive basis as the same science used. Nor can it be a helpful theology for biblical discovery and teaching, when thinking through God's interaction with man cosmically, ecologically, anthropologically, and spiritually.

R.E. Slater

April 26, 2012

* * * * * * * * *


continue to -

Index to past articles on "Particle Physics, Quantum Science, and the Universe"





Other related articles that I've written may be found here:

QUANTUM PHYSICS, INDETERMINACY & MULTIVERSES

Stephen Hawking: The Strangeness of Quantum Physics and Cosmic Indeterminacy, 6/27/12

Stephen Hawking, Indeterminacy, God & Quantum Physics, 5/30/12

Stephen Hawking, Multi-Universes, and God's Grander Design, 5/24/12

Process Theology - "Divine Action, Indeterminancy, and Dipolarism", 5/19/12

Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design of God and the Cosmos, 4/26/12




* * * * * * * * * *

God and the Cosmos

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/04/26/god-and-the-cosmos-rjs/

by RJS

April 26, 2012

Comment

I was recently sent by the publisher a copy of the new book by Harry Lee Poe and Jimmy H. Davis God and the Cosmos: Divine Activity in Space, Time and History. Harry Lee Poe (Ph.D., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is the Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture at Union University in Jacksonville TN, Jimmy H. Davis (Ph.D. University of Illinois) is University Professor of Chemistry at Union University. This book should prove to be something a bit different from our usual fare of late.

There are a number of different questions at play in the discussion of the interaction between science and the Christian faith. For some people the controversy over creation and evolution is driven by a desire to be faithful to scripture, and explicitly to a favored interpretation of scripture. Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis fall into this category. For others there is an appreciation for the sciences, but also a conviction that if the science is true traces of it will be found in scripture. Hugh Ross and Reasons to Believe fall into this category. But there is another set of question at play, especially within the Intelligent Design movement. Science and scientists are finding a natural explanation for all manner of phenomena formerly attributed to the work of God. This appears to squeeze God into an increasingly small corner of the universe – and many argue it removes God from the picture all together. As Laplace famously replied to Napoleon … we have “no need of that hypothesis.” Poe and Davis are addressing these latter kinds of questions in their book. Can a transcendent and personal God really act in the universe? and Can science help us answer this question?

The introduction to the book begins with reflections by Davis and Poe. Davis begins by posing the question – where is God in, for example, a chemical reaction? The reaction is the same and the explanation is the same whatever the worldview or presupposition of the person who brings together the reactants and starts the process.

Modern science assumes that all physical events have physical causes. In order to find these causes, modern science breaks down the event into parts and looks for some mechanism (pattern of connections) that give rise to the event being studied. Modern science explains natural phenomena in terms of natural events and does not invoke supernatural invention. (p. 15)

There is an assumption of methodological naturalism inherent in the processwe are quickly left with a deist view of God. He got things started, set the laws, and now steps back and lets it go.

Davis suggests that the error in this approach lies in the mechanical view of the cosmos. The models we construct are closed machines. But there is an intrinsic openness in nature – seen in quantum phenomena, chaos, and epigenetics.

This openness is an internal part of nature, not a God-of-the-Gaps ignorance that will one day be removed. We suggest in this monograph that God is there not only in the working of the “machine” but in the underlying software that tells the “machine” how to behave in a particular situation. It is an open universe providing an open vista on which the master Artist can craft what he wills. (p. 23)

Do you think explanations for observed phenomena are a zero-sum game – either there is a natural explanation or there is divine action?

Is this either-or attitude a problem in the church or in our society at large?

Harry Lee Poe provides a theological response to begin to address the question of how God relates to the world.

Answers to the question of how God acts on the universe have tended to be reductionist. As such, they have tended to be unhelpful. More complicated answers seldom gain a hearing because people prefer simple, black-and-white, either-or explanations. Politicians learned this trait of human nature long ago; thus the trait has charm both for fundamentalism and for unbelief. (p. 25)

The black-and-white, either-or explanations are intrinsically unsatisfactory. They simply cannot account for the world we see. Poe relates this to the complexity of the world and to the progression or hierarchies of complexity introduced by Arthur Peacocke. He suggests that different kinds of rules apply at different levels of existence. There is, it seems, a fundamental distinction between the laws that describe the simplicity of the atom and the laws that describe the complexity of a living cell.

Neither reductionist science nor reductionist theology help us understand this universe where one kind of rule applies at the level of human experience and another kind of rule applies at the quantum level of subatomic particles. (p. 26)

Poe sketches briefly in this introduction four theological ideas that may help to move us forward:

Freedom of the triune God. God is not just creator who says and it is, not just incarnate Son, not just Holy Spirit who animates but with no plan or goal. He is not deist, self-limiting, or undirected.

Only a truly trinitarian model of one God can help us move to a clearer understanding of how God might relate to such a complex structure as the universe in appropriate ways for different levels of physical complexity. (p. 28)

Directional universe: Simplicity to complexity. The universe is dynamic with a linear direction from energy to matter to life to consciousness. [More rather, from complexity to complexity. - res]

Progress: A value-based goal. Here Harry Lee Poe quotes Edgar Allen Poe (an indirect ancestor of his, about whom he has written a biography Evermore: Edgar Allan Poe and the Mystery of the Universe):

In Eureka (1848), Edgar Allen Poe’s original proposal of a big bang theory and the origin of life, Poe described the interaction of the elements and life forms in adaptation in terms of a grand narrative. He said, “The plots of God are perfect. The Universe is a plot of God.” (p. 29)

Open universe. Here Poe returns to the idea introduced by Davis. There is an openness in the universe at each level of complexity. A personal mind – a human mind or the mind of God – can interact with and change the course of nature without violating the laws of nature. “Rather than hiding in the gaps, God is involved in the big observables that science describes.“

The remainder of God and the Cosmos is divided into two parts – first looking at theology and asking what kind of God interacts with the world and then looking at the universe and asking what kind of world allows God to interact. It looks like this will lead to some interesting questions and, I hope, some interesting posts over the next few weeks.

Where would you look for evidence of the action or purpose of God in the universe?

How should Christians respond to the “mechanical” view of the universe that removes God from the picture?


If you wish to contact me directly, you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

Thinking About a New Kind of Christianity. One that is Postmodern. Part 3/3

Reflections on Cognitive Dissonance:

Theologian Stanley Hauerwas and Newsweek

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/04/reflections-on-cognitive-dissonance-hauerwas-and-newsweek/

by Roger Olson

posted April 6, 2012

Recently I’ve been reading a lot of Stanley Hauerwas who Time magazine labeled America’s “best theologian.” (Hauerwas famously responded that “best” is not a theological term.) Hauerwas, of course, is renowned for emphasizing the constitutive nature of the church for Christianity. He has even been criticized for putting the church in the place of God. For him, there can be no such thing as churchless Christianity; the church is the gospel (when it is being the church).

Cover Photo Inside Newsweek

As I was walking through the Dallas-Fort Worth airport the other day (just a day before the “fierce fingers of God” raked through the metroplex) my eyes fell on the April 9 issue of Newsweek magazine. The cover story is “Forget the Church: Follow Jesus” by Andrew Sullivan. Now, the actual title of the article inside the magazine is “The Forgotten Jesus,” but the marketers who design covers translated that into “Forget the Church:…” The cover shows a young Jesus dressed in 21^st century hip clothes standing on a busy city street.

Andrew Sullivan’s article doesn’t quite live up to the cover title. Or the cover title doesn’t quite live up to the article. The subtitle reveals the author’s thesis: “Christianity has been destroyed by politics, priests, and get-rich evangelists. Ignore them…embrace him [Jesus].” Sullivan doesn’t actually recommend abandoning church altogether; what he recommends, to save Christianity, is for Christians to follow the examples of Thomas Jefferson and Francis of Assisi and abandon power (except the power of love, of course).

It’s a strange combination—Jefferson and Francis. I wonder what they would say to each other? (Ah! An idea for another imaginary conversation!) What Sullivan likes about Jefferson is not his denials of traditional Christian doctrines but his emphasis on Christian practices—especially the teachings of Jesus he approved of. (Sullivan seems to approve of the same ones.) What Sullivan likes about Francis is not his tree-hugging naturism but his self-sacrificing lifestyle of love including abjuring of worldly power.

The villains of Sullivan’s rather jaundiced view of Christianity today are politicians who use Jesus and Christianity to promote political agendas—both right and left. Also, religious figures who use power politics to promote their religious agendas—both liberal and conservative. True Christianity, he asserts, is “the religion of unachievement.” His prophecy? That “one day soon, when politics and doctrine and pride recede, it [true Christianity] will rise again.”

Okay, we’ve heard much of this before—many times. There’s much here to agree with and much with which one must disagree if one is any kind of traditional Christian. The main point is the implicit one—that authentic Christianity is individualistic. There is no mention here of the church; the church seems to be the problem. (Sullivan only mentions church leaders critically.)

Back to Hauerwas. What would Stanley say? I don’t know, but I’ll venture an educated guess.

I think Hauerwas would agree with Sullivan’s diagnosis of the crisis facing Christianity. Only Hauerwas calls it Constantinianism or Christendom—the idea that the thinking and active Christian’s task is to translate the gospel to make it intelligible to its cultured despisers and to interpret the gospel so that it can be useful for secular politics. I think Hauerwas would disagree with Sullivan’s solution which seems to be another way of making Christianity palatable—to those who despise the many corruptions of true Christianity which are all they seem to see.

I suspect the sanctifying of Jefferson would irk Hauerwas as would the secularizing of Francis. Oh, Sullivan pays lip service to Francis’ love for the sacraments and obedience to the church, but his overall portrait of Francis is of one who has basically abandoned the [official] church [of his day] to set up his own little roving band of homeless helpers.

My own response is that Sullivan is mostly right in what he decries and mostly wrong in what he suggests. Contemporary American Christianity is largely held captive to consumerism and power. (Sullivan overlooks the many alternative forms of Christianity that have not succumbed to cultural accommodation.) Christianity is not about supporting American values—whether they be right-wing or left-wing. But I think Sullivan is mostly wrong in what he promotes which seems to be rejection of doctrine and organized Christianity—the church.

The church in America needs reform, not abandonment. The church is just as much a part of the gospel as is individual “humility, service and sanctity.” In fact, you can get those (depending on what is meant by “sanctity”) without the gospel. The gospel includes the new community of God’s people living and worshiping and serving together in obedience to the Lord who lives in their midst through the Holy Spirit.

Sullivan’s article seems like another version of “spirituality without religion,” only the “without religion” part seems to mean “without the church.” The cover title isn’t totally wrong; it captures the thundering silence of the article about God’s people, the church, born on the Day of Pentecost and constantly in need of reform while continuing to be the presence of Christ in the world.

However, my cognitive dissonance becomes acute when I ask myself this question: What does a Christian do when he or she finds himself or herself in a society without any true church? That is, what to do in a society where virtually all “churches” are subverted by culture? It has happened. Luther found himself in that situation and started his own churches (by converting Catholic churches into Protestant ones). However, Luther [ironically] turned right around and accommodated his new churches movement to the feudal system, calling on the nobility of the German nation to violently suppress the revolt of the peasants.

Kierkegaard found himself in that situation in early 19^th century Denmark. Bonhoeffer found himself in that situation in mid-20^th century Nazi Germany. (The Confessing Church which he helped found was too timid for his taste.)

Hauerwas and Sullivan seem to agree on one thing: the American churches are almost totally subverted by American culture. Of course, both no doubt see points of light here and there, but, by-and-large, both take a very dim view of the situation of Christianity in America. I see Sullivan’s solution—abandon the church and create your own Christianity guided by Jesus and Francis and Jefferson. What is Hauerwas’ solution? That’s not as clear to me. When he extols the church as constitutive of the gospel, which “church” is he talking about? Is it some ideal church that doesn’t exist materially and empirically? I don’t think that’s his intention. But what, then?

Here is my cognitive dissonance problem: I largely agree with Sullivan’s and Hauerwas’ diagnosis of American Christianity (although I’m not quite as pessimistic as they seem to be). On the other hand, I disagree with their solutions while seeing SOME value in both. Hauerwas’ solution seems to be some kind of traditionalism (as Jeffrey Stout calls it in Democracy and Tradition). My question is: Whose tradition? If you really want tradition, I say, go join the Eastern Orthodox churches. Hauerwas attends an Episcopal church. To me, that’s the very epitome of Constantinianism. How can he attend a church whose Chief Governor is a monarch? Yet, some return to tradition is needed in the face of invented Christianities all over the place.

Sullivan’s solution of individualism is anathema to me. There is no such thing as churchless Christianity. On the other hand, to the extent that all the churches are culturally accommodated, “going it alone” and waiting for authentic Christianity to return would seem to be the only path. I know good Christian people who live in cities where, after visiting numerous churches for many years, they have concluded that non-culturally subverted churches are not present. But “going it alone” is not ideal.

Again, both Sullivan and Hauerwas challenge me and American Christianity. And prophetic criticism is needed. I just wish they had more viable solutions.

The Full Series:

Thinking About a New Kind of Christianity.

One that is Postmodern.
Part 1/3

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/04/thinking-about-new-kind-of-christianity.html


Thinking About a New Kind of Christianity.

One that is Postmodern.

Part 2/3

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/04/thinking-about-new-kind-of-christianity_05.html


Thinking About a New Kind of Christianity.

One that is Postmodern.
Part 3/3
http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/04/thinking-about-new-kind-of-christianity_07.html



Related Articles:

What Wikipedia Has to Say About the Emerging/Emergent Church.

An Introduction.
Part 1/2

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/03/what-wikipedia-has-to-say-about.html


What Wikipedia Has to Say About the Emerging/Emergent Church.

My Personal Observations.
Part 2/2

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/03/what-wikipedia-has-to-say-about_26.html

 

 

Thinking About a New Kind of Christianity. One that is Postmodern. Part 2/3

From Leonard Sweet's book, So Beautiful -


There was once a broken-down old mainline/sideline/offline church
traveling on the road from yesterday to tomorrow when it fell among
postmodern culture. It was stripped of its place in society, leaving it beat up,
left behind, and more than half dead.

Now by chance there was a doctoral student going down the road who passed by
on the other side. “I’ve got papers due, and besides, that dead old denomination
hasn’t got any life left in it.”

In the same way a prophetic pastor came to the place, saw the broken-down church,
and whispered to himself, “O Lord, let me retire before it finally dies.”

But then a complete nobody, who didn’t know enough not to get involved,
and who had failed the Jesus course, found the church and had compassion on it.

S/he bound up its wounds, pouring on the oil of hope and the wine of Christ’s blood,
poured out the oil of forgiveness of sin; then set it on her/his own beast
 and took it to a place where it could reflect and refresh and find healing.

S/he said to the keeper,

“This poor old church is almost dead.
It may or may not have anything to say to a new world;
but make it as comfortable as you can ,
spend whatever you have to, until I come back…”

* * * * * * * * * * * *


Continued from:

Thinking About a New Kind of Christianity.

One that is Postmodern.
Part 1

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/04/thinking-about-new-kind-of-christianity.html

I am beginning with Leonard Sweet's quote from a Drew University student that had written an adaption to the Parable of the Good Samaritan in his class. I find it apropos to the other day's discussion on the postmodern church (see link above) and the state of affairs that the church is encountering and must choose between. However, I would make one small adjustment to the prose/poem above by substituting the word "modern" in place of "postmodern" to give it a better reflection of truism for today.

For postmodernism has not been the cause of death to the modernistic church. Firstly because it is too new to the church to be understood or incorporated even though it has been around since the 1990s (its roots have been around for far longer). Secondly because most of today's evangelical churches actively reject postmodernism and disparage its call to "discriminate and rebuild" itself in God's grace and redemption. To deconstruct and purge itself of all its earthly possessions held in its traditions and dogmas; and to reconstruct and renew itself into the spirit and principles that those same traditions and dogmas had once so faithfully declared. The truth of the matter is that postmodernism is the church's salvation as well as its death through revival from its antiquated past.

In actuality, it has been modernism that is causing the church's death plagued by society's standards of success through wealth, structure, building, programs, organization, marketing, publicity, power, popularity, and so forth. Not that these are bad things in-and-of themselves but because it can feed upon itself and eclipse the simple good news of the gospel though the church proclaims its devotion to Jesus' gospel daily. Still this gospel can soon be forgotten when bound up with preserving the "works of our hands."

Quite correctly Len Sweet speaks to the implications of practicing APC churches (attractional, propositional, and colonial churches) which are good at creating a growing numbers-based membership; producing catechised believers in pre-packaged confessionals; and provisioning a consumerist mindset amongst its many "safe" in-house, community-based programs. However, he urges that churches think again about becoming MRI churches (missional, relational, and incarnational churches) that focus on a missional, transformative message of Jesus; making disciples focused on relationships and revelation; and practicing Christ's daily incarnation through rich, vibrant connections into their community to provide context to Jesus' message of love and redemption, both to themselves as well as to those they would serve. In his estimation, as it is mine as well, "It is the only theology (or theological message) worth knowing and following." Jesus said it best when he said to live out the love of God through good works.

The Great Commandment

³⁴ But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducee's, they gathered together. ³⁵ And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ³⁶ “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” ³⁷ And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ³⁸ This is the great and first commandment. ³⁹ And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ⁴⁰ On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Below is Newsweek's annual Easter weekend tribute to Christianity that reflects the good and the bad of the church's cultural image to society at-large. Many of these same themes have been reflected within this web journal describing the heart-felt mandate of the Emerging/Emergent church to the more popular cultural idioms of Evangelicalism, and how each may help the other towards apprehending postmodernism's fundamental themes of reform, authenticity, and participation. Themes of personal worth and value; social justice and equality; practice of corporate ethics; preservation of ecology; integration with community; pursuit of global citizenship; practice of humanity without condemnation nor judgment; these are but to name a few. Yet each of these social qualities speak to dynamic areas revolutionizing the church to adjust its belief structures and practices to better reflect the demands of the gospel throughout its fellowship, goals, purposes, practices and intents. To accede to one is to accede to all by the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit of God.

R.E. Slater

April 5, 2012

The Full Series:

Thinking About a New Kind of Christianity.

One that is Postmodern.
Part 1/3

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/04/thinking-about-new-kind-of-christianity.html


Thinking About a New Kind of Christianity.

One that is Postmodern.

Part 2/3

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/04/thinking-about-new-kind-of-christianity_05.html


Thinking About a New Kind of Christianity.

One that is Postmodern.
Part 3/3
http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/04/thinking-about-new-kind-of-christianity_07.html



Related Articles:

What Wikipedia Has to Say About the Emerging/Emergent Church.

An Introduction.
Part 1/2

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/03/what-wikipedia-has-to-say-about.html


What Wikipedia Has to Say About the Emerging/Emergent Church.

My Personal Observations.
Part 2/2

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/03/what-wikipedia-has-to-say-about_26.html

* * * * * * * * * * * *


Christianity in Crisis

Newsweek Magazine

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/04/01/andrew-sullivan-christianity-in-crisis.html

by Andrew Sullivan

Apr 2, 2012 1:00 AM EDT

Christianity has been destroyed by politics, priests, and get-rich evangelists.

Ignore them, writes Andrew Sullivan, and embrace Him.

If you go to the second floor of the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., you’ll find a small room containing an 18th-century Bible whose pages are full of holes. They are carefully razor-cut empty spaces, so this was not an act of vandalism. It was, rather, a project begun by Thomas Jefferson when he was a mere 27 years old. Painstakingly removing those passages he thought reflected the actual teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, Jefferson literally cut and pasted them into a slimmer, different New Testament, and left behind the remnants (all on display until July 15). What did he edit out? He told us: “We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus.” He removed what he felt were the “misconceptions” of Jesus’ followers, “expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves.” And it wasn’t hard for him. He described the difference between the real Jesus and the evangelists’ embellishments as “diamonds” in a “dunghill,” glittering as “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.” Yes, he was calling vast parts of the Bible religious manure.

When we think of Jefferson as the great architect of the separation of church and state, this, perhaps, was what he meant by “church”: the purest, simplest, apolitical Christianity, purged of the agendas of those who had sought to use Jesus to advance their own power decades and centuries after Jesus’ death. If Jefferson’s greatest political legacy was the Declaration of Independence, this pure, precious moral teaching was his religious legacy. “I am a real Christian,” Jefferson insisted against the fundamentalists and clerics of his time. “That is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus.”

What were those doctrines? Not the supernatural claims that, fused with politics and power, gave successive generations wars, inquisitions, pogroms, reformations, and counterreformations. Jesus’ doctrines were the practical commandments, the truly radical ideas that immediately leap out in the simple stories he told and which he exemplified in everything he did. Not simply love one another, but love your enemy and forgive those who harm you; give up all material wealth; love the ineffable Being behind all things, and know that this Being is actually your truest Father, in whose image you were made. Above all: give up power over others, because power, if it is to be effective, ultimately requires the threat of violence, and violence is incompatible with the total acceptance and love of all other human beings that is at the sacred heart of Jesus’ teaching. That’s why, in his final apolitical act, Jesus never defended his innocence at trial, never resisted his crucifixion, and even turned to those nailing his hands to the wood on the cross and forgave them, and loved them.

Politicized Faith

Whether or not you believe, as I do, in Jesus’ divinity and resurrection—and in the importance of celebrating both on Easter Sunday—Jefferson’s point is crucially important. Because it was Jesus’ point. What does it matter how strictly you proclaim your belief in various doctrines if you do not live as these doctrines demand? What is politics if not a dangerous temptation toward controlling others rather than reforming oneself? If we return to what Jesus actually asked us to do and to be—rather than the unknowable intricacies of what we believe he was—he actually emerges more powerfully and more purely.

And more intensely relevant to our times. Jefferson’s vision of a simpler, purer, apolitical Christianity couldn’t be further from the 21st-century American reality. We inhabit a polity now saturated with religion. On one side, the Republican base is made up of evangelical Protestants who believe that religion must consume and influence every aspect of public life. On the other side, the last Democratic primary had candidates profess their faith in public forums, and more recently President Obama appeared at the National Prayer Breakfast, invoking Jesus to defend his plan for universal health care. The crisis of Christianity is perhaps best captured in the new meaning of the word “secular.” It once meant belief in separating the spheres of faith and politics; it now means, for many, simply atheism. The ability to be faithful in a religious space and reasonable in a political one has atrophied before our eyes.

Organized Religion in Decline

Meanwhile, organized religion itself is in trouble. The Catholic Church’s hierarchy lost much of its authority over the American flock with the unilateral prohibition of the pill in 1968 by Pope Paul VI. But in the last decade, whatever shred of moral authority that remained has evaporated. The hierarchy was exposed as enabling, and then covering up, an international conspiracy to abuse and rape countless youths and children. I don’t know what greater indictment of a church’s authority there can be—except the refusal, even now, of the entire leadership to face their responsibility and resign. Instead, they obsess about others’ sex lives, about who is entitled to civil marriage, and about who pays for birth control in health insurance. Inequality, poverty, even the torture institutionalized by the government after 9/11: these issues attract far less of their public attention.

For their part, the mainline Protestant churches, which long promoted religious moderation, have rapidly declined in the past 50 years. Evangelical Protestantism has stepped into the vacuum, but it has serious defects of its own. As New York Times columnist Ross Douthat explores in his unsparing new book, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, many suburban evangelicals embrace a gospel of prosperity, which teaches that living a Christian life will make you successful and rich. Others defend a rigid biblical literalism, adamantly wishing away a century and a half of scholarship that has clearly shown that the canonized Gospels were written decades after Jesus’ ministry, and are copies of copies of stories told by those with fallible memory. Still others insist that the earth is merely 6,000 years old—something we now know by the light of reason and science is simply untrue. And what group of Americans have pollsters found to be most supportive of torturing terror suspects? Evangelical Christians. Something has gone very wrong. These are impulses born of panic in the face of modernity, and fear before an amorphous “other.” This version of Christianity could not contrast more strongly with Jesus’ constant refrain: “Be not afraid.” It would make Jefferson shudder.

It would also, one imagines, baffle Jesus of Nazareth. The issues that Christianity obsesses over today simply do not appear in either Jefferson’s or the original New Testament. Jesus never spoke of homosexuality or abortion, and his only remarks on marriage were a condemnation of divorce (now commonplace among American Christians) and forgiveness for adultery. The family? He disowned his parents in public as a teen, and told his followers to abandon theirs if they wanted to follow him. Sex? He was a celibate who, along with his followers, anticipated an imminent End of the World where reproduction was completely irrelevant.

The Crisis of Our Time

All of which is to say something so obvious it is almost taboo: Christianity itself is in crisis. It seems no accident to me that so many Christians now embrace materialist self-help rather than ascetic self-denial—or that most Catholics, even regular churchgoers, have tuned out the hierarchy in embarrassment or disgust. Given this crisis, it is no surprise that the fastest-growing segment of belief among the young is atheism, which has leapt in popularity in the new millennium. Nor is it a shock that so many have turned away from organized Christianity and toward “spirituality,” co-opting or adapting the practices of meditation or yoga, or wandering as lapsed Catholics in an inquisitive spiritual desert. The thirst for God is still there. How could it not be, when the profoundest human questions—Why does the universe exist rather than nothing? How did humanity come to be on this remote blue speck of a planet? What happens to us after death?—remain as pressing and mysterious as they’ve always been?

That’s why polls show a huge majority of Americans still believing in a Higher Power. But the need for new questioning—of Christian institutions as well as ideas and priorities—is as real as the crisis is deep.

Back to Jesus

Where to start? Jefferson’s act of cutting out those parts of the Bible that offended his moral and scientific imagination is one approach. But another can be found in the life of a well-to-do son of a fabric trader in 12th-century Italy who went off to fight a war with a neighboring city, saw his friends killed in battle in front of him, lived a year as a prisoner of war, and then experienced a clarifying vision that changed the world. In Francis of Assisi: A New Biography, Augustine Thompson cuts through the legends and apocryphal prayers to describe Saint Francis as he truly lived. Gone are the fashionable stories of an erstwhile hippie, communing with flowers and animals. Instead we have this typical young secular figure who suddenly found peace in service to those he previously shrank from: lepers, whose sores and lesions he tended to and whose company he sought—as much as for himself as for them.

The religious order that goes by his name began quite simply with a couple of friends who were captured by the sheer spiritual intensity of how Francis lived. His inspiration was even purer than Jefferson’s. He did not cut out passages of the Gospels to render them more reasonable than they appear to the modern mind. He simply opened the Gospels at random—as was often the custom at the time—and found three passages. They told him to “sell what you have and give to the poor,” to “take nothing for your journey,” not even a second tunic, and to “deny himself” and follow the path of Jesus. That was it. So Francis renounced his inheritance, becoming homeless and earning food by manual labor. When that wouldn’t feed him, he begged, just for food—with the indignity of begging part of his spiritual humbling.

Jefferson cut the “diamonds” of Christ’s teaching out of the “dunghill”
of the New Testament
Hugh Talman / Smithsonian National Museum of American History

Francis insisted on living utterly without power over others. As stories of his strangeness and holiness spread, more joined him and he faced a real dilemma: how to lead a group of men, and also some women, in an organization. Suddenly, faith met politics. And it tormented, wracked, and almost killed him. He had to be last, not first. He wanted to be always the “lesser brother,” not the founder of an order. And so he would often go on pilgrimages and ask others to run things. Or he would sit at the feet of his brothers at communal meetings and if an issue could not be resolved without his say-so, he would whisper in the leader’s ear.

A Vision of Holiness

As Jesus was without politics, so was Francis. As Jesus fled from crowds, so did Francis—often to bare shacks in woodlands, to pray and be with God and nature. It’s critical to recall that he did not do this in rebellion against orthodoxy or even church authority. He obeyed orders from bishops and even the pope himself. His main obsession wasn’t nature, which came to sublime fruition in his final “Canticle of the Sun,” but the cleanliness of the cloths, chalices, and ornaments surrounding the holy eucharist.

His revulsion at even the hint of comfort or wealth could be extreme. As he lay dying and was offered a pillow to rest on, he slept through the night only to wake the next day in a rage, hitting the monk who had given him the pillow and recoiling in disgust at his own weakness in accepting its balm. One of his few commands was that his brothers never ride a horse; they had to walk or ride a donkey. What inspired his fellow Christians to rebuild and reform the church in his day was simply his own example of humility, service, and sanctity.

A modern person would see such a man as crazy, and there were many at the time who thought so too. He sang sermons in the streets, sometimes just miming them. He suffered intense bouts of doubt, self-loathing, and depression. He had visions. You could have diagnosed his postwar conversion as an outgrowth of posttraumatic-stress disorder. Or you can simply observe what those around him testified to: something special, unique, mysterious, holy. To reduce one’s life to essentials, to ask merely for daily bread, forgiveness of others, and denial of self is, in many ways, a form of madness. It is also a form of liberation. It lets go of complexity and focuses on simplicity. Francis did not found an order designed to think or control. He insisted on the simplicity of manual labor, prayer, and the sacraments. That was enough for him.

Learning How to Live

It wouldn’t be enough for most of us. And yet, there can be wisdom in the acceptance of mystery. I’ve pondered the Incarnation my whole life. I’ve read theology and history. I think I grasp what it means to be both God and human—but I don’t think my understanding is any richer than my Irish grandmother’s. Barely literate, she would lose herself in the rosary at mass. In her simplicity, beneath her veil in front of a cascade of flickering candles, she seemed to know God more deeply than I, with all my education and privilege, ever will.

This doesn’t imply, as some claim, the privatization of faith, or its relegation to a subordinate sphere. There are times when great injustices—slavery, imperialism, totalitarianism, segregation—require spiritual mobilization and public witness. But from Gandhi to King, the greatest examples of these movements renounce power as well. They embrace nonviolence as a moral example, and that paradox changes the world more than politics or violence ever can or will. When politics is necessary, as it is, the kind of Christianity I am describing seeks always to translate religious truths into reasoned, secular arguments that can appeal to those of other faiths and none at all. But it also means, at times, renouncing Caesar in favor of the Christ to whom Jefferson, Francis, my grandmother, and countless generations of believers have selflessly devoted themselves.

The saints, after all, became known as saints not because of their success in fighting political battles, or winning a few news cycles, or funding an anti-abortion super PAC. They were saints purely and simply because of the way they lived. And this, of course, was Jefferson’s deeply American insight: “No man can conform his faith to the dictates of another. The life and essence of religion consists in the internal persuasion or belief of the mind.”

The Faces of Christian Politics
Win McNamee / Getty Images

Jefferson feared that the alternative to a Christianity founded on “internal persuasion” was a revival of the brutal, bloody wars of religion that America was founded to escape. And what he grasped in his sacrilegious mutilation of a sacred text was the core simplicity of Jesus’ message of renunciation. He believed that stripped of the doctrines of the Incarnation, Resurrection, and the various miracles, the message of Jesus was the deepest miracle. And that it was radically simple. It was explained in stories, parables, and metaphors—not theological doctrines of immense complexity. It was proven by his willingness to submit himself to an unjustified execution. The cross itself was not the point; nor was the intense physical suffering he endured. The point was how he conducted himself through it all—calm, loving, accepting, radically surrendering even the basic control of his own body and telling us that this was what it means to truly transcend our world and be with God. Jesus, like Francis, was a homeless person, as were his closest followers. He possessed nothing—and thereby everything.

Christianity Resurrected

I have no concrete idea how Christianity will wrestle free of its current crisis, of its distractions and temptations, and above all its enmeshment with the things of this world. But I do know it won’t happen by even more furious denunciations of others, by focusing on politics rather than prayer, by concerning ourselves with the sex lives and heretical thoughts of others rather than with the constant struggle to liberate ourselves from what keeps us from God. What Jefferson saw in Jesus of Nazareth was utterly compatible with reason and with the future; what Saint Francis trusted in was the simple, terrifying love of God for Creation itself. That never ends.

This Christianity comes not from the head or the gut, but from the soul. It is as meek as it is quietly liberating. It does not seize the moment; it lets it be. It doesn’t seek worldly recognition, or success, and it flees from power and wealth. It is the religion of unachievement. And it is not afraid. In the anxious, crammed lives of our modern twittering souls, in the materialist obsessions we cling to for security in recession, in a world where sectarian extremism threatens to unleash mass destruction, this sheer Christianity, seeking truth without the expectation of resolution, simply living each day doing what we can to fulfill God’s will, is more vital than ever. It may, in fact, be the only spiritual transformation that can in the end transcend the nagging emptiness of our late-capitalist lives, or the cult of distracting contemporaneity, or the threat of apocalyptic war where Jesus once walked. You see attempts to find this everywhere—from experimental spirituality to resurgent fundamentalism. Something inside is telling us we need radical spiritual change.

But the essence of this change has been with us, and defining our own civilization, for two millennia. And one day soon, when politics and doctrine and pride recede, it will rise again.


Andrew Sullivan, former editor of The New Republic, weekly columnist for the Sunday Times of London, brought his hugely popular blog, The Dish, to the Daily Beast in 2011. He's the author of several books, including "Virtually Normal," "Love Undetectable," and "The Conservative Soul."