Passing the Jesus Torch from Evangelicalism to Emergent Christianity, Part 4

Is Evangelicalism Ending? 4

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/01/04/is-evangelicalism-ending-4/

 

by Scot McKnight

Jan 4, 2013

Comment

 

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:

 

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.

 

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?

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]

 

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].

 

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.

 

 

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

 

Passing the Jesus Torch from Evangelicalism to Emergent Christianity, Part 1

 

Passing the Jesus Torch from Evangelicalism to Emergent Christianity, Part 2

 

Passing the Jesus Torch from Evangelicalism to Emergent Christianity, Part 3

 

 

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

 

 

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
 

 

What Emergent Christianity Can Offer a Secularized World

A Postmodern Emergent Church Response

At Relevancy22 we have systematically responded to the secularity found in Evangelical modernism by proffering a postmodern version of Christianity known as Emergent Christianity which actively recognizes the syncretic effects that modernity has brought into the Evangelical church. And in response, have sought to identify those modernistic elements within the church by deconstructing them, often to the alarm and dismay, of many well-meaning evangelicals. And yet, in the aftermath, there has arisen an emergent Christian faith which lives more hopefully in these postmodern times, in the rediscovery of the God of the Bible in our everyday lives. Who is real, and is faithfully connected to, our turmoils and troubles, our witness and mission, our worship and fellowship, through Jesus.

 

Moreover, in the recovering of the supernatural presence of God in daily living and witness, there has resulted a continuing, sustaining presence of the Holy Spirit who empowers the Gospel of Jesus as presented in, and through, His church. So that when considering secularity, the answer is not to so simply return to those starry-eyed days of pre-modernistic Spirit-filled fellowships, but to incorporate what this would then mean to the church when placed within today's more discriminating postmodernistic times. For Emergent Christianity should not be thought as more charitable to those undiscerning protestations of miracles, the supernatural, spiritual warfare, angels and demons, but more critical of it in the defining sense of re-considering how those Christian positions oftentimes support an indiscriminate modernism found present within Evangelical Christianity. Thus withholding it from transitioning to a mandated postmodern re-definition of itself. Meaning that, we do not wish to trade one defeated "religious perspective" for another "less competent perspective" but to incorporate a more vigorous postmodern vision that gives life-and-breath back to the Word of God without relying on earlier superstitions, non-scientific assessments, religious folklore, traditions, fictions and fantasies. More simply said, an emergent Christian would not deny these biblical portrayals so much as re-express them in a postmodern sense of Christian enactment and divine presence.

 

Hence, we have been careful within this blogsite to question (and then restate) just what miracles are; what the nature, mission, and operation of spiritual gifting (tongues, healing, prophecy) under the ministry of the Holy Spirit is and can be; how to conduct a literary and not a literal reading of the Bible, of God, and of God's mission to the world through today's postmodern church; what the ministry of the church is to society; what sin's relationship to creation and humanity's free will is; how to read the Bible in a postmodern sense; how to minister and comport our lives within a postmodern setting; and generally, a revisioning of what it means to see the Holy One of Israel apart from the Evangelical blinders that we have too readily adopted uconsciously through the veneers of religiosity too comfortably adapted into our lives, our thoughts, our beliefs, tongues and dogmas.

Specifically, a postmodern assessment of secularization will not encourage those Third Wave Christians, nor spiritists amongst the church, backwards towards earlier beliefs and participations that once housed varying forms of mystical gnosticism. Nor towards an indiscriminate reading of either the bible, or modernity, or both; a reading which generally gives way to more naive forms of cloistered, pre-modernistic, Christian communities and worship fellowships. But then again, nor do we wish too discourage our brethren either for we have much in common with such mindful Christians wishing to apprehend God and live for Jesus in witness, work, and ministry. To such mindful groups we would challenge not a reversion away from modernism into pre-modernal living, but a progression forwards in renouncing modernal expressions of Evangelicalism. While coming to appreciate, if not adopt, a postmodernal, Spirit-filled Emergent expression and understanding of Christianity. For if this is not undertaken, than the church can not - and will not - have a contemporary global witness that is effective within this postmodern world of ours so long as we live and walk and breathe upon this Earth the dead-and-dying airs of yesteryear's secular modernity.

Moreover, Dr. Olson (below) has well pointed out the deficiencies of modernized Christianity. And though a postmodernist would wish to depart from such oversimplified characterizations of "secularity" knowing that such dualisms are a part of the classical modernal world being left behind, still Dr. Olson does point out (in modernal terminology) the deficiencies of modernity in using this type of categorical representation. However, in counterpoint, a postmodernist labors to remove as many of the dualities of the modern mindset as possible from the language of postmodernism, and from postmodern Christianity, so as to remove (reduce, or exclude) classical thinking and its paradigms from oversimplifying the person and work of God, His Word, His world, and mission through Jesus. While also seeking to remove modernal attitudes placed upon God, His Word, world, and mission, that are self-referential and self-reinforcing producing a prohibitive witness and exclusionary fellowships to God, His Word, world and mission to the world.

In its place a postmodernist seeks to integrate a wholism to life that incorporates a pluralistic perspective that places dualities along the fuller theological spectrum of quantum insights and definitions. It is a language that can only grow and occur as future generations develop it and the church absorbs it. Moreover, a critical component of postmodernal thinking is that it demands, as a mandatory basis for enjoining oneself to it, a self-criticism and introspection that would create a healthy respect for doubt, mystery, and a closer respect for those individuals and people groups who are different from ourselves. In this way it becomes a superimposing superstructure that can better give way to any future philosophic eras arising along the lines of demonstrated authenticity and global participation. How? By requiring a decentralization of our personal experiences to that of the expanding whole of humanity, as well as to that of creation ecologically. It has well been said that a journey of a 1000 miles cannot begin without first questioning the need for such a journey. For where there is no introspection or doubt, so too will there be found delusion and contempt (which is my humble attempt at speaking in terms of Peter "Rollinisms").

For those modernists amongst us, we will always feel less convinced and less willing to let go of our dualisms. But in the world of quantum physics, as in the world of quantum living, such classical descriptors cannot be helpful. Neither to a postmodern way of living and thinking, nor to our biblical studies and Christian worship. Emergent Christianity is a different type of Christianity than we are use to seeing. It is foreign to us, and startling new and refreshing. And as such, generally feared and dreaded, called names, and chastised as from the devil's own pit of hell, by the less informed, or less willingly to move forwards towards God's gracious calls of repentance and submission.

 

And though it is true that postmodern emergent Christianity has radically changed many of the goal posts of pre-modern, and modern, evangelical Christianity, it should also be known that God is still the same, only now we are gaining a richer, more fuller, understanding of His majesty and glory. As such, the wisdom of God's salvation through Jesus is itself radically removing all the goalposts of our Christian (and non-Christian) lives unto the furthering majesties and glories of God's renewing Kingdom. Not magically, nor mystically, but in a very real, definitive sense of spiritual undertaking by the Holy Spirit. Requiring the insights of today's younger, more nimble postmodern minds and spirits, which are more willing to rediscover the God of the Bible lost upon the foundering sands of religious secularisms and secularized lifestyles (I speak in modern day terms here, just as Paul did to his first century listeners!).

 

Underneath will be found a truer spirituality than can be found through the fantasizations and mysticisms many think must accompany a reforming Christianity. Certainly, there will be devils enough to fight; and, principalities and powers too! But don't be surprised to find those devils and powers housed quite comfortably within the halls and board rooms of the church. For inasmuch as there be heaven-sent angels let them be likewised clothed in flesh-and-blood hearts and souls through the postmodern day you of emergent Christianity. Who will globally speak Jesus' love and healing in as many tongues, and prophetic ministrations, of the redeemed to an unredeemed world lost in its hedonisms, atheism, pride and hate. It will require a greater power than our own human spirit of altruism and social justice. It will require the spiritual power of God's Holy Spirit testifying in-and-through us, to the power and resurrection found in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. Who Himself will put down all principalities and powers, and even the sin found in me and you. For it is to this postmodern day power of liberation and freedom, healing and forgiveness, that we are called to speak in Jesus' uplifted name. Amen.

 

R.E. Slater

January 4, 2013

   

 

 

 

How Secularized Has American Evangelical Christianity Become?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/01/how-secularized-has-american-evangelical-christianity-become/

 

by Roger Olson

January 3, 2013

Comments

 

How Secularized Has American Evangelical Christianity Become?

 

In a recent post here I talked about what I see as the secularization of evangelical Christianity in America. I gave some examples of its symptoms—that is, symptoms of secularization in American evangelical church life. I simply took for granted that secularization had long ago gripped and changed so-called “mainstream” Protestantism in America. Traditionally, that has been one of the primary ways of distinguishing “evangelical” from “mainstream” or “mainline” Christianity in America.

 

Some commenters have wondered if secularity is necessarily bad. How, for example, can evangelical Christianity engage in mission to secular people without some degree of secularity? Of course, that raises many questions, too many to discuss here. All I want to do here and now is discuss what I mean by “secularity” (and “secularization” and “secular”) and explain why I think it is something evangelical Christians should avoid. (By “avoid” I don’t mean “separate from” physically. I’ll explain further on what I mean by it.)

 

The word “secular” has a long and rich history and many meanings. In one sense, not the one I mean, it is simply a description of priests and nuns who do not belong to any particular order. Its alternative is “religious.” A priest or a nun is “secular” who does not belong to, for example, the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) or the Carmelite Order. A “religious” priest or nun is one who does belong to a particular order (which usually involves taking certain special vows and living a distinctive lifestyle). Just to be clear—this is not the meaning of “secular” here.

 

What I mean by “secular” (and its cognates) is belief that human life can be lived successfully without God or religion. “Secularity” is implicit belief in that; “secularism” is explicit and, usually, aggressive belief in that.

 

When I suggest that American evangelical Christianity is largely “secular,” I do not mean that it has bought into secularism. No evangelical I know espouses secularism. Evangelicals usually recoil with horror from it. It is “the enemy” (e.g., “secular humanism”).

 

No, what I do mean is that, to a very large extent, as I see it, American evangelical Christianity has bought into secularity—an ethos, an outlook, a way of living life “in the world and of it” that is often, usually, unintended and even denied.

 

Before proceeding, I want to confess that I am not immune to secularity. I think it is extremely difficult to be immune to it. It’s an ingredient, if not the main feature, of the modern, Western culture most of us live in on a day-to-day basis. It would be almost impossible to avoid being influenced by secularity without leaving culture behind in the way, for example, portrayed in the movie “The Village.” There are lesser degrees of that kind of separation in many intentional Christian communities, but it seems to me the only way to avoid being infected by secularity entirely would be to create something like the community portrayed in that movie.

 

Also, I confess that I think secularity, a product of modernity, has brought about some good things. I don’t believe in shunning everything secular. For example, methodological naturalism in scientific research is secular. There is a sense in which separation of church and state is secular. I happen to think it’s also biblical and practical in that it is good for both church and state. It’s good theology and good policy. So, “secular” is not always automatically bad.

 

What is bad, in my view, is when secularity invades the churches (or is invited in) and becomes the shaping ethos in Christian life. That usually happens without anyone noticing it or pointing it out. It is like the proverbial frog in the gradually heating water who fails to jump out and ends up boiled to death. (I have read about that and, apparently, it doesn’t really happen to frogs. Still, I think it’s a good illustration for what can happen to Christians who accommodate too much to culture whether it be secular or pagan.)

 

I think to avoid secularity becoming a controlling norm in Christian life, including church life, we have to be conscious of it and intentionally resist it. We American evangelicals are, by and large, very critical of Christians in other cultures who we think practice “syncretism,” that is, uncritical and unbiblical blending of non-Christian cultural and religious beliefs and practices with Christianity. We talk much about “contextualizing the gospel” while avoiding syncretism. For the most part, anyway, evangelical missionaries (and their teachers and supporters in America) have criticized such things as ancestor veneration among Christians in certain African and Asian societies. In some African countries, some Christians practice animal sacrifice in Christian worship. In Central America some Christians have combined shamanistic practices with Christianity. All these things we denounce and demand that our “converts” stop and shun.

 

However, when evangelical Christians from other, non-Westernized, cultures come to us they almost always see and point out (when coaxed) our own syncretisms—especially the ways in which we American Christians uncritically blend secularity with our Christianity. I don’t always agree with them. Sometimes they seem to want Western (European and North American) Christians to live pre-modern lives in a puritan manner (purified of modernity and all its products). For example, I once succeeded in getting a Christian student from Ethiopia to open up and reveal his thoughts about American Christianity. As the old saying goes, “Boy did we get an earful!” Among other things he said (very politely and respectfully) that in much of Africa (the parts he was familiar with) questioning authorities was considered unchristian and yet I encouraged my theology students to question anything. The difference in his case seemed to be that critical thinking itself revealed impermissible syncretism, accommodation to secular culture. I disagreed (about the “impermissible” part, anyway).

 

On the other hand, at the same college and seminary, Ugandan evangelical bishop Festo Kivengere (1919-1988), “the Billy Graham of Africa,” gave us an earful about our secularized ways (not so much in his public talks as in his answers to our questions during a private lunch with faculty and administrators). I had to agree with his examples.

 

For example, many even non-evangelical African Christians speak warmly and enthusiastically about miracles as part and parcel of authentic Christianity. A few years ago I invited a Nigerian Catholic priest to speak to one of my classes. He was supposed to talk about Catholic theology (he was then the priest in residence at the Catholic student center next to the campus where I taught). Instead, he talked about miracles in African churches and among African Christians—including Catholic churches and individuals. That was his main topic. Clearly, he was attempting to evangelize American evangelicals, not with messages about Mary or the pope but about the power of God to heal the sick and raise the dead (which he claimed to have seen with his own eyes).

 

[It is supposed here that the subject area of fighting spiritual "principalities and powers" such as demons and the devil would also come under this same topic for a 3rd World beleiver. - R.E. Slater]

 

I think this is one of the best ways for American evangelical Christians to discover and avoid secularity among us and in us—to invite evangelical Christians from non-Western countries (especially Asia and Africa) into our churches and Christian organizations and ask them to talk to us about our own tendencies toward syncretism with secular culture.

 

So where do I see secularization in American evangelical Christianity? You might expect me to talk first and perhaps foremost about our general neglect of miracles and the supernatural in general. However, I prefer to begin by pointing out the ways in which our churches and Christian organizations operate along secular business lines. And I don’t mean only with money.

 

Business language pervades our churches and organizations. Instead of talking about “calling” a pastor, we now talk about “hiring” one. A small thing? I think not. In many evangelical churches today, the pastor is treated as an “employee” and falls under the oversight of the “personnel committee” (whatever name that might have). Now don’t get me wrong, I have no objection to churches having personnel committees. My objection is to placing the pastor and pastoral staff under its supervision. Churches used to have “pulpit committees” or “pastoral relations” committees whose job it was to work with the pastor(s) as lay representatives of the congregation. We also now frequently refer to the worship space using terms such as “auditorium,” “platform,” and “lobby.” But at a deeper level, many evangelical churches in America now make budget decisions in the same way businesses make them. Appeals by congregants to “have faith” are routinely turned aside as impractical. When there’s a budget shortfall, one or more staff members get “laid off.” In many cases, funds donated to the church or organization are put into endowments instead of being used for immediate ministry needs. Often, if not usually, the endowment proceeds are used for building maintenance (or, in one case I know of, to pay non-church member choir members).

 

In today’s evangelical Christianity I hear very little talk about God speaking to people, guiding and leading them, healing or providing for them—or doing anything (except giving comfort). I know one evangelical man who claims he had a “conversation with God” that resulted in what he sees as a miracle of provision for someone else through him, but he’s afraid to tell about it because he thinks even other evangelicals will think he’s crazy or a fanatic. He wrote an article about it anonymously and tells only a select few friends that it happened to him. Some “good evangelicals” he’s told about it have expressed skepticism that God really speaks to people that way or provides in that manner.

 

This is one area where I agree with fellow evangelical Wayne Grudem (many of whose other opinions I disagree with very strongly). Wayne has written about the demise of prophecy in Christianity and how important it is to recover that gift. And by “prophecy” he doesn’t mean what most evangelicals mean by it—good preaching. Another more conservative evangelical (than I am) theologian who has advocated a renaissance of non-secular Christianity among evangelicals is J. P. Moreland, author of, among other books, Kingdom Triangle (Zondervan, 2007). I once served on a panel with him and Greg Boyd at a National Pastors Conference. They both reminded me just how secularized I have become, along with most other evangelicals. Moreland talked very openly and publicly about angels who attend him. Boyd, of course, talked about spiritual warfare. Many in the audience, made up mostly of pastors associated in some way with evangelical emergent churches, looked very skeptical. (I was sitting with Boyd and Moreland on the platform [this was not in a church!] and examined the facial expressions and body language of the audience members I could see.)

 

I’m not advocating seeing angels or practicing spiritual warfare or renewing prophecy so much as I am simply pointing out how far we American evangelicals have moved in terms of absorbing a secular outlook on life. Evidence, as I see it, is not so much that we don’t do those things as that we are skeptical about them in a kind of knee-jerk fashion. (I wrote in my previous post about the dwindling of church meetings for fellowship and worship and other symptoms of creeping secularization.)

 

So, after all that, let me confess my own guilt. I was shocked and somewhat put off when my Christian medical doctor asked to pray with me after an examination for a medical problem. Why? Not because he was doing anything less than the very best medical science has to offer. He wasn’t substituting prayer for medical care. I suspect many, if not most, American evangelical Christians would have the same reaction I had—wondering if that was appropriate professional practice even for a Christian medical doctor. (I concluded it is, but my initial reaction was revealing.) Later, I wasn’t surprised to find out that he attends a “Third Wave” church in town that believes in miracles. I would have been more surprised to learn that he attends a “normal” evangelical church! I could go on giving examples of my own secularization of mind and heart and behavior. But I’ll stop for now and just ask you, my dear readers, to examine your own Christian lives and churches and consider whether, and to what extent, they have been compromised by secularity.


 

Passing the Jesus Torch from Evangelicalism to Emergent Christianity, Part 3

Is Evangelicalism Ending? 3

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/01/02/is-evangelicalism-ending-3/

 

by Scot McKnight

Jan 2, 2013

Comments

 

What happens, then, to the doctrine of Scripture if David Fitch is right? What happens to what he calls “the Inerrant Bible” model — the model that speaks a polemical and ideological language game as it flows out of the modernist-fundamentalist debate and speaks against the liberal model? In his new book, The End of Evangelicalism? Discerning a New Faithfulness for Mission: Towards an Evangelical Political Theology (Theopolitical Visions), David Fitch proposes a view of Scripture that is both evangelical and missional.

 

Fitch’s influences on how to comprehend Scripture in the new model, in a model that gets beyond the ideology of evangelicalism and back into the missional model that Bible seeks to create.

 

His primary influencers are Karl Barth, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Kevin Vanhoozer and Christopher Wright. I can’t summarize all he says with any particularity, but he gets

• the Trinitarian and christological emphases from Barth — Scriptures extend the incarnation into the church
 
• Balthasar focuses on [how] Scripture are part of Christ himself (135) and our need to embody Scripture.
 
• Vanhoozer, known for his extension of Balthasar’s “theo-drama” into the Scripture being both revelation and in need of performance as a script in order to be seen and proclaimed.
 
• And Chris Wright’s emphasis is that Scripture is designed to serve the mission of God in this world. 

But this is where Fitch is headed: “These theologians prod us to leave behind the Bible as ‘inerrant according to the original autographs’ to instead understand it as ‘our one and true story of God for the world — infallible in and through Jesus Christ our Lord’” (138).

 

Here’s the primary model — and this is my idea — of classic evangelicalism: the order is God, revelation, inspiration, inerrancy, authority … and this model of Scripture becomes the epistemic foundation and the first article of theology. But there is room here to move without denying the value of these concepts to see God as Trinity, God as having a mission, God as revealing God in Christ in definitive and final form, and then Spirit as surrounding all of this and then Church as flowing out of the incarnation and pneumatic guidance and seeing Scripture as the primary — prima scriptura — form of expression. Scripture then is the primary “script” of the mission of God in this world.

 

This leads in Fitch’s view to a major shift in preaching: from expository preaching (which he sees as modernity and also as part of the ideology) to proclaiming the mission of God in Christ through the Spirit and inviting others into that mission. Bible reading is not just inductive and personal, but corporate and narratival.

 

David Fitch contends the ideology of evangelicalism is rooted in three major “master-signifiers”: (1)  the Inerrant Bible, (2) Decision for personal salvation, and (3) the Christian Nation.But he contends this ideological set of factors is losing ground because the antagonisms in culture no longer support the ideas, and furthermore the last fifty years have gradually eroded the “politic” that is needed for the church to be what God wants it to be in America. Obviously, these are strong and bold claims … we’ve looked at the Inerrant Bible idea, so today we turn to Decision. All of this is from David’s new book, The End of Evangelicalism? Discerning a New Faithfulness for Mission: Towards an Evangelical Political Theology (Theopolitical Visions).

Fitch’s big claim is this: the obsession in evangelicalism with making The Decision has cut off Christians from the necessity of personal transformation and from ecclesial robustness. In other words, as long as you’ve had the experience you don’t really have to change and you don’t really have to see your life in the context of a church life.

 

What happens to evangelism when the gospel message transcends personal transaction and becomes a holistic entrance into the mission of God in this world? [If you examine evangelistic plans, you will see they are shaped by a theology of salvation theory and atonement theory, and are almost never sufficiently robust when it comes to calling people to the kind of life the gospel actually calls us to.]

 

Here Fitch draws on four scholars:

Tom Wright’s understanding that justification is more than personal transfer of sins and righteousness because the theme of justification is also about God’s making things right in the world (and not just with me, but surely including me).

Second, he examines Michael Gorman’s idea of theosis and shows that justification entails dying to self and being raised to new life personally and corporately — all of which reforms “desire” (David doesn’t develop this much but it’s at work in this chp). We are living out then the new politic of death and resurrection together.

Then he turns to John Millbank’s idea that “gift” entails a life of reciprocity. We are caught up in the Trinitarian life of reciprocity once we are “in Christ.”

 

All of this leads to this very important claim by David Fitch:

 

“The call for conversion, however, is no longer ‘Have you made the decision to receive Christ as your personal Savior?’ It is, ‘Have you entered into the salvation begun in Jesus Christ that God is working for the sake of the whole world?’” (150). So the offer is an invitation to enter into the kingdom vision of Jesus, and I’d like (shamelessly) to mention here my newest book: One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow, and I’m encouraged by how many students and campuses are now reading this book.

 

Finally, he appeals to Dallas Willard’s emphasis on kingdom living that leads to transformation into the mission of God in this world.*

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

*Editorial Comment

At Mars Hill Church 14 years ago, I remember reading Dallas Willard in the small group fellowship circles that I was "coaching" at the time. And previous to that, working it out in seminary back in the early 80's. For a contemporary version of this please refer to the sidebar under "Rob Bell Sermons" and specifically, his Sermon on the Mount series, preached in 2009-2010. Through these emphases will come a Gospel of Jesus that is full orbed - revealed, inspired, inerrant, authoritative, and missional, as much as it is incarnational, Trinitarian, faith+works oriented (with an equal emphasis on both), and politic to the communities and governments surrounding it.

R.E. Slater
January 2, 2012

 

 

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

 

Passing the Jesus Torch from Evangelicalism to Emergent Christianity, Part 1

 

Passing the Jesus Torch from Evangelicalism to Emergent Christianity, Part 2

Passing the Jesus Torch from Evangelicalism to Emergent Christianity, Part 4

 

 

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

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