From the Series "Evangelicalism's Challenge": "Where Are the People?" (Crystal Cathedral, Rob Bell)

 

Where Are the People?
http://theamericanscholar.org/where-are-the-people/#.UqdRHymA29I

by Jim Hinch
Winter 2014 Cover Story

Jim Hinch is a religion correspondent for the Orange County Register. He has also written for The Los Angeles Review of Books, Gastronomica, and other publications.
 

"Evangelical Christianity in America is losing its power -

what happened to Orange County’s Crystal Cathedral shows why."

The Crystal Cathedral in Orange County, California, is one of America’s largest and most celebrated ecclesiastical buildings. At 60,000 square feet and designed by architect Philip Johnson, it was until recently the sanctuary of Robert H. Schuller, once one of the country’s most prominent and influential Christian ministers. In September 1980, when he dedicated the cathedral at an opening ceremony (“To the glory of man for the greater glory of God”), Schuller was at the height of his influence, preaching to a congregation of thousands in Orange County and reaching millions more worldwide via the Hour of Power, a weekly televised ministry program. Among the show’s annual highlights were “The Glory of Easter” and its companion production, “The Glory of Christmas,” multimillion-dollar dramatic extravaganzas staged inside the cathedral with a cast of professional actors, Hollywood-grade costumes, and live animals. The setting for the spectacles was a striking, soaring, light-filled structure justly praised by architecture critics. But it was not a cathedral. It was never consecrated by a religious denomination. The building is not even made of crystal, but rather 10,000 rectangular panes of glass. Like the much beloved, much pilloried Disneyland three miles to the northwest, the Crystal Cathedral is a monument to Americans’ inveterate ability to transform dominant cultural impulses—in this case, Christianity itself—into moneymaking enterprises that conquer the world.

 

But 2013 marked the end of an era. In June, Schuller’s evangelical Christian ministry, founded almost 60 years ago amid the suburbs of postwar Southern California, conducted its last worship service and filmed its last Hour of Power in the Crystal Cathedral. Hounded by creditors (including some of those Hollywood-grade costume and livestock suppliers), the ministry had declared bankruptcy three years earlier and last year sold the cathedral for $58 million to Orange County’s Catholic diocese. The diocese promptly announced plans to transform the 34-acre campus, which also includes notable ministry buildings by other name-brand architects, into Christ Cathedral, a spiritual home and civic showplace for the county’s surging population of more than 1.2 million Catholics, many of them immigrants from Latin America and Southeast Asia. The equipment facilitating Schuller’s elaborate stagecraft—lights, cameras, below-stage elevators, theater-style seating, an indoor reflecting pool—will be ripped out and replaced with a consecrated altar, bishop’s cathedra, baptismal font, and votive chapels dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe and other saints prominent in immigrant Catholics’ devotional lives. When the building reopens for worship in 2016, it will embody a transformation in the nation’s spiritual landscape that is only now beginning to be felt.

 

Just 10 years ago, evangelical Christianity appeared to be America’s dominant religious movement. Evangelicals, more theologically diverse and open to the secular world than their fundamentalist brethren, with whom they’re often confused, were on the march toward political power and cultural prominence. They had the largest churches, the most money, influential government lobbyists, and in the person of President George W. Bush, leadership of the free world itself. Indeed, even today most people continue to regard the United States as the great spiritual exception among developed nations: a country where advances in science and technology coexist with stubborn, and stubbornly conservative, religiosity. But the reality, largely unnoticed outside church circles, is that evangelicalism is not only in gradual decline but today stands poised at the edge of a demographic and cultural cliff. The most recent Pew Research Center survey of the nation’s religious attitudes, taken in 2012, found that just 19 percent of Americans identified themselves as white evangelical Protestants—five years earlier, 21 percent of Americans did so. Slightly more (19.6 percent) self-identified as unaffiliated with any religion at all, the first time that group has surpassed evangelicals. (It should be noted that surveying Americans’ faith lives is notoriously difficult, since answers vary according to how questions are phrased, and respondents often exaggerate their level of religious commitment. Pew is a nonpartisan research organization with a track record of producing reliable, in-depth studies of religion. Other equally respected surveys—Gallup, the General Social Survey—have reached conclusions about Christianity’s status in present-day America that agree with Pew’s in some respects and diverge in others.)

 

Secularization alone is not to blame for this change in American religiosity. Even half of those Americans who claim no religious affiliation profess belief in God or claim some sort of spiritual orientation. Other faiths, like Islam, perhaps the country’s fastest-growing religion, have had no problem attracting and maintaining worshippers. No, evangelicalism’s dilemma stems more from a change in American Christianity itself, a sense of creeping exhaustion with the popularizing, simplifying impulse evangelical luminaries such as Schuller once rode to success.

 

Prominent figures in the evangelical establishment have already begun sounding alarms. In particular, the Barna Group, an evangelical market research organization, has been issuing a steady stream of books and white papers documenting the erosion of support for evangelicalism, especially among young people. Contributions from worshippers 55 and older now account for almost two-thirds of evangelical churches’ income in the United States. A mere three percent of non-Christian Americans under 30 have a positive impression of evangelical Christianity, according to David Kinnaman, the Barna Group’s president. That’s down from 25 percent of baby boomers at a similar age. At present rates of attrition, two-thirds of evangelicals in their 20s will abandon church before they turn 30. “It’s the melting of the icebergs,” Kinnaman told me. Young people’s most common complaint, he said, is that churches are too focused on sexual issues and preoccupied with their own institutional development—in other words, he explained, “Christianity no longer looks like Jesus.”

 

A book making the rounds among evangelical pastors these days is called The Great Evangelical Recession. Written by John S. Dickerson, a former investigative journalist turned evangelical pastor, it chronicles in unsparing statistical detail how evangelical Christianity is hemorrhaging members, money, and influence. “The United States has shifted into a … post-Christian age,” he writes. “No one disputes this.”

 

Visible from nearby freeways, the 128-foot-tall Crystal Cathedral looms over Orange County’s landscape of low-rise tract houses, shopping centers, and manicured office parks. Up close, it resembles a giant, angular greenhouse. Glass panes, affixed to steel trusses by silicone-based glue, cover the entire exterior, glinting in the hazy Southern California sunshine and reflecting the landscaped grounds. Across a paved plaza from the cathedral are an older church sanctuary and an office tower designed in the 1960s by celebrated modernist architect Richard Neutra, and the so-called Welcoming Center, a performance and exhibition space completed in 2003 by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Richard Meier, known for his design of the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Adjacent to these buildings are a memorial garden and columbarium sunk like an amphitheater into the ground, and a 236-foot-tall mirrored glass bell tower, also designed by Philip Johnson.

 

The cathedral complex is an odd, sometimes startling juxtaposition of high and low culture. The three main buildings, though architecturally distinguished, bear no stylistic relation to one another and thus resemble ships from different eras run aground on a shoal. The light-filled interior of the cathedral, seen from ground level, feels more like a corporate convention hall than a religious sanctuary. Before the Catholic diocese began renovation in 2013, potted palms and ferns surrounded a raised stage. A reflecting pool ran the length of an aisle between rows of folding, padded theater seats. Banks of stage lights hung from the roof. Giant speakers flanked the stage. Outside, gaudy statues (“The Smiling Jesus,” “Christ With the Lost Sheep”) adorned the plaza, including a bronze replica of Jesus striding across a reflecting pool at the base of Neutra’s exacting, 13-story Tower of Hope. Amateur religious art donated by members of Schuller’s congregation hung in an exhibition gallery adjacent to the reflecting pool.

 

On a recent tour of the cathedral, Father Christopher Smith, the Catholic priest charged with supervising transformation of the complex into a Catholic worship space, did his best, but frequently failed, to be diplomatic about Schuller’s design sensibilities. “It was a beautiful campus,” he said. “It’s still beautiful. But it’s tired.” He pointed up toward the cathedral’s sloping glass roof. “We recaulked 1,500 panes of glass. We’re really trying to fix the leaks.” In its final years, Schuller’s cash-strapped ministry skimped on building maintenance.

 

Outside, on the plaza, the priest stopped beside a statue of children surrounding a beneficent Jesus. “Some of these are awful,” he remarked. Most, he said, would be removed during the diocese’s $53 million renovation. The diocese, taking its inspiration from the historic cathedrals of Europe, envisions the structure as something wholly different from Schuller’s ministerial showplace. “Traditionally, cathedrals are centers of art and culture,” Smith said. “We want it to be that.” He spoke of touring symphony orchestras playing in the sanctuary, academic and theological conferences in the Welcoming Center’s exquisitely spare meeting spaces, ecumenical worship services, art exhibits, the bustling cultural activity of a civic gathering place—something Orange County, built over decades with little central planning in car-mad Southern California, simply doesn’t have.

 

Born in Iowa in 1926 and educated at an evangelical seminary in Michigan, Schuller arrived in rapidly suburbanizing Orange County in 1955, the year Disneyland opened. Like other successful evangelical ministers before and after him, he quickly grasped the direction American society was moving and molded his ministry accordingly. He established a church not in a building but at a drive-in movie theater in the town of Garden Grove, which, following World War II, was rapidly transforming from an expanse of orange, walnut, and strawberry farms 30 miles south of Los Angeles into a grid of suburban neighborhoods home to 44,000 people. Five years after Schuller’s arrival, the newly incorporated city’s population had doubled. Many of those new residents attended Schuller’s church, where he preached atop a snack bar to rows of worshippers in their cars. In 1958, Schuller bought a parcel of land a few miles from the drive-in and commissioned Neutra, an émigré Austrian who had made his name designing glass-walled houses for wealthy Los Angelenos, to build a permanent home for what was then called the Garden Grove Community Church. Neutra’s modernist, rectangular worship hall was dedicated in 1961. Seven years later, the architect added the equally severe Tower of Hope. In 1980, by this time a pastoral celebrity known around the world, Schuller began preaching in the $18 million Crystal Cathedral.

 

Schuller, like Billy Graham and other name-brand evangelical ministers, led a mid-20th-century spiritual resurgence that corresponded with the birth and subsequent coming of age of America’s baby-boom generation. Even as older, inner-city mainline Protestant congregations withered in postwar America, suburban evangelical churches gained members when boomers, now having children of their own, began showing up in the late 1970s. A decade later, evangelical megachurches—some of the largest of which were in Orange County—were the dominant trend in American Christianity, growing in lockstep with the suburbs that gave them birth and set their spiritual tone.

 

The Christianity practiced in these suburban churches was not of the fire-and-brimstone variety. Evangelicals are far looser and more theologically diverse than Christian fundamentalists, who emerged in the late 19th century in reaction to the destabilizing effects of industrialization, the Civil War, and advances in science. Fundamentalism, especially the view that the Bible is inerrant in all of its teachings, has been steadily declining as a force in American Christianity for decades. Recent Barna Group research shows that just 38 percent of Christians—down from close to half two decades ago—regard the Bible as “totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches.” Evangelicals, by contrast, while acknowledging the authority of scripture, place greater emphasis on the believer’s personal relationship with Christ. They trace their roots in America to Jonathan Edwards, an 18th-century Massachusetts divine who paired Calvinistic theology with scholarship, evangelism, and spiritual conversion. The preeminence of conversion has produced huge variety and creativity in their outreach to nonbelievers. For nearly a century, evangelicals have been at the forefront of innovations in church music, worship style, architecture, and use of media to engage the non-Christian world.

 

Schuller was one of those innovators. His embrace of California car culture, his commissioning of high-profile architects, and his focus on televised spectacle were all efforts to wow, and woo, secular audiences. (Those approaches also fed Schuller’s ego, and their success his pocketbook.) The suburban style of evangelicalism Schuller pioneered was showmanlike and inspirational, emphasizing feel-good messages and entertaining worship services rather than liturgical tradition and theological complexity. Most other large evangelical churches have followed this pattern, with greater or lesser doses of commitment required of their worshippers. Christian traditionalists often assailed popular evangelical ministers for watering down the faith. But their flocks grew as baby boomers, accustomed to television and American plenitude, sought churches that matched their upwardly mobile, entertainment-oriented life styles.

 

Only with the social turbulence of the late 1960s—and particularly after the Supreme Court’s 1973 legalization of abortion—did evangelicals begin moving to the political right, merging with fundamentalists in a conservative Christian voting bloc—a rightward tilt that tracked with larger shifts in American culture. As the boomers’ youthful political activism evolved into the suburban libertarianism and mistrust of government that propelled Ronald Reagan into office, evangelical megachurches offered their own spiritual blend of social conservatism and entrepreneurial innovation. Pastors emulated the corporate managers who often filled their pews. They researched their audience, introduced new products, marketed their offerings, and measured success by growth in membership and budgets.

 

Schuller’s own Orange County was at the forefront of America’s plunge into entrepreneurial suburbanization. Explosive growth in the county during the 1950s and ’60s led in subsequent decades to the construction of sprawling planned communities. Heavily capitalized developers transformed the landscape into a manicured rebuke to America’s troubled inner cities. Their plans excluded the prevailing elements of urban design: high-rise buildings, mixed-use commercial districts, multifamily housing, and straight streets, which were thought to be easier for criminals to navigate. The county lured corporations with plush but safely bland office parks, and local governments kept taxes low and business regulations light. The result was a resounding success. Today, Orange County is an economic colossus with a 2012 GDP of $195 billion; per capita, its GDP is roughly the size of Singapore’s. Over the years, some portion of that wealth flowed into the evangelical churches, which molded themselves to suit the county’s mostly white-collar, affluent population.

 

But just as Orange County pioneered a new form of low-rise urbanism, it was also among the first places to experience the demographic consequences. All those planned communities—their well-paid inhabitants liked to eat out, their houses needed cleaning, and their lawns needed trimming. Beginning in the 1970s, migrants, mostly from Mexico, Central and South America, Southeast Asia, and Korea, began arriving to cook, clean, and mow. These immigrants and their families began taking over formerly all-white neighborhoods, principally in northern parts of the county, transforming the look and cultural fabric of those areas. Today, Orange County is one of the most ethnically, politically, and economically diverse places on the planet. Only 43 percent of its more than three million residents are white, and almost a third were born abroad.

 

Nowhere is this more visible than in the neighborhoods surrounding the Crystal Cathedral. Garden Grove, where Schuller once preached to young white homeowners in their cars, is now inhabited almost entirely by immigrants and their descendants. The adjacent city of Westminster is home to the world’s largest population of Vietnamese outside Vietnam. In another neighboring city, Santa Ana, 82 percent of the families speak at home a language other than English, primarily Spanish. These mostly poor residents cram several families into tract houses, work low-wage jobs, and reliably vote Democratic (the county’s registered voters are evenly split between Democrats and Republicans; Barack Obama won in 2008, Mitt Romney in 2012). They also gravitate not to evangelical megachurches like Schuller’s but to Catholic parishes, Buddhist temples, mosques, and storefront Pentecostal churches. The Islamic Society of Orange County, which owns a mosque, school, and mortuary five miles from the Crystal Cathedral, is one of America’s largest centers of Islamic worship. The Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights, a few miles north of Orange County, is the largest Buddhist temple in the United States. Orange County’s Catholic diocese is one of the nation’s largest and fastest growing.

 

This demographic shift, which experts predict will make the United States’ majority population nonwhite in roughly three decades, has not been kind to suburban evangelicalism. Young people in Orange County, no matter their ethnic or economic background, no longer view themselves as living in a suburban appendage of urban Los Angeles. The county is dense with Vietnamese pho joints, boba tea shops, Asian shopping malls, halal markets, Mexican swap meets, punk-rock nightclubs, and art galleries. Corporate-style megachurches seem bland by comparison. Several of them remain in Orange County, including the Rev. Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, Mariners Church in the planned community of Irvine, and First Evangelical Free Church in Fullerton. But these are clustered in the county’s most affluent areas. None are growing rapidly anymore.

 

These days, young Christians in Orange County attend very different kinds of churches, some unrecognizable as churches at all. Laundry Love, a ministry in Santa Ana, is an ad hoc community of young Christians who gather monthly at various inner-city, coin-operated laundries and wash patrons’ clothes for free. The ministry is an offshoot of Newsong Church, a mostly Asian evangelical congregation founded nearly three decades ago by a pastor named Dave Gibbons, who sought to reach people like himself, mixed-race descendants of immigrants (his parents are white and Asian) who felt out of place in mainstream American society. Newsong now has branches in Thailand, England, Mexico, and India—all of which function like self-sustaining Christian communes oriented around humanitarian relief initiatives. Gibbons has emerged as one of a growing number of in-house critics of evangelical Christianity’s wholesale adoption of corporate American values. “The church has become involved in big business,” he told me by phone. “That’s why artists and creatives don’t want anything to do with church. What’s unique about how we’re trying to do things is we focus on people who aren’t like us. We don’t have to build our own brand.”

 

A decade ago, Newsong, with 4,000 members, was on its way to becoming America’s latest Asian megachurch. Unsettled by its relentless focus on growth, Gibbons abruptly changed course, rededicating Newsong to ministering in low-income neighborhoods and providing a haven for artists. More than a quarter of the congregation left. But now Gibbons’s move seems prescient. In the past decade, evangelical churches, especially in culturally diverse urban areas, have been forced to choose between adopting urban cultural values and extinction. “The megachurch was a baby-boomer suburban phenomenon that folks under 45 typically aren’t perpetuating,” says Ryan Bolger, who teaches contemporary Christianity at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. Young evangelicals “want to start communities in cafés, and this isn’t just whites. We’re starting to see with Koreans and Latinos a desire to move away from the churchiness of church, to be multicultural and in an urban context, church in the profane areas of life.”

 

At Epic Church, a 200-member, decade-old congregation in a northern part of Orange County populated mostly by Koreans and Hispanics, members gather for weekly worship in a rented office building but spend much of their time together working as tutors to low-income students at a nearby neighborhood center. “We haven’t been a church that understands ourselves as goods and services,” said Kevin Doi, Epic’s founder and pastor. The church welcomes gays, makes no overt effort to raise money from members, and regularly invites residents at a neighboring homeless shelter to its services. Doi said he has no long-range plan for his church and wouldn’t mind if it ceased functioning as an institution altogether. “We didn’t feel like our goal was to get people to come to our church,” he said. “We wanted to be present in the neighborhood, where we’re the guests.”

 

In a few years, perhaps a decade or two, religious America will catch up to Orange County’s present. There will be a shrinking number of evangelical megachurches, gradually aging and waning in influence. There will be numerous small, eclectic, multiethnic evangelical congregations whose emphasis on spiritual commitment and social service is unlikely to attract a large, mainstream following. And there will be surging numbers of immigrant Catholics, Pentecostals, and Muslims. The political influence of evangelicalism will decline. America will not become like Europe, where ossified state churches proved unable to compete against the inherently secularizing forces of market capitalism—and where immigrants’ faith expressions are often met with hostility. America will remain exceptionally religious. But traditional evangelical Christianity will no longer be a dominant presence in that religiosity.

 

Two years ago, in December 2011, yet another immigrant arrived in Orange County. Rob Bell migrated not from abroad but from Michigan, where he was a megachurch pastor and author who’d recently made the cover of Time and was about to be profiled in The New Yorker. Bell’s arrival, with his wife and three children, in the oceanfront city of Laguna Beach was tantamount to an escape. His spring 2011 book, Love Wins, the catalyst for the magazine stories, had ignited a firestorm in the world of evangelical Christianity. The book questioned the existence of hell and raised the possibility that all people, not just Christians, will be redeemed by God. Nothing in the book was theologically new; indeed, Bell never denied outright the reality of hell. But his book became a flashpoint in the ongoing debate over evangelicalism’s future. Younger, liberal evangelicals were for the book. Older, conservative evangelicals rejected it. In the midst of the debate, Bell, who had already tired of the institutional responsibilities of running his 10,000-member Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Michigan, stepped down from leadership and lit out in semi-anonymity for the beach.

 

When I spoke to Bell earlier this year, he was still in the first flush of California love, waxing lyrical about the spirituality of surfing (he owns seven surfboards and arranges his schedule around the daily surf report). He was also at work on plans for a television talk show. Bell represents the new breed of young evangelicals who are, with gathering speed, reshaping and in some respects dissolving their movement. A decade ago, Bell was lionized in the evangelical world for blending the movement’s age-old formula (conservative theology; rapid, corporate-style growth) with hip new brains and style (sermons larded with quantum physics; a YouTube video series). Yet, like so many younger evangelicals, Bell grew disenchanted with church. By the time he wrote Love Wins, he was already fantasizing about Southern California, where he had attended graduate school. Bell doesn’t go to church in Laguna Beach. He and some friends from college have formed a quasi-intentional spiritual community, gathering in one anothers’ homes to worship and talk about faith.

 

“Evangelicals are good at whipping people up into a frenzy, and then you’re like, ‘What was that?’ ” Bell told me. “I was the pastor of a megachurch, and lots of people came, and I did book tours and interviews and films. That’s fine. But I’ll take seeing God every day, which is washing dishes with my kids and walking my dog and interacting with someone I just met.”

 

In other words, the future of the evangelical church as glimpsed from Orange County might be no church at all. Robert Schuller’s brand of worship might just turn out to be nothing more than a spiritual fad. As the generation that embraced it—middle-class, baby-boomer whites flocking to car-based suburbs—dies off, their spirituality dies with them. This is not to say that the church will go away. The Crystal Cathedral still stands. But its name is now Christ Cathedral. And Schuller’s vision of a glittery surface reflecting himself and the suburbs where he preached is gone.

 

 

 

Scot McKnight's Review of Molly Worthen's "The Apostles of Reason"

Liberation Themes among Evangelicals

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/12/06/liberation-themes-among-evangelicals/

 

by Scot McKnight

December 6, 2013

 

“The culture wars, of the late twentieth century began, in part,” Molly Worthen contends, “as a civil war within evangelicalism” (177). So she states in her study of the “gospel of liberation” among evangelicals in her fine study, Apostles of Reason. In the 1960s some American evangelicals looked to the church’s precedents in dealing with the social tensions at work in American society. Two points: (1) “left”-leaning thinkers found resources in the martyr tradition, in the Reformation models of communes to the social welfare pushes of the 19th Century. (2) “Right”-leaning thinkers saw in these proposals traitors to the tradition while the leftists saw the rightists as caving into modernity. There the culture began.

 

To be sure, 19th Century Evangelicalism was a coalition, and one of the themes was social progress and justice for all. But the rise of the social gospel pressed conservative evangelicals into less social engagement, but connect this to burgeoning interests in the Second Coming [of Jesus] and dispensational thinking and the culture war of the American church took on potent significance.

 

In 1960, at the NAE meeting, these social issues were at the front: communism, the RC situation, IRS pressure on ministers who preached politics, providing alcohol on planes, and Hollywood’s attacks on evangelicalism (Elmer Gantry). It cared about relief in the world for starvation but did not concern itself with racism or systemic approaches to poverty. Patriotism was important.

 

But there were some more social-conscience evangelicals, like TB Matson, JB Weatherspoon, Richard Caemmerer, Vernon Grounds, Richard Pierard, Timothy Smith, and David Moberg. Politicians like John B. Anderson and Mark Hatfield broke ranks. Sherwood Wirt’s work belongs here too.

 

This gave rise to what many call the “young evangelicals.” Richard Quebedeaux was a leading story-teller of this new movement of socially active evangelicalism. It gave rise to Jim Wallis and, in my view, Wallis has carried the banner for this view since the 1960s — 50 years of relentless pressing of evangelicalism to see the social implications of the message of Jesus. He tried to gain a voice in Christianity Today but the editors saw too much politics in Wallis, so he began The Post-American and then Sojourners. They moved to DC and the rest is the story many today already know.

 

Alongside this theme of social or economic liberation was evangelical feminism. The story is known, too, but hierarchicalism ruled evangelicalism in many ways — Phyllis Schlafly, Beverly LaHaye, and submission [issues], etc. Churches reflected the same. Then came Nancy Hardesty and Letha Scanzoni’s powerful and epoch-changing book All We’re Meant to Be : from sexuality to ministry. Lucille Sider Dayton created Daughters of Sarah , and Paul Jewett at Fuller… and before long turbulence within was interpreted as coming from without.

 

Then some evangelicals advocated for supporting McGovern… a movement that led to the famous Chicago Declaration for Evangelical Social Concern, which tried to form more consensus across the spectrum and sought to address social issues, and this led both to a major statement and to an eventual unraveling based on identity politics. (This story has been told very well by David Swartz, Moral Minority .)

 

Theologically, Fuller becomes more the center of the story: George Ladd’s protests against dispensational eschatology, Geoffrey Bromiley’s translation and teaching of Karl Barth, the use of Bonhoeffer among many (it was at that time that I too found Bonhoeffer) … all leading to a bit of a revival of the anabaptist viewpoint among evangelicals.

 

Molly Worthen’s book, I am suggesting, will become a potential watershed in that she has revealed why the coalition mindset that many of us want-and-believe-in struggles to find genuine centrality among evangelicals because the gatekeepers would prefer less diversity at the table while also wanting the numbers for support in the movement.

 

 

 

Peter Enns, "A Call for Diversity in Evangelicalism" (Molly Worthen)

a call for diversity in evangelicalism: more from Molly Worthen

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/12/a-call-for-diversity-in-evangelicalism-more-from-molly-worthen/

 

by Peter Enns

December 9, 2013

Comments

 

Here are the closing two paragraphs of Molly Worthen’s book Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism (see here for the previous post, which will lead back to the first in this series).

 

I think these paragraphs are an apt conclusion to the book, expressing both criticism for the intellectual history of evangelicalism while also acknowledging strengths. Bolded portions are my emphasis.

 

*******

 

The term evangelical mind conjures images of a creature of many faces sharing one brain, or at least a movement of people who think and act in concert. No metaphor could be further from the truth. This story of shifting and conflicting authorities, evolving alliances and feuds, and debate over the essence of Christian identity means that it we continue to speak of an evangelical mind–if we continue to use the word evangelical at all, and we will–we must allow room for diversity and internal contradiction, for those who love the label and those who hate it. We must recognize that American evangelicalism owes more to its fractures and clashes, its anxieties and doubts, than to any political pronouncement or point of doctrine.

 

It may be wiser to speak instead of an “evangelical imagination.” In every individual, the imagination is the faculty of mind that absorbs ideas and sensations as fuel to conjure something new. It is a tool for stepping outside oneself or plunging into egocentric delusion. But we might also speak of the imagination that a community shares, no matter how furious its internal quarrels: a sphere of discourse and dreaming framed by abiding questions about how humans know themselves, their world, and their God. The evangelical imagination has been both an aid to intellectual life and an agent of anti-intellectual sabotage. Above all, it is a source of energy: energy that propels evangelism, institution-building, activism, care for the suffering, and a sincere passion for intellectual inquiry. It offers no clear path past the impasse of biblical authority, no firm discipline for the undecided mind, and no reconciliation with the intelligentsia of secular America. But any crisis of authority is no longer a crisis if it has become the status quo. If the evangelical imagination harbors a potent anti-intellectualism strain, it has proven, over time, to be a kind of genius.

 

Several things strike me here, but I will mention only one: the call for diversity in the use of the term “evangelical.” The term is here to stay in American culture, and rather than fighting and hand writing over who has the divine right to use the label, perhaps there is a better way forward: to embrace significant internal diversity as as part of the evangelecial identity.

 

To do this, however, the American evangelical power brokers will have to lay down their guard and allow for an evolution (if I may use the word) in what the label means. I think this will be hard to so, given that evangelicalism was created to protect boundaries rather than entertain a redefinition of those boundaries.

 

I suppose we shall see.

 

 

 

Roger Olson, "Review of Apostles of Reason by Molly Worthen," Part 1

Review of Apostles of Reason:

The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism (Part One)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/12/review-of-apostles-of-reason-the-crisis-of-authority-in-american-evangelicalism-part-one/

by Roger Olson

[editorial outline and commentary by R.E. Slater]

December 9, 2013

Comments

Review of Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism

by Molly Worthen (Oxford University Press), Part 1

to read Part 2 click here

to read Part 3 click here

This review will appear in three parts corresponding with the three parts of the book. This first installment covers the book’s introduction and Part I: Knights Inerrant.

(Feel free to skip the first nine paragraphs which are autobiographical. The review of Worthen’s book actually begins with paragraph ten.)

Why Read This Book?

I admit to having a weakness for books about evangelicalism. Evangelicalism is my spiritual family and reading books about it can be almost an emotional experience. Few of them have resonated with me as powerfully as this one (which happens to be the most recent of scores that I have read). Worthen’s book is not just a book of facts; it’s her interpretive history of evangelicalism - especially so-called “neo-evangelicalism” (more about that later).

When I was growing up in a pastor’s family with many close relatives in ministry I was well aware that we were most definitely evangelicals. As I look back on my home church and denomination now I realize we were also fundamentalist Pentecostals. I knew then that we were Pentecostals even though we preferred the label “Full Gospel.” However, throughout my childhood and youth we spoke the language of American evangelicalism and evangelicalism’s heroes were ours—especially Billy Graham. The music that filled our home was “gospel music”—on “Christian radio” and from evangelically-produced “sacred albums.” Our home and church were filled with evangelical publications. I was raised on childrens’ stories such as “The Sugar Creek Gang” series.

We thought of ourselves as “special” evangelicals: We were “Full Gospel” evangelicals. Baptists, Evangelical Free (my grandparents’ church), Evangelical Covenant (my aunt’s and uncle’s church), Nazarenes, Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) (the church of many of my relatives and the one in which my father was baptized at age 16), Christian Reformed (other relatives’ church), were “Not Quite Full Gospel” evangelicals. But we felt a real kinship with those churches and many others we distinguished with ourselves from “nominal Christians” (so-called mainline Protestants and Catholics).

My uncle was president of our little Pentecostal evangelical denomination for twenty-five years. He served on the boards of both the National Association of Evangelicals and the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America. As I grew older and became more actively interested in our religious “family tree” he and I had many discussions about all things Pentecostal and evangelical. It was he who informed me that we were “conservative” and “evangelical” but not “fundamentalist.” We were not the latter because we were not cessationists [(sic, belief that the Apostolic gifts of the Holy Spirit ceased; as opposed to continuationism)] (which in our informal taxonomy, anyway, all fundamentalists were [cessationists] by definition). We also didn’t practice “secondary separation”—refusal of Christian fellowship with all who didn’t agree with us. Compared with hard core fundamentalists we were downright ecumenical.

My father read and introduced me to magazines such as The Christian Herald and Eternity and Christianity Today. (He also read The Sword of the Lord but often only to laugh at it or borrow a sermon outline from it.) We watched both Billy Graham crusades and Oral Roberts healing meetings on television (when we had a television). Our ideal Christian hero would be a hybrid of Graham and Roberts. When it came to the past our heroes of the faith were (after Jesus and the apostles) Luther, Wesley, Finney, Moody, Amy Carmichael, Fanny Crosby, Aimee Semple Macpherson, Billy Sunday, A. W. Tozer, and, later, Kathryn Kuhlman, John Stott, Alan Redpath (Keswick) and David Wilkerson.

My father attended all the local Evangelical Ministerial Alliance meetings and participation in Youth for Christ was taken for granted—as much as was church attendance. I saw every Christian film from “Without Onion” to “The Tony Fontaine Story” to “The Restless Ones” as a kid. (We didn’t go to movie theaters but often viewed these and many other gospel-themed films at churches and YFC events.)

Eventually I graduated from an evangelical Bible college and an evangelical theological seminary. My published piece was a book review for Eternity. Then I graduated to writing book reviews and articles for Christianity Today. I taught theology at two evangelical universities over seventeen years and have for the past fourteen years taught theology at a broadly evangelical seminary. Most of my sixteen books have been published by evangelical publishing houses. I edited evangelically-inclined Christian Scholar’s Review for five years and served two years as co-chair of the Evangelical Theology Group of the American Academy of Religion. I wrote The Westminster Handbook to Evangelical Theology at the publisher’s (Westminster John Knox Press) invitation. My most recent writing effort was a lengthy chapter on “The Fragmentation of Evangelical Theology” for a forthcoming volume on evangelicalism to be published in 2014 by Columbia University Press).

All that is to say that being evangelical in both senses (ethos and movement) has been part of my identity for sixty-one years. So whenever a new scholarly book on evangelicalism appears I buy it, read it and often review it.

(Review of the book begins here…)

Part I - Knights Errant

Amazon.com book link

I first heard of Worthen’s book while writing “The Fragmentation of Evangelical Theology” for the forthcoming book The Future of Evangelicalism edited by Mark Silk and Candy Brown. An anonymous reviewer of my chapter’s manuscript suggested I read and incorporate material from Worthen’s book into my chapter. It was too late for that, but I bought the book at AAR/SBL in Baltimore in November and have begun reading it. At first I swore I wasn’t going to use my usual red marking pen to underline. I was just going to read for enjoyment. But after a few pages I started marking up the book with red (which designates interest, not criticism).

I do not know Worthen or anything about her other than what it says on the dust jacket. She is a historian who teaches at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. But from this book I know that she is a meticulous researcher. She’s also a very good writer. One of the most interesting things about the book for me is that she sprinkles her narrative of neo-evangelicalism with quotations from arcane sources—letters from neo-evangelical leaders to each other (for example).

It’s important to know what this book is about. It’s not about “evangelicalism in general” although there’s a lot of good information and interesting interpretation about what I call the “evangelical ethos”—a style of Christian spirituality and theology that was born out of the Pietist movement of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and was shaped especially by the “awakenings” (revivals) of the 1730s-1740s and the first decades of the nineteenth century. This book is mainly about neo-evangelicalism—the term founder Harold John Ockenga preferred for the postfundamentalist “new evangelicalism” that started formally with the National Association of Evangelicals in 1942 and 1943.

One thing I like very much about Worthen’s book is that it tracks almost exactly with my own interpretations of these subjects. Although she does not use the language of “ethos” versus “movement” (as distinct if inseparable things) she presupposes it. Throughout Part I she juxtaposes the Ockenga-inspired movement of postfundamentalist neo-evangelicalism with the wider evangelicalism of much of conservative Protestant Christianity in America—including non-fundamentalist Pentecostals, Pietists, Holiness churches and ministries, and Anabaptists.

This is what I mean by “evangelical ethos” versus “evangelical movement.” The former is that spirituality with a conservative doctrinal component shared by many diverse Protestant traditions. The latter is the quasi-ecumenical evangelical movement begun by Ockenga and friends in the 1940s to move beyond fundamentalism’s anti-intellectual, schismatic, separatistic, and insular ethos that it acquired between the 1925 Scopes Trial and the late 1930s.

For example, Worthen notes in the Introduction that Jonathan Edwards and Count Zinzendorf were “among the very first evangelicals.” (6-7). She could have thrown John Wesley in there for good measure. She argues that evangelicalism is “a creature of the Puritan and Pietist revivals.” (6) As I said, throughout Part I she discusses at great length and in great detail the interactions between diverse denominational expressions of this evangelicalism (spiritual ethos) and neo-evangelicalism (postfundamentalist movement).

1 - One of Worthen’s main themes is that Ockenga’s and Carl Henry’s neo-evangelicalism always was and still is (as represented by Christianity Today, for example) heavily Reformed. Putting this in my own language, her point is that neo-evangelicalism privileges Reformed theology and more or less expects other evangelicals (Holiness, Pentecostal, Anabaptists, Restorationist) to adjust to that to be acceptable. And many non-Reformed evangelicals have succumbed to that pressure while others have resisted it—causing tensions among evangelicals and within denominations.

2 - Another point where Worthen and I agree is about neo-evangelicalism’s failure to extricate itself from fundamentalism completely. She highlights and provides evidence for neo-evangelicalism’s founders’ and leaders’ inability to leave the fundamentalist past behind. Two examples are their obsession with biblical inerrancy and their concern for certainty through authority. I would add their continuing separatism. When a past leader of the NAE suggested eliminating the rule that member denominations could not also be members of the National Council of Churches he was so heavily criticized by fellow neo-evangelicals that he had to resign.

Another point of agreement is that inerrancy became a mere shibboleth among neo-evangelicals, a test of evangelical fidelity without real meaning. As I have often argued, and as Worthen demonstrates, so long as one is perceived as adequately conservative and loyal to the evangelical cause and untainted by liberal theology he or she can define “inerrancy” just about any way and be accepted by conservative evangelical leaders.

3 - One of Worthen’s main points is that, according to her, anyway, neo-evangelicals sought a unifying authority not so much in the Bible, as they claimed, as in a Reformed epistemology - presuppositional apologetics combined with Common Sense Realism combined with Calvinism combined with biblical inerrancy that formed the “groundwork for an ideology.” (46) Carl Henry is her main case study and illustration of this.

Here is one example of her conclusion (and excellent writing):

“The neo-evangelicals were refugees from churches conquered by modernists a generation earlier, and this freed them to preach across denominational lines. Yet when it came to institution-building, a separatist hangover combined with the ideological mindset of the early Cold War to dampen any ecumenical spirit.

“Scratch a neo-evangelical and underneath you would likely find a fundamentalist who still preferred the comforts of purity to the risks of free inquiry and collaboration. Their efforts did not calm evangelical anxieties over the place of the Bible in modern life: Instead, they institutionalized them.” (46)

Worthen goes to great lengths [and] great detail to argue that fear of liberalism (accommodation to modernity and secularity) drove non-Reformed evangelicals who did not have a history of affirming biblical inerrancy and who were by-and-large free of the influences of Princeton Orthodoxy (Alexander, Hodge, Alexander, Warfield, Machen) to seek shelter under the neo-evangelical umbrella and to imitate neo-evangelical institutions.

I would put it this way. For neo-evangelicals the theology of Charles Hodge, B. B. Warfield, and J. Gresham Machen (largely stripped of Warfield’s openness to evolution) served as the interpretive framework, a kind of informal magisterium, for developing theology. Alternative evangelical theologies were expected to adapt to it to be accepted into the neo-evangelical fold. Pentecostal, Holiness (e.g., Nazarene), Anabaptist (e.g., Mennonite) and Restorationist (e.g., Independent Christian) did not have the Princeton theological influence, but gradually adapted it (here and there, with controversy) in order to “fit in” with neo-evangelicalism because it was the best game in town—for fighting off liberalism and fundamentalism.

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*Broadly, fundamentalism (1920s-1930s) occurred much later after the birth of evangelicalism (1730s) and was a deep reaction to the modernist controversies (liberalism, science in general, evolution, etc). Mostly, it was a movement to protect religious Christian beliefs from the outside influences of modern culture by imposing an isolationist belief system and exclusionary life style in a counter-cultural movement of ethos and belief. Today, in the 21st century, fundamentalism has found new life in the neo-evangelic movement of schools, churches, Christian universities, politics, and communities. - R.E. Slater

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One thing that really strikes me about Worthen’s book (so far) is her inclusion of non-Reformed theologians in her story of evangelicalism and neo-evangelicalism. For example, she discusses at some length the life and ministry of H. Orton Wiley, leading Nazarene theologian who tried to steer the Church of the Nazarene away from fundamentalism and neo-evangelicalism. She also discusses Nazarene theologian Mildren Bangs Wynkoop—a much neglected evangelical theologian—probably because she was non-Reformed and a woman! And she discusses Mennonites theologians Harold Bender and John Howard Yoder and their ambivalence toward neo-evangelicalism. The same with Pentecostals and Restorationists.

At one point Worthen goes so far as to agree with a critic who referred to neo-evangelicals as “fundamentalists’ more polite and articulate cousins.” (66)

Worthen says of Pentecostal, Holiness, Anabaptist and Restorationist “non-Reformed leaders [that they] conveyed…a mixed message that both pushed Reformed neo-evangelicalism away and pulled it close.” (95) I can testify to that from my own life experience. Many, many Pentecostal, Holiness, Anabaptist and Restorationist schools adopted curricula written from a Reformed neo-evangelical perspective.

Worthen concludes Part I by saying that the story of the neo-evangelical movement in America reveals “different ‘evangelicalisms’ at odds with one another over the nature of religious experience and the gathered church, and a Christian’s place in politics and culture.” (96)

Near the beginning of the book Worthen puts her finger on the main problem with postfundamentalist, “neo-evangelicalism.”  She says “The sundry believers who share the evangelical label…are all children of estranged parents—Pietism and the Enlightenment—but behave like orphans.” (7) I would adjust that to say they (we) are all children of estranged parents—Pietism and Puritanism (especially Princeton Orthodoxy)—and behave like orphans.

Neo-evangelicalism tried to draw together concerned conservative Christians of disparate types to fight the hegemony of liberal Protestantism as seen, for example, in the National Council of Churches’ domination of the airwaves in the 1930s and 1940s. The founders’ Reformed theology was the implicit glue holding the new coalition together. While attempting to maintain their non-Reformed identities, Pentecostals, Anabaptists, Holiness and Restorationists (and I add Pietist Free Churches) gradually succumbed to the Reformed hegemony of neo-evangelicalism. Neo-evangelical leaders pretended to include non-Reformed evangelicals on an equal footing, but they never really intended to do that.

I have been criticized by some Reformed evangelicals for claiming that Arminians (among others) have been persecuted by Calvinist evangelicals. Worthen’s book provides support for what I say—not that we non-Reformed evangelicals are actively persecuted but that we have been patronized and treated like stepchildren by the Reformed leaders of neo-evangelicalism and that we have been accepted by them only to the extent that we take on their flavor of intellectual life and spirituality.

continue to:


My response to Neo-Evangelicalism -

The Oracles of Postmodern Theology Must Reinterpret Scripture

or

continue to Part 2 of this series -

Roger Olson, "Review of Worthen's Apostles of Reason," Part 2

Can Relational Theism Overcome the Ills of both Process Theology and Classical (Evangelic) Dogma? Part 2 of 2

"The Century is Over" - Evolutionary Tree of Twentieth-Century Architecture with its attractor basins,

by Charles Jencks, Architectural Review, July 2000, p. 77 (see link here)

Introduction

Rather than discussing Dr. Roger Olson's list against process theology (sic, "Why I Am Not a Process Theologian), I thought I might approach this subject from a sideways direction. Mostly because this website contains within it many good responses to process theology, but in a more positive form than Dr. Olson's list - while not ignoring the complaints of classical orthodoxy in lists like this. In essence, we have discussed on many occasions each of Dr. Olson's orthodox concerns in an effort to "update" classical Christian's folklores and dogmas by applying either relational theology or open theism as our tools of rejoinder and expression when writing on process subjects.

Thus, rather than work through a point-by-point response to Dr. Olson's list perhaps the more helpful avenue of discussion would be to re-contextualize the concerns of non-process theologians bounded as they are within their own closed systems of what they think Christianity should, and should not, be. Though we each would like to think we hold open systems of thought that are centered-set in Jesus, in actuality when discussions like this arise we find ourselves describing a Christianity that has difficulty in approaching unfamiliar, non-traditional subject matter. One that is mostly closed and closed-minded.

Whereas the better response would be one of attempting to re-integrate the many helpful directions of process theology back into the folds of Christian orthodoxy so that it might remain relevant to societal needs and perceptions rather than closing any-and-all discussions made upon it. As good examples of this I think Bruce Epperly, Thomas Jay Oord, and Homebrewed Christianity (see sidebar under Emergent resources), each do a yeoman's job in bringing out the practicalities of process thought. Moreover, an open system of thought will approach a closed system of beliefs to help open it up and prevent it from establishing overly strict, uncrossable, epistemological borders. Hence, a by-product of this effort will be seen in an attitude of a future forward movement within one's own epistemological maturity correspondent to a coincidental rise in confidence and personal relevancy to the topics of the day.


Setting the Table

Firstly, process philosophy is to process theology as early Greek philosophy (Hellenism) was to early church theology... a theology that continued well into the Middle Ages until latterly replaced by the Western philosophy of Enlightenment which consequently birthed modern secularism.

What this means is that there was no period of time in the theology of the church (including the New Testament period) that wasn't subjected to the philosophies extant around itself in the lands, people, and customs that it met and interacted with. This was as true of Jewish theology of the Old Testament as it formed and competed against the ANE philosophies of the Akkadians and Sumerians, or Egyptians, or even the Babylonian philosophies of their day. From Jewish creation stories, to flood (Noah) and worship stories (Babel), to its deliverance from Egypt (Moses), and its subsequent deliverance from Babylonian exile (the Prophets). The Bible is replete with Jewish theology examining, absorbing, integrating, reforming, and rejecting surrounding worldly philosophies into its ancient faith.

So too was this true of the early church in the Apostle Paul's day under the many pervasive philosophical influences of the Greeks and Romans as it updated its inherited Jewish theological center of covenant-and-promise (sic, people, worship, land, community) around a Christological center that would re-center everything it knew and believed about God against the prevailing amalgamation of Greek and Roman cosmological and anthropological beliefs and mindsets. Hence, Jewish monotheism soon became nuanced by an understanding of Trinitarian monotheism and Christological atonement schemas; lengthy discussions took place about the effects of Pelagianism, antinomianism, and the nature of the hypostatic union of Christ - including the problem of sin and evil (theodicy); the nature of God's grace and human free will; and a variety of competing apocalyptic eschatologies covering various sorts of anthropological hermeneutics describing the nature of divine revelation as received by the church. Which community of believers were as inherently different in constitution and charter from its predecessor Israel, as it was similar to its earlier communities of God-fearing believers. But underneath, or around, all these newer (Christian) theologies came with it the many fragmented forms of not only Greco-Roman philosophies, but incipient global philosophies as well, which underlay inside, underneath, and around, the church's "gospel" as it spread outwards to the four corners of the trade winds - north, west, south, and east.


Staying Conversant

As such, it would be naïve to think that postmodernism is not influencing today's 21st century church no less than yesteryear's Enlightenment philosophies which had similarly birthed modern secularism and its influences upon the "orthodox" church's doxological life-and-theology over its past 500 hundred years of historical church movement. In response, denominationalism, fundamentalism, and evangelicalism, have each arisen to provide numerous religious answers and attitudes to the deep philosophical questions of their day. Even as today's postmodernism (in reaction to modernism) has bourne its own correspondent rectitudes of analyticism (logical positivism) and continental philosophies via seminal studies in existentialism and phenomenology by the likes of Hegel, Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche's Nihilism, Ricoeur, Tillich, Heidegger, Deleuze, Derrida.

From this hotbed of ideas in correspondent study of societal event re the turmoil-and-clash of cultures has come the church's reciprocating Christian reaction of liberal theology (19th-20th century), process theology (20th-21st century), and radical theology (the Death of God movement in the 21st century). Certainly the church is not beholden to the belief-sets of philosophy - as can readily be seen by its struggle of theology with prevalent ideologies (whether locally, regionally, nationally, or globally). Which doesn't mean that it isn't affect within its espoused theologies by philosophy either. For no church through the generations of man can be insular from the culture and climate of the nations around itself, no matter its protestations that it is not. It would be naïve to think so. For instance, Western Civilization is rife with ideas and systems to which the church must respond or withdraw. But to withdraw is to become bounded by exclusive, unmitigating ideas, that can no longer communicate with the larger world of ideas that it is tasked to do. It loses its sense of mission when become isolating to its own bounded sets of belief. And once this is done it loses its sense of purpose and fulfillment. A cold, antiquated, orthodoxy does no one any good... least of all its own congregants.

However, to the degree the church understands that "philosophy is like the air we breathe" even as "theology is like the food we digest", to that degree must theology work to stay open and expressive. The liberal theology it once thought so useless long years ago is now the basis for most biblical work today. It took years and years and years for liberalism's concerns to be understood but once grasped the church then re-worked those ideas into its religious charters and institutions (with varying degrees of success or non-success). So too must postmodernism's process theology be re-computed into the life-and-theology of its many denominational expressions. The best vehicles to do this is a maturing  anthropological hermeneutic that opens up and enlarges language constructs, communication, and community; an acceptance of, and concerted effort towards purposefully assimilating, polypluralism within the attitudes of the church; an enlarged idea of how a good narrative theology based upon contextualized resourcing can help with this assimilating process; a scientific mindedness eschewing anti-intellectualism; and an open and relational theology that stretches the boundedness of classic theology; to name a few.

Hence, the church needs to become conversant with all philosophical epistemologies and any derivative theologies spinning from these movements. Which means that the church's definition of orthodoxy must always be in the process of self-examination if it is to remain conversant with the burgeoning societies of the 21st century united in global commerce and exchange, communication, and cooperation.


Good, Bad, and Great Listening Skills

Thus, syncreticism is a fact of life in the church. Accordingly, the church's embrace of orthodoxy cannot be expected to remain static. It must grow and expand in order to accommodate newer ideas and discoveries. Not all accommodations will be biblical, but not all biblical theologies will be as fully expressive as they could be without certain strategic re-thinking (Christian think-tanks and braintrusts). As the church reacts and develops newer theological expressions, time-and-attendance will mediate all false expressions of the Christian faith by death's ever remorseful relent. What seems so certain today to the orthodox traditions of the church may rapidly become decidedly unhelpful and untrue all in one breath at the hand of God (remember Ezekiel where God uses the bowl, to then wipe it out and discard its remains, when done?). Hence, creating lists can only be helpful to those fearful and threatened by newer ideas. And, they can also be harbingers to a dying faith no longer relevant to the church's mission and witness.

Why? Because lists can cause stakeholders to cling to their religious boundaries a bit too tightly to their own demise and death. Or they can help forward-looking, progressive individuals and institutions to respond appropriately by enlarging older, more sacrosanct, theological concepts which have become overly retardative, restrictive, and outdated. There is no harm in conversing with ideas like process theology so long as it helps one's biblical understanding of God, self, and creation, to become more fully enriched and biblically insightful. Today's process theology tells the church that it must reconsider what it means when declaring equality to all but rendering equality to none outside their own circles of impaling beliefs. Or by preaching respect for all persons and religions when remitting time-and-again its generosity to those unlike itself by resisting the necessary of assimilation of cultural pluralism incumbent upon its outreach of the Gospel.

Rather than calling everything foul and digressing from further discussion it is this author's opinion that as mankind mature's in his postmodern societies - especially in the sciences and technologies - so too must we allow reciprocating movement within church doctrine. As science is not static, so too is theology not static. Newtonian physics passed away with all mechanistic, classical philosophies when atomism climbed forward in molecular chemistry and quantum physics. So too must today's postmodern church find that it must update its own theological ideas of "God, man, and the gospel" in the face of societal evolution as it lurches forward in newer discoveries, disciplines, ideas, and language. It would be naïve to think that we must not.


Reading Lists through the Book of Deeds

Thus the warrant to consider process theology and its philosophical underpinnings in light of the orthodox interpretation of Scripture. Lists, like the one Dr. Olson has provided from a non-process basis, can only be helpful to those apologists unwilling to move forward in conversation with a postmodern generation of youth and ideas. Rather than forcing restrictive boundaries and dilemmas upon the church we should be examining how to relate those newer discoveries with what we think we know already. And should our past, more ancient traditions change, than we must know how and why they must change, rather than arguing those changes away in the flotsam of denial and argument.

At the last, I do not fight to hold onto my ideas and definitions of who I think God is. It would be far better if I were the more willing to asking myself why I must believe why God is the way that I want Him to be. Or, to be more content in pursuing better questions of my Christian faith than in demanding better explanations of my faith. Or, to be more content in leaving a little mystery around the God I think I know who in essence has become held hostage as an idol of my imaginations and desires.

As example, at the behest of yesteryear's classicisims, God was declared as far removed from us as a transcendent heavenly Being can be, who was primarily bent on excising His righteous judgment and ire upon a creation gone to hell (per Reformed Calvinism). However, under relational thought, God is primarily re-described as a God who is near to us in presence and person, grace and forgiveness (per relational-process theism). Perhaps had the church held these latter (newer) ideas than perhaps centuries-old inquisitions, crusades, genocides, wars, famine, cruelty, slavery, discrimination, and suffering might have been avoided. If classic Christian orthodoxy is so vaunted than I (and others) do suspect its more tattered message of hypocrisy and greed when reviewing its faith based upon its historical works and deeds.... (what is known as the priority of an orthopraxy over orthodoxy - the practice of one's beliefs).

The respected British historian, Sir Kenneth Clark, once said in his treatise [Great] Civilisations, that "Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." Even so do I when reviewing church doctrine taking precedence over human tragedy and pathos. Consequently, the works of art by artist's like Banksy seems to shout our present generation's ills and fates when left in the hands of the more civilized, Christianized, man whose ethos of beliefs have caused so much grief and harm when left in the hands of a less tolerant, more ignoble society of men motivated by doctrine over deeds, disruption over community, ideals over life, liberty, and freedom.

by R.E. Slater

December 7, 2013
updated: December 13, 2013 

From Homebrewed Christianity -

A reply from a Process Site (albeit, a "conservative" Process Site)

A Newbie Response to Roger Olson

http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2013/12/05/a-newbie-response-to-roger-olson/

December 5, 2013 by Bo Sanders 107 Comments

Roger Olson blogged about why he is not a Process Theologian. Since I am a newbie to Process Thought, I thought it would be fun to respond to the post point-by-point. My responses are in bold.

In the days to come, people who do this for a living (instead of a hobby) will respond more deeply and more accurately than I have here.

First … let me say that many, many people I know who think they believe in process theology really don’t. Like many theological labels and categories, over time, “process theology” has been stretched to cover much, much more than it originally covered. Many people who claim to believe in it simply don’t know what it is, historically-theologically, or what it entails logically.

I am up for the challenge. I might be who you are talking about. Let’s see how this goes.

When I talk about “process theology” I mean the type of (so-called) Christian theology based on the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (sometimes as modified by Charles Hartshorne) and expressed above all, prototypically, by John Cobb, David Griffin, Norman Pittenger, Delwin Brown, et al.

Good so far – that is what I thought it was. 

In other words, “process theology” is not just any relational theology. It is a type of relational theology, but not the only one. And, I would add, not the best one. (For example, Jürgen Moltmann’s is a relational theology and, in my opinion, much better than process theology.)

Sure. We know plenty of people who prefer Moltmann or the Open Theology of someone like Greg Boyd. No worries there.

Many people have taken a course that included a little process theology or have read a book by a process thinker or just heard about process theology and jumped on the bandwagon without really knowing all that it involves. So—just because you call yourself “process” doesn’t mean you are.

Agreed. We try to say this all the time. Of course we say from a purist sort of qualification and you mean as as dis-qualification – but so far so good. 

So what are the essentials of process theology? My description will be of an “ideal type” based on the consensus of the most noted and influential process theologians (some of whom are mentioned above).

Let’s do this! 

First, process theology assumes that to be is to be in relation. It is a relational, organic worldview.

Yep. In fact, I would ask, “what was the other option?” 

Second, process theology avers that God is not an exception to basic ontological rules but is their chief exemplification.

This is a major distinction and one that I find very attractive. But you are right – it is a significant departure. This is why I talk about Process Thought as not just a new program to download but a new operating system that reformats ones’ theological hard-drive.

Third, process theology asserts that omnipotence is a theological mistake; God is not - and cannot be - omnipotent. God’s only power is the power of influence (persuasion).

Right. The nature of God’s power is not coercive but persuasive. God’s power is not unilateral but seductive. No problem so far. 

Fourth, process theology is a form of theistic naturalism; it does not have room for the supernatural or for divine interventions (miracles).

Umm … yes and no. This is true to the degree that the super-natural is based in a pathetically antiquated metaphysics and a three-tiered universe. But ‘no’ in the sense that there is room for the miraculous – especially as testified to in the Gospel accounts. So we are 4 in and we start to get a little shaky. 

Fifth, process theology denies creatio ex nihilo, creation out of nothing, and affirms classical panentheism—God and the world are mutually interdependent. There is a sense in which God is dependent on the world (beyond self-limitation).

Ya – read the two creation accounts in Genesis. There is no creation ex nihilo. Read church history. No Jewish person, including Jesus, would have believed ex nihilo until two centuries after Christ. It is a greco-roman reading imported and imposed on the Jewish text. 

Sixth, process theology refers to God as “dipolar”—having two “poles” or “natures”—one primordial and one consequent. God’s primordial pole is potential only and consists of ideals. God’s consequent pole is actual and consists of God’s experience. The world contributes experience to God. God has no primordial experience. (Theologian Austin Farrer referred to this as process theology’s lack of “prior actuality in God.”)

Right. And doesn’t a classic Trinitarian understanding speak of the immanent and the economic Trinity? Am I wrong on this? If I am someone will tell me … 

Seventh, process theology regards God as radically temporal; God learns as history unfolds and how history unfolds is ultimately up to creatures (actual occasions). (“God proposes but man disposes.”)

Umm … isn’t there evidence of this in both the Hebrew and Christian testaments? I mean, it’s not completely unprecedented. I mean, you can go the Openess route and say that it is a ‘self-limitation’ or you can go the Process route and say that it just the way it is (God’s nature / the nature of reality).

Eighth, process theology reduces God’s creative activity to bringing about order and harmony insofar as possible. God is not the actual creator of the world or any actual occasion (the basic building blocks of reality). God can only create, however, with creaturely cooperation.

Right – the interventionist notion of God is shed. This will become important as we move through the 20th century (let alone the 21st). 

Ninth, process theology views Jesus Christ as different in degree but not in kind from other creatures. His “divinity” consists of his embodying the self-expressive activity of God (“Logos”) which is “creative transformation.” He is not God incarnate in any absolutely unique sense that no other creature could be.

Ugh. This is overstated. I would venture to say that the last sentence is not well represented. If one listens to the latest Barrel Aged Podcast with John Cobb on Advent, you will hear a more nuanced and ‘orthodox’ presentation of this concept of incarnation. Jesus IS unique. 

I would go as far as to say that Olsen gets this one wrong. 

Tenth, process theology denies any guaranteed ultimate victory of God or good over evil. The future is “more of the same” so far as we know. Ultimately, that is up to us, not God. God always does God’s best, but he cannot guarantee anything.

Half Right. Is the future guaranteed? No. It is 100% up to us? No – there is still a God in the universe. Does God work with us to bring about a preferable set of possibilities and open up options yet unseen? Yes. 

Now, if that is an accurate brief summary of the essential points of process theology, which I believe it is (allowing that there are people who call themselves “process” who may disagree with one or two points and who may add to it something others would not), here is why I think it is not a form of Christian theology.

I would give it a 90% – but let’s see where this goes. 

First, process theology’s ultimate authority for belief is not divine revelation but philosophy and, in particular, Whitehead’s organic metaphysic (sometimes as altered by Hartshorne). That becomes the “Procrustean bed” on which revelation must fit. It is not merely influenced by or integrated with that philosophy; that philosophy is its very soul and foundation.

Dr. Olson, you have to know that all of Christian theology is both in concert with and based on some set of philosophical frameworks. That is part & parcel of every theological project through the centuries. Process’ explicit reliance on this is not a disqualifying admittance. In fact, it is better than the implicit nature of other historical expressions. 

Second, process theology’s Jesus Christ is not God and Savior in any recognizable sense. Its Christology tends to be either adoptionistic or Nestorian (as in the case of Norman Pittenger).

What? Oh my. Really? Oh no. We are going to have to do a TNT on this one. The beauty of ‘christology from below’ the subtle way that Cobb does it in the pod on Advent is masterful. 

Third, process theology has very little, if any, room for the Trinity. Attempts by process theologians to include the Trinity in their theology have been weak and mostly modalistic. (Catholic process theologian Joseph Bracken has attempted to develop a trinitarian process theology, but I’m not convinced it works.)

Now you are swinging wildly. Would you say this about the parichoretic view? 

Fourth, process theology denies miracles including the bodily resurrection/empty tomb of Jesus Christ.

Not exactly. 

Fifth, process theology constitutes radical accommodation to secular modernity.

Because Evangelicalism has made no accommodation to modernity or changed anything since the Apostles?

Sixth, process theology denies the efficacy of petitionary prayer.

There is no interventionist God in Process. [Rather, God works with us, others, events to effect His will - res].

Seventh, process theology has no realistic eschatology.

Realistic? Did you mean that? Did you mean ‘real’? Otherwise you will have to show me a ‘realistic’ one. 

Eighth, process theology makes God dependent on the world and not as a matter of voluntary self-limitation (as in the case of Moltmann, for example).

God’s nature versus decision - a slight distinction. Certainly doesn’t need to be a matter of disqualification. 

Ninth, process theology reduces salvation to actualization of God’s “initial aim” and thereby falls into a kind of Pelagianism (except that for most process theologians everyone is or will be “saved” in the traditional sense of reconciled with God).

Now this is an interesting point – one worth fleshing out in throwdown. Having said that, I hope you are prepared to have your view of salvation scrutinized. 

Tenth, process theology is so esoteric as to be impossible for most people to understand. It uses conventional Christian language but means something so different that only people steeped in process philosophy could possibly guess at its meaning. The meanings bear little resemblance, if any, to orthodox Christianity.

Oh come on! Is that a real accusation? You just said esoteric. Big words and new concepts are not a problem. People learn new words all time: “I’ll have a venti Caffè macchiato barista”. 

Added: This happens when people join denominations of change expression of church. You can not become Lutheran, Episcopal, Wesleyan, Methodist, Catholic, charismatic, Pentecostal, Eastern Orthodox , non-denominational any other from without learning new words: Sanctification, liturgy, vestry, sacrament, diocese, cruciform, stole, christen, laity … it just goes on and on.

SO the learning of new words and concept thing is not a big deal. We do the same thing when we go seminary: soteriology, annotation, attribution, attestation, primary source, ontology, Turabian.

None of that is prohibitive. People do this all time when it A) benefits them (barista) and B) they enjoy it/ feel it is necessary.

If you talk to someone in the military, medical or legal fields … it is ubiquitous – then it come to religion and ‘Oh NOO! the average person in the pew has to understand EVERYthing immediately’. Why is that?

Is there anything redeemable in process theology? Not that I cannot find elsewhere.

Nothing redeemable? Is that a play on words because of the salvation thing earlier? 

Why is process theology so popular? I think it’s because it seems to solve the theodicy question. If process theology is true, there is no theodicy question. Evil exists because God is not omnipotent and creatures, having free will and some degree of self-centeredness, often resist God’s initial aim for them. I’m not sure that begins to explain evils such as the holocaust. 

It’s popular? Nice. 

You are right about the theodicy question. 

But process theology solves the theodicy issue at too high a cost. The God of process theology is hardly worshipful. In order to be worshipful God must be both great and good (but not one at the expense of the other). The God of process theology is not great enough to be worshipful. He/she/it is great enough to be admirable but not worshipful.

No. Wrong. You sound like the person who says “Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th? Christmas isn’t even worth celebrating!” Just because it isn’t the way you were taught it or previously understood it – doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing. You should walk in the woods or come to church with me sometime.

A better solution to the theodicy issue may be found in God’s self-limitation in creation. This is the alternative presented by Moltmann, among others. I highly recommend Greg Boyd’s book Is God to Blame? for those attracted to process theology but wanting a more orthodox alternative. (For those who object that Boyd is an open theist, this particular book does not depend on that.)

This should get interesting.

- Bo

*Side Note by R.E. Slater, November 29, 2019

Having re-read my friend Dr. Olson's review of Process Theology nearly six years from the day he posted his thoughts (see Part I) I still find it unhelpful in its apprehension of its relationship to Open and Relational Theology. Rather, I found it pregnated with older evangelical apprehensions and arguments clinging to a past comprehension of the cosmic universe that doesn't see to work with postmodernism's newer theological environment. Dr. Olson's very helpful expositions on Arminianism (and away from Calvinism) was one of the reasons I found Open and Relational Theology so attractive. Which then led more naturally to embracing Process Theology in its many nuances/expressions of Christian theology rightfully placed in-under-and-through the orbit of God's love. God's power (omnipotence) means nothing to creation without God's love permeating every aspect of creation's lives. As such, I suspect given time and perspective, Dr. Olson, like myself, would join the ranks of Open and Relational Process theologians but there comes a time in all of our lives that our academia cannot keep up with the revolutionary thoughts we must weigh and judge whether helpful or not to the understanding our Christ Jesus our Lord. I wonder, if like Dr. Olson's good and foresightful friend Clark Pinnock, given six years of reflective thought he might have changed some of his opinions on this subject. If anyone knows please comment below as I would find this greatly encouraging.

- R.E. Slater

PS - As a reference point to Bo's open discussion with Roger one might refer to Wikipedia's dated entry to "Open Theism" which would place Roger's arguments more in line with classical evangelicalism. However, importantly note that Arminianism is not presented as a fourth line of argument only its deformed brother Calvinism. ;)  Too, Wikipedia's entry of Open Theism is more of a classical discussion but not updated into the Relational nor Process Sense. This is why I call its entry here dated. Thank you. RES