Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Monday, February 18, 2019

What is process philosophy and Who is Alfred North Whitehead?

Introduction

I will be updating and adding newer articles about process philosophy as I participate in a six week class on Alfred North Whitehead's understanding of the idea he developed with Charles Hartshorne resulting in his magnum opus, Process and Reality. Here, among other observations, Whitehead's time-event structure is related to what makes our idea of time as "time". Too, Whitehead' process philosophy has also been instrumental in developing a foundation for contemporary discussions of "ecological civilizations" by it's emphasis on what we have overlooked for centuries - the uplifting of the nonhuman world all around us which is literally dying for us to remember it.

What about eternal objects? How do they related with processed events? Consider how Plato might relate to Process & Event ontological structures. Traditional church doctrines have been based on neo-Platonism for centuries. Yet, can Holiness be defined in Platonic terms of the "Eternal Objects" or can it be better expressed in Process Theology's idea of the "Creational Event"?

Here is why the theology of process-based panentheism better describes "the Holy" and how "the Eternal" derives its essence between the interplay of Being & Event. Admitting that God is God is one thing (in Platonic terms of the idealized form of the "Eternal"). But to know God as God can only be known through creational forms. Otherwise He is the Wholly Unknown Other we claim exists but with no ties to creation which proclaims He exists. Which experiences His existence. Which has life through His existence.

Consequently, the eternal object has no meaning without involvement - or generation - from within creation itself. It's not that creation defines God but that it gives to God the Godness we know in biblical terms and have tried to explain through time on the basis of Platonic ideas of holiness (or, otherness) to the Process forms of "Being and Event" (sic, the writings of philosopher Alain Baidou, AN Whitehead, and other process philosophers).

As such, without Whitehead's concrescence (sic, a growing together) describing the metaphysical conditions necessary for conscious experience, the idea of being and event becomes meaningless. In essence, moments of becoming conjoin with other moments of becoming as they perish and arise in newer moments of becoming within time's relational unfolding of being and event.

Rather than stipulating that Plato's eternal forms are preeminent realities of the world and that we are bit players in the eternal order of things Whitehead says eternal forms are rather deficient in actualizing reality without reality first arising from actual occassions within creation as it is experienced, or as it concresces towards becoming (being and event).

As such, what we experience is a bit of eternality gathered together in conscious arrays of experience telling us the story of God and His relationship to a creation full of life and response to its Creator God. We know God through our experience of the world. We cannot know God without this experience of the world. Process theology then goes on to say it is more meaningful to see God as part of His creation than as above and apart from it (Plato, sic theism). Thus the idea of process-based "pan-en-theism". Of a creation and a God which are conjoined together and imparting a moment by moment concrescense to the realtiy of the other in relational experience.

Matthew Segall sums it up this way:

"It is in concrescence that Whitehead's "eternal objects" come into play.... [But rather then being] identical to Plato’s forms [of eternal objects] ...Whitehead actually inverts Plato’s theory of forms. While for Plato, eternal forms are the preeminent realities [where] physical creatures are derivative copies or pale imitations [of the eternal], for Whitehead, eternal objects are “deficient in actuality” and depend entirely on the decisions of actual occasions [of creation] to make any difference in the world." - MT Segall

Lastly, is God dependent upon creation for His existence? Nay. But this is not what we're saying. If God had no relation to creation He has Himself alone which the bible says He was dissatisfied with; that He wanted more; that He needed a growing, evolving fellowship beyond Himself which would provide even greater concresence to His reality than before. God then is the eternally restless Other who desires to share all of Himself in fellowship with His creation. Otherwise, as an eternal object, there is a sterility in divine living set apart from unfolding worlds of eternal becoming. We are because He is. Creation reflects the God of Creation. But it also grants foundation to God's Being in ways He never had before through eternal evolving event.

R.E. Slater
March 17, 2020




What is process philosophy and
Who is Alfred North Whitehead?
A conversation with Matthew T. Segall
Whitehead is an unusual figure in western intellectual history: revered, studied and debated heavily in certain circles, but largely unknown today outside the specialized fields of philosophy and mathematics.
Anyone who decides to delve in to the world of Whitehead would agree that he was a prodigious figure in the history of ideas, even though relatively few people would presume to have understood much of his body of work.
He is best known today for two things: first, the quote: “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” In fact, my interviewee in this dialogue, Matthew Segall, has a blog called Footnotes2Plato.
Whitehead’s second well-known contribution is the three-volume Principia Mathematica, with Bertrand Russell and published from 1910 to 1913, which is a highly technical work that attempted to put all of mathematics onto a firmer foundation by reducing it to a formal logical system from which all mathematical truths could be derived. That effort ultimately failed, but that’s a different story than our focus here.
Whitehead’s late career was devoted to what he called “speculative philosophy,” essentially system-building philosophy that attempted to provide a system of the world that was coherent (not self-contradictory) and adequate to the facts of science as well as to human experience. He wrote a series of books starting in the early 1920s that, while not as difficult as Principia Mathematica, are still known for their difficulty and multitude of possible interpretations. His 1929 Process and Reality is considered his magnum opus and most difficult philosophical work.
It’s a journey to try and understand Whitehead and I’ve been greatly aided by David Ray Griffin’s works that explain and expand Whitehead’s works, including the:


  • 1998 Unsnarling the Worldknot,
  • 2001 Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism, and
  • 2008 Whitehead’s Radically Different Postmodern Philosophy
Matthew Segall, Ph.D. is assistant professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco where he teaches on German Idealism and Process philosophy in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program. He has authored a number of books, most recently Physics of the World-Soul. I met Matt a number of years ago through online discussions about evolutionary theory and process philosophy and we’ve had various conversations over the years and met in person a few times, which led eventually to the present interview.
The proximate cause of this discussion was my earlier interview with Carlo Rovelli about the nature of time in modern physics. Matt saw some promise in Rovelli’s suggestion that events should be considered the basic entities of modern physics, which is a position that Whitehead would agree with. However, as we see in my interview with Rovelli, he doesn’t acknowledge Whitehead as being an influence for this idea.
Matt and I follow up on some topics raised in the Rovelli interview, including in particular the nature of time in Whitehead’s process philosophy, and various aspects of process philosophy more generally. My hope is that this dialogue presents a good brief introduction to Whitehead’s philosophical thought, while touching on the depth of the discussions about the nature of time in relation to modern physics and philosophy, and also, finally, demonstrating that Whitehead’s system is rich, complex and certainly open to interpretation and amendment in various ways.
I have considered myself a “Whiteheadian” for some time now, since discovering his philosophical work a bit more than a decade ago. However, as we see below there are some aspects of his philosophy that I have a hard time with and I’ve been working slowly on a revised version of process philosophy that adopts much of Whitehead’s approach but tries to simplify and further “naturalize” his impressive intellectual edifice.
We conducted the below interview via email in early 2019.
Why is Whitehead relevant today, to both the layperson, and in physics and the philosophy of physics?
Whitehead was one of the first initiates into the new cosmological story that, with any luck, will help us build an ecological civilization in the coming decades.

The advances in philosophy of nature and discoveries in natural science that occurred during the 19th and 20th centuries (e.g., Schelling, Humboldt, Darwin, Einstein, Bohr, Bergson, Whitehead, et al.) were even more revolutionary than those made by Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton in the 16th and 17th centuries.
If we take a Whiteheadian lens on the contemporary natural sciences, it becomes clear that 21st century people are living in an entirely new world, a [chaotic and random] self-organizing cosmogenesis that is nothing like the mechanical clockwork universe imagined by 17th century scientists. The problem is, hardly anybody — laypeople or physicists — realizes that we are living in this new universe! We are so mesmerized by the old mechanical model of Nature and by the technological toys it has allowed us to invent and surround ourselves with that we’ve lost touch with the nonhuman world that is literally dying for us to remember it.
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Would you describe yourself as a Whiteheadian traditionalist? Or are there any aspects of Whitehead’s system that you would change?
I think Whitehead understood metaphysics as an open-ended project, so I engage with his work in the spirit of a co-inquirer. I would describe myself as a Whiteheadian, but there are plenty of ways that I diverge from “traditional” readings of Whitehead. If something in his scheme of abstractions doesn’t fit with my own experience and understanding, I first interrogate his writing more deeply just to be sure I am not misinterpreting him. But once I’m satisfied that I am not misunderstanding, I am perfectly willing to adjust his scheme accordingly. For example, his concept of God’s function in the universe is, by Whitehead’s own admission, incomplete. In my dissertation, I took some liberties in re-interpreting the process God in more pluralistic terms, such that each cosmic epoch has its own divine occasion, with certain characteristics being inherited by subsequent epochs.
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Who do you regard as the most helpful intellectual descendants/students of Whitehead, thinkers who can both help us understand what the heck Whitehead meant in his sometimes opaque prose, or thinkers who have helpfully extended Whitehead’s system?
John Cobb, Jr. and David Ray Griffin should be mentioned first. They have and continue to contribute tremendously to Whitehead’s legacy, and to helping us make sense of his sometimes difficult ideas. I have not spent much time myself with Charles Hartshorne’s work, but he has also been very influential. More recently, thinkers as diverse as Catherine Keller, Isabelle Stengers, Bruno Latour, and William Connolly have taken up Whitehead’s work and applied it in illuminating and important ways to, e.g., mystical theology, geopolitics, and the sociology of science. The philosopher Peter Sjostedt-H has also done some fascinating work on the relevance of Whitehead’s philosophy to the interpretation of psychedelic experience.
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Whitehead’s process philosophy is so named because it focuses on process, a succession of states, as the central feature of reality. Yet there are some aspects of Whitehead’s philosophy that are largely and perhaps wholly outside of time, such as “eternal objects” that are akin to Plato’s forms. How would you (succinctly) describe the nature of time in Whitehead’s philosophy in relation to the time of human experience?
I’ll be as succinct as I can be, but this is a complicated question! Whitehead was one of a number of early 20th century thinkers (including William James, Edmund Husserl, and Henri Bergson) who zeroed in on time, process, or becoming as a crucial nexus point that might help reconnect human experience with the natural world known to science. Whitehead was not influenced by Husserl so far as I know, but he was certainly an inheritor of James’ radical empiricism and Bergson’s vitalism. But he did not inherit from them uncritically.
I hope it is not an unfair summary of his criticisms to simply say that he rejected James’ nominalism and Bergson’s anti-intellectualism. That said, he inherited enough from Bergson that he would likely be uncomfortable with your characterization of process as “a succession of states,” since such a characterization may fall prey to what Bergson called the “cinematographic” tendency of the intellect, whereby the continuous flow of time is broken into discrete states, instants, or still frames that are then supposed to generate a sort of cartoon illusion of movement in the flip book of our conscious experience.
Like Bergson, Whitehead entirely rejected the materialistic idea of “Nature at an instant.” This idea is as central to Newton’s absolutist view of space and time as it is to Einstein’s relativistic conception of space-time. Whitehead follows James and Bergson in denying that it has any reality whatsoever. It is a mere abstraction used for convenience in the measurements and equations of physical models. Concrete time cannot be captured by such models because it always has duration. All attempts to measure duration necessarily erase what is essential to it. Duration is pure succession, in Bergson’s terms, which is to say that it is a continuous transformation and not merely a series of translated spatial states.
The point here is not to give up measuring and calculating. Science can go on doing what science does. Following Bergson, Whitehead simply wanted to remind scientists that they should avoid committing his famous “fallacy of misplaced concreteness” by never forgetting that the measurements made by clocks, though convenient for physical models and for the coordination of civilized life, falsely spatialize the flow of temporality.
All that said, Whitehead had more hope than Bergson that the scientific intellect could be reformed so as not to falsify the creative becoming of Nature in its abstract models. His notoriously complex metaphysical system, the so-called “philosophy of organism,” [generally known as “process philosophy” today] is the result of his effort.
I can understand why you would characterize Whitehead’s view of process as “a succession of states,” since he does in fact articulate an “atomic” or “epochal” theory of time, whereby a historical route of atomic “actual occasions” or “drops of experience” constitutes the continuous flow or stream of our consciousness. These occasions “arise and perish” in Whitehead’s terms and are not simply identical to the unbroken flow of conscious time, nor are they static instants. Whitehead thus challenged Bergson’s idea, mentioned above, of duration as “pure succession,” since the duration of Whitehead’s actual occasions is not pure but a mixture of spatial and temporal (as well as eternal, as we will see) ingredients.
Whitehead asks us to imagine two distinct types of process: the first is “transition” (roughly equivalent to Bergson’s “duration”), which is the continuous time of our conscious experience, and the second is “concrescence,” which is the epochal or punctuated becoming of actual occasions.
Concrescence is Whitehead’s neologism for what occurs within each drop or occasion of experience as it arises and perishes. Whereas transition provides an empirical account of what we experience in consciousness, concrescence is a speculative idea that is supposed to provide an explanation of the metaphysical conditions necessary for conscious experience. In other words, concrescence is Whitehead’s account of what is going on under the hood of consciousness.
It is in concrescence that Whitehead’s “eternal objects” come into play. They are the “forms of definiteness” or “pure potentials” that constitute the character of what each occasion experiences. Eternal objects can be mathematical or sensual in nature (e.g., circularity, twoness, a particular shade of redness, and saltiness are all examples of eternal objects). Whitehead tells us that they are required for our experience of Nature and not emergent from it.


So far, they sound identical to Plato’s forms, but Whitehead actually inverts Plato’s theory of forms. While for Plato, eternal forms are the preeminent realities while physical creatures are derivative copies or pale imitations, for Whitehead, eternal objects are “deficient in actuality” and depend entirely on the decisions of actual occasions to make any difference in the world.
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Can we achieve an improved version of Whitehead by eliminating eternal objects, as some thinkers have aspired to do? Or does the whole edifice fall apart if we remove this concept from Whitehead?
There have been several attempts to eliminate eternal objects from Whitehead’s process-relational ontology. In my opinion, the two most interesting recent examples are Ralph Pred’s Onflow (2005) and Mark Hansen’s Feed-Forward (2015). Along with eliminating eternal objects, they also try to eliminate Whitehead’s concept of God. Let me clearly state that these are both excellent philosophical works worthy of close study by all Whiteheadians and by anyone interested in the deepest questions we can ask about human consciousness and the technological environment we find ourselves increasingly embedded within.
And let me state just as clearly that Whitehead’s process-relational ontology falls into incoherence as soon as eternal objects and God are removed. Eternal objects and actual occasions are the magnetic poles powering the explanatory dynamo that is Whitehead’s metaphysical scheme. I’ve argued at length elsewhere that those who attempt to do without eternal objects (perhaps because they believe they have no places in a supposedly “processual” ontology) while still deploying Whitehead’s other categories only end up re-inventing the wheel and calling it something else. It’s like trying to break a magnet to remove the negative pole: you just end up with a new negative pole at the broken end. I have no problem whatsoever with thinkers who want to develop their own process ontology, but if they want to build on Whitehead’s work, it just doesn’t make sense to talk about actual occasions without eternal objects.
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You stated that actual occasions (Whitehead’s atoms of actuality) are “not states or static instants,” but isn’t it the case that the passage of time in Whitehead’s system is indeed a series of actual occasions, at every level of reality, which are states but not static instants (I didn’t invoke any static features in my question)? This is the shared character of Whitehead’s concrescence, “perpetual perishing,” the “creative advance” and more generally Whitehead’s strong emphasis on becoming [PR, xiv, 22]. As such, shouldn’t we characterize the passage of time in Whitehead’s system as a result of a series of instants or snapshots, at every locus of the universe, which are always changing, but still instantiating as “actual” in an eternal oscillation between actuality and potentiality?
I don’t think it is Whitehead’s intention to say that the passage of time is a series of instants or snapshots. Such instantaneity can be approached via mathematical abstraction, but actual passage or creative advance is a process that moves from occasion to occasion in a network of relations, not a series of point-instants on a graph. Actual occasions are just that: occasions, or in Bergson’s terms, durations. I don’t see how a static instant could be experiential. Whitehead’s actual occasions of experience each exist “stretched out” in a sort of sublime tension, what James called a “specious present,” wherein the already actualized past is inherited and subjectively synthesized with potential futures.
An actual occasion’s final phase of becoming is called its “satisfaction,” which is the decisive moment wherein the occasion collapses the field of potentials into a unique form of actualization. This actualization is the achievement of a novel experience of value, “novel” in that with the becoming and perishing of each actual occasion a perspective on the universe is achieved that has never existed before. This perspective, once perished, becomes “objectively immortal” and is taken up by subsequently concrescing actual occasions. This arising and perishing of actual occasions forms what Whitehead calls a historic route or “society,” and it is at this level that what we consciously experience as the flow of time emerges. I do like your characterization of this process as an “eternal oscillation between actuality and potentiality,” but I don’t think the occasional beats composing the oscillation are instantaneous.
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Building on our agreement that the passage of time may be characterized as an oscillation between actuality and potentiality, an instant in modern physics can have some minimum duration, such as the Planck time (5.4x10^-44 s), in the same way that energy or space can have a minimum quantity (this is the “quantum” in quantum mechanics). So is time for Whitehead not built as a nested hierarchy of these minimum instants, with each actual occasion constituting an instant or multiple thereof, and the universe built from the set of all actual occasions concrescing in each phase of the creative advance into novelty [PR 29 “The ancient doctrine that ‘no one crosses the same river twice’ is extended”]? Whitehead does posit non-temporal aspects of each concrescence, as you point out, but each concrescence itself is temporal through and through, right? So I think we’re generally saying the same thing?
There is a lot here to unpack. I would want to distinguish the physics of Planck time and Planck space from Whitehead’s metaphysics of actual occasions and their extensive connection. Whitehead would want us to tread very lightly in identifying his actual occasions with quantum events, since it may very well be the case that the latter are a special case of the former.
Regarding the notion of the universe as a “set of all actual occasions,” we also need to be careful. In their brilliant text The Quantum of Explanation: Whitehead’s Radical Empiricism (2017), Randall Auxier and Gary Herstein are careful to distinguish between two approaches to logically formalizing our thinking about such matters. While Whitehead did often use the term “set” in his writing about collections of occasions, this should not mislead us into a “set theoretical” way of thinking about the relations among actual occasions. Instead, Auxier and Herstein point to what has come to be called “category theory” as an alternative, and more Whiteheadian, way of thinking about the extensive relations among occasions, particularly when we try to think the cosmic socius as a whole. In short, while set theory focuses on abstract collections of entities and membership in groups, category theory allows us to think in terms of functions and relations, and in terms of the topological transformation of wholes and parts (i.e., mereotopology). Auxier and Herstein argue that category theory, as a form of spatial or topological reasoning, has a more empirical or experiential character, thus granting it deeper relevance in questions of ontology. So instead of thinking of all actual occasions as though they existed side-by-side as members of the group called “universe” advancing along some universal timeline, we must think of the cosmic “socius” of occasions as a complex network of open-ended activities, all internally related but also differentiated along multiple timelines. It is difficult, if not impossible, for our 3-dimensional imagination to picture a topological network of activities wherein each node or occasion is both a whole in itself, prehending the whole universe in its concrescence, and a part within the concrescence of other occasions. This is the sort of situation that category theory can formalize mathematically.
Concrescence is neither wholly eternal nor wholly temporal. It is an amphibious, boundary-dissolving account of the way potentiality becomes actual. Concrescence is Whitehead’s explanation for how potentials achieve actualization through the portal of a sort of temporal eternity or eternal moment, the creative repetition or oscillation of which is responsible for generating the spatial and temporal world as we normally experience it.
It is also important to remember that the universe as a whole is, in Whitehead’s terms, an “essential incompleteness,” as it is never finished or fully present but always advancing into novelty. To capture this, I sometimes expand and reform Einstein’s space-time “fabric” analogy by saying that space-time is always fraying and needs to be continually re-woven with each concrescence.
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Isn’t Whitehead’s system in key ways in opposition to Einstein’s notion of spacetime? Isn’t this a key point of the “process” in process philosophy, that we need to accept the very real passage of time? Reconciling our experienced passage of time with the “block universe” and combined “space-time” of Einstein’s physics is, of course, a large outstanding problem with modern physics. One reason I find Whitehead’s approach appealing is that it presents a way out of this conundrum that Einsteinian physics seems to have gotten us into.
Whitehead accepted Einstein’s extension of some of the formulae related to electromagnetism to the concept of gravity. As a scientific theory, he was not disputing the usefulness of Einstein’s space-time model. His dispute with Einstein concerned the latter’s metaphysical interpretation of said model. Whitehead was concerned not only about the reduced status of time in Einstein’s eternal vision of the cosmos, but with the possibility of measurement in a space that, according to Einstein, was heterogeneous as a result of being warped by contingently arrayed mass. Accurate measurement requires rigid rulers. Unless we know in advance where all the mass in the universe is, we cannot be sure how our ruler (or its equivalent, light rays) may be bending in any attempted measurement, particularly if we are talking about astronomical distances.
The problem is that we cannot know in advance how mass is arrayed in the cosmos since that would require measurement. We are stuck, as Whitehead puts it, having to know everything before we can know anything. As part of his attempt to articulate precisely why he disagreed with Einstein, Whitehead produced his own tensor equations that did not rely on the idea of “curved” space but that nonetheless made equivalent empirical predictions as Einstein’s model (i.e., Whitehead’s formulae make the same predictions about Mercury’s perihelion, etc., and its variables could be easily modified to fit with any new observations resulting from more sensitive instruments).
As for time, Whitehead was in agreement with Bergson (who debated Einstein on this issue in 1922) that Einstein’s metaphysical interpretation of relativity mistook the abstract units of mechanical clock-time for the ontology of temporality. But unlike Bergson, who sometimes seems to have imagined that some universal flow of time underlies everything, Whitehead was perfectly clear that relativity theory destroys the idea of global simultaneity or universal time. Contra Einstein, he argued that time was perfectly real and not an illusion, but it is real only in a local sense related to unique historical routes of actual occasions of experience. So the Whiteheadian universe includes many distinct (more or less overlapping) time-systems. For this reason, I sometimes refer to a Whiteheadian pluriverse instead of calling it a universe.
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Can you elaborate on why you think that Whitehead’s system would become incoherent without the inclusion of eternal objects?
Without eternal objects, there would no longer be any potential ingredient in the passage of Nature. The past and the future would become ontologically indistinguishable. Everything would already be actualized and there’d be no room for genuine creativity. All process would become locked in habit and repetition. Further, eternal objects are part of what allows actual occasions to be individual creatures rather than being indiscriminately merged together with every other occasion. Whitehead does view actual occasions as “internally related” and thus in some sense each occasion is dependent on every other occasion to be what it is, but it is the mediating role played by eternal objects in characterizing the “how” of experience that allows actual occasions to decide on unique subjective interpretations of the world rather than just directly inheriting the world as it is objectively given. Occasions can consider possible alternatives by ingressing novel eternal objects, thus inviting new potentials into settled actuality. Finally, eternal objects are what allow us to recognize and identify stable entities in what is otherwise a world of flux. What is it that you recognize in a friend or loved one as their distinct personality or character, something that sticks with them through many years of life despite other changes to their appearance?
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You suggest that without eternal objects the past and future could not be distinguished. But if we eliminate eternal objects and ingression from Whitehead’s ontology we are left with actual entities and Creativity (as a general principle of potentiality or novelty [PR 21 “‘Creativity’ is the principle of novelty”]). Isn’t concrescence of actual entities, the sum of which is the creative advance into novelty, in addition to Creativity as the principle of potentiality becoming actual in each actual occasion, enough to provide all of these aspects of our experienced reality: 1) the experienced passage of time; 2) a physical passage of time more generally; 3) novelty; 4) a clear arrow of time that distinguishes between past and present?
No, I don’t think so. To fully answer this question, I need to bring in Whitehead’s concept of God again. If we eliminate the notion of ingressing eternal objects and God from Whitehead’s ontology, preserving only prehending actual occasions and Creativity, I am no longer sure what we could possibly mean by “concrescence.” God’s function in Whitehead’s ontology is to provide relevance to each occasion as it concresces out of Creativity. Without this mediating or filtering role, each occasion would be overwhelmed by the sheer infinity of potentials available for actualization in any given moment. God is Whitehead’s principle of limitation or concretion, and the graded hierarchy of eternal objects is Whitehead’s way of describing how infinite possibility is made relevant to each finite occasion’s experience. Further, it is precisely through the contrast granted by contact with eternity in each concrescence that an experience of passage arises. Without the contrast, without the punctuation of process by eternality, time would be experientially undetectable.
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Why can’t physical prehensions of surrounding actual entities, in each moment of the creative advance, be sufficient for limiting the “infinity of potentials available for actualization”? I’ve suggested this kind of notion in my work on the mind-body problem, inspired by Whitehead, and it is based on the uncontroversial notion that actual entities can only include in each instantiation information that they can receive within the duration of each concrescence, limiting the actual entities that form each set of prehended data available to the new concrescing entity. Under this framework, each actual entity is still an ordering of Creativity, an actualization of pure potentiality, but there is no need to posit what seem like more religious notions of God or eternal objects beyond the pure potentiality of Creativity.
Whitehead did not include a concept of God in his metaphysical scheme for religious reasons. His God is a concept to be reflected upon and not a personal being to be worshipped (though of course God may become this secondarily for those who fully inhabit and live into his cosmology). Noting this up front is important, as it allows us (hopefully) to just focus on the philosophical issues at stake without dragging in all the emotional controversies associated with the battle between religious belief and secularity, etc. Whitehead specifically says in Process and Reality that he wants to “secularize the concept of God” and that this is one of the most important tasks for modern philosophy.
That said, it may be possible to account for the provision of relevance to each concrescing occasion of experience in the way that you suggest, via the physical prehension of past actualities in its environment. But then we are left with another problem, which is how to account for the novelty added by each occasion. If there is just physical prehension of the actualized past and no conceptual prehension of potentia (i.e., eternal objects), what prevents actual occasions from just repeating the experiences of the past ad infinitum? The question is not just about the relevance of each newly concrescing occasion to its inherited past, but the relevance of this past to potential futures. The provision of this relevance is necessary for a concrescence to decide how to actualize the potential value it is incubating. Even if we eliminate the role of God and eternal objects in determining the relevance of a concrescent occasion to its past, we still have to account for the determination of the relevant possibilities open to that occasion given its past. While the realm of actuality is finite, the realm of potential is infinite. So again, actual occasions would seem to need a little divine help here to avoid being overwhelmed by unlimited creative potential.
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Various thinkers have tried to “naturalize” Whitehead by removing eternal objects, God or other aspects of his system that seem to some to be out of place or unnecessary. Donald Sherburne, one of the editors of the standard corrected edition of Process and Reality, and a serious Whitehead scholar, has proposed “Whitehead without God.” You are clear so far in rejecting attempts to eliminate eternal objects or God from Whitehead’s system, but what about inserting Creativity as a substitute for more non-religious notions of God like Source/Brahman/akasha, as thinkers like Huston Smith have argued (see, e.g., the great debate between Griffin and Smith in the book-length dialogue Primordial Truth and Postmodern Theology)? Under this amendment to Whitehead’s system, we retain Whitehead’s Creativity as the Ultimate and we can call it Source/Brahman, etc., as well as Creativity, since it is the ontological ground of being in Whitehead’s system. But we can eliminate God in its primordial nature (which is comprised of the set of all eternal objects), while retaining God in its consequent nature, as the high/highest level of a nested hierarchy of concrescing actual entities.
I am fine with folks coming up with whatever cosmological scheme they feel best captures the reality of their experience and understanding. But I don’t think we are talking about Whitehead’s scheme anymore if we remove God. Creativity is Whitehead’s category of the ultimate, while God is said to be the first creature of Creativity. God’s function here is to limit the unlimited. So strictly speaking, Creativity is not the ground of Whitehead’s ontology; rather, the primordial nature of God, as the principle of concretion or limitation, provides this ground. Creativity itself is a groundless abyss of pure potential, more a fountain than a foundation.
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In terms of the discussion about mathematical discovery vs. invention, this is as you point out a longstanding debate. Many thinkers have taken the view that it is invention, which means that mathematical and similar truths are based on concepts that we create in our minds and manipulate to find new insights. So twoness, to use your example, is in this view an invented generality based on the observation that many things in our experienced world can be enumerated and compared, and in doing so given labels. A human 100,000 or more years ago probably realized that using her fingers to keep track of things in the real world was useful and then eventually gave labels to each numbered finger and by extension items in the real world that were labeled similarly. In this evolutionary approach to the development of language and mathematics there is no need to posit discovery of eternal objects in a realm only accessible to human reason. We also have good evidence that other animals have basic concepts of number; crows, for example, can count at least as high as three, with specialized cells in the brain, similar to how primates like us count. Are crows discovering transcendent mathematical truths or only using their evolved brains to create useful tools mapped on to their experienced worlds?
Whitehead’s eternal objects are not sequestered in a realm accessible only to human reason. They were ingredients in the creative advance of Nature long before humans showed up. Indeed, Whitehead tells us, “in the most literal sense the lapse of time is the renovation of the world with ideas” (Religion in the Making, 100). In Whitehead’s view, human reason does not even begin to comprehend the full breadth of the realm of ideal possibilities from out of which it has emerged and toward which it is passing.
Whitehead does not deny that other humans and animals exist on a cognitive spectrum, with some animals possessing very basic conceptions of number. In Modes of Thought, he describes watching a mother squirrel remove her young ones from a nest that had grown too small. She becomes distressed when she sees her children outside the cramped setting of the nest for the first time, running back and forth to make sure she hadn’t left anyone behind. This is because, according to Whitehead, she had only an indefinite or vague sense of how many children she had. She had no definite sense of number, in other words. Perhaps crows, clever as they are, have the ability to count higher than squirrels. Granting the cognitive continuum here, Whitehead still points to the advance achieved by humans, likely due to language: “Mankind enjoys a vision of the function of form within fact, and of the issue of value from this interplay. That day in the history of mankind when the vague appreciation of multitude was transformed into the exact observation of number, human beings made a long stride in the comprehension of that interweaving of form necessary for the higher life which is the disclosure of the good” (Modes of Thought, 77). So while eternal objects were ingredients in the evolutionary process long before humans showed up on the scene, our linguistic capacities do indeed grant us more definite conceptions of their distinct forms and mathematical relations. But our symbolic languages do not invent mathematical relations, they discover and express them.
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In terms of your suggestion that it is eternal objects that allow us to identify loved ones over time, I don’t understand what you mean so can you elaborate on this further? Isn’t the constancy of their person and your recognition of that person the same as any changing pattern in nature in terms of steady change over time but with a general commonality over time (in Buddhist thought, this notion is a “continuant” as described in the Milindapanha)? Or are you suggesting there is some eternal essence that each individual enjoys that is an eternal object?
Whitehead wanted to give some explanation for how it is that in a world of process we nonetheless are able to recognize and identify definite characters or entities. We are out at sea and glimpse a whale just before it dives under the surface. A moment later, it explodes into the air. “There it is again,” we say. A simple enough observation, but Whitehead finds it metaphysically perplexing. Why are we justified in saying it is the same whale? I am not certain of the exact physiological details here, but scientists tell us that after some number of years every single atom in our body is replaced. Despite this complete material renewal, we are still somehow justified in claiming a sense of stable identity. Our matter changes, but our form endures. Whitehead talks about societies of actual occasions with “personal order,” and here he does not just mean the persistent identities of human persons but the persistent “serially ordered” identity of everything from rocks and trees to whales and skyscrapers. The serial personal order of a human being or a whale is constituted by especially intimately related historical routes of actual occasions of experience that repeatedly and collectively ingress a complex constellation of eternal objects. This unique constellation of eternal objects grants an individual human or whale its definite character or personality, experienced from within and recognized by others as in some sense a consistent identity despite its continual passage. Whitehead does not accept substantial notions of identity (“no thinker thinks twice,” he reminds us in Process & Reality), so he is forced to invent a processual account of this continuity, and the ingression of definite possibilities through historical routes of socially ordered actual occasions is how he attempts to pull it off.
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But can’t a society of actual entities, as you and Whitehead discuss, accomplish this continuity over time (but always changing in each moment) without eternal objects? More generally, isn’t this kind of continuity over time what Whitehead means by “enduring objects” (which are different from eternal objects and are societies with “personal order”) [PR p. 34, 109]?
Whitehead is pretty clear, it seems to me, that what defines a society of actual occasions as an enduring object with personal order (personally ordered societies are a special case of enduring objects) is the complex constellation of eternal objects that these occasions repeatedly ingress through a historical route of genetic inheritance. The common form of any society of occasions, including personally ordered societies, is provided by the inherited constellation of eternal objects that sustains its definite characteristics.
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More specifically, what does it mean to you that “saltiness,” an example you provide of eternal objects, is an eternal something that exists in a different realm than our manifest world? Aren’t these features of reality far more likely to be biologically evolved features of our universe that arose out of the specific conditions found on our planet? I personally have a hard time with positing such features of human reality and of reality more generally as unchanging “eternal objects”?
Saltiness is probably a complex eternal object, rather than a simple one that cannot be further decomposed. So it is not the best example to convince you of the metaphysical role of eternal objects. Mathematical objects almost certainly provide the strongest case for the necessity of something like Plato’s forms. You’ll never find “twoness” anywhere in the physical world. You’ll find endless examples of twoness participating in the physical world: two birds, two stones, two people, two fingers, two very different objects that you decide to group together for whatever reason, etc. But the idea of “twoness” itself is not captured by any of these specific instances. Where does it come from? Nominalists would say twoness, like other mathematical ideas, is just a name whose meaning derives from the conventional use of an arbitrarily invented symbol. But in my experience the majority of mathematicians, including Whitehead, would strongly contest this notion and claim that the history of mathematics is full of genuine discoveries that cannot be reduced to invented symbolisms. Yes, mathematicians need symbols to express their ideas, but there is more to the mathematical patterns and relations they discover than just these symbols.
A complex eternal object like saltiness is dependent upon the crystallization of sodium chloride molecules and the evolution of sensory organs and many other factors in order to ingress. Whitehead isn’t denying the importance and indeed the priority of these factors, but he was unable to conceive of a coherent metaphysical scheme that didn’t do justice to the realm of potentiality alongside that of actuality. “Coherence” for Whitehead means that neither potentiality nor actuality can be understood in isolation from the other.
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How do we help spread a wider interest and understanding of Whitehead’s ideas? Are there any attempts to spread his ideas through, for example, primary school education (at a kid-friendly level)?
This is a really important question. I believe that the most developed effort on this front is coming from the Pando Populus organization, which emerged from the huge International Whitehead Conference held in Claremont, CA back in 2015 called “Toward an Ecological Civilization.” Most of their work is focused locally in Los Angeles at this point, but they also have plans aiming at a more global impact and already have a foothold in China (where there are something like 30 graduate programs devoted to Whitehead’s ideas).
I don’t know of any attempts to bring his ideas into primary school classrooms, but that sounds like a great idea! I would even be happy with just the story of philosophy and its most basic questions being taught in primary school. Whitehead’s panpsychist outlook is only a philosophically refined and attenuated form of animism, so it may already be common sense to most kids. That it is animate is an obvious fact about the world for childhood consciousness (and for most of our species’ 200,000+ year history: the disenchanted mechanistic view is only a few hundred years old). Kids have a much more intuitive grasp of basic metaphysical questions. Unfortunately, our innate curiosity about the hidden causes of everyday facts (“But why?”) is beaten out of us pretty early on by impatient adults. Bringing philosophy into primary school classrooms would really just be about encouraging the wonder and curiosity that is already everpresent in childhood. Sharing the best historical articulations of the Big Questions so that they take root in the imaginations of children might help shape them into more intellectually flexible adults who are capable of avoiding ideological fixation in the face of an overwhelmingly complex world.

​Ecotheology and Ecological Civilizations: An Overview of Ideas and Practices

From a process perspective...

If I use the process perspective of ecotheology to think expansively of the universe as the "language of all being" than essentially this language can be broadly defined as "spiritual" thus creating a personal or inclusive experience to all living or non-living things participating within its complex. The experience is the same whether for atheists, theists, agnostics, animals, trees, rocks, or atoms. It is simply its language of being which provides to it existence, substance, provision, relationship, event, context and a host of other interwoven ingredients making for the language of life we call the cosmos. For the Christian, it is simply the language of God which He endowed His creation with - essential Himself, or His divine Being - and with all that this can mean as we as humans continue to try to grasp and explain His inhabiting grace and spirituality.

It seems then this experience was the divine spiritual essence with which the founding fathers of ecology tapped into, became caught up in its web, and sought to share with their fellow communities of beings. John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Henry David Thoreau each separately reveled in their preliminary revelations of "nature's spirituality" attempting to describe to the twentieth century's industrial revolution the substantively transformative affects these insights could have on developing eco-civilizations. Simply, they began to envision early eco-communities in spiritual harmony with very nature itself (and for the theist expansively, with the very fellowship of God Himself). Hence, regardless of religious affection, these founding fathers each had a love and care for nature we might describe as "spiritual."

It is thus within this broader, inclusive ontological language of "spirituality" we might ascribe to the cosmos life experiences beyond the assumed spiritual convocations of the church, temple or religious settings. That all things inhabit a kind of spirituality from the Divine which, having created the cosmos, might bring it to bear to fruition unto all things so that it shouldn't be surprising to find a kind of spirituality residing within mere secular structures, pagan occasions, or very nature itself. Fundamentally, the very nature of the universe is in itself essentially-and-always "spiritual."

This is what underlies process thought - with its adjoining branch of process theology - each deigning to consider the entanglement of the universe with itself from its rudimentary forms of relational space-time elements to its relational real-time actualities spawning what can be described in Whiteheadian terms as infinitely acceding "concresencing events" holding each relational moment eternally open-ended with possibility, novelty, and opportunity spawning an ever-evolving, ever-expanding, creational communion between God, the cosmos, and man. As an aside, *concresence is the coalescence, or growing together, of parts originally separated by an event. In the Christian sense, this event may be broadly described as "sin" entering creation to separate it from itself. But because of the divine inhabiting creation's essence, the spirituality of the cosmos moves forward coalescing, or growing together, towards a kind of wholeness in process with its very nature. Thus process thought and process theology together seek to capture this cosmic spiritual essence by bringing it forward into humanity's thoughts, structures, beliefs, and activities.

Lastly, when we delimit this ontological symmetry-and-balance of evolving spiritual process with our own unspiritualized lives we then create endless ripples of possibilities of life-devolving forms rather than life-evolving forms. We miss the spiritual for the mere natural without fully realizing how we tread through the spiritualized entanglement of cosmic relational processes in time and space clod-footed and dim of thought. Like too many things broken by sin we miss the spiritual for the secular and seek the present for the eternal. And yet, despite our ponderous influences and devastating affects within this life the very nature of the cosmos stands against us like mere sand castles to the ocean's tides. We live in an ocean of grace and substance, goodness and creative happening. We need to listen to the spiritual overtones God and His cosmos are constructing everywhere about and within to find, in our own lives, the symmetry and balance of spirituality that might inter-play a chord or two across the broad symphony of God's creational bounty we cannot hear unless we learn to stop, listen, and hum a few bars.


R.E. Slater
February 18, 2018
re-edited February 19, 2018


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​Ecotheology and Ecological Civilizations

An Overview of Ideas and Practices


​Ecotheology is an outlook on life that sees something sacred
in people, animals, and the earth and in human efforts to
help build Ecological Civilizations, with no one left behind.

It is available to people with many different religious affiliations,
and also to people without any religious affiliation. It can include,
but does not require, belief in God. What is sacred is life itself.

An Ecological Civilization is a society in which people live with respect
and care for the community of life, with special care for the vulnerable.

They know that they are small but included in a larger web of life that includes
hills and rivers, trees and stars, and that this web is their extended family.

For them the universe is a communion of subjects and not just a collection of objects.
This means that there is something like aliveness -- or subjectivity -- everywhere.

The fundamental units of Ecological Civilizations are local communities,
in rural and urban settings, that are creative, compassionate, participatory.

Egalitarian, culturally diverse, multi-religious, humane in their treatment of animals,
ecologically wise, playful, imaginative, and spiritually satisfying.

*Below we at Open Horizons offer some general comment on ecotheology, and some short video examples of local action aimed at helping build Ecological Civilizations. We hope this page will be useful to all who are interested in helping build a greener, kinder, and more joyful world.

see also:




A Mentor: Jane Goodall and the Ecotheological Spirit



Ecotheology: General Observations

Ecotheology. Ecotheology does not belong to a single culture or religion. It is a social and spiritual movement emerging in the 20th and 21st centuries among people of many different cultures, and from many walks of life, all over the world. They share the idea that the well-being of life on earth, not ever increasing economic growth, is the best ideal for societies to follow; and that we humans become whole, not when we amass large amounts of material goods, but when when live kindly with one another, gently with animals, and lightly on the earth. Along with Gandhi, they believe that there is enough on earth to satisfy everyone's need, but not everyone's greed.

Some Mentors for Ecotheology: Lao Tzu, Black Elk, Gandhi, Tagore, Rachel Carson, Howard Thurman, John Muir, Thomas Berry, Jane Goodall, Rachel Carson, and Pope Francis.

Examples of Ecotheology. Pope Francis' Laudato Si. The building of a community garden. Earth jazz. Victor Wooten's organization of a Center for Music and Nature outside Nashville, Tennessee. Jane Goodall's video above.

A sample of Ecotheological Ideas. The environment is not an issue among issues but rather a context for all issues, because it is the web of life on earth. The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects; there is no 'dead' matter. God is not a tyrant in the sky but rather the deep Listening in whom the universe lives and moves and has its being. Our calling in life is not to ask how much we can get from life but rather what does the world need from us. It is to help build eco-communities.

Eco-communities. Neighborhoods, villages, towns, cities, states, and nations that are creative, compassionate, participatory, diverse, ecologically wise, and spiritually satisfying, with no one left behind. They can also be called just and sustainable communities.

The theological side of Ecotheology. Ecotheologians emphasize that there are three dimensions of a well-lived life: spirituality, understanding, and action. The theological side of ecotheology is its spirituality. It may or may not involve belief in God, understood as a personal presence active in the world or a deep listener affected by all that happens. It always involves respect and care for the community of life. a sense of being small but included in a larger whole, delight in multiplicity, and gratitude for beauty.

So non-theists can be Ecotheologians? Yes. The heart of Ecotheology is respect and care for the community of life. Belief in God is a viable way of embodying this respect but not the only way, but it is not necessary. People can appreciate the sacredness of felt connections with other people, animals, and the Earth without believing in God. Thy believe in the horizontal sacred.

What about people who believe in God? Can they be ecotheologians? Yes, of course. There are many ways of understanding God. Many ecotheologians (process theologians, for example) understand God panentheistically, which means everything-in-God. The general idea is that God the universe is inside God, not unlike the way in which clouds are in the sky or a womb is in an embryo, but that God is also more than everything added together, continuously influential in the world as a non-coercive lure toward wisdom, compassion, and creativity in human life, a lure to live with satisfaction in other animals, and a lure toward novelty in the cosmos as a whole.

Can people who are "spiritual but not religious" be ecotheologians? Yes. Many ecotheologians are not affiliated with the world religions and identify themselves as naturalists. But many ecotheologians are religiously affiliated, too; and the world's religions offer many resources for a healthy ecotheology. If you are curious about how the world's religions can help people live lightly on the earth and gently with one another, see the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology.

What about science? Many ecotheologians are also scientists, and almost all ecotheologians (scientists or otherwise) are grateful for, and indebted to, modern science. Some version of evolutionary thinking is presumed not questioned. Pope Francis and Jane Goodall are good examples. Ecotheologians oppose making a god of science (scientism) but not science itself.

Integral Ecology. Pope Francis' name for a state of affairs in which care for people, care for animals, and care for the earth is integrated. Integral ecology is a good name for what eco-communities embody and aspire to embody.

Eco-Justice. The human side of integral ecology. A state of affairs in which human beings freely participate in the decisions that affect their lives; with ample opportunities for life, liberty, education, health care, and happiness. They are free from fear and free to enjoy rich relations with other people and the more-than-human world.

Two Sides: The Political and the Personal. One of the aims of the ecotheologian is to empower people to build eco-communities. This is the political side of Ecotheology. Another is to provide them with opportunities for personal fulfillment and satisfaction. This is the personal side of Ecotheology. Often these two -- the political and personal -- go hand in hand. Both are important.

Language of Ecotheology. Ecotheology can speak through words, images, movements, and sounds. All can function as lures for feeling and understanding. Landscapes and soundscapes can also function as lures for feeling. Lures for feeling can be humanly made or they can be made by the more than human world: geological activity, for example. There is no need to impute conscious intention to the creation of the lures in either the human or more-than-human realm.

Beauty and Ecotheology. Beauty is harmony and intensity in objects perceived and, still more deeply, in the depth of relationships. It as at the heart of the spiritual side of Ecotheology. Beauty is felt in the natural world, in the poignancy of human relationships, and in music and the arts. It is what sustains the action and part of what informs the understanding.

Spiritual practices and Ecotheology. Spiritual practices are activities that help people plant or replant themselves in beauty. They can include prayer, meditation, gardening, running, and, as Victor Wooten makes clear, learning to play a musical instrument.

Cultural Obstacles to Ecotheology. Consumerism, anthropocentrism, patriarchy, hyper-individualism, dualisms that draw sharp distinctions between humanity and the web of life, and mechanistic worldviews that reduce the whole of reality to a machine for human use.

Social Context of Ecotheology Today. Global climate change, social injustices, war and threat of nuclear war, economic inequality, political repression, and cultural despair; and the existential need on the part of human beings to enjoy rich connections with the more-than-human world, as intensified by urbanization and alienation from the world.

Eco-spirituality. Respect and care for the community of life, a sense of being small but included in a larger whole, sensitivity to individual human beings and other animals as subjects of their own lives (not simply objects for others), delight in multiplicity, and gratitude for beauty.


Video Examples of Practicing Ecotheology in Local Settings

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Addendum:
A New Economic Model & Way of Living for America



Wednesday, February 13, 2019

What Evangelicalism Is and What It Isn't and Why It's Meaning is Being Mangled

By way of introduction, if I were asked whether I was "evangelical" or not I would need to consider the social context of the one asking this question. Historically I am, and always have been evangelical. However, with the rise of Trumpian Christianity my distance continues to grow rapidly apace from this secular form of religious expression. In my experience, those churches and brethren involved have been caught up in a movement that is very un-Christlike substituting statism and nationalism for Christ. This I cannot, and will not, submit too. It was one of the main reasons I began writing this blog ten years ago even before the idea of Trumpian Christianity was around. It's telltale signs and evidences lay everywhere around the churches I participated in, and identified with, before it all came to a head since the years of 2015-2016 requiring my departure from such unkind fellowships claiming the name of Christ I worship and honor.

So am I an "evangelical"? Yes! I say this with affirmation and definitiveness that I am an evangelical in the historic sense of the word. But do I claim such today in the social circles I interact? Especially when they leave no room for explanation? Nor wish to even try to understand that explanation? Then "no," I am not an evangelical unless I am allowed to tell the difference between being an evangelical Christ-follower versus an evangelical politicist more willing to decry nationalism in Christ's name than His love, mercy, and justice.

As example, I consider abhorrent the very actions of the US government under the auspices of ICE for making a crime of crossing the US borders, separating families, and jailing children. This is wickedness in the very meaning of the term. If the US policy must require such action than I cannot abide with it's policy and wish to remove its draconian laws from the lives of those suffering its insidious affects. I chose Christ over the my brethren's political obsessions of fear, security, and protectionism. Christianity sees the alien and refuge as those requiring great help - not greater persecution. And if my Trumpian Christian friends cannot distinguish this than I fault their understanding of Christ and for choosing the State over their Lord. My prayer for America and the American church is that it repent of its hard heart and work to create a US policy respecting grace, mercy and justice over fear and protectionism.

Below I have listed three articles by Roger Olson detailing the distinction between evangelicalism as an ethos (my kind of Christianity) versus evangelicalism as a movement (which favors either a heighten or lower Christian message to the world of Jesus as Lord). Moreover, today's Christianity must now require those of us choosing to follow Jesus to re-describe ourselves both to our brethren and to the world as Jesus followers over any other apostate gospel purporting to be from Christ but is not. And if we must reclaim the gospel of Christ under some other banner than "evangelicalism" than let us do  so at once because the usage of the older banner name has become apostate in every sense of the Trumpian word. Mr. Olson, to his credit, hopes to reclaim the original definition back to itself, but alas, I fear it is too late and thus have I spent so many recent years delineating why-and-what Jesus-based-Christianity is-and-isn't, and why it must reach beyond its past yesteryears to the years ahead of us that it might become meaningfully relevant again to the masses yearning for spiritual release and freedom from sin's spiritual and humanitarian bondage. So let the elders of the church say with us, Amen and amen, thus shall we do!

R.E. Slater
February 13, 2019




Evangelicalism Again:
Why Are They Not Using My Distinction
between “Movement” and “Ethos?”


by Roger Olson
February 8, 2019

This is my response to the following Religion News article:


I read it with real interest and was very disappointed. The subject is one I have discussed here and in some of my articles, book chapters, and books frequently. I expended great energy in trying to enlighten people about the difference between “evangelical movements” (which come and go) and the “evangelical ethos” which is world-wide and not tied to any one particular evangelical movement.

The article mentions my colleague David Bebbington’s “evangelical quadrilateral” which describes what I call the evangelical spiritual-theological ethos which transcends any denomination or movement. It can be found in individuals and congregations in almost every Christian denomination.

But the article slides back and forth between treating evangelicalism as a “white movement” and evangelicalism as something other than that. But the distinction between “movement” and “ethos” is not clearly grasped or articulated. I believe it would solve this whole ongoing debate.

*Sidebar: The opinions expressed here are my own (or those of the guest writer); I do not speak for any other person, group or organization; nor do I imply that the opinions expressed here reflect those of any other person, group or organization unless I say so specifically. Before commenting read the entire post and the “Note to commenters” at its end.*

Are many African-American Christians truly evangelical? Yes—in the ethos sense. Not many call themselves “evangelicals” because they are thinking of the mostly white post-WW2 American movement and the current media-driven political evangelicalism.

In the article one well-known religion writer objects to one of my colleagues categorizing a 19th century African-American woman as “evangelical.” I respect that well-known religion writer, but I am bewildered by his seeming ignorance of the difference between a particular evangelical movement and the evangelical spiritual-theological ethos!

What all the people referenced in this Religion News article seem to miss is that evangelicalism as an ethos (spiritual-theological) is world-wide! The vast majority of evangelical live outside of the United States! How in the world can “evangelicalism” be defined as “white” and “American” unless the people doing so are brainwashed by the media who love to identify being evangelical with being pro-Trump and probably racist?

I am almost certain that Ed Stetzer, Russell Moore, Anthea Butler and others referenced in this article (and especially David Bebbington) know the difference between being evangelical ethos-wise and being evangelical by self-identification to pollsters (or even being evangelical by belonging to a group that calls itself “evangelical”).

Neither the NAE (National Association of Evangelicals) nor the Gospel Coalition nor any organization owns the label “evangelical.” Any church historian knows this. So why do we continually run up against this confusion (viz., of “evangelical” with being “white” and “American nationalist” and “pro-Trump” or even of just having some connection with the (mostly white) post-WW2 American evangelical movement? Many evangelicals never joined that. According to historian of evangelicalism George Marsden that movement disintegrated around 1970 anyway!

A huge, huge problem lurking in the background of all this confusion is that “being evangelical” has both advantages and disadvantages. In some contexts it has advantages such as in getting hired in many Christian institutions. In other contexts it has disadvantages such as not getting hired in many Christian institutions! I don’t know any way to solve that problem except to get everyone to recognize the difference between “movement evangelicalism” and “ethos evangelicalism”—a difference I have talked about here many times.

Let me end with an open comment to all the people quoted in the article: Please embrace and use my distinction between ethos evangelicalism and movement evangelicalism. Let it solve these confusing conversations, debates, even conflicts over the meaning of “evangelical.”

*Note to commenters: This blog is not a discussion board; please respond with a question or comment only to me. If you do not share my evangelical Christian perspective (very broadly defined), feel free to ask a question for clarification, but know that this is not a space for debating incommensurate perspectives/worldviews. In any case, know that there is no guarantee that your question or comment will be posted by the moderator or answered by the writer. If you hope for your question or comment to appear here and be answered or responded to, make sure it is civil, respectful, and “on topic.” Do not comment if you have not read the entire post and do not misrepresent what it says. Keep any comment (including questions) to minimal length; do not post essays, sermons or testimonies here. Do not post links to internet sites here. This is a space for expressions of the blogger’s (or guest writers’) opinions and constructive dialogue among evangelical Christians (very broadly defined).

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Roger Olson, Board of Contributors:
Evangelicalism simply not a political movement


by Roger Olson, Board of Contributors 
November 22, 2017

Once again, in a column published here, a political pundit predicted something about “evangelicals” that treats all of us as political conservatives. According to Philip Bump [“Religion, politics awkward mix,” Nov. 12] “evangelicals” will rally to support arch-conservative Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore in spite of accusations of sexual misconduct.

Repeatedly in recent years sociologists, political commentators and pollsters have treated American evangelicals as the Republican Party at prayer. While it is true that many Americans who identify as evangelical support politically conservative policies, platforms and politicians, it is most certainly not true that “evangelical Christianity” is itself tied to any particular ideology.

I recently contributed to a book and then participated on a panel about “The Future of Evangelicalism in America” (Columbia University Press, 2017). During the panel and following discussion at the annual meeting of the Society of Church Historians (Denver, January 2017) I discovered many American sociologists and those influenced by them (journalists, commentators and poll-takers) automatically exclude African Americans from being evangelicals.

As a theologian and church historian I consider this a travesty. “Evangelical” is a spiritual-theological category, not a political one. By excluding African Americans and by tying it inextricably to a passing political fad sociologists and the media have distorted it.

David Bebbington, distinguished visiting professor of history at Baylor University, is nearly universally recognized as a world class historian of the evangelical movement — going back to the Great Awakenings of the early 17th century. Bebbington’s “quadrilateral” of evangelical hallmarks is widely recognized and frequently used by scholars to identify the evangelical ethos.

According to Bebbington, the evangelical brand of Christianity crosses denominational boundaries and is marked by biblicism, conversionism, crucicentrism and activism:

  • The Bible is considered by all evangelical Christians to be God’s inspired Word written.
  • All evangelicals have always believed authentic Christian existence necessarily includes a personal decision of faith called conversion.
  • The cross of Jesus Christ is believed by evangelicals to be humanity’s only basis and hope for salvation.
  • And, all evangelicals support evangelism, world missions and social action to change the world for the better.

Throughout evangelicalism’s history, however, evangelical Christians have never all adopted a particular social, political or economic ideology.

And evangelicalism is a global movement, with the vast majority of evangelicals living and worshiping outside the United States. Most have no connection with U.S. political ideologies or parties.

African-American Protestant Christians have often shied away from using the label “evangelical” because “evangelicalism” has been considered a white spiritual movement. Recently, well-known, influential African-American rap artist Lecrae “resigned” from “white evangelicalism” because of the pushback he received from white conservative evangelical leaders (whom I would probably consider more fundamentalist than truly evangelical) after he sided with the protests of the Black Lives Matter movement against police shootings of unarmed African Americans.

A few years ago I was asked by an African-American seminary professor (at a mostly white Baptist seminary) if I considered black American Protestants “evangelicals.” I said yes, I do, and I still stand by that. Spiritually and theologically most African-American Protestants believe, worship and live as disciples of Jesus Christ in complete accord with the historical evangelical ethos. While they may not use the label “evangelical” for themselves, once I explain its true meaning as a spiritual and theological ethos, most African-American Protestant students and ministers respond affirmatively — that they fit that mold.

My most recent research project involved revising the Handbook of Denominations in the United States for its 14th edition. (The Handbook is a widely used and respected reference book published by the United Methodist Publishing House/Abingdon Press.) I scrutinized the web sites of all major and many newer, smaller, predominantly African-American denominations and found their statements of beliefs and practices to be perfectly in line with historic evangelicalism even if not with the current American “religious right.”

I am calling out sociologists, journalists, and commentators who exclude African-American Christians, most of whom claim to have a “born again experience” (the main test often used for determining whether someone is evangelical), from being considered evangelical. Evangelical Christianity, properly understood, is not exclusively white, American or politically conservative, even if some individuals and churches are.

*Roger Olson is Foy Valentine Professor of Christian Theology and Ethics at Baylor University’s Truett Seminary. His recent books include “The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition and Reform” and “Who Needs Theology?”


The Weakness of the Evangelical Ethos in its Present Day Form

Without openness to curiosity, imagination, or theological exploration the Christian faith harms itself. It cannot both be highly suspicious of critical thought in theology, biblical studies, philosophy, etc, and yet pretend to keep its currency in contemporary dialog. The one requires the other else withdraws into its own cloistered communities of the "ins" and the "outs". Evangelical Christianity has become this latter thing which now harms its very foundations.

R.E. Slater
February 13, 2019



The Dark Side of Evangelicalism
by Roger Olson
February 12, 2019
"Suffice it to say that evangelical intellectuals have always found themselves somewhat on the defensive and rarely applauded. By “intellectual” I mean a person given to critical inquiry even about his or her own religious (or other) commitments." - RO

Here, in this essay, by “evangelicalism” I do not mean any particular evangelical movement but what I have described as the “evangelical ethos”—a broad and inclusive spiritual-theological form of Christianity defined by the so-called “Bebbington quadrilateral”: conversionism, biblicism, crucicentrism, and activism. I have expounded these here much in the past, so I will refrain from doing so again. Anyone interested can simply look up the “Bebbington quadrilateral” and read about evangelical Christianity—not as a particular movement (the ethos is shared by many movements) but as the spiritual-theological ethos that grew especially out of the Pietist movement in Germany and Scandinavia as well as Great Britain and spread throughout the world.

The ethos of which I speak always existed in Christianity but came especially to the fore in and with a series of “awakenings” among (mostly) Protestant Christians beginning in the early 18th century. However, once it was recognized as a distinct form of Christian life people recognized its precursors in the radical Reformation (e.g., the Swiss Brethren) and among some Puritans.

I have described and promoted this evangelical spiritual-theological Christian ethos in my books, articles, and here. For the most part I have attempted to clear up misconceptions about it, especially the one that regards it as political which it is not and never has been. (Although, of course, as with any movement many both inside and outside the movements marked by the ethos have attempted to hijack it for their political causes.)

*Sidebar: The opinions expressed here are my own (or those of the guest writer); I do not speak for any other person, group or organization; nor do I imply that the opinions expressed here reflect those of any other person, group or organization unless I say so specifically. Before commenting read the entire post and the “Note to commenters” at its end.* - RO

I am unapologetically evangelical—so long as I can explain what I mean by that. I do not regard myself as part of any particular evangelical movement as I once did. For many years I identified myself with the American post-World War 2 post-fundamentalist, “neo-evangelical” movement associated especially with the National Association of Evangelicals and the Billy Graham ministries and related organizations. (For more about this particular evangelical movement read Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism by historian Joel A. Carpenter (Oxford University Press, 1997). However, I think that evangelical movement is dead. Remnants and relics of it exist, but as a relatively cohesive movement it is gone.

In case I need to say this—in my opinion (and that of most scholars of evangelicalism—the evangelical spiritual-theological ethos is not tied to any denomination or organization.

As a church historian-historical theologian, what do I regard as the weaknesses of the evangelical ethos? Of course, as a kind of Platonic essence, in its purity, I don’t think it has any weaknesses except certain tendencies it seems to carry along with it that have to be resisted because they automatically “pop up” among people who “catch” the ethos of evangelical Christianity (or are raised in it).

The first weakness I find is a tendency of evangelicals to lean toward anti-intellectualism. Evangelical historian Mark Noll examined and critiqued this so well in his book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Eerdmans, 1999) that I don’t feel the need to repeat that. Suffice it to say that evangelical intellectuals have always found themselves somewhat on the defensive and rarely applauded. By “intellectual” I mean a person given to critical inquiry even about his or her own religious (or other) commitments.

The second weakness I find is a tendency of evangelicals to succumb to hero-worship. By this I mean a tendency to identify men and women among themselves—past or present—who are placed on a pedestal as “especially spiritual” and expected to be immune to the vagaries of fallenness and given spiritual authority beyond that which any human (other than Jesus Christ) deserves.

The third weakness I find is a tendency of evangelicals to eschew organized efforts at social reconstruction to eliminate poverty, hunger and oppression. Oppression is a concept almost totally lacking among evangelicals—except the spiritual oppressions of Satan, sin and “the world.” Many evangelicals have been active in charitable work, community development, etc., but few have been actively involved in anti-poverty and anti-oppression programs of a political nature. Liberation theologies, for example, have been largely rejected by evangelicals as allegedly replacing “spiritual salvation” with “social salvation.”

The fourth weakness I find is a tendency of evangelicals to follow a “Christ against culture” approach (H. Richard Niebuhr) to the arts. By and large, with some exceptions, evangelicals have neglected the arts. Many are highly suspicious of the arts, as they are of critical thought (in theology, biblical studies, philosophy, etc.). This has been a notable tendency among evangelicals historically. There are exceptions, of course. I have written here before also about a seeming aversion to writing literary fiction from an evangelical perspective.

The fifth and final weakness (for now) is a tendency I find among evangelicals toward spiritual elitism—to the point of often believing that non-evangelical Christians are not authentically Christian or even saved. Especially in the past, but still to a very large extent, evangelical Christians have been conditioned to regard Catholics (to say nothing of Eastern Orthodox about which they tend to be ignorant) and “mainline Protestants” as false Christians and unsaved. The language of evangelicals has been that we/they are “Christians” and others are something else. This has hindered ecumenical understanding between evangelicals and other Christians.

Evangelical pastors, organizational leaders, institutional administrators, need to work to correct these tendencies and many do. However, what I have observed is that when they do they get “push back” from the evangelical grassroots. Many among the grassroots of evangelical Christianity have fundamentalist leanings that cause them still, in spite of not being fully fundamentalist, to label all such attempts by pastors, denominational leaders, college and university administrators as “on a liberal trajectory.”

These tendencies seem to be endemic to evangelical Christianity—with many outstanding exceptions. Unfortunately, the exceptions struggle to maintain an evangelical identity among evangelicals. They are often viewed with suspicion.

I struggle with the question of whether these weaknesses are actual endemic to evangelical Christianity or whether they could be overcome with success. I have seen them overcome with success in places, but often those “places” are marginalized by the evangelical constituents.

*Note to commenters: This blog is not a discussion board; please respond with a question or comment only to me. If you do not share my evangelical Christian perspective (very broadly defined), feel free to ask a question for clarification, but know that this is not a space for debating incommensurate perspectives/worldviews. In any case, know that there is no guarantee that your question or comment will be posted by the moderator or answered by the writer. If you hope for your question or comment to appear here and be answered or responded to, make sure it is civil, respectful, and “on topic.” Do not comment if you have not read the entire post and do not misrepresent what it says. Keep any comment (including questions) to minimal length; do not post essays, sermons or testimonies here. Do not post links to internet sites here. This is a space for expressions of the blogger’s (or guest writers’) opinions and constructive dialogue among evangelical Christians (very broadly defined). - RO


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What is an Evangelical?


Evangelicals take the Bible seriously and believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. The term “evangelical” comes from the Greek word euangelion, meaning “the good news” or the “gospel.” Thus, the evangelical faith focuses on the “good news” of salvation brought to sinners by Jesus Christ.

Evangelicals are a vibrant and diverse group, including believers found in many churches, denominations and nations. Our community brings together Reformed, Holiness, Anabaptist, Pentecostal, Charismatic and other traditions. As noted in the statement “Evangelicals — Shared Faith in Broad Diversity,” our core theological convictions provide unity in the midst of our diversity. 

The NAE Statement of Faith offers a standard for these evangelical convictions.

Historian David Bebbington also provides a helpful summary of evangelical distinctives, identifying four primary characteristics of evangelicalism:

  • Conversionism: the belief that lives need to be transformed through a “born-again” experience and a life long process of following Jesus
  • Activism: the expression and demonstration of the gospel in missionary and social reform efforts
  • Biblicism: a high regard for and obedience to the Bible as the ultimate authority
  • Crucicentrism: a stress on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross as making possible the redemption of humanity

These distinctives and theological convictions define us — not political, social or cultural trends. In fact, many evangelicals rarely use the term “evangelical” to describe themselves, focusing simply on the core convictions of the triune God, the Bible, faith, Jesus, salvation, evangelism and discipleship.

Defining Evangelicals in Research

Evangelicals are a common subject of research, but often the outcomes of that research vary due to differences in the methods used to identify evangelicals. In response to that challenge the NAE and LifeWay Research developed a tool to provide a consistent standard for identification of evangelical belief.

The NAE/LifeWay Research method includes four statements to which respondents must strongly agree to be categorized as evangelical:

  • The Bible is the highest authority for what I believe.
  • It is very important for me personally to encourage non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior.
  • Jesus Christ’s death on the cross is the only sacrifice that could remove the penalty of my sin.
  • Only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive God’s free gift of eternal salvation.

Researchers are encouraged to use the method, with proper citation to NAE/LifeWay Research.



For Further Study


Charles J. Scalise, “What Does Fuller Mean by ‘Evangelical’?,” Fuller Theological Seminary, February 1, 2015.

David W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1930s (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989).

“Evangelical: What’s in a Name?,” Evangelicals Magazine, National Association of Evangelicals, Winter 2017/18.

“Evangelicals — Shared Faith in Broad Diversity,” National Association of Evangelicals, May 22, 2018.

Leith Anderson and Ed Stetzer, “Defining Evangelicals in an Election Year,” Christianity Today, March 2, 2016.

Leith Anderson and Ed Stetzer, “Who are Evangelicals & Where are They Headed?,” Today’s Conversation podcast, January 15, 2016.

Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield, and the Wesleys (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2003).




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What Is an “Evangelical?”

by Roger Olson
June 21, 2016

To learn quickly and simply what an “evangelical Christian” is you can do no better than peruse the web site of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) at www.nae.net. There, on the web site’s “front page” you will find links to such defining tools as the NAE Statement of Faith and answer to “What Is an Evangelical?”

The NAE does not claim to speak for all evangelical Christians, but it is far and away the most important and historically influential organization for uniting evangelical Christians in the U.S.A. for purposes of cooperation.

The reason I am posting this essay here is that my blog contains the word “evangelical” as part of my own self-definition. Due to the secular media’s ongoing misguided and misleading effort to define “evangelical” as a political posture people are naturally confused when they discover that I am a lifelong, “card carrying” evangelical and politically progressive—especially with regard to economic issues. I strongly believe in government redistribution of wealth such that many people would regard my political-economic posture as “socialism”—in the Northern European sense of the term. (My Scandinavian genes perhaps incline me that way, but I believe faith in Jesus Christ is the real reason for my belief in redistribution of wealth.)

The NAE adamantly rejects any identification of “evangelical” with a particular political ideology or even posture. Historically and theologically that is correct—even if most people in the United States who identify themselves to pollsters as “evangelical” also identify as conservative Republicans. Here is an analogy. Probably most people in the United States who identify themselves as “Unitarian” also would identify themselves to pollsters, if asked, as liberal Democrats. Historically-theologically, however, there is no necessary link between the two (viz., being Unitarian and being politically liberal).

My point is that if you consider the NAE as the major “voice” of evangelicals in the United States, as it was throughout the 1950s and beyond and still probably is (except for the secular media which has no “credentials” for defining “evangelical” historically-theologically), then there is no necessary connection between being evangelical and being conservative in the sense of supporting the goals and aims of the current Republican Party.

Again, the NAE does not pretend to speak for all evangelicals in the United States or elsewhere, but since its founding in 1942 it has served as the single most important “voice” for evangelicalism in the United States. Nobody in the NAE leadership would claim that a person or organization must belong to it or even agree with every single word or sentence in its Statement of Faith to be authentically evangelical. However, its Statement of Faith was carefully and cautiously crafted by the founders to be as inclusive as possible without being compatible with anything and everything. Denominations as diverse as the Christian Reformed Church and the Church of the Nazarene have been members. (Some evangelical denominations such as the Southern Baptist Convention have never officially joined the NAE but have participated in its programs at a non-member level and sent non-voting “observers” to its board meetings.)

One of the NAE’s most important programs is its World Relief Commission that raises funds for suffering people around the world.

The NAE has had its “ups and downs” in recent years. Some of what has happened in it has saddened and even upset me. One president was ousted due to his strong suggestion that the NAE drop its policy that member denominations cannot also belong to the National Council of Churches. Another president was discovered to be secretly living a lifestyle incompatible with evangelical Christian morality (viz., paying a prostitute for sex). Every organization has problems from time to time, but I think the main reason for what many of us perceive as a decline in the influence of the NAE is the media’s constant identification of the concept “evangelical” with relatively extreme political, social and economic conservatism. This has caused many evangelicals in the U.S. to shy away from the very word “evangelical.”

I consider myself “evangelical” in the general sense of the word as defined by the NAE which shaped my early spiritual and theological formation. My uncle, with whom I was very close (and still am), was a member of the national board of the NAE for many years. When I was struggling to settle on a religious self-definition in my late teens and early twenties he and I had numerous conversations. I came to agree and identify with the broad evangelicalism of the NAE. Eventually I studied the history of the NAE. It was founded in 1942* to provide a cooperative “umbrella” for non-fundamentalist, non-liberal, gospel-centered Protestants in the United States. At its founding it included a diverse group of relatively conservative Protestants in the U.S.—ranging from the Presbyterians to Pentecostals. (*I have chosen 1942 for the NAE’s founding because that year falls between its initial exploratory meeting in 1941 and its first official convention in 1943. I believe the actual “birth” of the NAE can best be pegged to 1942.)

Over the years at least 50 distinct denominations have joined the NAE which also includes numerous individual churches and trans-denominational organizations. The current president is highly respected evangelical pastor Leith Anderson, by all descriptions a moderate theologically. (I have met him and heard him speak and we belonged to the same Baptist denomination for some years. He also served on the governing board of the college and seminary where I taught from 1984 to 1999. While I do not agree with everything he has done or said I consider him a good representative spokesperson for contemporary American evangelical Christianity. I wish more media people would turn to him instead of to certain neo-fundamentalists when they seek a resource to explain American evangelicalism.)

There is no single person or organization that speaks for all American evangelicals. In some sense evangelist Billy Graham was viewed by most American evangelicals as the main spokesman for them, even though he was never an “evangelical pope.” With Graham’s retirement many individuals calling themselves “evangelical” have attempted to replace him as the recognized spokesperson for American evangelicalism, but to date no one has achieved that recognition. Most of those wishing to be recognized as the spokesperson for American evangelicalism work out of theological orientations that would have been considered “fundamentalist” by the NAE’s founders.

I will end this blog post by coming around to where it began and its main purpose. If you want to know what “evangelical” means you can do no better than look at and examine the web site of the National Association of Evangelicals at www.nae.net. While I do not commit myself to agreeing to everything you find there, I still consider myself “evangelical” in that broad sense and I do not allow the popular media to define “evangelical” for me.