Showing posts with label Evangelicalism. Show all posts

This is a wonderfully enticing ad for a conference in Atlanta, featuring some of the hot shots in the evangelical movement. 

I'm familiar with a couple of these guys.

I'm also familiar with how many of them view the role of women in ministry: to support their husbands but to have very little official authority in the life of the church.  Take a look at the "Pastor's Wives Track." I have been served and taught and led by a number of outstanding women in ministry and am thankful that I belong to a denomination that would face much internal criticism if it tried to pull off a conference that was segregated in this way.  I'm not quite sure how Trisha Davis gets to speak alongside her husband.

Mind you, I'm sure there will be a lot of great teaching at the conference. I'd love to hear Pete Wilson, Ed Stetzer, and Chris Seay.  But I can't believe what gets said on the main floor and in that wonderful "Pastor's Wives Track" wouldn't be beneficial for all.

Pastor and professor David Fitch offers the following critiques of evangelicalism, as based in his book The End of Evangelicalism. This is found over at "The Other Journal."

TOJ: You claim that the evangelical belief in the “inerrant” Bible has not really been about the truth but about “being in control of the truth.” It appears that just as evangelicalism continues to fracture into different hermeneutical camps, large church personalities have effectively replaced denominations in defending doctrine. Over this next decade, how do you see the fight of inerrancy shaping up?

DF: There’s a splintering of evangelicalism, and strangely, I would say that the majority of evangelicalism realizes that “inerrancy” is an apologetic strategy whose time is over. It is a strategy that in fact undermines Scripture by defining its authority via a reference point outside itself, by what is an “error” and who gets to define “error,” as opposed to what Scripture is in its relationship to the Incarnate Christ. Nonetheless, it wouldn’t surprise me if the New-Reformed movement among evangelicals makes inerrancy once again a shibboleth to determine who is a true evangelical. Once this happens, I think we’ll all be energized to expose the defensiveness in this move and move on to a true faithfulness.

TOJ: Another hallmark of the evangelical is the “decision for Christ,” but you write that this decision has effectively been “separated from one’s embodied life.” Could you explain that further, particularly how such a deep and personal decision has found such tragic separation?

DF: I refer to it as a separation because speaking of a decision for Christ doesn’t mean anything anymore. I am sure that is an overstatement. But what I try to show in the book is that the decision for Christ has become a master signifier that creates a fantasy, as if to make a person feel good for what he or she has done. Yet it demands nothing of this person. In essence it does what any good master signifier must do—it enables us to “believe without believing,” in Žižek’s famous words. It allows us to be Christians without it meaning anything material to our embodied existence. Nonetheless, conversion is at the heart of Jesus’s call to follow him. We need to recover conversion. I go much deeper into this whole phenomenon in the book. 

You can read more of the interview following the link above.

Well it's ONE of the places. 

It's where evangelicalism has been so very focused on personal salvation as opposed to entering into the salvation story of God's people. 

I thin David Fitch hit the nail on the head as he described Scot McNight's book, The King Jesus Gospel:

I think pretty much everyone knows by now Scot McKnight’s contention that evangelicals equate the word “gospel” with the word “salvation.” Hence, according to McKnight, we evangelicals are really “soterians” not “evangelicals”. According to McKnight, the NT gospel should not and cannot be reduced to “our plan of salvation.”(39). Scot shows in King Jesus Gospel that the gospel according to the NT is best defined out of 1 Corinthian 15.  Here the Gospel is the telling of the whole Jesus Story as the completion of the Story of Israel, the lordship of Christ over the whole world. It is the summoning of people to respond to the completion of the promise to Israel in Jesus Christ as Lord.  Through the proclamation of the gospel, we are invited to enter into this grand work of God in history in Christ. Out of all this, we are saved and redeemed (here’s where salvation is part of the gospel but not to be equated with the gospel). Without the Story (of Israel), Scot says, there is no gospel (36). So Scot singularly does one thing in this book, he shows how “individual salvation” is part of the wider gospel. It is not the whole gospel. The salvation we as individuals receive is something we receive as we participate in the wider work of God in the world to bring in His Kingdom in and through Jesus Christ. Even this “personal” salvation is much bigger than “justification by faith” although it certainly includes that!

...as you ponder salvation

...as you ponder evangelism

...as you ponder discipleship

...as you ponder whether we've made Christianity a "come to Jesus moment" rather than a "live in Jesus life."

...as you ponder contemporary evangelicalism and what mainline churches can offer

Sit with this quote...


Now...I may have already made the focus on discipleship a long time ago...with spotty success.  But seeing it phrased this way kinda' blew my mind this morning as I sat with it, feet up, coffee in hand.

(HT/Rachel Held Evans)

Below are words of Menno Simons (1496-1561), yes, the founder of the Mennonites. These words exemplify the notion that evangelical faith is one that is lived out in community and service. It is "incarnational."

Too often evangelical faith has been concerned about what one had on the inside (Jesus) and not how one loved because of the acceptance of Christ's first love of us. What's going on inside of us in faith will be shown with what we do with our bodies and our lives.

True evangelical faith is of such a nature it cannot lie dormant, but spreads itself out in all kinds of righteousness and fruits of love;

it dies to flesh and blood (1);
it destroys all lusts and forbidden desires (2);
it seeks, serves and fears God in its inmost soul (3);
it clothes the naked (4);
it feeds the hungry (5);
it comforts the sorrowful (6);
it shelters the destitute (7);
it aids and consoles the sad (8);
it does good to those who do it harm (9);
it serves those that harm it (10);
it prays for those who persecute it (11);
it teaches, admonishes and judges us with the Word of the Lord (12);
it seeks those who are lost (13);
it binds up what is wounded (14);
it heals the sick (15);
it saves what is strong (sound) (16);
it becomes all things to all people (17).

The persecution, suffering and anguish that come to it for the sake of the Lord’s truth have become a glorious joy and comfort to it.

What's cool about these words is how all-encompassing Menno's views faith are. There are aspects of sanctification in the individual life. There are aspects of peacemaking, justice, evangelism, and healing.

Too often Christianity has been concerned only about belief and not about life. The two are connected. Wesley, of course, got this as well. But here it is from another source.

VIA

Image via WikipediaThis is from Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove's America's Next Revival:

Arising out of different church communities, these Red Letter Christians are variously labeled as 'progressives,' 'Emergents,' 'new evangelicals' and 'new monastics.' Though we don't agree on everything, we all have this in common: we feel deep in our bones the need for the hope of the gospel to connect with the material needs of our world today.


This will be the hallmark of America's next revival: an embodied faith that makes the connections between conviction and practice, between Spirit and flesh, between the world that is and the world that ought to be. Something is stirring in a dozen different movements today to teach God's people to pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." This one thing is more important than any of the smaller movements we are part of.

Image via WikipediaLook, I think one of the things that comes through on this blog and in my reflection is that I have pretty good evangelical roots.  It's not something I got in New York so much.  I was 15 and under when I was there.  But it's something I got in my years in Indiana when surrounded by Wesleyans...not of the United Methodist kind but of the actual "Wesleyan Church" kind.  Evangelicalism was somewhat "in the water" of Indiana, inside and outside of the United Methodist Church.  And it was a pretty conservative sort of evangelicalism.

And, to this day, I really do believe that being an authentic follower of Jesus Christ requires one to have some type of conversion experience ("justification" for my good, old Methodist friends out there) and some type of growth in faith (regeneration or "sanctification" for said Methodists).  I believe in confession of sin and I believe that Jesus Christ is the only way for this to happen, and, therefore, it is right and good and important to share the message of Jesus and live in such a way that persons can see Christ's love through one's actions.  Saying all of this, I think,  makes me an evangelical in a pretty classic sense.

That said...I think there is a lot of room for interpretation in there.  There's a lot unsaid in all that's said above.  And, in spite of believing all of this, I know that my theology is sometimes questioned and sometimes questioned to my face...even believing all that I do about Jesus.

(Please note, this really isn't commonplace for me...the whole questioning thing.  I don't walk through life with persons shaking their heads every time I open my mouth.  I am surrounded by a bunch of people who know me and appreciate me and, I pray, see Christ working through me and can hear the depth of my faith in my preaching, my speaking, and in my writing.  But I do occasionally get the "head shake" or the "I'll pray for you."  Some base it on nothing other than knowing I'm part of the United Methodist Church.  And some within the United Methodist Church base their opinions on nothing more than my location, now, in the West -- a bastion of what some see as liberal Methodism.)

And so, I was more than a little amused as I stumbled over to The Pangea Blog and a post by Kurt Willems.  It's entitled "You Might Be an Evangelical Reject" and I resonated with many of his bullet points.  Clearly he has struggled with self-identity over the years, probably from a much more evangelical side of evangelicalism.  His points made me think and ponder...which is a good thing.  See the original post for a complete list of his bullet points.

In so far that evangelical means the belief in repentance and conversion into a genuine relationship with Jesus Christ through the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit, the term describes me.  What I continue to find, is that such a central conviction is NOT enough to appease those who want the term to mean other things.  So, based on my experiences, I want to let you know that: You Might Be an Evangelical Reject If…

• You’re uncomfortable calling other branches of Christianity “apostate.”
• You have significant questions about controversial theological “hot button” issues of the days and are some-what comfortable with the subsequent cognitive dissonance.
• You read theologians from all across the spectrum.
• You think that science and scripture both reveal God’s truth in complementary ways.
• You think that what we believe about the so called “end times” actually matters for how we do mission today.
• You recognize culture wars as pathetic attempts for Christians to grab for power.
• You don’t use the word inerrancy to describe biblical authority because its too rigid a definition and a modernist categorical imposition on the Holy Spirit inspired Scriptures.
• You think women should do anything BUT be silent in the church. (Can I get an AMEN from my sistas?)
• You think that postmodern philosophy helps theology more than it hurts it.
• You drink alcohol sometimes (in public).
• You believe that there are significant parallels between the Roman Empire of the 1^st Century and the United States of modern day.
• You believe social justice is central to the gospel of the Kingdom.
• You’ve said “I’m not that kind of Christian…”
• You considered or actually voted democratic in the last two elections.
• You think that African American Activists have valid points when it comes to justice issues.
• You have gay friends.
• You’ve been in a conversation where the other was appealing more to the constitution of the USA than actually biblical theology.

Perhaps we can argue (rightfully so, I think) that his bullet points which claim him as an "evangelical reject" are not classic evangelicalism. Instead, evangelicalism has come to mean "conservative evangelical" or "politically conservative" or "socially conservative." It's gotten away from the the priority of the "evangel" or "Good News" and has come to mean a lot of other things along the way. But this has come to be the new understanding of "evangelical." And, by that, with Kurt Willems, I sometimes find myself outside of a circle I once dutifully drew myself in.