The past few Monday’s I’ve been working through some of the issues related to interpreting Genesis well (here and here, if you’d like to go back and read). Over the weekend, we had a back porch discussion that led to an epiphany for explaining it even better, but that’ll have to wait until next week. I’ve got some reading to do in The Silmarillion and I’ll get back to you.
Also over the weekend, I read David Gushee’s Still Christian: Following Jesus out of American Evangelicalism. It is the second such memoir I’ve enjoyed reading that was made possible by good journal keeping (the first was John Frame’s Theology of My Life) In this book, Gushee offers a memoir of sorts, mainly related to his journey from lapsed Roman Catholic, to Baptist convert, to now something kind of in-between (his wife converted to Catholicism and he attends mass with her as well as pastoring a Baptist church in Georgia). As you can guess from the subtitle, the thesis is something along the lines of “you can still be a true Christian and follow Jesus without being an evangelical because look I did it.”
At the moment, I don’t have an in-depth critique or interaction with the book. But I do think that Gushee is perhaps reacting against something slightly different than classical evangelicalism. Granted, he was at Southern Seminary in the early 90’s as the conservative resurgence was happening. He then taught at Union University before ending up at his present post at Mercer. In those institutions he ran into a sub-stream of evangelicalism that I think is better considered fundamentalism.
Now, one can be an evangelical and not be a fundamentalist. Likewise, one can be a fundamentalist and not be evangelical. This is because fundamentalism is more of an ideology, a posture if you will, that interfaces with various belief systems. While it is religious fundamentalists (mainly Christians) who often get a bad rap, secular fundamentalists are just as annoying (and harmful to their overall cause).
Because of the nature of fundamentalism (which notice I haven’t directly defined yet), it sits more comfortably with the conservative end of Christianity. We should note too that “conservatism” is an ideological stance as well. The impulse is to conserve tradition and the past, and in its more unhealthy versions, it makes an idol out of history. Conservatism stands in distinction from progressivism, which as you can imagine aims to progress forward. The danger of course is that change and progress become idols that lead to discard the good of the tradition and past in favor of an ever marching advance toward utopia (which is variously defined).
The tension for a healthy Christian is that you need to be both conservative and progressive. You are conservative in that you value the past, both in terms of an historical event (the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus) and a book that was completed roughly 2,000 years ago. You are progressive in that you should always be reformed and reforming. We grow in our understanding of biblical interpretation and doctrine. We don’t reinvent them for each new generation, but we don’t repackage theology from the 16th century (or any previous century) as if it was the definitive statement of the faith in all its particulars that can never be improved upon.
You should see how this creates cultural problems for Christianity. Who gets to say what’s faithful progress and what’s faithful conserving? We have no Christian pope, evangelical or otherwise. Reform movement are therefore always tricky. The easy route is to dig down on tradition and refuse to change the way you read a text or understand a second order doctrine (those not directly tied to orthodoxy). This is the path of fundamentalism, which coalesced as a named movement in the early 20th century. I’m hoping as I read more of Marsden’s book I’ll have a better grasp of the developments.
As I work through the stack you see (I’ve already read a couple), I’m hoping to better be able to communicate what fundamentalism is, why it is problematic, and how to better pursue being a conservative Christian in a secular culture. My initial hunch is that like Gushee, many young people are reacting and moving away from fundamentalism, not necessarily evangelicalism or Christianity as a whole. But, without the years of following Jesus that Gushee has, these younger students discard a faith before it really has a chance to take root. They are the seeds that fall on rocky ground.
In our work with UCF students and graduates of the high school where I teach, I try to show that there are more options than rigid fundamentalism or enlightened atheism. The world will present it in those categories, but that overlooks the breadth and depth of solid Christian teaching and thinking through the centuries. One can be Reformed and still reforming. Open to new understanding, but tethered to the faith once and all delivered to the saints. I know it’s possible because I’ve done for more than a decade now and hope to continue to show the way in the years to come.
Comments
One response to “Leaving Evangelicalism or Leaving Fundamentalism?”
“Who gets to say what’s faithful progress and what’s faithful conserving? We have no Christian pope, evangelical or otherwise.”
Who is “we” ? The three last words suggest that evangelicals are not the group being described. Protestants have not been referred to, but since there is no human office-holder in Protestantism analogous to the Pope, I would guess Protestantism is referred to. (The specification “Christian pope” is a little puzzling, as the Popes in Catholicism & among the Copts are both, in intention, Christian office-holders, though not Protestant Evangelicals, let alone Protestant Evangelical Fundamentalists.)
How is “faithful progress” to be recognised ? By looking at the Tradition, is part of the answer. A faithful development within Christianity can be discerned by a number of tests. The question is one of theologically informed discernment, not of mere uninformed random guess-work. For those of us in union with the Roman Pope, the final judgement in disputed matters of doctrine rests either with the bishops teaching in communion with the Pope, whether or not in an Ecumenical Council; or, exceptionally, with the Pope acting alone but acting on behalf of the whole Church, when he defines that a doctrine is to be held by the whole Church as having been revealed by God,
That at least is what the Church in union with the Pope believes about the “keys of the kingdom of Heaven” conferred on St Peter by Christ: that Christ, to Whom Alone belongs “all power/authority in Heaven and on earth”, and to Whom Alone by right belongs, therefore, the authority of the keys, delegated to St Peter a share in the authority that is proper to Christ Alone, since Christ, as all the Gospels together (notably that by St Matthew) show, Jesus is God’s Chosen, Anointed, Davidic, Eschatological, King through Whom the Kingdom of God is made present among men. IOW, the authority of the Glorified Christ was, and still is, exercised through St Peter, as through His steward; and as the “authority/power to bind and loose” seems to refer to a Rabbinic metaphor that refers to solving disputed questions, it seems that, just as Jesus, the “greater than Solomon”, is the supremely wise king Who is the Incarnate Wisdom of God; so, this Wise King is exercising, through St Peter, the wisdom to settle disputed questions.
Leaving all the pro-Roman stuff aside, ISTM that there is a strong Biblical basis for the position that there is, in the Church on earth, an authority with competence from Christ to settle thorny issues. If the existence of human teachers and pastors in the Church, as per 1 Cor. 12, does not diminish, deny, obscure or sin against the Primacy of Christ, His Mediatorial Office, the Work of the Holy Spirit, or the place of Scripture in the Church, then it is not clear (to this poster anyway) that there is no place in Protestantism for a human office-holder in the Church with authority from Christ to “bind and loose”; IOW, an office-holder having the authority conferred on St Peter. There can be, I think, a genuinely Protestant case for a “Papacy” of some kind. A major question is, whether the office conferred on St Peter was a mere temporary conferral, or whether it was to last as long as the Church on earth should last.
That might look like covert Papalism. That is not intended. One of Protestantism’s strengths, is its ability to jettison past traditions when this is judged to be necessary for the good of its witness to Christ. (That can also be a weakness, but it is not a weakness only: it can have some advantages.) The ability of Protestantism to adapt to changing needs in a changing world as a service to an essentially unchanging Gospel, suggests the possibility that it may be able to conclude that a sort of “Protestant Papacy” is what is called for by loyalty to Scripture, regardless of its previous staunchly unPapal tradition. The question, or, a question, is: what does God want Protestantism to be today ? What changes do its various parts need to make, so as to serve Christ more faithfully, less corruptly, more fruitfully ? The Protestant attitude seems able to be summed up by St Paul’s words: “13…But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize of God’s heavenly calling in Christ Jesus.…”
The purpose would not be to resemble the CC, but to have the Church agree as closely as possible with whatever the NT says. And if that means that the Church looks uncomfortably “Romish”, then so be it. The Church is to obey Christ, so as to obey His Father. And if in doing so the Church seems to be drawing uncomfortably close to Rome, Constantinople, atheists, Communists, homosexuals, Muslims, Democrats, Republicans, theological liberals, or some other controversial group, then so be it. The Church must follow the Spirit of God whithersover He pleases, because the Church is Christ’s, not man’s, so it must be as He wants it, whether that is what His People want or not. The Reformation is not final. Confessional orthodoxy is not final. The Protestant tradition is not final. The Church is not final. Even the Bible is not final. God, and only God, is final. If Protestantism is going to be faithful to its internal logic, ISTM that it must relativise everything that is not God, and recognise God Alone, through Christ, in the Holy Spirit, as having final authority.
There is nothing more important than for the Church, than for her to be as He wants her. Human likes and dislikes & hopes and fears, cannot be allowed to get in the way of that.
Sorry this is so long. If it’s too long, please delete it 🙂