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beyond liberal/conservative evangelical
The older I get the more thankful I am for my earliest exposure to Christianity as an “adult” (age 18-19, but married.) My earliest teachers were reading the gospels primarily, with Paul as commentary (not the reverse) and writers like C.S. Lewis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Soren Kierkegard and Karl Barth. Hope I spelled those correctly. I don’t recall hearing the words “evangelical” or “conservative” as faith categories from the mother ducks upon whom I, a brand new believer duckling imprinted.
One of my first teachers was a guy named Haskell Stone, a Jewish believer who studied under George Eldon Ladd at Fuller Theological Seminary back in the day. My earliest memory of the man is sitting in the backyard of a modest home in Detroit, with maybe 60 kids my age or thereabouts, watching him teach from the gospels from a seated position in a lawn chair, smoking a cigarette in a holder like FDR and thinking nothing of it. I assumed this was normal.
Decades later, I know so many young men and women in their twenties who grew up in “conservative evangelical” homes. They are drawn to what we’re doing in the Ann Arbor Vineyard, but nervous at the same time. Because it doesn’t feel safely conservative evangelical. And so I’m trying to understand what it is they have to process as they move away from some of the faith categories that shaped them.
And I wish to make one thing clear: liberal and conservative are words that may aptly apply to the political conversation in the United States, but it is, as my brother in law Bill so aptly says, “a category mistake” to apply these words to Jesus, or the Bible, or to spirituality or faith in any way, shape or form. These are not categories that Jesus himself recognized or urged us to apply as a discernment screen, let alone a litmus test. I regret ever using these words in that way. I was in error. I was making a category mistake. I was, most of all, simply being lazy–using words because they were floating lazily along in the logosphere, near at hand, ever ready, offering themselves for service promiscuously.
So I wish to blog about this. I hope to hear from some of those who grew up in this mileu who are moving beyond this way of understanding their faith.
March 2nd, 2008 at 5:22 am
Ken,
I really appreciate the way you approach this. It isn’t (for the most part) that self-described conservative evangelicals are wrong in their theology or approach, it is that they categorize themselves and others in a way that is not biblical, that is not like Jesus.
I went to a basically conservative evangelical church (Wesleyan), and attended a Christian high school that took categories to the next level (self-described “fundamentalist”). On the one hand this (along with a bit of Pentecostalism on the side) shaped me with a love for the Bible, and a passion to spread the good news. On the other hand, my surroundings forced me to have to face (and eventually fight) stupid tendencies that arose in me as well as those around me: to see most people “outside conservative evangelicalism” as outside of Jesus (particularly with regards to mainline churches and Catholicism)…. and the badge “conservative evangelical” was a part of the way I identified myself. (at times it still is…sadly it is a bad category distinction but sometimes is a nice shortcut to saying what we think)
All this frustrated me, and Vineyard was just what I needed. Somewhere early on something of a “love for the whole body of Christ” (church) was communicated. That’s where it is at. Not in the categories, but in the love that comes from God.
Just my two cents. Keep up the good work on the blog. I’ve been enjoying it.
-Ben
March 3rd, 2008 at 7:16 am
Ben, Wise words from you, especially on love as the guiding principle for separating the wheat from the chaff of one’s beloved God tribe. Jesus modeled this kind of internal critique of his own beloved God tribe. Faithfulness to God and ultimately love of our own requires it. ken
March 6th, 2008 at 9:31 am
as i have reflected on these thoughts and the milieu of my own early formation, i realize i may defy the categories or at least be one that God positioned to be a synthesizer. you see, my father and mother were divorced when i was really young (2-years-old). my mother re-married when i was 4-years-old. this bi-furcation of my parents put in in a unique position both in what was envisioned and enfolded into me, but also in the output: my mother and step-father (whom i lived with) were strongly evangelical and conservative/republican; my father and step-mother were strongly liberal/democrat and not-so-much evangelical (although very personally and strongly holding to faith in Christ).
being between the two, i got to see many issues from both perspectives, (thus i see God at-work giving me a broader vision for things); the funny part of my teen years was that when discussing issues with my step-father and mother, they believed me to be a liberal; when discussing issues with my dad and step-mother, they labelled me a conservative.
that early input which provoked me to seeing more than one-perspective of life, has brought me to the path i now tread…which can, with possibly a critical loyalty to some socio-political context, say: George W Bush is not the leader of the free world…Jesus is the leader of the free world!
(…and i don’t feel guilty…even saying it outloud…lol)
March 6th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Steve, Explains a lot! I too was raised by left leaning democratic parents (they were part of the Young Socialist Workers Party before the war; dad was a member of the NAACP, though white); And then of course, I know-love many deeply conservative (politically) people; one of my dearest pastors friends has a radio talk show in Detroit that is very conservative. I too feel conservative often in the presence of liberals, and liberal in the presence of conservatives. ken