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a massive shift is underway
I’ve known it for a long time, but it’s another thing to face it. A massive shift is underway that is profoundly reshaping the spiritual/cultural/religious landscape of American Christianity. Everything that can be shaken is being shaken it seems in the life and perspective of the church. Missionaries are grappling with deep theological issues raised by the efforts to bring the gospel into an Islamic context (how to understand Islam? who is Allah in relation to the God of Abraham, Issac, Jacob and our Lord Jesus Christ?). Worship is shifting–and I mean contemporary worship. When Vineyard was forging a new way forward in contemporary worship there was a cultural consensus regarding contemporary music–pop/rock was king and had a vast following. But that’s changed with the internet and itunes and the millenial generation whose musical tastes are nothing if not eclectic.
What does it mean to do contemporary worship when everyone can pursue their own individual tastes in music, and the monolithic genre is no more?
Theological issues long brewing beneath the surface are surfacing: how to understand hell and eternal destinies, open theism, the nature of Scripture and it’s inspiration–these are all openly discussed, written about, wrestled with and not just in the secluded citadels of academia but online where anyone who’s interested can tune in and sound off.
Christianity Today, the flagship publication of modern American Evangelicalism recently awarded their “book of the year award” in the evangelism and apologetics category to a book by a leading evangelical scientist, Francis Collins, who advocates for “biologos” or theistic evolution, and critiques respectfully the previous prevailing American evangelical view/s of origins (young earth, old earth, Intelligent Design).
A major leader in the National Association of Evangelicals rallies American Evangelicals to support efforts to reduce the harmful effects of climate change, while an evangelical leader with one of the largest mailing lists and a powerful impact on the political landscape calls for his head on a platter, or rather for his job, as though a crime against the unity of evangelicalism has been committed. Within a year, the Southern Baptist Convention is moving toward viewing environmental stewardship, including concern to mitigate the harmful effects of climate change as part and parcel of Christian discipleship. The assumed alliance of the most vibrant movement in American Christianity with a single political party is questioned, with signs of the alliance breaking up.
The major New Testament scholar of our time, quietly but persistently insists that we’ve gotten a major aspect of our gospel proclamation wrong: the emphasis is not on going to heaven when you tie as the ultimate aim of faith in Jesus, but life after life after death, or new creation. It’s tough to read your bible and argue with him, but it doesn’t help the growing sense of disorientation: how could we have gotten the emphasis on the wrong syllable regarding something so basic? What else have we been missing?
Well, I could go on, but you catch my drift.
It’s disorienting is what it is, especially for those who’ve bought homes on the shifting landscape, for those who have comfortably settled in to what is now shifting. (I count myself among them as I make my living here.) Disorienting and anxiety provoking. Where is it headed? Where is Jesus in all this? How to discern whether to welcome, question, or resist the shifts?
And I think what’s doubly disorienting is something I’ve been discerning: that the shorthand for discernment that we’ve relied on in the past, that is, lazily applying the liberal-conservative category to events or changing perspectives (which camp is this change coming from or pleasing? as the key to deciding whether it’s to be welcomed or resisted) isn’t going to cut it. This category will mislead as much as it informs.
We’re going to have to go back to the biblical category: faithful or unfaithful to the revelation of God in Jesus? That is the pertinent question and not “does this sound liberal or conservative?”
I think, like the woman in the tumultuous crowd as Jesus was passing through, we’re going to have to put our head down and grope for the hem of his garment in all this. I think, like Peter in the face of the wind and the waves and the possibility of his boat capsizing, we’re going to have to listen for a different voice in the howling wind: Courage! I am! No fear! And I think we’re going to have to start looking for fruit, which isn’t as easy as it sounds when the orchard is being shaken by the winds of change. And we’re going to have to ask ourselves, where is love aiming in all this, and how can I follow it’s (a personal pronoun would be much better here) trajectory?
March 27th, 2008 at 9:14 am
I’ve been thinking about these issues a lot lately - especially in the wake of troubling news about the environment (the huge and mysterious dyeoffs of the Indiana brown bats and Oregon wild salmon, the breakoff of the Wilkins Ice shelf). I believe praying for a position of love and respect in the face of all the bad news is really important. I think as we bring more people in to churches maintaining a respectful attitude towards everybody’s point of view is critical. New faces, new voices, new points of view are always going to mean change of some sort and change (while inevitable) can stir up all kinds of anxiety.
Successfully fostering dialouge with people of other beliefs requires this respect too. I’ve been puzzled over these wars of religion (both overt and covert in nature) when Father Abraham is something we have in common. I know we have to hold tightly to the tenets of our faith but it’s always puzzled me that people of faith will kill each other over the issue of which day exactly is the Sabbath (holy) day? Where is the love and potential for redemption there?
I like the idea of moving beyond the conservative/liberal dichotomy and maybe finding Jesus just beyond that. I don’t have any answers but when I have been thinking this over what comes to mind is Jesus’s interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well and how Jonah was so furious about being directed to preach at Nineveh he ran away…only to get swallowed by a whale. I agree with Madeline L’Engle that all sin can be seen as hardness of heart. I have to admit when I find some person or groups of people scary and try to label them as beyond the pale; well, Jesus is usually biding his time to show me that it isn’t necessarily how he sees these people. I’m not proud to admit that I identify with Jonah way too frequently but - there it is.
I’m not advocating the codependent path of being mushy hearted and moving away from a real walk of faith with Jesus. The attitude towards Jesus and other humans that is holy might be something like having a really healthy heart - something that promotes life. I guess I could wrap all this into something along the lines of all of us being “part of the body of Christ” but I strongly suspect I’d just be rambling.
March 31st, 2008 at 5:14 am
i think the question in your last sentence is the key to navigating/living in transitional times…because we cannot do nothing. i just picked up jacques ellul’s book ‘the politics of God and the politics of man’ to read again in this political season in america, and at the end of the instroduction these words struck me, stopped me in my tracks, and call me to love in the same sort of humility as God in Christ Jesus:
“This testimony to the immense love of God which not only creates and saves but which also in its incomprehensible humility wants to associate man with its work,”
i highly recommend ellul’s book to aid in moving past the liberal-conservative perspectives, as he moves through the narratives of 1 and 2 Kings, i think this comment goes to the heart of what he is seeking to communicate and how it relates to breaking out of this lib-con perspective:
“It is from the first perspective of politics that we shall select our texts, although we shall certainly not forget that Elisha’s work is a close intermingling of political action and the individual witness of love. Between his actins in relation to oab and Naaman come the mircle of the oil and that of the raising of the small child. Between the siege of Samaria and the dama of Hazael comes the act of justice on behalf of the disinherited woman. This close intermingling of the public and the individual is the specific testimony of the prophet Elisha…Now it must be understood that there is no question here of trying to arrive at a politics taken from the Holy Scripture. One might even say that the very reverse is the case…thus God’s action in politics will continually have for us the appearance of vocation, appeal, and address, and then judgment, outburst, and wrath. It will continually have for us the appearance of grace, of timid approach, of liberation, and of rigor, of inflexibility in attaining its specific end, and sometimes, if rarely, of a miracle which intervenes to overthrow the course of events, of history, of life.”
it is as deeply satisfying and disturbing as i remember…
March 31st, 2008 at 7:30 am
the other thing that strikes me about this, and why all the issues you touched on: from worship to the gospel in context to heaven/hell to inspiration/scripture and the environment/stewardship, etc.
as anxious and fraught with disorienting vertigo of right/wrong, good/bad…these are all faultlines…nay battlefronts that betray our prideful and idolatrous natures. and as i think chesterton says, everybody in church is ok, until you mess with their idols. then watch out!