Friday, May 16, 2014

Is the Evangelical Church Hopelessly Lost? – Part II

In my last post I asked the question, "Is the Evangelical Church Hopelessly Lost?," I attempted to argue that we are, indeed, lost and to explain (at least in part) how we got lost.

The critical word, I think, is “hopelessly.”  Some are already planning the funeral service for the Evangelical Church, but maybe that’s a bit premature.  I would argue that we’re not hopelessly lost but hopefully lost.  We’re still lost, but I think we’re beginning to follow the biblical bread crumbs that will lead us back home to Jesus.

From my perspective I see (and feel with a part of me that maybe can’t be categorized under one of the five senses) that there is a grassroots movement in the church.  It is definitely not being initiated by any of the major denominations (especially mine), but it is happening.  It is being led primarily by millennials (young adults), although many from older generations are glad to see it growing and want to be part of it. 

Maybe we could think of it as a series of shifts or movements within the church; kind of like the shifting tectonic plates imperceptibly moving beneath us a millimeter (or less) at a time, until finally there’s an earthquake.  I think we could talk about a lot of these shifts but I will only discuss two.

A shift from Biblianity (or Biblicism) back to Christianity

One of the fall outs of Fundamentalism is the elevation of the Bible to “god status.”  In short, the “inerrancy” fundamental claims that the entire Bible is equally authoritative. 

In a recent article entitled "Why Christians Should Support the Death Penalty," Al Mohler argues that they should.  (You may support the death penalty.  I’m not arguing that issue one way or another here.)  My point is not that Mohler argues for the death penalty but how he does it.  In the article he never mentions Jesus; not once.  He uses the Old Testament teaching about capital punishment (a great advancement in the ancient world for sure) and applies it authoritatively to today’s society.  He simply doesn’t wrestle with anything that Jesus said.

Jesus, however, audaciously claimed that his teachings outranked the Jewish Torah.  Repeatedly he said, “You have heard it said [in Torah]… but I say to you…”  May I suggest you read Matthew 5:38-48.

What I sense, particularly among young people, is a return to a more orthodox understanding of the scriptures.  They agree, I believe, with the "The Baptist Faith and Message" which says, “The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ.  The Bible is the written Word about the living Word.  Therefore, any interpretation of a given passage must be made in the light of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ and his teachings and redemptive work.”  (page 30 in the 1971 edition)    

A shift from Arrogance to Humility

I would like to be able to describe this shift in more diplomatic language, but I don’t think I can.

By its very nature, Fundamentalism seems to gravitate toward arrogance.  We tend to be intellectually arrogant about our theology.  We seem to be unable to entertain the idea that we might get it wrong and someone else might get it right.  We tend to be morally arrogant.  So we point out those sinners and their sin instead of acknowledging that we are all sinners.  In a word, this is called moral superiority.  In another word, it’s called judgmentalism.

But I sense a shift away from this kind of arrogance.  These days I talk to more and more Christ followers who are humble and gracious.  They have this refreshing spirit about them that is respectful of people who are different from them.  They have the wonderful ability to disagree with someone while seeing that person as the offspring of God, created in his image.  They don’t need to portray themselves as less sinful or less broken than others.  They genuinely believe that every human being is loved by God and they possess the uncanny ability to extend love to all of God’s beloved, which means everyone.   

I think a lot more “shifts” could be listed.  We’re seeing young Christians shift from consumer Christianity to contributor Christianity, from maintaining the institutional church to embracing the beautiful, comprehensive mission of the Church, from being politically hyperactive to being communally interactive; the list could go on.

The result is that our lost Evangelical Church is becoming more and more hopefully lost.  We don’t claim to know exactly how or when we will find our way back home to Jesus, but we are confident that we’re moving in the right direction.  We feel him in the air.  We smell his sweet aroma.  His beauty is beginning to shine through.  And, in my opinion, the beauty of Jesus is practically irresistible.




Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Is the Evangelical Church Hopelessly Lost? - Part I

John Dickerson, an Evangelical pastor, says that “a majority of young people raised as evangelicals are leaving the church.”  According to Dickerson, “In the 1980s heyday of the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority some estimates accounted evangelicals as a third or even close to half of the population, but research by the Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith recently found that Christians who call themselves evangelicals account for just 7 percent of Americans.”  From 50% to 7% – quite a drop!  (Taken from the N.Y. Times article The Decline of Evangelical America by John S. Dickerson

It seems to me that evangelicals are lost.  We’re wandering aimlessly and some (actually most…especially young adults) are wandering out the door.  We not only don’t know where we are, we don’t know who we are.  We’re lost inside and out.

I think we need two blog posts to discuss this.  In this post I want to talk about how we got lost.  Next time I’ll wrestle with whether or not we’re hopelessly lost.

Who were evangelicals before we got lost? 

The word “evangelical” is derived from the Greek word “euangelion” which means “good tidings or good news” i.e. Gospel.  Evangelical Christians have historically been followers of Jesus who actively shared the good news of God’s love expressed through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Our distinguishing characteristic was conversion; the belief that the love of Jesus Christ transforms human beings and empowers us to become different people. 

We believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ is literally changing the world.  The kingdom of God that Jesus announced is crashing into this world and the world is being transformed.  It is a message (and a movement) of redemption and hope.  Evangelicals have a beautiful heritage and a beautiful message.

The evangelical movement is normally traced back to the Great Awakenings and leaders like John Wesley and George Whitfield.  But the heart of evangelicalism (Gospel) is as old as the Christian movement itself.

So what happened?

Like other good movements before and since, the Evangelical movement has been sort of high-jacked and morphed into a kind of “mutant” that doesn’t look much like it’s original self.  From my perspective, subcultures (think of them as viruses) have grown up in the evangelical church.  Over time these subcultures (viruses) have severed us from our identity and cut us loose to drift aimlessly.  There were other factors but I think these three were primary. 

Fundamentalism

A lot can and has been said about Fundamentalism but I will try to simplify as much as possible.  Fundamentalism is the 20th century version of 1st century Phariseeism.  The Pharisees were the legalists of their day and the Fundamentalists were (and are) the legalists of their day.

In response to the threat of liberalism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a group of protestant pastors got together and developed a list of “fundamentals.”  These were the “essential” beliefs that, in their opinion, one must adopt in order to be considered a Christian.  Most lists included five “fundamental” beliefs: biblical inerrancy, the virgin birth of Christ, substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection of Christ and the miracles of Christ.    

Here’s the important part.  The list itself was not the problem.  Many evangelicals hold to these beliefs.  The problem was the same one that always slips up from behind and bites legalists in the butt.  For Fundamentalists, an empirical belief in the fundamentals became the way one achieved salvation.  Fundamentalism turned “belief” into just another form of works salvation.  Instead of entrusting ourselves into the loving care of God through his Son Jesus, a beautiful transformation, “belief” became just another way to earn God’s favor.

Consequently we lost the transformation and the beauty.  The problem with any form of legalism is that it doesn’t actually change who we are.  We remain the same people (often bigoted and hateful), but we feel okay because we “believe” the right things. 

Fundamentalism may have been the greatest blow to the evangelical church.  Some say it was the virus that killed us.

Militant Eschatology

I thought I made up that term until I googled it and discovered that there’s a book out entitled Restorative Militant Eschatology.  I don’t know what the book’s about but here’s what I mean.

Eschatology is a word that is used to describe the study of the “end times.”  Around the time Fundamentalism came into vogue, a school of eschatology developed, at least partly out of the Fundamentalist movement.  In other words, this understanding of how this age ends and the new age begins is a little over 100 years old.  So, for 1900 years the church functioned without this idea of the end of time.

Here’s how I would describe this school of eschatology in a nut shell.  There are lots of variations on this theme, but here’s a summary.  The world is a really bad place and it’s only going to get worse.  At some point the world will be much like the time of Noah when human beings were totally controlled by the evil in their hearts.  When that happens Jesus Christ will return, but unlike his first coming when he came in peace and sacrificed his life, this time he will come in war and sacrifice the lives of his enemies.  The first time he came as a lamb.  The next time he’s coming as a lion.  In short, he will destroy all his enemies and set up his kingdom.  This theory is, of course, derived from a very specific understanding of the book of Revelation and parts of Daniel.

There are lots of flaws with this concept of “the end of time,” but the biggest problem, in my opinion, is its militant nature.  If this is the way Jesus and his Father work, then God is no different from any of the warrior gods in the Greek or Babylonian pantheons.  Jesus didn’t really defeat evil on the cross.  To get the job done he will have to come back and slaughter his enemies. 

Think about it.  If this is the way God operates then the cross is depleted of its power and we don’t really have a Gospel worth sharing.  Maybe this is one reason no one is listening when we try to share it.  We do have a beautiful story to tell.  It’s a story about a God whose love is so powerful it moves him to rescue the world.  He doesn’t have to destroy his enemies by nailing them to crosses and killing them.  He defeated evil and sin and death and hell by being nailed to the cross and dying.  His resurrection is the proof. 

Without that story to tell, evangelicals are lost.  

Militant Activism (I think we could list some more but I’ll stop because this post is getting really long.)

Fundamentalism needs two things to survive and thrive; a belief system and a list of enemies that fail to adhere to the belief system.  Militant activism is the fuel that keeps the Fundamentalist engine running.  Whether Christian, Muslim or some other expression of Fundamentalism, they need an enemy to fight (sometimes physically).

For Christian Fundamentalists the enemies tend to change over time.  Right now abortionists and homosexuals seem to be our primary targets.  Like our Pharisee ancestors we are bent on ignoring the beam in our own eye while we poke at the speck in the eyes of others.  The end result is wide spread blindness.

The other day I received a request to fill out a survey from Lifeway Research, a division of the Southern Baptist Convention.  One of the questions instructed me to rate how much of an intentional effort my church is making to address abortion and homosexuality.  I responded by saying that our church is pretty busy trying to deal with our own sins of gluttony and greed.

Sadly, evangelicals have become known for what we are against, not what we’re for.  Various research groups have conducted random surveys asking, “What is an Evangelical?”  Typical answers are almost always negative.  Most people identify us as narrow minded, bigoted, right wing, hateful and negative.

Not many are saying, “Oh yeah, evangelicals are those followers of Jesus Christ that believe he is transforming our world one person at a time.”  We don’t hear many people say, “Evangelicals are people filled with love for their enemies.  They follow the example of the founder of their movement.  They reflect the beauty of Jesus Christ!” 

Consequently, more and more young people are simply leaving the church.  There is a new wave of atheism gaining momentum among young adults.  The evangelical church is lost and we’re losing those who can’t see Jesus in us.

Are we hopelessly lost?  Stay tuned.