Why I am a (lower-case, uncapitalized “e”) evangelical, Part I
(John 15.9-12)
A reflection by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington.
The 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time: August 21, 2011
The tenth in a summer series on topics the congregation has asked to hear reflections about. This morning’s topic: What are the differences & similarities between evangelical and mainline and progressive Christian churches?
Three years ago, if someone had told me I would ever offer a reflection called, WHY I AM A (lower-case, uncapitalized “e”) eVANGELICAL, I would have smiled and said, “I hope you have a nice trip back to earth.” I knew I’d never preach anything with that title because I knew what evangelicals were like. And I was dead sure I wasn’t – and never would be – one of those Christians.
So what happened?
I’ve changed. And some people who call themselves evangelical have changed. These “new” evangelicals and I have found each other. These “new” evangelicals have called me out of my safe and reasonable faith that loved the stories and teachings of Jesus. They’ve called me into a “delightfully terrifying” love for Jesus Christ himself (phrase in quotations from Tony Jones, The New Christians, Jossey-Bass, 2008, p. 234). And for me, that changes everything. That’s why I am a lower-case, uncapitalized “e” evangelical.
Imagine we’re playing a word association game. Someone says evangelical. I imagine that, for most of us, the first word that comes to our minds wouldn’t be terribly flattering. We hear the word evangelical. And we think Religious Right. We think Jerry Falwell or James Dobson. We think of Christians who proclaim with utter certainty that women should have no leadership roles in church or society. Or that same-sex marriage is an abomination in the eyes of God. We hear evangelical, and we think of people who say people who don’t believe certain thing about Jesus are not saved and are going to hell. That’s what many Christians who don’t call themselves evangelical associate with that word.
But since 1998, the Holy Spirit has been causing quite a stir among capital “E” Evangelicals. Some religion scholars go so far as to say the Spirit is stirring up a revolution among them. Next week, I’m going to talk about a group of revolutionary lower-case “e” evangelicals whom I find myself powerfully drawn to. For now, I just want to say these lower-case “e” evangelicals, who are called emergent Christians, are building bridges out to mainline and progressive Christians. And I believe if we step onto those bridges and get to know these emergent Christians, our lives would change. And the world would change. But more about that next week.
This morning, I want to invite you to take a brief walk with me through the past 200 years of Christian history in this country. So we can see where we’ve come from. And see where we are now. I believe where we are now is a place where mainline and progressive Christians have a lot less faith, hope, and love than we need, and that is possible
Our historical walk begins with the revolution in Europe that occurred between 1650-1800. That revolution is called the Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason. Very simply put, one of the things the Enlightenment did was put everything religions said about God, the Bible, and faith under a microscope. It challenged everything that couldn’t be proven or that violated reason. Up to that point, traditional religious teachings and ways of understanding the Bible had been widely accepted as true. Now all of this was examined closely under the clear light of reason. Were these beliefs and teachings rational? Did they make sense? Could things really have happened the way the Bible says they happened? If the answer was “no”, then Enlightened thinkers concluded these teachings and beliefs should be rejected as irrational superstition. Thomas Jefferson, an avid student of the Enlightenment, took a razor blade to the Bible. He sliced away all the parts that he felt asked Christians to believe things that were superstitious, irrational, and unreasonable. So angels, prophecy, miracles, the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus, and the resurrection all disappeared from the Bible. For some reason Jefferson decided the story of the flood passed the “reasonable and rational” test. But Jefferson’s actions showed the power of Enlightenment thinking. It showed what happened when people decided Reason was the best way to measure what was true. They wouldn’t admit this, but many Enlightenment thinkers simply replaced the capital “G” God with the small “g” god of Reason. Reason was the god they worshipped. Because Reason told them how the world worked, and what was true, and what kind of life makes sense.
Of course many Christians were horrified by what Jefferson and others were doing to their religion and their sacred stories. So some Christians decided it was time to draw a line in the sand. These Christians are the capital “E” Evangelicals. The word evangelical comes from the same Greek word that gives us the words angel, good news, and gospel. So, evangelicals are any people who have something to do with being messengers of the good news. These Evangelicals came up with five things they believed anyone who was a real Christian had to believe. So today, what we associate with capital “E” Evangelicalism didn’t grow out of a long period of calm, non-anxious prayer and study. What we associate with capital “E” Evangelicalism grew out of a deep fear and anger that the faith and the sacred stories they loved were being destroyed by so-called enlightened people.
Here are the five fundamental beliefs that capital “E” Evangelicals in the early 1800s decided all “true” Christians had to believe:
1. there are no mistakes in the Bible, but each word is literally the true word of God;
2. Mary became pregnant with Jesus without having sex, so she gave birth to him as a virgin;
3. Jesus’ was brought out of the tomb alive with a body, and, when the Last Judgment comes, all who believe in Jesus Christ will rise from the dead with bodies. So the resurrection is physical, not just spiritual; and the resurrection isn’t just a metaphor or symbol that says new life can grow out of death;
4. God sent Jesus to earth to die for the sin of humankind; his blood washes us clean of sin and restores our shattered relationship with God; and
5. at any moment, Jesus Christ will return to earth to judge all people, and become the Lord of creation for all time
(Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, Zondervan, 2004, p. 197).
That these are the five absolutes evangelicals in the early 1800s decided were the mark of real Christians shows how threatened they felt. Jesus never even mentioned some of these. His resurrection is the only one among these five he talked about more than a couple of times. Evangelicals picked these because they were the teachings “liberal” Christians with Enlightenment tendencies were challenging – or rejecting altogether (McLaren, p. 197).
And what about “mainline” Christians? Mainline Christians are those Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, Congregationalists, Quakers, and the like, whose ancestors brought their “religions” with them from Europe when they migrated to the United States. Pennsylvania was the colony that welcomed people of all Christian backgrounds. These religions got the name “mainline” because a number of immigrants who were members of these established religious groups ended up living in a group of Philadelphia suburbs that were on the Pennsylvania Railroad Main Line.
Though there were clear differences between the ways Evangelical and mainline Christians believed and the ways they thought, they worked together in some amazing ways. In Britain and in the United States, Evangelicals and mainline Christians worked together to make slavery illegal and to fight for the right of women to vote. Of course there were lots of Evangelicals and mainline Christians on the others sides of these issues as well. But today it’s easy for non-Evangelicals today to assume capital “E” Evangelicals have always had the same conservative political beliefs. But that isn’t the case at all. Indeed, it was the explosion of evangelicalism in Britain in the mid-1700s that really got Christians fired up to oppose slavery.
From the colonial period into the 1970s, the vast majority of Christians in this country belonged to mainline churches. The twenty years after World War II was the period when mainline Christianity held a particularly powerful role in society. Millions of soldiers returned from fighting in that war. Millions had been traumatized by it. They filled the churches. And though they couldn’t have know this is what they were doing, they shaped these churches in ways that created environments in which they could heal from their trauma. The ways the churches were run and the ways worship was run reflected how much these returning veterans and their families needed and valued order, structure, safety, and predictability. For the 20 years following the end of WWII, mainline churches became even stronger supporters of the U.S. government and its policies. Leaders of all levels of government and industry were part of mainline congregations. This tended to keep mainline churches relatively conservative, and unable to respond creatively to the changes brought about by the revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s around civil rights, the Vietnam War, and the trustworthiness and value of institutions. Now only 13% of people in the United States say they are part of a mainline church.
The term progressive Christians grew out of a movement in the early 1900s called the Social Gospel movement. It was a clear reaction to the growth of evangelicalism. The key figure in this movement was the Baptist preacher Walter Rauschenbusch. In the early 1900s, Rauschenbusch said he didn’t believe God made Jesus die so we could be forgiven. Instead, he said Jesus died "to substitute love for selfishness as the basis of human society." He explained the Kingdom of God "is not a matter of getting individuals to heaven, but [a way to] transform…life on earth into the harmony of heaven" (Wikipedia entry, “Walter Rauschenbusch and the Social Gospel”).
During the 1900s, we Christians did an odd and tragic thing. Evangelical Christians began to focus almost entirely on personal faith. What was most important is if Jesus and I are friends. If I believe those five fundamental things about Jesus, then that’s all that really matters. Because what matters most is being saved, which means going to heaven when I die and living with Jesus there forever. Progressive Christians began to focus almost entirely on the social gospel. They said being Christian means working for civil rights and environmental protection, and against war and poverty. And the mainline Christians kind of floated between the two. Since the 1970s, progressive and mainline congregations have been losing members at an alarming pace. And capital “E” Evangelical churches, along with the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Church of God, and many Pentecostal congregations, are increasing at healthy rates.
While Christians have broken into our various camps, and gone our different ways, I think most of us have forgotten about the Jesus we say we want to follow. We’ve ignored the Jesus of the Bible in his complexity and radicalness. And instead created Jesus in our own image.
One of the “new” lower-case “e” evangelicals I’m going to talk about next week is a former capital “E” Evangelical named Tony Jones. He points to the ways capital “E” Evangelicals and mainline/progressive Christians use the Bible to show how both kinds of Christians don’t let the Bible speak for itself. We don’t let the mystery of scripture take hold of us. Instead, we bring our biases and our small “g” gods to our reading of it. So we limit the power of the Spirit to enfold us in love and send us forth as bold, imaginative, compassionate followers of Jesus. Here’s what Tony Jones says:
[T]he Bible is not an object, to be read and studied dispassionately. In my experience, evangelicals read the Bible like a science book, looking for clues that would establish its truth, in order to prove that the events recorded in the Bible actually took place and to justify what they say it says about women’s roles in the church and the abomination of homosexuality. I knew mainliners, on the other hand, who read the Bible with a healthy dose of skepticism, almost visibly uncomfortable with the extraordinary claims of miracles and items of faith like the resurrection. But I had started to think that either of these approaches is a misappropriation of the Bible. It is a living, breathing document that makes a claim on its readers’ lives
(Tony Jones, The New Christians, Jossey-Bass, 2008, p. 45).
A lot of mainline and progressive Christians struggle with letting Bible stories of mystery and miracle have power in our lives. Do a lot of us still worship the small “g” god of Reason that Thomas Jefferson and others seemed to worship?
Let’s take a look at the Easter story, and the resurrection of Jesus as an example.
Why does the resurrection seem unbelievable to so many Christians? It’s because a lot of Christians believe something that violates physical laws is probably not ‘true’ (at least not in a factual, historical sense). Many mainline and progressive Christians are not willing to hold together at the same time two ideas that seem like they can’t both be true. As far as the resurrection goes, these Christians have a hard time believing (1) that the physical laws of the universe operate everywhere all the time and (2) that events that break those laws – such as resurrection and miraculous healings – really did happen. Most mainline and progressive Christians reject that resurrection and miraculous healings happen because they place for faith in reason than in the power of God.
Why is it better to say that our reason should be stronger than the power of God? The problem with reason is that what we human beings have considered ‘reasonable’ (a universe where the earth is at the center, slavery, healing with leeches) are fruits of human reason humans have had to throw away. When we decide our reason is the way we’ll decide if something is really true, we force God to play by our rules. Which means we throw away one what people who have a living faith need to be able to hold together: mystery. So lots of us Christians decide we have to choose to have faith and trust in either the rules of physics or God’s freedom to do what God wants to do. Which means lots of Christians end up squeezing all the mystery out of God. Instead of deciding there are some things we can just never know and never be in control of. What would it take if mainline and progressive Christians decide not to fear mystery but embrace it? What if we decide God can be the creator of the universe and God can the breaker of the rules of physics? What if God can be Lord of the universe and not be the one who creates or uses evil (adapted from Jones, p. 154).
What would happen if more of us mainline and progressive Christians allow ourselves to fall into the arms of the God of Mystery whose actions we cannot control and whose ways we often do not understand? What if we stopped deciding what in the Bible could and couldn’t be true, and instead let these teachings and stories be the strongest force in shaping how we see the world, what we dream of, what we live for, and how we build community together?
If we were really able to embrace the Mystery of God, and let go our decision that what makes sense and what fits with how we think the world works, then I think more of us could hear these words of Jesus … and let ourselves truly make our home in his love.
Jesus said to his disciples,
"I've loved you the way my Father has loved me.
Make yourselves at home in my love.
If you keep my commands, you'll remain intimately at home in my love.
That's what I've done -- kept my Father's commands and make myself at home in his love.
I've told you these things for a purpose:
that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature.
This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you.
This is the very best way to love."
(The Message Re-Mix © 2003 Eugene Peterson)
Amen.
0 comments:
Post a Comment