A Glimpse Forward
The evangelical church in America can be difficult to pin down in large part because the broad descriptive terms the media uses (the Religious Right being the most infamous phrase and one even yours truly resorts to using) do not adequately capture a church that is more fractured than some would lead us to believe. As just one example, even though it would be fair to say that the church holds fairly homogeneous political positions, its theologies are wildly disparate. The thriving Word of Faith movement with its prosperity Gospel and magical “healings” are folded within the “Religious Right” but represent a mindset and theology that most other evangelicals find deeply embarrassing. Another example of the deeper fissures within American evangelical thought are the two opposing voices for reforming the church – on one hand a liberal movement that would create a religion without faith, and on the other the Emergent movement that would maintain a faith but create a new religion.
The liberal church seems to appeal mostly to people who long for a community for activism and worship, but who disagree with the orthodoxy of evangelical Christianity. The liberal church holds to a theology void the divinity of Christ, typically an allegorical interpretation of the resurrection of Christ, is fully pluralistic (it believes salvation is not limited to only fellow Christians and would acknowledge Christianity is not uniquely efficacious), and does not hold Scripture to be authoritative. Contrasted to this is the post-modern Emergent church which seems to appeal primarily to those who have grown disenfranchised with the church and are willing to stretch themselves doctrinally, but who still wish to stay comfortably within orthodox Christianity and the church at large. The Emergent movement is characterized by a real willingness to allow questioning, fewer theological statements consisting of “must believe” positions, a desire to integrate religious truths from other Christian denominations and traditions, and to a lesser degree some effort at being realistically pluralistic. The Emergent movement has courageous leaders that are worth respecting; it is not easy to divorce yourself from the traditional and long-held belief that all who do not know Christ will face eternal damnation. To challenge these beliefs, as people such as Brian McLaren and Tony Campolo (just to name a few) have done, is an honorable and important step.
As these two options for change within the church engage the challenges of this century, they are going to encounter changes the church has not faced in over two hundred or more years. The 21st century holds out great promise, but only at the other side of great turmoil. In the lifetimes of most of those reading this essay, the world will face a set of obstacles that will strain our social systems in ways we have rarely been tested. It would do us all well to learn from history as to what mistakes humanity is fond of making in times like this. In the next thirty years, American culture will change as the middle class begins to face the reality of its mounting debt position coupled with family’s diminishing wages. The economic squeeze play that will occur when two-income families are initially reduced to one but still have fixed debt payments will result in families across America reappraising not just their finances but their hopes and most importantly, where they look for answers to their diminishing aspirations. In this same period of time, the world will begin to wrestle with the implications to a key non-renewable energy source (oil) dwindling away. Whether we subscribe to the specifics of Hubbert’s peak, which accurately predicted the peak of American oil production and has predicted an equally ominous peak for global oil production within the next ten years, is less important than the general observation that our systems of transportation and the many industries which rely on petroleum as a precursor will face real strain never before seen. This need not become an apocalyptic scenario, but it must be remembered that our history as a people suggests we respond to a crisis well, but to the leading indicators of said crisis quite poorly. Globally, the rise of religious fundamentalism has repercussions we find echoed in our pain, sorrow and confusion over the events and our responses to 9/11. The likelihood that the small-scale terrorism like what London experienced last week will increase is all but inevitable. The UK, a more stoic people than we Americans, if for no other reason than decades of IRA terrorism and the memories of German bombing raids during World War II, has handled the recent difficulties well; but American culture will respond differently when facing similar subway or shopping mall bombings. These three cultural changes: the diminishing aspirations of the American middle class, the economic aftermath of a diminishing global oil production and lastly the likelihood of an America on edge from repeated terrorist strikes are all challenges the church will have to face. It may seem odd to have begun this essay on the two voices for reform of the Christian church and to now be making societal observations; however, I believe nothing is more important when wrestling with the changes the church must make than to reflect accurately on where society at large is going.
It is in light of these three cultural issues that I continue to believe the danger of fundamentalism is higher now than ever before, and it is because I hold to this fear that I believe the church needs to aggressively reform itself before it finds history has again swept its voices of moderation and reformation aside and has co-opted the language of politics and power. I wonder if a history has adequately memorialized the angst Dietrich Bonhoffer must have felt at seeing too many of his fellow clerics and citizens be unwilling or unable to see through their own fear, anger and pain to the deeper dangers of Hitler’s Germany.
Evaluated pragmatically, it would seem the Emergent church holds out the greatest promise for reforming the church from within. This is, if for no other reason, because the positions of the Emergent church, while encouraging a broader orthodoxy, still stay comfortably within the outlines of acceptable doctrine, making it easier for large bodies of Christians to migrate to the Emergent church’s positions. My suspicion of the Emergent movement is not because I doubt the motives of its leaders, which is not something I can say of the more evangelical and fundamentalist parts of the church. Having immersed myself in the writings and teaching of the Emergent movement’s leadership, it is impossible to not appreciate their graciousness and intellectual curiosity. The difficulty I see within the Emergent movement is whether or not it will prove to be able to withstand the withering attacks of their more conservative brothers whose theology is, to be fair, much easier to understand and layered beneath fewer theological abstractions and difficult ideas than those of the Emergent movement. My suspicion, which I believe can be held in high confidence based on history, is that during times of duress we all look for simplicity, for quick solutions and easy answers. The Emergent movement, for all of its appreciated good, requires a mindset comfortable with complexity. Because I doubt the attitude of tomorrow’s America will be ready or interested in answers that pose complexity, I fear the potential of the Emergent movement to reform the church from within.
It is not for this reason that, if my positions were to be characterized with broad brush strokes, I would begrudgingly call myself a “liberal.” To fear that our society will not tolerate complexity is damning, and not a conclusion I wish to hold. For me, my resistance to the Emergent movement is because I find actually more questions than answers in their theology. Since my initial flirtations with them began because of questions that still exist after my share of rendezvous with their teaching, I must look elsewhere for answers to my questions. Without beleaguering the point, it is sufficient to say that I have found the answers I seek in more liberal positions (specifically those earlier mentioned as characterizing the liberal church). On a deeper level, my unwillingness to ally myself with the Emergent movement is because not only do I not hold to various creedal statements they hold dear, but because I believe the primacy they give these creedal statements, and the sacred authority with which the support these claims can not prevent itself from reverting to fundamentalism.
I do not believe we can advance as a species in an increasingly small world where our capacity to destroy one another is higher than it has ever before been, if we do not learn to make secondary our various myth statements and make primary those things that bind us together in community and that foster transcendent values we all hold in common. Ken Wilber, in his book A Sociable God, has this to say about the future of American Christianity in relation to the changes he believes it must undergo:
“Whether esoteric, mystical, nonfundamentalist Christianity will be able to carry out this transformation, or whether it can even survive the prior, necessary demythologizing and dismantling of its exoteric, patriarchal, mythical accouterments, I do not know … But I am fairly convinced that one of the keys to the specific type of future transformation lies in surface structure compatibility, that is, in a compatibility of the old and new translations, a bequeathing of legitimacy (the old and new have to be different enough to constitute an actual transformation, but similar enough to encourage people to jump, as it were). Therefore, the new yogic (shamanic, panenhenic) translations will likely have certain surface structures that are compatible with (and perhaps occasionally direct continuations of) past surface symbolizations. For example, the modern phase of rational-individuation, however otherwise different from its mythic-Christian predecessor, retains an emphasis on personhood and individuality, which is clearly Judeo-Christian in origin and nature (God loves and protects individual souls; the individual person is cherished in the eyes of the Lord; God Himself is big person, so is His Son, etc.). Because of this general necessity for surface structure compatibility, I do not believe that Eastern religions will serve as large-scale models for Western transformation, however otherwise significant they might have proven to be in terms of being provocateurs. Their influence will be considerable, to be sure, but in a way that is finally translated and assimilated in the new Western panenhenic worldview, and not merely transplanted en bloc … it would not surprise me if a new and specifically Western mysticism arose, although it would be compatible in surface terms with Christian symbology and rational technology.” (Emphasis Author’s, pages 130-131)
Underneath some of the language unique to Wilber’s model of religious development as advocated in his book is the glimmer of potential the Emergent movement holds. The Emergent church is close enough (to use Wilber’s phraseology it bequeaths legitimacy) to the current evangelical church as to gradually shift the church farther away from its current center of gravity. My resistance to believing this will be sufficient is again that when seen within the increasingly complex and confusing world of the next thirty years, I do not believe this gradual change will be of interest or will be able to adapt itself to the needs of the American Christian community at large. If we return to this quotation from Wilber, we also see the second issue at-large for the Emergent church which is its ability to withstand the demythologizing of its sacred texts. The essential distinction between the Emergent and liberal church is that the liberal church has undergone this demythologizing and the Emergent church has not. It is for this reason that the Emergent church represents a comfortable shift for some; were it to eliminate this reluctance it would be unable to serve as a bridge to anything other than its own confusing conclusions.
Is it necessary that the Emergent church demythologize its creedal statements? No simple answer exits. Inevitably if it were to do this, it would lose any of its ability to have a voice within the existing evangelical church. The chasm that exists between conservative and liberal Christians is as wide as the chasm between conservative Christians and agnostics. Seen in this light, we can appreciate that for the Emergent movement to have value it must maintain certain parts of its teaching. What is lost if the church does not demythologize its beliefs? In the short term, nothing of significance is lost other than such a position does not recognize the deep unwillingness of most people to wrap their belief statements around supernatural occurrences. But in the mid-term, something more significant is lost when myth statements are allowed to stand. Again quoting Ken Wilber in his The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion that
“[unless religion can learn to] put brackets around their myths … [myths] can not be separated from their past of being linked to power … because evidence undoes mythology … mythology hides from evidence … and mythology has been a source of oppression … because power, not truth, drives claims that hide from evidence …”
If that which is given primacy is that which is supra-rational (a colloquialism for irrational) then we establish that which can not be tested as that which must be allowed to stand as absolute truth. Such compromises infect the thinking and reasoning ability of a culture at large and are to be seen as the poison they rightfully are. When Sam Harris says that “faith is a conversation stopper” and that we must “cease to pretend to be absolutely certain of that which we cannot be” he is saying this less out of a resistance to organized religion and more out of a realistic acknowledgement that sloppy thinking, incomplete arguments supported by things not in evidence, and leaps of faith have societal consequences. It is an overstatement to say that every time faith has been publicly advocated it has resulted in the types of things this essay makes vague allusions to; however, that is not what I am positing. What I am positing is a world of increased tension, with people at large looking for answers and to some very real degree, looking for scape-goats, history teaches us that religion will be happy to oblige and too many times does just that. In such an environment we have every reason to rightfully fear where sloppy thinking may lead, its implications to public policy, and the type of retribution it becomes willing to advocate.
We began with a question as to what the future of tomorrow’s Christianity will look like. The world has something to reasonably fear unless the Emergent movement finds an increasingly strong voice and solid leadership that is able to clearly articulate its differences from its fundamentalist brothers. A particular challenge for the Emergent movement is to become that which it most abhors and what its post-modern advocates direly resist – the idea of an internal hierarchy. The Emergent movement needs to prove it is sustainable and that it can project itself beyond its limited sphere of influence today. If the Emergent church is unable or unwilling to take strong stands of denial out of some convoluted sense of grace, it will no doubt prove unable to resist the increasing tensions and searching for simplicity that its more extreme fellow believers will offer. In a similar vein, the liberal church needs activists who make activism primary and belief secondary, drawing others to them in causes that are sensible. The liberal church must pick its battles carefully, especially when engaging its own more right-of-center believers. If the future is as I suspect, we may find ourselves learning again the painful lessons of where public religion belongs and where it does not. Now is the time to wrestle with potential remedies to the past excesses of organized religion; to wait too long could be a tragedy of truly historical import.
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4 Responses to “A Glimpse Forward”
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About MysteriousFaith
“If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm.”
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July 13th, 2005 at 1:05 pm
Ben, I like what you say in the article and have many areas of agreement, and yet here is my question: How do you connect the 2nd to last paragraph in your article to the title of your website - “Mysterious Faith”? It is almost as if you are saying - “Mysterious Faith - just without the mystery!” Help me understand this better. - Shane
July 13th, 2005 at 2:58 pm
Shouldn’t you be picking out baby clothes or something?!? Take a look at my “about” section in the site - it should explain my struggle in maintaining the web site’s name. In short, I kept it up to acknowledge that which we can not know and respect for the role faith has played, and will continue to play, in the lives of those around me. What I mean by acknowledge mystery is different than what POMO people tend to mean - if something doesn’t make sense, then it doesn’t belong in a belief statement. If something just isn’t known, then it’s a mystery. Certain dogmas just don’t make sense, and so they don’t belong to appropriate mystery. I mean mystery more in line with the sense of the four unanswerable questions of Buddhism. Those reasons and, well, I like the name of the site!
July 30th, 2005 at 8:10 am
I am a former evangelical who has more than a few bones to pick with the Religious Right. However, I have difficulty aligniing my beliefs with either the liberal or Emergent groups of Christianity. My problem is that I find both groups reductive. A Christianity without a divine Jesus seems to fly in the face of everything that Christianity has stood for. If I decided that Jesus was not divine then I do not think I would call myself a Christian any longer. On the other hand, I agree with the liberals when they call us to interfaith dialogue. I believe firmly, however, that such a dialogue would be pointless if we are willing to abandon our doctrines at the door. This is where Wilber is wrong. Myths must be held onto at the dialogue table, to be shared and reflected on, not to be hidden away by a bunch of embarrassed revisionists. The places where I see the best results of interfaith dialogue are actually in the Roman Catholic Church between monastics. People like Thomas Merton, Bede Griffiths, David Steindl-Rast and Laurence Freeman point the way better than most academics and liberal bishops.
Perhaps at the end of the journey we will abandon the raft of mythology and doctrine, but until then, I want to confess the risen Christ proudly while listening open-mindedly to Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Druids and anyone else.
For an excellent essay on dialogue and Christian faith, I’d recommend this link.
August 3rd, 2005 at 8:05 pm
Andy - Before responding, let me thank you for the nature of your response. In preparing my essays and looking for particular types of dialogue amongst people of disparate viewpoints, your response is precisely what I am looking for; it is sufficiently detailed as to be helpful and for that I do thank you!
Wilber and Sam Harris (The End of Faith) both hold to a similar construct - that being to demythologize religion - but for two different reasons. Wilber’s reason is that he believes ultimate truth is not contained within any one faith tradition and so he sees holding primary emphasis on mythology as being against his objective of integrating all various truths into one global set of beliefs. To accomplish this, he believes we must make myth secondary to those truths that can withstand empirical analysis as to their claims of achieving transcendent value. Harris’ perspective is similar in that he also wants to de-mythologize humanity (religion specifically), but his reasons are much more direct: he believes we will collectively destroy ourselves unless we learn to become increasingly hostile to truth claims that put us at odds with others. Said most simply, Harris’ argues that myth separates our collective emphasis on real spirituality (and those who diminish Harris’ work selectively look past his very practical emphasis on morals, values, ethics and spirituality).
Does having a Christianity without a Divine Christ fly in the face of everything Christianity has stood for? Perhaps. At a practical level it is imprudent to argue that Christianity has ever not had a clear idea of the Divine Christ (minus perhaps those who would look to the years between Jesus’ death and Paul’s ministry as being indicative of myth being developed); and so on that point you are correct. I feel I would be out nothing in my beliefs were that to be actually true, although in my life - and hear this carefully because this is difficult to say and no doubt to hear - confessing a Divine or Risen Christ has never impacted my life in any material way. The only means by which I have been able to do something lasting with the life of Christ has been on the other side of what I was taught was heresy; namely, my slide from orthodoxy when this slide was done sincerely and not out of blind rebellion forced me to think about the life of Jesus and why he was so compelling. Was he God? I do not know. I suspect not, but frankly, unlike your comments (which I wish you to know I respect in all sincerity - it is the belief of many of my dear friends and family) I have found a Christianity of enormous depth and value outside of dogma I do not understand and that which does not make sense to me.
Let me finish with two things - the last which will be a lengthy quote from Wilber’s The Marriage of Sense and Soul. First, I do agree with you as to the essential value of work by people like those you mention. Within these discussions (I would add people such as Huston Smith and Harvey Cox to that list), a real desire for truth above all else is possible - and few other places. I am finishing Merton’s Mystics and Zen Masters - I would be very curious to have seen where his tragically shortened life would have led him to with more time to explore interfaith dialogue.
I will close with Wilber (pages 164-166): “Religious mythological proclamations are clearly dogmatic, which means that when they are taken to be literal truths, they are simply asserted without any supporting evidence. As such, they fail the test of the three strands of all valid knowledge. At one time, those beliefs performed various important cultural functions, such as maintaining social cohesion, because they formed the basis of a legitimiate (or consensual) intersubjective worldivew. But with the differentiations and increased depth of the dignity of modernity, a more sophisticated truth disclosure placed these mythological claims in irreversible doubt. With each development unfolding, the truths of the higher domain place the truths of the lower domains into a profoundly different context, a context that, because it transcends and includes its juniors, also preserves and negates various features of its predecessors. Modernity preserved many of the aspirations, ideals, and values expressed in the best of mythology (such as retribution and justice) but negated most of its literal contents (such as the notion that we all actually descended from Adam and Eve) … But the fact remains: the concrete-literal forms of mythology cannot withstand - and have not withstood - the tests of modernity: those concrete claims are indeed bogus. And if religion is to survive in a viable form in the modern world, it must be willing to jettison its bogus claims, just as narrow science must be willing to jettison its reductionistic imperialism … Because evidence undoes mythology, mythology intrinsically hides from evidence. Thus mythology is - and historically has been - a massive source of personal and social oppression. This is why the Enlightenment, as Habermas points out, always understood itself as a counterforce to mythology. The clarion call of the Enlightenment was for evidence, not myths, because these myths, despite the lovely halo given them by today’s premodern revivalists, were in fact a source of brutal social hierarchies, gender oppression, wholesale slavery, and barbaric tortue. ‘Remember the cruelties!’ was indeed the battle cry of the Enlightenment, and for precisely that reason.”
Let me end with this comment: Andy, if Christianity is exclusively right in some way I think it makes sense that we could see in the lives of its practioners something fundamentally unique. I see something very, very special in the lives of many great Christians, but I see it equally well in those from other faiths. It is for this reason, and those previously listed, that I deliberately make myth second (and a distant one at that) to transcendent values.