Cons and Libs pt 2

I'm stealing from myself again. Mostly because I'm ready to go home but I don't want to neglect posting yet another day. So here's some follow up thoughts from my earlier post. Thanks to a new friend for the thoughtful response to that post that prompted me to expand and, maybe, clarify.

Speaking in HUGE generalizations that are unfair to both sides - "conservative" Christians in the 19th and 20th centuries emphasized belief in the Bible on things like the Resurrection but over-spiritualized what Jesus says about violence and about love for enemies and care for the poor, widows and orphans - which is a huge theme not just from Jesus but throughout Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and the prophets (Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, Amos, etc.). "Liberal" Christians in the same period have emphasized what's been called the social gospel - caring for the poor and the hungry - choosing to emphasize belief in the Bible (the same books I just mentioned) when it talked about those things, while overspiritualizing what it said about the Resurrection, the Virgin Birth, and miracles generally. This is in my opinion a sad fact of history.

"Conservative" Christians didn't like the (in their and my opinion) overspiritualizing (i.e. lack of faith in the actuality of) miracles and especially the Resurrection, and so they fought against the social gospel - which, however (in my opinion, again), was paying real attention to the substance of Jesus' teaching on loving your neighbor as yourself. Possibly, had the social gospel not been paired with theological liberalism, conservative Christians might not have fought so hard and been so suspicious of anyone who talked about applying Jesus's teaching to real life concerns. (Though critics could also charge that they were motivated by self-interest to argue - because let's face it, Jesus' claims and expectations are radical and scary.) "Liberal" Christians on the other hand couldn't believe that so-called Christians wouldn't join their social activism, and so were very contemptuous of the conservatives, and over time came to think of them as mean and not-too-bright. (THat's possibly the most unfair generalization I've made yet - but certainly that's the impression many liberal Christians give of their opinion of conservatives). Both sides came to see the other as unbiblical, and as the enemy, and failed to obey the biblical command to love your enemy, or pray for those who persecute you...both sides failed to listen...and in the meantime, the biblical message was split in two, and the two sides turned against each other, and the real teaching of Jesus was obscured for a long time. Good people on both sides trying to be faithful - but it was pretty much impossible for much of the 19th and 20th centuries for anyone in the USA to do anything without taking into account the conservative/liberal split. A great waste, I think.

(Interesting sidenote - a Baptist named Walter Rausenbusch was one of the first in the modern era to emphasize the Social Gospel, and was influenced by Charles Sheldon, who wrote the book "In His Steps" and came up with the WWJD phrase to influence his congregations. When they saw a poor person, he said, they should ask themselves "what would Jesus do" and then do likewise. He intended it to get his people to act like Jesus and help the poor and the needy. Ironically, when WWJD bracelets became popular in the 1990s, it was - as best as I can tell - in conservative churches, and was usually used with youth and children to emphasize behaving morally with regard to cliques, peer pressure, sexual behavior, not cheating on tests, not drinking, being generally "good" - but usually was not used to encourage care for the poor.)

By the way - conservative Christianity and liberal Christianity do not equate to conservative and liberal politics. There's a lot of overlap, certainly, and that's increased since the rise of Jerry Falwell/the Moral Majority/the Religious Right/etc. And in the last couple of years there's a push-back from folks along the theological left side - a push-back which, again, sometimes blurs the distinction between liberal/conservative politics and liberal/conservative theology. But when I'm saying "conservative Christian" I don't mean "Republican Christian." Likewise, one could be a liberal Christian and be conservative economically - that is, have a belief in helping the poor but not believe in welfare and therefore not be a democrat. Personally, if we're talking conservative and liberal politics? I don't have much faith that either side has a great approach to helping the poor. But political sides is not my main concern. My main concern would be for Christians to stop dividing the Bible against itself, place their faith in the resurrected Lord, and do the things he said to do. "Make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey all the things I have commanded you to do." If we had more churches doing that, more church communities that would help people like me who are basically selfish and challenge and support us to step out in faith and obedience...

That would be something to see. And a thrill to be a part of.

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Blog on Everything Must Change

Eli did some blogging about the Charlotte EMC event - find it here. There - it's almost like I've posted, the way I keep promising, isnt' it? :)

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Liberal or Conservative? An Emerging Perspective

I'm quoting myself in this a lot - stuff I posted on another website, slightly reconstituted for here.

I've mentioned, and some of you are familiar with, the term "emerging" or "emergent" church. At a really basic level, the term speaks to how the church is changing (or needs to change) to keep up with shifts in culture, from a modern to a post-modern world. A lot of times emergent folks talk about it using the metaphor of a conversation, because what "post-modern" means, and will mean, is still evolving - emerging - so it can't be described fully. But if you've ever heard or used the phrase "cultural Christianity", ever thought that Christianity in our churches was sort of nominal, not going very deep and not creating a community or environment where people lived like Jesus did, then you have something in common with the emergent conversation.

Note that the message of Jesus is always spoken in, and interpreted through, a culture(s) and worldview(s). Paul talked about "being all things to all people," so that by any means he might win some - this is someone who understood that cultural differences or preconceptions shouldn't get in the way of the Gospel. And for some, who are already on the "post-modern" end of things, the "modern" era church is a church from another culture - one that's difficult to understand or to get excited about, one that doesn't seem very relevant. One where you can fall asleep during a sermon week after week - can you imagine anyone sleeping through one of Jesus's sermons?!??!

Another way to look at it - the message of the gospel has to continually be put in fresh wineskins. The old ones burst.

Anyway, much of the emerging conversation is a lot more radical than this - this is a soft-pedaled, not-even-scratching-the-surface description of the conversation. For a lot of people, emerging stuff is suspect - maybe heretical. For a lot of other people, emerging is a revival and reformation of God with, perhaps, the potential to rival the Protestant Reformation for its power. (Hopefully without any burnings at the stake or religious warfare this time around.)

All I know is, my very modern-era seminary education just about killed me. That's not entirely fair - I'm sure I'll blog about the seminary years at some point - but, it was not a good period. It's taken a good chunk of the last five years to recover.

The other thing I know is, over the last year and a half that I've been engaged in emerging conversations, I've been more excited about what God is doing - had more passion (in the current sense and also the archaic sense of pathos) for seeking to live in the way of Jesus - been more aware of the Spirit working in, through, and around me - and had more hope in and love for the church, than I've had in years. It's also reawakened a love for learning and a commitment to missional living (that being a key component of emerging/post-modern discussions of the church).

Anyway, this started off to be about politics, but I know lots of my friends aren't familiar with emerging stuff, and these days, to know what's going on with me, you have to know a little about it. My attraction to the emerging church came initially (I have more reasons now) from the concept that “post-modern” attached to the church meant “post-liberal” and “post-conservative.” I’ve been a token conservative among liberals AND a token liberal among conservatives, without much modifying my views – because, in my opinion, speaking primarily theologically and not necessarily politically/socially, I think the conservative/liberal split is one of the great tragedies of the church in the modern era and one key reason the church in the West is so weak. My first exposure to emergent was in finding convergence among those coming out of a post-liberal and a post-conservative viewpoint – in other words, across denominational lines people looking seriously again at the message of Jesus were finding themselves agreeing more than arguing.

Specific examples of how the liberal/conservative split seems, to me, unsupportable? I’ll use admittedly extreme examples - One side supporting a social gospel that doesn’t include belief in the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord (the disciples had a spiritual experience, there wasn’t a bodily resurrection); the other side loudly proclaiming faith in the resurrection but closing a school of social work at their seminary because Jesus wouldn’t have been concerned about feeding poor people.

Huh?

Both sides seem insane. That's not very charitable. Sorry. But come on - is either side reading the Bible they're fighting over? One talking about a gospel but not believing in the best thing about it – the Resurrection, the death of death, the reason we have hope! The other side proclaiming a gospel about the resurrection, but ignoring the words of the One Who was Resurrected, who proclaimed that he was anointed to preach a gospel of good news to the poor, and who encouraged the wealthy to sell all they possessed, give it to the poor, and come follow him.

How did the liberal/conservative split become so…well, it’s offensive, but the only word I can think of is irrational, or at least inconsistent. If you take the Bible seriously, it seems to me you should be kind to the alien in your midst and think more about grace than law – the way Huckabee talked at the start of the campaign, not the way he talks now. Or the way that the Democrats speak. It also seems to me that if you take the Bible seriously you at least have to wrestle with the issue of abortion, and not be in favor of everything that supports it and against everything seeking to reduce the (staggering) numbers of abortions. In other words, closer to a typically Republican position.

(By the way – I’m weak in a pro-life stance, primarily because forcing a woman to bring a baby to term against her will seems inherently gross and violating. And more pro-life folks than I am, I think you should acknowledge that. It might, ultimately, be more important to fight for the unborn who can’t fight for themselves; but it’s still a violation of a woman to force her to bear the child, and it can never be fixed – it will affect her whole life. And of course it will on the other side too. I go round and round…primarily, I’m saying that Christians ought to wrestle with that issue more, and also focus on systemic issues that promote abortion like poverty and unequal opportunity and children who don’t have parents and get raised by the gov’t. Church folks that believe in the family, why are we letting that happen? And I don't say more about that because I'm single and not in any position to adopt and so not in any position to moralize about it.)

It seems to me that if you’re Christian you have to temper support for the military with commands to love your enemy and turn the other cheek. You may or may not be pacifist, ultimately – it’s a legit debate - but if you’re Christian you shouldn’t be competing with other candidates to sound most hawkish, so that you talk about bombing people to Hell. That kind of language shouldn’t be used lightly.

I could go on and on and on…basically, it drives me crazy that Republicans co-opt half of the moral/ethical/religious arguments I take seriously, and Democrats take the other half, and both splits seem so irrational to me.

That’s why I’m independent, and why I’m drawn to McCain and Obama – their stance on reaching out across the aisle, regardless of individual issues, strikes me as the most Christian response (working with enemies) and as the one that produces hope of policies balanced between extremes on the left and on the right. I also understand Christians who feel they can’t support either side – I’ve decided that in the past. (Not sure I’d make those same decisions again, but I did at the time.)

And yes, it should be a right not to die of something treatable just because every generation of your family for hundreds of years has been poor. (Not saying that applies to every uninsured person – but it applies to some of them.) And yeah, I'm supporting Obama. (But if Senator Clinton beats him out, I'll go back to McCain. Why? Because, whatever they or the pollsters tell you, McCain is post-Conservative - at least a little - and so am I. Hillary is definitely not post-liberal.)

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Missional? Emergent?

It occurred to me that, again, lots of my friends and family aren't all that familiar with terms thrown around in the last post, like "emerging church" and "missional". Since I'm likely to use them a lot, I was going to link to their entries on wikipedia. But glancing at them quickly, I'm going to refrain - as it turns out, I don't think their descriptions are very good. They seem very one-sided and written by people suspicious of the terms. (You can still read them if you want, but I'm not going to help you do it. :P Except for making it easy to get to wikipedia.)

So, since it's late and I don't want to write out comprehensive descriptions myself, which would also be one-sided - anybody know where there are really good definitions of the terms? You can get a fair bit of info from checking my links - there are several missional/emergent-influenced groups mentioned to your right, especially the Emergent Village. But that itself is only one expression of the emerging church or the missional life. Though this, from EV, seems like a pretty good description of missional as commitment to God's world:
"We practice our faith missionally – that is, we do not isolate ourselves from this world, but rather, we follow Christ into the world.
We seek to fulfill the mission of God in our generations, and then to pass the baton faithfully to the next generations as well.
We believe the church exists for the benefit and blessing of the world at large; we seek therefore not to be blessed to the exclusion of everyone else, but rather for the benefit of everyone else.
We see the earth and all it contains as God’s beloved creation, and so we join God in seeking its good, its healing, and its blessing.
PRACTICES:
To build relationships with neighbors and to seek the good of our neighborhoods and cities.
To seek reconciliation with enemies and make peace.
To encourage and cherish younger people and to honor and learn from older people.
To honor creation and to cherish and heal it.
To build friendships across gender, racial, ethnic, economic and other boundaries.
To be involved at all times in at least one issue or cause of peace and justice."

Cool. Whereas the wikipedia article implies that missional doesn't include 'teaching' or encouraging 'holiness' or 'disciple-making.' Which may or may not be true of individual strains, but is not my understanding or experience. My experience is that there's lots of teaching and theology; and as for calling for holiness or disciple-making, it's more fair to say that there's a different understanding of it. Say, rather than teaching somebody to recite the four spiritual laws, or that they're not supposed to dance or , you try to model loving God, loving neighbor, forgiving enemies...you know, Jesus stuff. And you build relationships with people without first requiring that they live as if they were saints - which is not the same thing as not talking about holiness, or virtue - though as I say, I've no doubt that tendency is there for some. Overall, though, I find that the missional understanding calls much more fully for holiness, as it encourages taking Jesus' most outrageous commands seriously, and encourages living them out all the time, not just on Sunday morning or Wednesday night.

Any better definitions of missional out there? How about emerging/emergent?

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