Church Voices

I already posted this on my blog, but this week’s NPR religion podcast is causing me to revisit the Pat Robertson remarks about Israeli PM Ariel Sharon.

The evangelical Christian community was quick to separate themselves from Uncle Pat’s ramblings. This leaves the media with a new dilemma. No self-respecting Christian wants to be identified with Robertson’s opinions; he’s just a lone-lunatic who represents only himself. So now, they need to find a new spokesman, someone to quote when something crazy happens in the world. Amy Sullivan at the Washington Monthly blog offered up her suggestions to replace Pat and also defunct blowhard Jerry Falwell. Her list frightens me more than a hairspray shortage at the TBN studios. Here’s the men she offers up [notice no females. Interesting?] and my immediate vote on their representation of the evangelical nation.

Ted Haggard- Not my President.
Rick Warren- The guy I [purposely] like best on this list.
Brian McLaren- Does he even know what he believes?
Joel Osteen- Um, no.
Rod Parsley- Um, seriously, no.
Franklin Graham- I’d rather have his dad.
Jim Wallis- Well intentioned, but a too liberal for even me.
Ron Sider- Call me ignorant but I really don’t know who he is.
Tony Campolo- I just can’t see it.
Herb Lusk- See Ron Sider.
TD Jakes- Sorry, but thou art loosed.

So with my almost unanimous rejection of this list I’m left to wonder a few things.
- Are my standards too high?
- Am I expecting these guys to be/do more than humanly possible?
- Is the problem with me, feeling caught in the middle of the conservative/liberal theological spectrum?
- I am just stuck up?

I’m still sorting through those questions but, in the meantime, who’s my choice to speak for American evangelicals?

No one.

That’s right, I’d prefer silence.

It’s an impossible task, so why even bother? No one would think of selecting one person to be the official spokesperson for all American Caucasians. And it’s the same thing with evangelicals. If you gathered that group above in a room, how many issues do you think they’d agree on? I’d be embarrassed to hold the theology of at least half the guys on that list so why would I want them answering spiritual/theological/cultural questions on my behalf? True, I share some of the same foundational beliefs as these guys- Jesus, Bible, etc. But when some of them open their mouths, it makes me want to hide . . . or hurl . . . or do both.

Obviously this whole debate hinges on whether or not I continue to identify myself as an evangelical. Of that I’m not too sure. I find myself drifting back to my Restoration Movement roots where just being a Christian was enough. This way, no one has to do the talking, and I can just let Jesus speak for me.

If only it were that simple.

The more I work in the church the more I’ve found this to be true.

This has led me to ponder the difference between the modern liberal view of charity and the Christian view. In the modern liberal view, charity is a poor substitute for government programs, which have the advantage of being able to force people who need the charity to participate and to coerce resources from others to expand the scope of the program to meet the larger need. In short, it’s about providing the most relief to the largest number.

In the Christian view, as I am coming to understand it, it seems that charity is as much about the moral choices made by the giver. It is important that the giver be touched and transformed by the experience. It therefore cannot be forced.

I have consistently maintained that there is very little difference between emergents and conservative Christianity* (the main difference being the march of technology). Here’s yet another attempt by emergents to create a line of demarcation. There’s a lot in there, but due to my short attention span, we’ll focus on one particular point:

Postconservative evangelicals believe that the conservatives’ privileging of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy is mistaken. Inerrancy is a data-centered approach to Scripture, whereas postconservatives practice a person-centered approach. In our view, the Bible is not a repository of facts, but rather a witness to a living person: the resurrected Jesus Christ.

This is a distinction without a difference. On the one hand we have people who believe the Bible is a collection of true data. On the other hand we have people who believe that the Bible is a collection of true observations. Swap out and trade the words “data” and “observations” all you want and it doesn’t radically alter (or even alter at all) either statements. The primary source of evidence (ie data) collected in a court room for a criminal proceeding are eye witness accounts. Whether you say to yourself, “Ah, the courts are dealing with a collection of data about a crime”, or “ah the courts are dealing with an eye witness accounts about the crime” you’re making the same statement. Swapping out one synonymn for another doesn’t create an actual difference in ideology.

On a side note, sometimes I really hate the internet. I get sick of reading the lastest manifesto about why a particular author is the member of a sub-sub-sub group of Christianity that is somehow more “authentic”, “honest”, “generous” or whatever than every other Christian or group of Christians in the history of the universe. Out here in small town Michigan simply being a Christian is enough. I don’t have to make sure I have all my super secret code words down straight so I can gain entrance to the Club Relevancy. I can just minister in whatever meager way I can.
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Do you think a church should force members to give money through either the use of force or the threat of the use of force? What if the money secured through the use of force or the threat of force was used 100% for the feeding and care of the poor? Would it be acceptable for a church to threaten members with force then?

I don’t know any Christian who has answered yes to any of those questions.

So why do some Christians believe it is a moral duty for Christians to support government action that does the exact same thing? For example, the National Council of Churches (NCC) wrote a letter to congress which leveraged their claims of a moral imperative into pushing Congress into delaying passage of the federal budget on the basis that there are $50 billion in cuts to services from the poor.

In other words the NCC believes that it is a Biblical requirement for the church (or at the very least a non-Biblical though required duty of the church) to outsource the threatening of the use of force, or the actual use of force against people to the government in order to secure funding for the care of the poor.

What’s the difference between committing murder yourself and hiring a hitman? In the eyes of the law nothing. What’s the difference between using force to shakedown people for donations and getting the government to do your dirty work?

This also brings up some troubling church/state issues. Why should a 21st century Scrooge be forced at the point of a Bible shaped government gun to pay money out to take care of the poor? Would anyone today advocate that homosexual sex should be outlawed because the Bible says so? Why is there an exception when it comes to the care of the poor?

about the role of government over at the BHT. Here’s a little taste, but all of it is well worth reading.

To the left - DON’T expect the government to take care of the poor, and do it well. Take a good honest look at where such social spending and programs have gotten us since the New Deal. Is this *really* “progress”?

To the right - DON’T expect changing the laws to change the attitudes of the nation. Remember Prohibition.

If we have aspirations to help the poor, to change the attitudes of the nation, let us channel those aspirations where they will do the most good - in the local church, in the Gospel preached, believed, and lived.

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The Bible is clear here: I am to love my neighbor as myself, in the manner needed, in a practical way, in the midst of the fallen world, at my particular point of history. This is why I am not a pacifist. Pacifism in this poor world in which we live - this lost world - means that we desert the people who need our greatest help.

- Francis Schaefer

[Pacifists are] the last and least excusable on the list of the enemies of society. They preach that if you see a man flogging a woman to death you must not hit him. I would much sooner let a leper come near a little boy than a man who preached such a thing.

- Chesterton

Hattip: Travis Prinzi on BHT

Honestly, when it comes to discussions about the emergent church, I don’t really see much of a difference between those churches labeled “emergent” and every other type of church out there (other than the constant name calling and emanating from those in the emergent camp). Fred Peatross attempts a line of demarcation. I believe he fails. Lets take a look.

First he labels churches as “museum churches” or “mission churches”. As I noted before there’s a lot of name calling coming from emergent types, and it begins here with some extremely loaded language. I gotta wonder why he chose “museum church” rather than “crappy church”, maybe becuase that would be too obvious. But anyway, onto the show.

The museum church is… Attractional – expecting people to come to it and measuring effectiveness by attendance at the Sunday service.

Quick, name an emergent leader. What name did you come up with? McLaren? Rob Bell? Why did whatever name that popped into your head come into your head? Why did that person get the pub in the first place for you to become well aquainted with them? Chances are because in some way roughly a bajillion people show up at their church. Maybe its not on Sunday, but the reality is that nothing fundamentally or essentially changes just because the day or time changes.

The museum church is….. Dualistic – seeing the secular and the sacred as two separate spheres of life, leading to the belief that God is only encountered under their definition of ‘holy places.’

This is an argument that has been going on even before the cross. Do we worship on the mountain or in the temple? The early church struggled with this as well. The reality is that there are some things that are forbidden for all Christians and some things that are required for all Christiasn, and a large gray area between. Where those lines are drawn has been and will continue to be a source of debate.

The museum church is….. Hierarchical – relying on a ‘top down’ corporate management system with a strong minister/leader / member distinction

This is absurdity almost to the point of parody. I had to check my satire meter on this one to make sure I wasn’t being victimized by Sarcastro. Turns out I wasn’t. The emergent church has been almost exclusively reported about and commented on by CEO style ministers. Guys that are the head of a large congregation and by definition fit the corporate management paradigm. Some of them even look like Bill Lumberg.

the emerging missional church is….An incarnational ecclesiology – a church that engages with the culture in every way and that lives ‘in the world’ rather than hiving off into Christian enclaves and seeking to draw others into its gig.

Yeah, sure. Sort of like to the weak we become weak? I remember this goal being explicitly stated in a very un-emergent one room church in Kentucky.

The emerging missional church is….Messianic spirituality – seeing God in all of life and living with more of a Hebrew approach to life.

I remember reading this in Francis Schaefer’s work How Should We Then Live which now has a 50th anniversery addition out.

The emerging missional church is….Apostolic leadership – seeing the church as led by people with a mix of the five gifts mentioned in Ephesians 4.

The labeling of “apostolic leadership” is, at best, a poor use of “apostolic”, but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that the “priesthood of all believers” is a concept that has been floating around since at least the Reformation, and one that has a strong presence in the Restoration Movement since at least the 1850s. I’m sure other protestant movements have as well.

I grow very impatient with these types of divisive rhetoric emanating mostly from emergents. For whatever reason they seem to take extreme pleasure in pointing at the vast majority of Christians in the world and saying, “we’re not like those [insert particular derogatory statement] people”.

I’m not the only one.

Hattip: Noel.

An update to this post is found here.

Here is perhaps the best possible explanation on the Christianity and government I have come across. Read the whole thing, but here are some tasty morsels to tide you over.

But I object to Roy Moore’s crusade or Christian Exodus not just because they will fail in practical terms. I object to it because the attempt to Christianize government, as these frame it, will fail in theological terms as well. Pursuing a here-and-now political embodiment of Christianity is a classic species of what in the theological trade we call “over-realized eschatology, that is, the fundamental neglect of the tension between the “already” and the “not yet.” Moore and Christian Exodus pretend that the kingdom of God can be brought in its fullness through human effort apart from the return of Jesus. They assume that human nature is such that if enough thoroughly committed Christian people can take over the major political and social institutions, the will of God can be realized on earth, or at least South Carolina, as it is in heaven. It acts as if the parables of the sower and of the tares have been repealed.

Faithful readers (both of them) will recall the numerous admonitions found on this site about the proper role of government. That particular topic flows naturally with this one.

Strange bedfellows.

Have I mentioned how much I love the term “Campbellite”?

Oh, I haven’t? Must have been an oversight.

Going to Bible college is a good way to develop a nervous tic in which the knee is spontaneously and devastatingly applied to the face of anyone who complains about the church.

See, there exists among future ministers the attitude that the church at large sucks and really can’t do much of anything right. To listen to my classmates you’d think the church was filled with a combination of malevolence and incompetence, like some sort of wierd lovechild between Hitler and Barney Fife. Now, I don’t particularly have a problem when there is a specific complaint made about a specific church (or members of a church) so long as the complaint is made with the intention of correcting the problem and its done in a Christ-like way. But that was the rare exception to the rule. Most of the time when I heard complaining about the chuch it was done to elevate the complainer, sort of like when the school bully punches a fat nerd and leaves him flailing on the ground humiliated and hurt to get the attention of a little Ms. Bully. So with that in mind I wanted to just drop a few scriptures on people.

For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the savior.Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
-Ephesians 5:23-25

His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms,
- Ephesians 3:10

And finally, let me leave you with this…

Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not!
- 1 Cor 11:22