evangelicalism

Review: Recovering Classic Evangelicalism

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Recovering Classical Evangelicalism

Recovering Classic Evangelicalism, Gregory Alan Thornbury. Wheaton: Crossway, 2013.

Summary: Addressing an evangelical context that seemingly has lost a sense of its identity, core convictions, and model for cultural engagement, the author commends a re-appraisal of the work of Carl F. H. Henry as a source of wisdom for the future.

It seems there are numerous books being published at present addressing what is perceived the parlous state of the contemporary church in America. They seem to fall into two camps. Either they recommend innovation, or they call for a return or recovery of some lost tradition, whether the church fathers, Benedict, or the Reformers.

This book, written particularly for that part of the church that would identify as “evangelical” proposes that the way forward is to recover the philosophical, theological, and cultural vision of the movement birthed in the post-World War II years. This was the time of the founding of Christianity Today as a periodical of both evangelical conviction and theological and intellectual heft, befitting the concerns of two of its’  founders, Billy Graham and Carl F. H. Henry. This work focuses on the work of Henry, who was evangelicalism’s leading theologian, probably until his death in 2003.

Thornbury hardly consider’s Henry to be perfect, and in the first chapter enumerates some of the flaws in both his personality and work. He also chronicles the “drubbing” Henry has faced from scholars criticizing his commitments to inerrancy, his epistemology, and more. Furthermore, what may be his most significant work, his six-volume systematic theology, God, Revelation, and Authority is also largely unread and unknown, particularly because few got beyond its first, densely written volume. Yet Thornbury commends Henry as a model of someone who brought a Christian mind to bear on both the theological and cultural questions facing evangelicalism, and as one whose example and advocacy paved the way for renewed efforts to bring Christian thought to bear in the academy and the culture.

The focus of Thornbury’s discussion is volumes two and four of God, Revelation, and Authority (hereafter GRA) and Henry’s much more approachable The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism.  He focuses on four significant contributions of Henry that he believes deserve renewed attention. First was his rooting epistemology in a God who reveals God’s self and does so in language and propositions.  Second was that theology matters, and here, he focuses his discussion around the fifteen theses found in volume two of GRA. He engages the theology of speech-act theory and the work of Hans Frei and Kevin Van Hoozer, and still comes back to the idea that while language may do more than what Henry allowed, it does no less–that we may find more than just theological propositions arising from the scripture, but for a God who reveals God’s self effectively, we will find no less.

For Henry, the inerrancy of scripture, so much under fire even in evangelical circles today, was of utmost concern because of its connection to the authority. His concerns were not merely liberal criticism, but the hermeneutical relativism of Continental philosophy. It was not that Henry was unmindful of both problem texts in scripture and the fallibility of interpreters. Rather, he was convinced that concessions here would cast a shadow over the whole of scripture and the Church’s proclamation.

Finally, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism was a kind of manifesto that brought to bear biblical thought on the social, political, and economic issues of the day. It lead to the recovery of a social conscience that had been lost in the fundamentalist retreat from society. It provided an argument that culture, and cultural engagement that was not culture war mattered deeply.

Thornbury concludes by arguing that our evangelical roots matter. To unthinking shift from these or to live cut off from our roots can be fatal. To re-examine these roots, in this case the roots provided by the work of Carl F. H. Henry, is not necessarily to affirm that these roots are adequate, but rather important and not to be neglected. It strikes me that in growing things, roots continue to grow as well as the plant above ground, and the plant draws nourishment from an growing root system, both new roots and old.

I have to admit that I have not paid attention to Henry in recent years, paying more heed to newer thinkers. Yet this book reminds me of the personal debt I owe him, and those like him. As a young Christian working in the university context, Christianity Today, which in the seventies still reflected Henry’s intellectual influence and heft, was a great encouragement that I could both believe and think, that I could root my thought in a trustworthy and authoritative revelation that provided the foundation to wrestles with the deepest questions being asked in the university world. I could root a commitment to justice and compassion in the care and standards God established for human societies, and the words of the prophets who called a straying people back to such things. Reading Thornbury, I realized that I have often heard but never read Uneasy Conscience. It now sits on my TBR pile. Look for a review.

Review: Praying at Burger King

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praying-at-burger-kingPraying at Burger King, Richard J. Mouw. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007.

Summary: Short essays on the life of faith in the world, originally appearing on beliefnet.com, and several other publications.

Richard Mouw is the former president of Fuller Theological Seminary and one of the more thoughtful and irenic commentators in evangelicalism today. This little book, with its unusual title and book cover is a great way to get acquainted with Mouw. He has collected a number of short (most are three pages or so) essays from contributions to Christianity Today, Perspectives, and posts on his blog and on beliefnet.com.

The essays are grouped under three categories: living, believing, and church and world. They are written in a conversational style yet cast a fresh light on some familiar aspect of Christian faith. The title essay has to do with the practice of prayers before meals, and Mouw’s recognition that Burger King is one of those places where God is indeed present and so he will keep acknowledging that. The next essay gives equal time to competitor McDonald’s and an insight of how important it is to talk with youth that translates into caring for the indifferent youth who is serving his burger the next time he is at the airport McDonald’s. Subsequent essays in this first section include reflections on Halloween, Lent, Machiavelli, integrity, greed and a number of other everyday matters from housekeeping to the “ordinary” work of a researcher. He speaks simply about how we often subconsciously bracket off the “stuff” of scholarly work from the “spiritual” life when in fact “every square inch” (as Kuyper would put it) belongs to the Lord.

In the second section, three essays caught my attention. In “Entrenched” he observes how this label is often applied to conservatives when in fact everyone is interested in “conserving something” and may be liable to trench digging. He proposes that we might consider a better, more biblical metaphor of “the way” in which we’ve chosen to walk through life, something we are all doing, whether or not we are all walking in the same way. In “He Did Weep,” he writes about Jesus not simply at Lazarus tomb, but in the manger at Christmas. True incarnation involved a crying baby, experiencing the discomforts of all human babies, contrary to “Away in a Manger.”  His sensitive response to a student’s troubled questions in “What about Hell?” and the distinction he made between those who think they are too good to be condemned by God, and those who consider God too good to punish are responses I will remember for similar conversations.

In the third section, his essay on “Eating Alone,” inspired by Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone notes the great dangers that come to us in our increasing isolation from social organizations, the mediating institutions, that once were a significant part of the fabric of belonging. I’m surprised how many writers are sounding this theme, which may truly be one of the great perils of our age. He also includes some beautiful essays about his encounters with Catholicism and some thoughts about “Patriotism” that are balanced and measured and worthy of consideration wherever you are on the political spectrum.

Mouw’s irenic voice is one we need in our time of ambivalent triumphalism on one side and anguished resistance on another. He explores the everyday acts of faithful Christian presence in the real world we inhabit. These essays feel to me to be “dispatches from another place” than where we usually live that call us to both our true selves, and the true north of our faith.

 

Review: Rescuing Jesus

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rescuing-jesus

Rescuing Jesus: How People of Color, Women & Queer Christians Are Reclaiming Evangelicalism, Deborah Jian Lee. Boston: Beacon Press, 2016.

Summary: An account of how three marginalized groups within American evangelicalism are finding increasing acceptance, and the struggles they have faced along the way.

Deborah Jian Lee writes as a journalist who has been on the inside of much of what she is covering. Raised in an Asian American family, she came to an evangelical Christian faith as a teenager, became involved as a participant and leader of a collegiate fellowship during her college years, experiencing painful encounters around issues of race, the role of women, and LGBTQ issues, which led to her distancing herself and becoming one of an increasing number of religious “nones”, still spiritual, but no longer identifying with a particular faith community.

In this book, she recounts the efforts of three marginalized groups to gain a place of their own at the evangelical table. She does this by focusing on the stories of several representative figures. Lisa Sharon Harper, an activist working with Sojourrners, represents the struggle of ethnic minorities to be accepted on their own terms rather than assimilating into white Christianity. Jennifer Crumpton represents the awakening of many evangelical women from being subordinated to men in church, marriage, and public life to discover her own identity and exercise her own gifts in ministry as a woman. Tasha, Will, and Jason were core leaders of the Biola Queer Underground and represent the many youth coming from evangelical homes who struggle to authentically acknowledge and live out their sexual orientations and gender identities and yet find acceptance within the evangelical community.

The book is divided into three parts, describing a journey from conformity to evangelical norms, to skepticism and questioning, and finally to what would seem a “radical” but honest expression of what it means to be an ethnic minority, a feminist, or an LGBTQ person yet an evangelical. The narrative of these central figures journeys is interspersed with a historical account of evangelicalism around issues of race, feminism, and engagement with LGBTQ or “queer” persons, the self-identifier most often used in the book. At various point, Deborah Jian Lee interjects her own narrative as well as her personal interactions with the central characters as well as other evangelical leaders including Soong-chan Rah, Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty, Justin Lee of the Gay Christian Network, as well as senior figures like Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo and Richard Cizik whose views on the place and inclusion of these marginalized groups changed over the course of their lives.

This was a hard, and yet illumining book for me to read. I am a white male, straight, boomer generation person working in the collegiate ministry world that is the scene of both Deborah Jian Lee’s personal narrative, and significant in the wider narrative. Reading surfaced memories of stereotypes, and incidents where I grieved individuals in each of the marginalized groups she describes, and my own continuing journey of repentance. Recent years and interactions have shown me how much I don’t know, and how much I need to listen and learn from people in each of these groups. The book also chronicles how hard and complicated this journey can be.

There are some other things I wrestled with as well. One is that this was one of about ten examples of recent books with the idea of “rescuing Jesus” in the title. I’m pretty sure that it is not Jesus who needs rescuing, but rather his followers who wander into various captivities. The second is with the word “reclaim” in the subtitle. I think it is more accurate to say that each of these marginalized groups and their allies are attempting to “reframe” evangelicalism in a way that includes and affirms them for who they are.

This leads to a third, and to my mind, far more significant question. Particularly around questions of gender roles and sexual identity and acceptable practice, there are significant differences around how the Bible is to be read, or if the Bible should even be relevant to the practice of the Christian community. Biblical authority, or, what I think a more negative term, biblicism, has been considered one of the defining marks of the evangelical movement. There are some who would be just as happy to see this go, but the question is whether what is left is still definably evangelical. Lee is conscious of these tensions within evangelicalism, but evidences a desire that it would move toward a type of progressive inclusiveness that may not be so far from her own status as a spiritual “none.” This is in no way to denigrate her own beliefs or journey. But I do think it will lead others, for example Wesley Hill, who she only mentions in passing, to conclude this too great a price to pay and choose the challenging road that seeks to hold together loving the marginalized and biblical faithfulness.

At the same time, Reclaiming Jesus is a good indicator of what is happening in the Christian movement of a Millenial generation in which people of color are becoming a majority, where women are finding their voice, and LGBTQ persons have won significant battles for civil equality. The majority of white evangelicals may have played a key role in electing the next president, but are hemorrhaging members among Millenials. This book can help them understand why, and what they must address while there is still time.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher via LibraryThing. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Adventures in Evangelical Civility

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Adventures in Evangelical Civility, Richard J. Mouw. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2016.

Summary: An intellectual memoir, tracing Mouw’s efforts to find common ground while maintaining reformed and evangelical convictions.

“Evangelical civility.” It sounds like an oxymoron to some. Yet for those who know Richard Mouw’s work, or have the privilege of personal acquaintance with him (which I do not), you know that there is at least one example of a person for whom both terms are true without contradiction.

In this “intellectual memoir,” Mouw shares with us his own intellectual journey and engagement with others. We have closely written chapters on his studies in philosophy and theology, his wrestling with “antithesis” in Van Til, the reformed doctrine of total depravity, and how far common grace goes in providing a basis for common ground with those who are not among the elect.

Mouw also traces his engagements with other thinkers and theologians throughout his career. Perhaps most fascinating was his relationship with John Howard Yoder. What could a Calvinist and Anabaptist find in common? In this and other relationships there were differences to be sure, and yet surprising places of common ground. This is true for him in encounters with Catholics, and more controversially perhaps, with Mormon scholars. Mouw also recounts his work at Calvin College and later as President of Fuller Theological Seminary, a place that allows for “big tent evangelicalism.” In a chapter on being a public intellectual, he writes of a non-Christian academic friend’s challenge:

” ‘You have a problem, Mouw,’ he said. ‘Right now Fuller manages to maintain the highest level of scholarship with a strong connection with grassroots evangelicalism. But that can’t last. Either you are going to start dumbing things down or you are going to move to the ‘ivory tower’ thing.’

    In candor I have to admit that my secularist friend may have been a little too optimistic in his reading of the present relationship between the evangelical academy and popular evangelicalism. There is a ‘mind’ within the evangelical movement, but there is a serious gap between what the mind says and how the rest of the body often acts. In our public life, especially in recent years, we evangelicals have consisted embarrassed ourselves by mindless behavior. My friend was offering important advice, however. To the degree that there is some mutual support between the evangelical academy and the grass roots, we need to work hard to keep the mutuality strong. If the creative tension cannot be maintained, the results will be tragic. The two components of evangelicalism need each other. Neither can sustain a healthy evangelical character without the other.”

These words give a good example of the convicted civility in search of common ground that is the thread running through this memoir. In his concluding chapter, he makes an interesting point in noting that conviction and civility are never actually in tension because the Christian is called to both and the practice of civility is itself rooted in conviction. This last chapter exhibited, to me, a great deal of vulnerability. He returns to qualms he expressed in opening pages about whether the quest for common ground concedes too much, and yet argues for this as the way of faithfulness as well as consistent with his own calling in life. And he concludes with the example of one of his predecessors at Fuller, E. J. Carnell, whose call to theological humility in his inaugural address was roundly criticized and whose life ended in a profound depression in a hotel room where ingested an overdose of sleeping pills. He quotes a portion of that address, with which I will conclude:

“Whoever meditates on the mystery of his own life will quickly realize why only God, the searcher of the secrets of the heart, can pass final judgment. We cannot judge what we have no access to. The self is a swirling conflict of fears, impulses, sentiments, interests, allergies and foibles. It is a metaphysical given for which there is no easy rational explanation. Now, if we cannot unveil the mystery of our own motives and affections, how much less can we unveil the mystery in others.”

It has been said more simply, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle” (Attributed to variously to Plato, Philo, and John Watson). Perhaps this is the common ground of our humanity that calls us to civility in the hard and common battle of life. Mouw’s memoir is indeed an exemplar of civility without sacrificing conviction.

Review: The Faithful Artist

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The Faithful Artist, Cameron J. Anderson. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2016.

Summary: Addresses the tensions between the world of modern art and evangelical faith, where opportunities for creative engagement might be found in tensions, and what values might shape the life of one sensing a call to be both faithful Christian and artist.

The world of modern art, and the world of faith, particularly evangelical Christian faith have often been at odds with, or not even in conversation with each other. This is the challenge the author has wrestled with since his teenage years as an aspiring artist who embraced the evangelical faith in which he was raised. In the introduction, he describes his own struggle with the absence of mentors, the disregard of his church for the visual arts, and the parallel hostility toward religious faith he encountered in the art world.

Much of this work explores these tensions between evangelical faith and modern art. He begins by tracing the post World War Two parallel rise of modern evangelicalism as an effort to “guard the gospel” and modern art, as an effort to throw off the shackles of tradition and the “double consciousness” artists struggled with, often by either muting faith, or lapsing into sentimentalized art appealing to their faith community. He uses My Name is Asher Lev to discuss one of the fundamental challenges facing the aspiring Christian artist in training: the practice of drawing the nude human figure, both central to the development of artistic skill and raising questions of whether this is proper, and deeper questions about the Christian understanding of the body, and our embodied existence. Building on this, he considers the senses, and how we think about this aspect of our embodied existence as we engage the arts.

He then turns to the conflicts between word and image that have been at the heart of some of the conflict between faith and art, whether it is the iconoclastic movements, ancient and modern, that favor word over image, and the inconsistency of a faith community that denounces icons while creating its own versions of these. He points toward a theology of word and image that finds its ultimate fulfillment in the incarnate Word. He also explores the radical doubts about language in post-modern thought and its appropriation by artists, sometimes portraying the deconstruction of language. Anderson gestures toward a theology in which word and image cohere, and for the possibility of meaning.

He also gestures toward the transcendental of beauty in art, once again contended territory, both by artists who seek to lay bare the exploitive ways beauty has been used, and an evangelicalism focused on goodness and truth to the exclusion of beauty. Against the art world’s often legitimate protest about the manipulation of beauty for tawdry or oppressive purposes, Anderson holds out the possibility of being beholders of beauty, and for the artist of faith, the seeing in beauty, even co-mixed with pain, evil, and suffering, the hand of the Creator. He acknowledges that this may be a quixotic, yet for the faithful artist, necessary endeavor.

Anderson contends that these collisions of faith and art may “reveal a third way, a great vista where biblical and theological reflection–especially the doctrines of creation and incarnation–become the wellspring of inspiration.” Each of his chapters includes models of this kind of biblical and theological reflection that serve, not to give definitive answers, but to point other artists who wrestle with the same tensions toward this “third way” in the practice of their art. Indeed, his conclusion is an invitation to both the church and artists to embrace this work, and for artists to give themselves as called people to the work of culture-making and good studio practice. He writes,

“…the artists whom most of us deem to be successful share a common trait–they do the work. At some point they set romantic ideas about being an artist to the side and commenced doing the artist’s work. Arriving at this place requires one to accept delayed gratification, the awkwardness that is sure to come from making bad art and the reality of negative cash flow. Pushing beyond distraction and discouragement, they accomplished something Herculean–they pushed beyond musing and imagining to establish regular studio practices, to take on habits of making” (p. 252).

Cameron Anderson is executive director of Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA) and what he offers in this book is nothing less than an analysis of the recent history of the visual arts and the challenges and opportunities for Christians who are called to work in this field. It reflects his lifelong familiarity with the art world and his presence as an leader, teacher and thinker in the Christian community. I might add, both by way of disclosure and appreciation, that I worked closely with Cam in his previous role as national director of InterVarsity’s Graduate and Faculty Ministry, and owe twenty years in a job I love to his influence. I saw parts of an early version of this manuscript, kind of like the blocking in of shapes on a canvas that mark the beginning of a painting. It is a delight to see the finished work, which reflects the deep reflection on faith and art that I had come to appreciate in presentations by Cam, disciplined by extensive research and enriched by years of experience working with visual artists.

[This is the second work in the series Studies in Theology and the Arts. The first volume in the series, Modern Art and the Life of a Culture was reviewed earlier this year at Bob on Books.]

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher . I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Endorsers Repent!

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Wayne_Grudem_Photo_2014

Wayne Grudem, By Wayne Grudem, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35265675

On August 5, I wrote a post called “The Endorsement Game.” I opened the post with this paragraph:

“My Facebook feed has been filled with both defenses of and outrage toward the various evangelical leaders, including Wayne Grudem, who have endorsed the Republican candidate for the U.S. Presidency. Maybe the reason for this is that I have friends across the spectrum (yes there is one!) of evangelical belief who have lots of different takes on these endorsements, and on the fitness for office of the one being endorsed.”

I return to this post because over the weekend Dr. Grudem withdrew his endorsement of the Republican candidate for president and called upon him to resign. I was heartened to see this and a willingness to acknowledge his own error, according to a Washington Post article, of not taking time to investigate earlier allegations about the candidate’s character before making his endorsement.

I credit Dr. Grudem’s integrity of publicly acknowledging an error instead of doubling down as others have done, even justifying the candidate’s language as “locker room banter,” which seems to me appalling, particularly among supposed evangelicals.

What distresses me however is that Dr. Grudem never even begins (to my knowledge) to question the basic practice of endorsing candidates as an “evangelical leader” and the entanglement of the gospel with partisan politics. He only is saying that he made a bad decision this time. I would argue that this is always a bad decision for evangelical leaders for one fundamental reason (evangelicals like fundamentals!):

Endorsing one party’s candidate carries with it the implication that you can only be a Christian if you vote a certain way.

I know most leaders wouldn’t say that (although it wouldn’t surprise me that some would). But I have friends who have been repulsed from Christian faith for precisely this reason. The warning of Matthew 18:6 is one I think every evangelical endorser ought to consider seriously:

“But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to have a large millstone tied around your neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea.” (NIV)

Furthermore, I would argue that the leaders who endorse, whether conservative or progressive, have led the flocks who follow them into political captivity, fostering deep estrangements within the Christian community in our land across racial and economic lines. The prophets of the Old Testament denounce the shepherds of Israel for scattering the sheep. I will be blunt–leaders who engage in this kind of political activity as leaders of the evangelical community are misleading their flocks and are under the judgement of God (cf Jeremiah 23:1-8; Ezekiel 34; Zechariah 10:2-12).

Unless evangelical leadership repents of this kind of behavior (repent means to turn, in thought and action, because of the awareness that one has transgressed), that leadership will find that they aren’t leading anything. Their cry will be “Ichabod!” which means “the glory has departed.” Repentance isn’t simply withdrawing embarrassing endorsements, it is to cease from this endorsement game, which idolizes political power, to the denial of the greater power of the kingdom, whose heralds they are called to be.

Those who read me regularly probably find this writing uncharacteristic of me. You are right. But I am deeply angry and grieved, not with the presidential candidates, but with the harm I’ve watched these “evangelical leaders” commit over a generation to the gospel I love and how they’ve besmirched the glory of the Christ I love and how their activity is turning away a generation of spiritual seekers. Given how far we’ve sunken in this current election, I’ve wondered if we’ve come to our last chance to turn from this political and spiritual folly. Lord, have mercy!