On Not Caring About Stemming the Tide of Mainline Decline
January 12, 2012
It appears that Anglicans are really quite talented at creating entire cottage industries around problems of identity. Books about “Anglican Identity” and “What is Anglicanism?” abound in numbers far greater than you may at first imagine. I feel as though, if one is allowed to judge by certain internet circles, we are about to start on a whole new creation when finally – about 30 years too late – we get around to addressing the “problem” of “mainline decline.”
The facts are…
- We’re getting older
- We’re getting smaller
- We’re getting poorer
- We’re getting less and less important in our social stature
Well, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT!!!????
- Should we eschew hierarchy?
- Should we come up with THE missional strategy?
- Should we maybe wear khakis to preach?
- Should we mess with the liturgies? Make God more feminine; black; expansive; Celtic; relevant?
Now, these are not all merely banal questions (though perhaps some are), but I would like to suggest that so long as the beginning and focal point of the discussion is centered around decline and “stemming the tide,” then we’ve already failed.
This line of reasoning puts us immediately in a reactionary position. “What are we going to do about this threat? (This too is where the “identity fetish” creeps in. Constantly going in circles trying to fence the boundaries of identity means that less and less do we care to look to Jesus to judge what we think it important about our identity).
It also creates an atmosphere where even practices and beliefs that are very good are swept aside by the well-meaning or self-proclaimed “prophets” and “reformers.”
What often goes overlooked is how deeply institutional this line of reasoning is, and how ironic it is that these questions are often under the guise of being “anti-institutional.” Concern about numbers and colleges and seminaries and ages are all very institutional issues. (Though, far be it from me to be anti-institutional.)
Allow me to suggest that whether numbers are waxing or waning, the primary issue ought to be one of praying, working, longing, to be faithful to our Lord and faithful to the proclamation of the Gospel. I know this might seem just empty and pious word-mixing. The point I’m trying to make, though, isn’t about out-piousing anybody, but about shifting the seat of discernment from one of reactionary concern about structures to a positive freedom to love and worship our Lord and love our neighbor without concern for “maintaining” the Episcopal Church.
Doing otherwise evinces a deep lack of faith. As if somehow Christ isn’t risen and it’s up to us to pick up the Church by her bootstraps and keep her going! (Thus, even now the pelagian shadow of liberal protestantism lurks behind every question and every answer)
I think we could all stand to learn from people like Derek Olsen, who when prodded on the question of a drop in numbers responds not by saying what ought to go in order to stop the bleeding, but by pointing out what ought not be negotiable because they are the things that help to keep us faithful to the Gospel that we’ve received. Or +Rowan Williams who concludes his astounding essay “God” in this way:
“In a church that is in many ways deeply wedded to ‘territorial’ preoccupations, it is unlikely that the gift and promise of the non-territorial God will be clearly discernible. In other words, a church that is concerned about its internal politics will not transform the political in the way that is in fact made possible by Jesus. The desire to secure purity and control in the Church (which can be a preoccupation as much of ‘progressives’ as of ‘traditionalists’) looks to a territory in which believers may see in one another a reassuring sameness; and when believers are looking at one another to test that assurance, they are less likely to be attending to the foundational absence on which the life of the community rests. And if the contemplative life is central in some way to the integrity of the Church at large, it is because of this: not to point to ‘values’ above and beyond the concerns of the world, not to pass judgment on the unspiritual conflicts of the Church or society, but to witness to the way in which a life may be constructed in which all acts are referrable to God and in which the consequent ‘deregionalizing’ of the life of the spirit, life before God, impacts increasingly upon the understanding of prayer. It is to do with the poverty and wealth of the everyday; with the fullness and emptiness of faith.”
Putting Things in Perspective
April 9, 2011
I hope that I’m not sounding too much like an anti-intellectual, but there are definitely times where I am reminded about the frustrating gap between certain academic conversations and the real needs of the Church, as well as the indulgent curriculum offered at some seminaries reflecting more the desires of professors than the recognition of appropriate classes for pastoral training. (See these two articles to really fill this out more – here and here).
My father makes an annual trip to India to evangelize and work with local pastors. A significant number of these country pastors, as it happens, cannot even read. Not a Bible, not a hymnal. When he told me this I remember wondering to myself how they could even perform their pastoral duties.
Now, I am in total support of educated clergy, indeed that is why this tidbit of information really got my imagination going, once again, as it is prone so to do, about seminary education. If one were to teach these pastors, just what might be an appropriate “core” to enable and empower them? And by thinking about this, it began to prompt thoughts on our own seminary education here in the States.
It seems to me that apart from needing first to teach them to read, and considering it is totally impractical to expect these pastors to attend a residential seminary, an appropriate “core” would ideally revolve around four books: The Bible, a Prayer Book, a hymnal and a catechism.
At first I questioned this – surely this is a peculiarly Anglican way of looking at things? But inasmuch as there could be developed a Pentecostal (Pentecostal because my father is an Assemblies of God minister) “Prayer Book, hymnal and catechism” it began to strike me as far more appropriate than I would’ve thought at first. Precisely because these clergy have a “blank slate” when it comes to the Faith, and precisely because they couldn’t be expected to leave their responsibilities for too long, by teaching them to read and giving them these elementary tools, what they lacked in “full training” they made up in practice by really getting to know these books.
What it seems the A/G might need, then, is a Book of Common Prayer -of sorts! – appropriate to their tradition, for the training of clergy where otherwise training is unavailable. And as for us, perhaps our own core should revolve around these rather than having so many electives open for “Feminist readings in Daniel” or whatever.
Explorations in Mainline Campus Ministry
September 20, 2010
Well it happened like this. Sometimes blog contributor Reed Carlson had been attending St. Matthew’s Episcopal parish for a rather short amount of time but was quickly in an energetic relationship with our wonderful rector and her husband, from whom he had taken a class on Anglicanism at Luther Seminary. The Episcopal Church has some money set aside for grants for those brave enough to risk campus ministry. At the initiative of our rector, in a very very short amount of time, Reed and our friend Aaron composed a plan and vision for a campus ministry to be developed at St. Matt’s. We just so happen to be right on the border of the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota and quite near a fair number of other colleges in the area.
As it turned out, the Episcopal Church was excited enough by their proposals that we received a grant to fund the ministry! So in the matter of a few months Reed and several others organized and planned this new flowering ministry and as of a week ago we are up and running.
Via Media (who’da thunk it right?) is a gathering which takes place every Sunday evening. Starting at six we have a free communal meal – lord knows how we college folk love free food – and at seven we move to a simple service. One Sunday a month the service follows a Taize order, and the three others are an ever-so-slightly simplified Evensong, of which one includes a Eucharist. We are already a part of the various campus groups at the U of M and we even have a sign painted…as well as a Facebook page, and most importantly fancy website.
Now in our second week, we’ve already had multiple visitors.
It has been of upmost priority that this ‘ministry’ be one of the local parish and not a pseudo-para-church organization. We’ve gotten nothing but support from them and we are very thankful for it. The goal has been, not to portion off a specific age group – 20-30 yr olds – and ‘target’ them, but that this be a gateway into the larger multi-generational life of the parish.
Additionally it has been hoped that students will quickly become a part of the life of Via Media. Already a visitor from the first week has played guitar the second and we are hoping to encourage this kind of thing.
Having spent time cutting my teeth on both ‘Street’ and ‘Relational’ evangelism, this has drug all sorts of questions on missiology out for me; questions I hope in time to raise here and there on the blog.
For now, pray that we will be successful in bearing witness to the Gospel.
I wonder if any have had any experience doing this sort of thing. What were your experiences? What would you have done differently and what did you find worked well? Given that we have for a long time as the Episcopal Church relied on our cultural inheritance to the expense sometimes of evangelism, in what ways might we learn to become a missional church?
Around the Interwebs
August 6, 2010
- David CL Driedger has two posts up introducing a recent collection, The Gift of Difference: Radical Orthodoxy, Radical Reformation. Sounds glorious by the way he de-scribes it.
- Pastor Carol Howard Merritt writes about an encounter she had a party recently:
“I was at a party, holding my plastic cup of beer and talking to a stranger in a crowded house. She was in thirties, like I was. “So, what do you do?” she asked. “Where to do you work?”
I smiled because this part of the conversation can become really interesting. I’m a five-foot tall woman, who’s part of a generation that considers itself “spiritual but not religious,” so people don’t usually expect my answer: “I’m a pastor.”
“Oh my God,” she responded. “I never knew why anyone would go to church. But last year, my mom got sick. She’s divorced, and I’m living hundreds of miles away from her, so I didn’t know what we were going to do. And her church totally took care of her. They brought her meals. They drove her to the doctor. They called me when anything out of the ordinary happened.”
“Yeah. That’s what the good churches do.”
“Really?” She looked completely confused as she continued, “I had no idea. You should really advertise that.”
I don’t care much for the whole re-naming-liberal-protestantism-”progressive Christianity”-and-see-if-no one-notices thing, but I really like most people who self-identify as such and among them, Pastor Merritt, who advocates strongly for rejuvinating the Mainline and putting trust in the younger creative pastors.
- The Other Journal has a bit up about the “Righteous Rich in the OT” by Christopher J.H. Wright and I thought it very suggestive for political theology despite the fact that “list exegesis” is from the devil himself.
- Apparently there’s a site where you can download a ton of low-fi arrangements of classic tunes by some spectacular indie artists…for FREE!
- Ben Meyers tells things from multiple perspectives.
- David Congdon reviews an Arcade Fire concert in which Spoon opened. He captures why Arcade Fire is among the greatest bands of the ’00′s
Identifying the single representative weltanschauung for Islam ultimately proves to be difficult. There must certainly be some unifying presupposition (s) to which all Muslims adhere; but the parsing of perfunctory elements, no matter how salient they seem, from indispensable elements of Islamic orthodoxy will demand a narrowing of the scope of current apologetic efforts. As such, there is a general trend within Christian apologetics to try and reduce such perfunctory elements to absurdity. Unfortunately, an apologetic aimed at dispelling the errata of Islam’s obligatory customs proves unhelpful, either positively or negatively, in providing Christians with a tenable response to the fundamental claims of Islam.[1] Those fundamental claims, then, must be clearly articulated, fairly appraised, and systematically refuted where necessary.[2] Islam’s fundamental theological claims, and consequently the loci for Islam’s weltanschauung, all originate from the Five Pillars of Islam.[3]
The first pillar, the Great Confession or “Shahada” declares that, “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God.”[4] According to Braswell, this assertion of monotheism and belief in Muhammad as the final prophet of Allah entails necessarily ancillary doctrines of angels, sacred texts (of which the Qur’an is the preeminent), judgment and an afterlife; it is the “basis of the belief system.”[5] Tim Winter provides important insight into the Islamic understanding of the Shahada and subsequent Islamic theology explaining that theology can only be recognized as Islamic, “to the extent that it may be traced back in some way to the prophet Muhammad and his distinctive vision of the One God.”[6] Consequently, there are other beliefs and theological reflections that contribute to Islamic weltanschauung, but only as they can be traced through the Qur’an to Muhammad via the proclamation of the Shahada.
The second pillar, prayer or “Salat” constitutes much of the liturgy and ceremonial conduct of worship in Islam.[7] In Islam, the place of adulation and personal exchange with God all takes place in daily prayers.[8] The third pillar, almsgiving or “Zakat,” is the discipline in which Muslims are called to serve and minister to their community through giving.[9] The fourth pillar, ritual fasting or “Saum,” calls for a period of abstinence from drinking, eating, and other sensual pleasures during the month of Ramadan. The fifth pillar, the pilgrimage or “Hajj,” obliges every faithful Muslim to visit Mecca.[10]
There is a clear proclamation on behalf of Islam that Muhammad was correcting the way in which Christianity corrupted the message God had given to the Jews.[11] As such, Muhammad and his successors saw the Qur’an as an effort by Allah to set the record straight regarding a “confessional world complicated by Christian disputes.”[12] Naturally, Christians are going to respond in like fashion. Albeit there are some similarities,[13] there are fundamental conflicts between Christians and Muslims. Whether there is distinction in the God-head, whether the Qur’an is a revelation from God and consistent with the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, and whether Muhammad is a prophet of God are all matters in need of serious attention.
Problematically, some Christian polemicists have abandoned addressing these fundamental claims, and they have resorted to unhelpful tactics. By way of example, Richard Cimino argues that Evangelical Christians, in particular, have pushed rhetoric about Islam to a polemically fevered pitch as a kind of nationalistic, fear mongering response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. This ought to be received as a stinging criticism that is indicative of a willingness to focus on what are seen as devious practices within Islamic culture by Christians instead of making lucid arguments against their foundational claims.[14] According to Cimino, this is problematic because much of the positive, global-apologetic toward Muslims argued by polemicists like Ergun Caner centers on a characterization of Islam as dangerous, militant, and cultic.[15] However, this should all be tempered by Thomas Kidd’s research, which demonstrates plainly that such anti-Islamic polemics as Cimino describes were being leveled against Muslims by “Anglo-Americans” as early as 1697.[16]
So, while there is definitely an attempt to demonize the Islamic weltanschauung on the basis of mischaracterization, while there have been periods of interfaith dialogue initiated by Christians and spoiled by terrorists, and while there are clear examples of current Evangelical scholars focusing their apologetic efforts on ancillary issues within Islam, such behavior in no way belongs exclusively to the modern Evangelical movement. That particular characterization by Cimino is unwarranted. Nonetheless, Christian apologists should avoid being trapped by polemics preoccupied by what amount to “straw men” parading around as reductio ad absurdum arguments. There is sufficient dispute to be had with the foundational presuppositions of Islam to diminish the expediency of such distractions.
Perhaps the most direct conflicts between the truth claims of Christianity and Islam come from the Shahada. The Islamic understanding of the Great Confession places Muslim theology at odds with Christian theology regarding the Trinity, the juxtaposition of Jesus and Muhammad, and the message of the New Testament. Islamic thought on the tawhid, or “Oneness” of God, is extremely prohibitive of any notion that derived distinction within the person of God.[17] Muhammad revealed through the writing of the Qur’an that Jesus was indeed a prophet of Allah, but that he was not the Son of God, and was succeeded by Muhammad, the final prophet.[18] Finally, the Qur’an teaches that the divisions between Jews and Christians were the result of the revelation of God given to Jesus, the Injeel, being corrupted by the early church.[19]
What, then, should be the approach Christians use in positive apologetics to Muslims? A simple response is to use the truth of Scripture and the testimony of the Qur’an about Jesus and God. Surely, demonstrating how the doctrine of the Trinity maintains the tawhid of God within Islamic conceptualization will become an important element to bridging the gap between the two. Additionally, settling some of the theological issues that Muslim’s have with Trinitarian theology would necessarily affect their doctrinal concerns over Jesus and the Gospel account recorded in the New Testament. If the Trinity maintains tawhid, then the notion that Jesus is the Son of God is tenable, and there is no need to doubt the veracity of the New Testament accounts. Perhaps to Caner’s frustration and Geisler’s delight, John D.C. Anderson says, “I have never met a Muslim-background believer who regards the God he previously sought to worship as a wholly false god. Instead, he is filled with wonder and gratitude, that he has now been brought to know that God as he really is, in Jesus Christ our Lord.”[20]
[1] However, this claim ought not to be interpreted as saying there is no value in such critiques, only that they prove unhelpful in demonstrating that Muslim presuppositions are fundamentally flawed.
[2] Apologists should appreciate all the while, of course, that many scholars find a great deal of theological overlap within the monotheistic traditions, ultimately making the apologetic effort easier in many ways. See Michael Ipgrave, ed., Building a Better Bridge: Muslims, Christians, and the Common Good (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2008), which features articles by Rowan Williams and Timothy Winter; Hans Küng, Der Islam: Geschichte, Gegenwart, Zukunft (Munich: Piper Verlag, 2004); and Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991).
[3] See George W. Braswell, Islam: Its Prophet, Peoples, Politics and Power (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1996), 59; Ed Hindson, and Ergun Caner, eds., The Popular Encyclopedia of Apologetics: Surveying the Evidence for the Truth of Christianity (Eugene: Harvest House Publishers, 2008), 279; and Keith E. Swartley, ed., Encountering the World of Islam (Atlanta: Authentic Media, 2005), 88.
[4] Braswell, Islam: Its Prophet, Peoples, Politics and Power, 59.
[5] Ibid., 60
[6] Tim Winter, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 5.
[7] Braswell, Islam: Its Prophet, Peoples, Politics and Power, 60; Swartley, Encountering the World of Islam, 90.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Swartley, Encountering the World of Islam, 92.
[10] Ibid., 95.
[11] Winter, The Cambridge Companion, 5.
[12] Ibid.
[13] In fact, there is remarkable continuity between the other four Pillars of Islam and the broader expression of Christian belief and practice as seen in the “catholic Church.” Swartley provides a helpful chart in demonstrating the biblical corollaries to the Pillars of Islam. See Swartley, Encountering the World of Islam, 94.
[14] Richard Cimino, “‘No God in Common:’ American Evangelical Discourse on Islam after 9/11,” Review of Religious Research 47, no. 2 (December 2005): 162-74. Perhaps more immediately troublesome for students of Liberty Theological Seminary is the fact that Cimino singles out Ergun Caner’s Unveiling Islam as a polemic set out not only to demonize Islam, but also to “dispel the position of Geisler and Saleeb that Allah is the same God (Jehovah) that Christians and Jews worship.” See Cimino, “‘No God in Common,’” 166. Interestingly, Caner has included Geisler as a contributor in his Popular Encyclopedia of Apologetics. While Caner must certainly be given the berth to respectfully disagree with even those he includes in his edited works, all of the articles concerning Islam in the Popular Encyclopedia are authored by Caner. It may all prove coincidental, but such a situation only helps to strengthen Cimino’s critique.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Thomas S. Kidd, “‘Is It Worse to Follow Mahomet than the Devil?’ Early American Uses of Islam,” Church History 72, no. 4 (December 2003): 773.
[17] Braswell, Islam: Its Prophet, Peoples, Politics and Power, 45; Swartley, Encountering the World of Islam, 135-137. Winter also makes an interesting point, “Its [monotheism] inbuilt paradoxes, which had already exercised divided Jews and Christians, ensured that most Muslim thinkers came to recognize the need for a formal discipline of argument and proof which could establish the proper sense of a scripture which turned out to be open to many different interpretations.” See Winter, The Cambridge Companion, 6.
[18] Braswell, Islam: Its Prophet, Peoples, Politics and Power, 278-284; Swartley, Encountering the World of Islam, 35-36.
[19] Braswell, Islam: Its Prophet, Peoples, Politics and Power, 249-252; Swartley, Encountering the World of Islam, 292-295.
[20]
John D.C. Anderson, “The Missionary Approach to Islam,” Missiology 4, no. 3 (1976), 295.
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