Rethinking Evangelicalism

In “Rethinking Life” I intentionally did not discuss my understanding of being an Evangelical. Here is a brief effort to remedy that omission. In response to one of the Facebook responses to “Rethinking Life”, I noted the National Association of Evangelicals’ web page, in which the NAE uses Bebbington’s summary of Evangelical distinctives:

·         Conversionism: the belief that lives need to be transformed through a “born-again” experience and a life long process of following Jesus.

·         Activism: the expression and demonstration of the gospel in missionary and social reform efforts.

·         Biblicism: a high regard for and obedience to the Bible as the ultimate authority.

·         Crucicentrism: a stress on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross as making possible the redemption of humanity.

I like this shortlist, although one can debate its adequacy. I see two basic streams to the Evangelical movement. One is represented by the Gospel Coalition and such figures as John Piper and Don Carson. On the web the first sentence of their “foundation documents” reads: “We are a fellowship of evangelical churches in the Reformed tradition deeply committed to renewing our faith in the gospel of Christ and to reforming our ministry practices to conform fully to the Scriptures.”

One sees in their self-definition a sense that to be Evangelical is to be Reformed. One sees also the immediate reference to Scripture, with a strong commitment to “conform fully” to Scripture. My own sense is that the Reformed stream emphasizes doctrine over experience. The testimony of someone like Millard Erickson (a prominent theologian within the Reformed Evangelical stream) reinforces my impression. There is much good in this stream. The pastoral work of Tim Keller in New York City shows how good it can be, as does John Piper’s ministry in Minneapolis-Saint Paul.

The second stream comes from the Wesleyan-Holiness movement, and prioritizes the personal experience of God’s presence. We can see this priority in the way that the Methodist movement grew in the United States in the latter part of the 19^th Century, and in the way that the great Pentecostal Revival of 1906 spread from Azusa Street, Los Angeles.

The Wesleyan stream is less organized than the Reformed stream. The Brethren in Christ (my church family) has been part of the Christian Holiness Association, which was an expression of this stream, but the association appears to be dormant. Wesleyanism is best represented by organizations such as Asbury Theological Seminary (where I did my mission studies).

I can summarize the difference between the two streams by using Bebbington’s four markers. Wesleyans emphasize the first two: conversion (that is, experience) and activism (that is, living out one’s faith in concrete ways). Reformed Evangelicals emphasize the latter two: Biblicism (a strong commitment to the authority of Scripture) and crucicentrism (the centrality of the cross).

One can easily overstate the difference. Wesleyans embrace the cross and rely fully on Scripture; the Reformed movement believes in conversion and discipleship. One should think, then, of a difference in emphasis, not of two visions in conflict. The difference in emphasis is, however, important. Reformed Evangelicals are more likely to insist on stating things the right way. Wesleyan Evangelicals are more likely to start with a personal testimony. I am a Wesleyan!

Experience and Doctrine: Subjective and Objective

One of those who commented on “Rethinking life” made an important point that holds both sides together, He said, “While I think that ‘stressing relationship with God over doctrine about God’ sounds good... unless we have a good understanding of who this God is (doctrine about God) we may all end up having a relationship with different gods. Just to say that both are rather important to the Christian mindset.”

He is, of course, right. In response I add that the danger of a subjective perception that misidentifies God exists for both streams. The God defined by those who focus on doctrine can be as subjective as the God defined by those who say, “The Spirit told me.” We interpret Scripture from our socially constructed lives, which leads to what missiologists call “local theologies”. Everyone constructs there theology like this. Africans responding to the fear of witchcraft construct a local theology; Americans worrying about the influence of secularism construct a local theology. We have to do the hard work of hearing the Scripture speak for itself in order to hear God’s supracultural gospel (to use Charles Kraft’s phrase).

Similarly, people who have a spiritual experience may think that God is at work, when in fact the source of the experience is not God. I remember a Pentecostal friend in Zimbabwe who critiqued the Toronto Airport Church for me. He said, “You Americans are funny. You see someone roar like a lion or engage in holy laughter, and you think it must be the Spirit of God. We have seen these things in Zimbabwe too, and we know that it is not always God’s Spirit.” What protects us from our own subjective experience is the objective reality of God. When one gives oneself fully to the “God who is there”, God takes care of bringing objective reality into our experience.

So both streams need to heed my friend’s warning. We rely on Scripture and we give our lives to Christ. We seek to understand and to experience the cross. We live out our lives fully in light of our commitments to Christ as we meet him in the Bible.

The Centre and Boundaries

A second observation about Bebbington’s four marks of the Evangelical movement. The emphasis on doctrine tends to focus on boundary issues, so those in the Reformed stream are more likely to draw lines that others cannot cross if they wish to stay in the movement. I prefer to emphasize the centre and to use these four marks—experience, activism, Scripture, and the cross—as the common core that Evangelicals share. This emphasis fits better with my Wesleyan orientation.

The problem with drawing lines that others cannot cross is that it moves boundary issues to the centre of the Evangelical paradigm. For example, those in the Reformed stream tend to make complementarian thinking a line one cannot cross: Women cannot serve in church leadership. In the Wesleyan Holiness movement women have been leaders for more than one hundred years. General William Booth’s daughter, for example, became the fourth leader (General) of the Salvation Army in 1934. Wesleyans tend to be egalitarian on the issue of women in ministry. Now using the four marks of Evangelicalism looks like a set of core issues that we can use at the centre of our identity. The role of women in ministry is a boundary issue—more marginal, and not necessary for an Evangelical identity.

Another example: Those in the Reformed stream insist on Penal Substitutionary Atonement as the model Evangelicals must use to understand the saving work of Christ on the Cross. But surely the precise model is a marginal issue. Perhaps it can serve as a fuzzy boundary between two branches of the Christian faith (for example, Roman Catholics, who refer to the Satisfaction Theory [of which PSA is a subset] and the Eastern Orthodox, who I think refer to Regeneration or something like that). But we are saved by Christ’s work on the cross; elevating a theory of how that works to a line that cannot be crossed moves PSA from the margin to the centre. I don’t think it’s a helpful way to move forward.

To be clear, I think that the PSA makes sense and is worth using in our understanding of the atonement, but I don’t think it is nearly as important as is experiencing the presence of Christ in one’s life. A friend of mine has observed that N.T. Wright, the English theologian, has been in significant conflict with the Gospel Coalition over this issue, because they want to make PSA normative for all Evangelicals. I’d rather be a Wesleyan!

Some random wanderings by a decidedly amateur theologian. I beg the forbearance of those who know this whole field better than I do and welcome correction as leading to my own better understanding of what I’m talking about.

Solus Christus – Christ Alone: An Anabaptist Perspective.

My assignment this afternoon is to reflect as follows (quoting from the email Peter Bush sent me):

[The panel is] a mixture of academics and ministry practitioners who will each be given 15-20 minutes for their presentations. … The invitation is to reflect on what “Christ Alone” means in our present context – what are the challenges and strengths of this concept? How is it incorporated (or not) into the church’s life and the lives of Christians now? How might it be understood now in ways that the Reformers would find troubling? Are there contemporary metaphors that help us understand the watchword’s meaning now?

So the following questions: What does “Christ Alone” mean today? What are the challenges and strengths of the concept? How is it part of the church’s life today? What would the Reformers think of the way that we use this concept? Is there a better way to think of it today?

I think about this from the perspective of someone within the larger Anabaptist-Mennonite family. I come from the Brethren in Christ Church, which is a part of the Mennonite World Conference, and now hold membership in Mennonite Church Canada/MC Manitoba in Steinbach. My theological training was at the Mennonite Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana, and my missiological training at Asbury Seminary’s School of World Mission, a Methodist school in Kentucky. So I am a Wesleyan-Anabaptist, and I speak from within that somewhat unique and unstable synthesis (which also, as it happens, describes the BICC).

A Contemporary Metaphor

I leave most of the questions above to the others here today. Here are some brief answers, before I move on to my particular interest this afternoon.

·         What does “Christ Alone” mean today?

It has become something of a bromide in Christian thinking. I graduated from Messiah College, whose motto is “Christ pre-eminent”. Providence, where I teach, says that we are Christ-centred. My home church says that our mission is to follow Christ faithfully. We all say this, but I doubt that many of us have thought it through all that much.

·         What are the challenges and strengths of the concept?

A basic challenge is precisely the self-evident clarity of the concept: of course we live for Christ alone! This is so obvious that it loses meaning. A basis strength is this same clarity. Christ really is the centre of Christian faith. Christ is the One who sets Christian faith apart from all other paths to God. 

·         How is it part of the church’s life today?

I think that it functions primarily as a way to allow us to cut free from traditions and denominational identity. If we are all “of Christ”, we don’t have to listen to our own founders and past, our own history. We are free to forge our own path today, which is not necessarily a good thing.

·         What would the Reformers think of the way that we use this concept?

They would be bemused—a bit puzzled and perhaps dismayed. In the Mennonite church, for example, we have made the pursuit of peace (to which I am wholeheartedly committed) more important than a relationship with God or complete faithfulness to Scripture—and we have done so in the name of Christ. Conrad Grebel and Menno Simons would be puzzled and dismayed. 

·         Is there a better way to think of it today?

This is the question I want to pursue. 

Missiological thinking (along with various other disciplines) has picked up on the mathematical concept of “centred-set vs. bounded set”. In missiology Paul Hiebert is the one who brought the concept into our thinking as a way of answering the question: When should we baptize a new convert? [1] Hiebert asks the question this way: If a Christian evangelist travelling through North India comes to a village where the gospel has never been heard before, and preaches the gospel, and if a villager who has never heard the gospel before responds and seeks to follow Jesus, how much must that villager learn and accept before we can say he has been converted? 

Although the concept, “Christ Alone”, is a genuinely centred-set concept, bounded set thinking continued to predominate in the Reformation. That is, we have a catechism—a list of questions and answers that one must master in order to be confirmed, which functions as a boundary of belief separating Christians from non-Christians. In the Mennonite Church we have a catechism of commitment, in which belief is present, but a willingness to do is more important. Again, it forms a boundary of action separating Christians from non-Christians. 

Hiebert recommends that we use a centred-set approach instead. Christians are defined by their orientation to a common centre—Christ alone—rather than by an external boundary. In the Reformation the five “alones” remembered over this five year-period can be seen as a centre, replacing the boundary of the existing Roman Catholic Church. I suggest that this metaphor of a centred-set church may help us today to move ahead. 

Some Possible Implications

In the cultural and religious wars of the contemporary scene, particular beliefs have functioned as boundary markers to determine who is accepted as genuinely Christian. One camp has boundary markers such as commitments to the inerrancy of Scripture, to the traditional family, and to a number of other fundamental beliefs. If one does not give assent to these boundary markers, those in the camp label one as outside the true faith. Another camp has a different set of boundary markers—a commitment to social justice and a consecration of positions held by the Liberal Party of Canada. Again, if one does not give assent to the boundary markers, one is labelled as outside the true faith, committed to an individualistic Christianity that is somehow less than fully Christian. There are other camps inside and outside the church, Christian and non-Christian in character. 

This past weekend I listed to Michael Enright describe Christians of a particular sort as hypocrites and hardly worth any respect—primarily on the basis of his own boundary markers for what makes one a good citizen of Canada or of the world. It is not only Christians who set out boundary markers to exclude those with whom they disagree. 

The Reformers would not much care about Michael Enright and CBC, for of course they lived in a context still controlled by the church. Christendom is now dead, and a new reformation impulse within the church needs also a new metaphor. I suggest that the centred-set, drawn from mathematics and mediated to missiology through Paul Hiebert, gives us such a metaphor. 

The centred set consists of those elements with a common centre, as opposed to the bounded sets of those elements within a specific boundary. The centred set can embrace a greater diversity than can a bounded set—if the centre is sufficiently strong. In my own formulation of this idea I have suggested holding Christ, Scripture, and the Lord’s Table as the centre,[2] but I think that we can also state it through the common centre of the statements in this series of celebrations of the Reformation: sola gratia, sola fide, sola Scriptura, solus Christus, and soli Deo Gloria. By grace, through faith, with Scripture as our only written authority, centred on Christ, and all for God’s glory. The Reformers themselves did not move fully to this centred set model, but they began the process; we can complete it.

Sola gratia. Sola fide. Sola Scriptura. Solus Christus. Soli Deo Gloria.

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[1] See Paul G. Hiebert, “The Category Christian in the Mission Task”. Originally published in International Review of Missions 72 (1983): 421-427, this essay appears in fuller form in Paul G. Hiebert, Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1994, pp. 107 to 136).

[2] See “A Missiological Exploration of Church Membership”, paper presented to the Brethren in Christ Study Conference, “Who’s In? Who’s Out?: Rethinking Church Membership in the 21st Century”, held October 9-10, 2014, which appeared in Brethren in Christ History and Life, August 2015 (38:2), pp. 285–301.

Boundaries

Conversion and Reversion: The Place of Boundaries

Blogs are too brief to develop ideas fully, so this blog backs up to an earlier idea: The way that religion functions as a pattern for living. Patterns create clear boundaries, so that one can tell if you are in the pattern or outside it. The plain dress that my parents grew up with is an example of such boundaries. Women who wore the headcovering were inside the boundary and could be trusted to follow the pattern of simplicity and obedience that the boundary enclosed.

Now boundaries are good. Although bounded-set thinking has its problems,[1] boundaries—and the pattern they enclose—are necessary to enable us to cope with life. If we had to work out from the beginning what to do in every situation what we should do, we would live paralyzed lives. We would be unable to act, because we would be constantly analyzing each action to decide whether it is right or wrong. Boundaries and patterns serve as a useful shortcut so that we can function according to a high moral and ethical standard.

But boundaries—and the patterns they enclose—fit only the situation in which they were created. A friend described to me the way that her Catholic community responded to her contact with non-Catholic friends. It reminded me of my own BIC background: We socialized with our own and avoided outsiders. That practice of separation (whether Catholic, with its understanding that it is the only true church, the mother church, or BIC, with our understanding that we had regained the purity of the first church) worked within the setting in which it was created. But in a new setting, North America as we know it today, it is simply out of place.

For many years missionaries from widely differing backgrounds have found themselves working as sisters and brothers when they go to countries with no significant Christian presence. Similarly, as Christian faith becomes a minority option in North America,[2] Christians of various backgrounds do not have the luxury of separating from each other in the way that we once did. We belong together, and the old patterning (which promoted separation from other Christians)  is actually destructive.

One can consider a variety of boundary issues (one thinks of the old saying, “Christian boys don’t smoke, drink, dance, or go to movies, and they don’t go with girls that do”) that have lost their relevance as the pattern they enclose has less and less to do with the world we live in today. So boundaries are good, but the centre of the Christian faith (which in the long run creates the boundaries) is essential.

I suspect that one primary source of reversions from Christianity (whether in the sense of moving from one church to another, or in the sense of leaving Christian faith) is the way that we have often substituted the pattern we know (complete with its boundaries) for the Christian faith in itself. That faith is primarily centred on a relationship with Jesus Christ, which is why Bruxy Cavey has emphasized the saying in his own ministry, “Christianity is not a religion; it’s a relationship.” 

References

Hiebert, Paul G. Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1994.

 

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[1] I am working on a paper on bounded-set thinking and centred-set thinking in which I develop these ideas more fully. The terms and their relationship to who belongs in the church were mediated to missiology through the work of Paul Hiebert (1994).

[2] This assertion can be debated. See the work of people like Reginald Bibby in Canada and Christian Smith in the USA for a good picture of religion in North America today.