The final chapter of Molly Worthen's, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism.
Reviews of previous chapters include:
Introduction
Chapter 1 (Birth of Neo-Evangelicalism)
Chapter 2 (Evangelicals on the Edges)
Chapter 3 (The Strivings of Christianity Today)
Chapter 4 (Mennonites and Nazarenes in the 50s)
Chapter 5 (The Drive to Accreditation)
Chapter 6 (The Church Growth Movement)
Chapter 7 (The Canterbury Trail)
Chapter 8 (Democrat Evangelicals)
Chapter 9 (A Form of Intellectualism)
Chapter 10 (The Presuppositionalists)
Finally, chapter 11: "The Paradox of the Evangelical Imagination"
1. The lead off of this chapter is a now famous question by Mark Noll in his book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind: could it be that "it is simply impossible to be, with integrity, both an evangelical and an intellectual" (241). Noll wrote that in 1994. He has since converted to Roman Catholicism and moved from Wheaton to Notre Dame.
I wondered if there was a little more opinion in this chapter than the others. But here is the basic point of the chapter and perhaps the book: "The problem with evangelical life is not that its participants obey authority. All rational thought requires the rule of some kind of law based on irreducible assumptions. The problem is that evangelicals attempt to obey multiple authorities at the same time. They demand that presuppositions trump evidence while counting the right kind of evidence as universal fact" (258).
This critique is similar to my critique of Ken Ham. He tries to look like he is using an evidentiary approach but he only uses it until the evidence seems to point away from the desired direction (to be fair, he makes the shift most when shifting from "observational science" to what he calls "historical science." Then he invokes his presuppositions to channel the evidence in a different direction).
So if it looks like stars are millions of light years away, we can simply assume God created the light in mid-stream because of our presuppositions. When our presuppositions are in danger, we find a "possible solution" relating to evidence and thus avoid the more "probable solution." We are still talking evidence but we look for a more complex and less likely interpretation that will fit with our assumptions.
There is a spectrum to this dilemma. At what point should presuppositions be brought in to trump the apparent trajectory of evidence, if ever? We inevitably operate with certain "irreducible assumptions," but are they huge systems or more atomic in nature?
2. Worthen mentions the founding of what came to be called the CCCU in 1971. This coalition of Christian colleges and universities met even a couple weeks ago, I believe. It has made it possible for grants and exchanges to take place. It helped Christian colleges become more than they could have become on their own.
3. The chapter mentioned the bromance that has occasionally happened between evangelicals and Catholics. For example, Notre Dame has hired a string of famous evangelicals over the last few decades: George Marsden (historian), Alvin Plantinga (philosopher), John Howard Yoder (ethicist), Stanley Hauerwas (ethicist), Mark Noll (historian), Christian Smith (sociologist). Chuck Colson and Richard John Neuhaus founded Evangelicals and Catholics Together.
The Catholic idea of "natural law" has provided a way for Christians to argue for various things in the public sphere without explicit religious language. The notion is that there are certain features of the world that argue for certain legislation and that all humans can see these laws without having to reference special revelation or Scripture.
4. I didn't like the way a section on thriving anti-intellectualism threw in together Richard Mouw and Ken Ham. Mouw is worlds away from Ham, IMO. This section also mentioned David Barton, who is very popular in some circles but considered an incompetent historian by most historians. Harper Collins pulled his book on Thomas Jefferson almost as soon as it was published because of its historical problems.
5. Worthen also mentions left-leaning evangelicals in this chapter, the "emergent church" in particular. She depicts the "new monasticism" of a Shane Claiborne as picking a few features of the Middle Ages and laying them over a still very modern mindset. "Without quite realizing what they have done, evangelicals often use these ancient teachings and practices to confirm, rather than challenge, their own assumptions" (254).
She especially has Western individualism in view. "Worship is more of a therapeutic means to personal fulfillment than submission to a higher authority" (256).
6. The last section of the book speaks of the "evangelical imagination," something deeper than ideas, something that involves underlying drives and impulses. She especially engages James Davison Hunter in this section. To him, evangelicals exaggerate the importance of ideas and worldviews. To him, evangelicals take history and "warp it into self-serving myth" (260).
"The anti-intellectual inclinations in evangelical culture stem not from wholehearted and confident obedience to scripture... but from deep disagreements over what the Bible means, a sincere desire to uphold the standards of modern reason alongside God's word--and the defensive reflexes that outsiders' skepticism provokes" (261).
Here is as close to a conclusion as we get: "If we continue to use the word evangelical at all, and we will--we must allow room for diversity and internal contradiction, for those who love the label and those who hate it. We must recognize that American evangelicalism owes more to its fractures and clashes, its anxieties and doubts, than to any political pronouncement or point of doctrine" (264).
7. Take-away
I have personally hated the word evangelical because I have come to associate it with the neo-evangelicalism of the 1940s and the fundamentalism of the Moral Majority. This book has helped me, in the words of Donald Dayton, "re-discover an evangelical heritage." The publisher changed his title to, "discovering," but the title he wanted was "re-discovering."
That is to say, the word evangelical was revivalist before it was co-opted to primarily be what it is today. The book has helped me be able to use that word of my faith community without exactly equating it to the mainstream evangelical establishment that has evolved over the last 50 years. The book, no doubt annoyingly to those who think they speak for evangelicalism, makes it clear that we are a bigger group--and more diverse--than at first appears.
Showing posts with label Donald Dayton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Donald Dayton. Show all posts
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Thursday, February 06, 2014
Worthen: Democratic Evangelicals (8)
Chapter 8 of Molly Worthen's, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism.
Reviews of previous chapters include:
Introduction
Chapter 1 (Birth of Neo-Evangelicalism)
Chapter 2 (Evangelicals on the Edges)
Chapter 3 (The Strivings of Christianity Today)
Chapter 4 (Mennonites and Nazarenes in the 50s)
Chapter 5 (The Drive to Accreditation)
Chapter 6 (The Church Growth Movement)
Chapter 7 (The Canterbury Trail)
Now chapter 8, "The Gospel of Liberation"
This chapter deals with the awkward evangelicals of the 60s, 70s, and 80s who didn't fit the political mould of the central neo-evangelicals. It is no surprise that Wesleyans and Anabaptists feature strongly in this chapter, because strong streams of our tradition stand in tension with the political sensibilities of other evangelicals.
1. For example, the Wesleyan tradition was an abolitionist movement in the early 1800s (the equivalent today of being pro-immigration reform, pro-civil rights, etc). Meanwhile, social action to the NAE in the 60s meant anti-communism, anti-Roman Catholic, anti-IRS taxing of ministers, stopping alcohol on airplanes, and anti-Hollywood. So Nazarenes like Timothy Smith pointed out that evangelicals were "social progressives" long before liberal Protestant theology.
The problem with the social gospel, as I've often said, was not that it wanted to help the poor--that's straight Bible. The problem was that it no longer believed Jesus was God.
2. This chapter also introduced us to Jim Wallis, Sojourners, and Ron Sider. They are evangelicals in the older sense, even though they support what are often thought of as "liberal" causes.
3. Again, churches in the Wesleyan tradition have been supporting women's rights since before Protestant liberalism even existed. It ordained women in the 1800s, almost a century even before the United Methodist Church did. Many in the Wesleyan tradition thus have seen no contradiction between being a "feminist" and being a Wesleyan.
4. "Evangelicals for McGovern" McGovern was the son of a Wesleyan Methodist minister and a Democratic candidate for president. This was before the issue of abortion had become what it is today. This was before Roe vs. Wade. "Historian David Swartz has suggested that as late as the mid-1970s, the political prospects of the evangelical Left seemed nearly as bright as those of their peers on the Right. Evangelicals' ambivalent opinions on social policy, gender equality, and abortion rights had not yet hardened into the slogans of the Moral Majority" (191).
I think this is an important point. The political positions of conservative Christians today seem clearer than they were in the year 1970. We do not have a good memory of the period when these positions were hardening. And I should throw in here that memory studies show that the human brain infects earlier memories with later ones. That is to say, it is predictable that some of those who lived through this period will remember themselves having a firmer opinion on abortion in 1970 than they actually did at the time.
Worthen is spot on with this analysis--the right had a better "grand narrative." That is to say, the narrative of American moral deterioration has had staying power in a Christian premillennial culture that expects things to get worse and worse before Christ's return.
5. A strain of scholars continued to engage Europe. People like George Ladd, Geoffrey Bromiley, Paul Jewett engaged the thinking of people like Karl Barth. Dietrich Bonhoeffer became a hero.
There was also an Anabaptist renaissance during the Vietnam War. Pacifism was anathema during WW2, but the Vietnam War was a different story. Stanley Hauerwas became part of the mix, along with John Howard Yoder.
Reviews of previous chapters include:
Introduction
Chapter 1 (Birth of Neo-Evangelicalism)
Chapter 2 (Evangelicals on the Edges)
Chapter 3 (The Strivings of Christianity Today)
Chapter 4 (Mennonites and Nazarenes in the 50s)
Chapter 5 (The Drive to Accreditation)
Chapter 6 (The Church Growth Movement)
Chapter 7 (The Canterbury Trail)
Now chapter 8, "The Gospel of Liberation"
This chapter deals with the awkward evangelicals of the 60s, 70s, and 80s who didn't fit the political mould of the central neo-evangelicals. It is no surprise that Wesleyans and Anabaptists feature strongly in this chapter, because strong streams of our tradition stand in tension with the political sensibilities of other evangelicals.
1. For example, the Wesleyan tradition was an abolitionist movement in the early 1800s (the equivalent today of being pro-immigration reform, pro-civil rights, etc). Meanwhile, social action to the NAE in the 60s meant anti-communism, anti-Roman Catholic, anti-IRS taxing of ministers, stopping alcohol on airplanes, and anti-Hollywood. So Nazarenes like Timothy Smith pointed out that evangelicals were "social progressives" long before liberal Protestant theology.
The problem with the social gospel, as I've often said, was not that it wanted to help the poor--that's straight Bible. The problem was that it no longer believed Jesus was God.
2. This chapter also introduced us to Jim Wallis, Sojourners, and Ron Sider. They are evangelicals in the older sense, even though they support what are often thought of as "liberal" causes.
3. Again, churches in the Wesleyan tradition have been supporting women's rights since before Protestant liberalism even existed. It ordained women in the 1800s, almost a century even before the United Methodist Church did. Many in the Wesleyan tradition thus have seen no contradiction between being a "feminist" and being a Wesleyan.
4. "Evangelicals for McGovern" McGovern was the son of a Wesleyan Methodist minister and a Democratic candidate for president. This was before the issue of abortion had become what it is today. This was before Roe vs. Wade. "Historian David Swartz has suggested that as late as the mid-1970s, the political prospects of the evangelical Left seemed nearly as bright as those of their peers on the Right. Evangelicals' ambivalent opinions on social policy, gender equality, and abortion rights had not yet hardened into the slogans of the Moral Majority" (191).
I think this is an important point. The political positions of conservative Christians today seem clearer than they were in the year 1970. We do not have a good memory of the period when these positions were hardening. And I should throw in here that memory studies show that the human brain infects earlier memories with later ones. That is to say, it is predictable that some of those who lived through this period will remember themselves having a firmer opinion on abortion in 1970 than they actually did at the time.
Worthen is spot on with this analysis--the right had a better "grand narrative." That is to say, the narrative of American moral deterioration has had staying power in a Christian premillennial culture that expects things to get worse and worse before Christ's return.
5. A strain of scholars continued to engage Europe. People like George Ladd, Geoffrey Bromiley, Paul Jewett engaged the thinking of people like Karl Barth. Dietrich Bonhoeffer became a hero.
There was also an Anabaptist renaissance during the Vietnam War. Pacifism was anathema during WW2, but the Vietnam War was a different story. Stanley Hauerwas became part of the mix, along with John Howard Yoder.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Whatever happened to evangelicalism... (7)
In yet another proof of miracles and God's existence, I have finished reading a book, Donald Dayton's Discovering an Evangelical Heritage. Today I read chapter 10, "Whatever Happened to Evangelicalism?" and the Epilogue, "Reflections on Some Unresolved Issues." This book, we remember, came out in 1976.
Here are the previous posts on this book:
Evangelical Heritage
Finney and Weld
Oberlin and Civil Disobedience
Louis Tappan Quotes
Luther Lee and Antoinette Brown
Gospel to the Poor
The Epilogue was enticing because it has stuff I am actually more interested in than what this book covers. Dayton was writing in the wake of the civil rights conflict and the Vietnam War and was trying to justify the social action history of American evangelicalism. My sense is that the current generation of evangelical children are, if anything, focused more on social action than they actually are on personal salvation (although I sense the political climate in relation to the Obama administration, in addition to a generation that was just beginning to look around at the world when 9-11 happened, could actually result in some sort of a reveral of this trajectory--we'll see). In any case, I am much more interested in the history of my own tradition than in recovering a sense of our past social action.
I hope to read through Bebbington next. But I am especially interested in what Dayton calls "two types of Evangelicalism," which I'll call the old Princeton school and the revivalist school. Finney, Dayton says, represents a reaction to the "old Calvinism" of B. B. Warfield and Charles Hodge. The Princeton school opposed the abolitionist and women's rights movement represented by Finney, Oberlin, Wesleyan Methodists, and so forth.
We find Hodge saying things like, "females... are judged... incompetent to the proper discharge of the duties of citizenship." And of abolitionists, that they were "a small minority of the people. They have never included in their ranks either the controlling intellect or moral feeling at the North." Hodge also could proudly say, "I am not afraid to say that a new idea never originated in this [Princeton] seminary."
I am quite happy to say that my Wesleyan roots had nothing whatsoever to do with the likes of Hodge and Warfield. I do not have to be embarrassed by the B. B. Warfields and Charles Hodges of nineteenth century Christianity. They are like those Christians in the 60s who opposed letting African-Americans sit anywhere on a bus or in a movie theater or to use any water fountain or go to any school. These are all on the wrong side of history, individuals who were out of touch with the Holy Spirit.
The nice thing about history, as Gamaliel once reminded us, is that it doesn't care who you are, how much power you have, or how loudly you can shout. History, like truth, simply doesn't care about people's feelings. The Flood comes, some people are saved, some people drown with "Oops" as their final words.
But Dayton also tells of "what happened to evangelicalism," remembering that the majority of the Christian institutions recognized by a magazine like Christianity Today as evangelical have their roots not in the old Princeton type but the revivalist type of evangelicalism. What happened was that "the sociological, theological, and historical currents produced a movement that in many ways stood for the opposite of what an earlier generation of Evangelicals had affirmed. What had begun as a Christian egalitarianism was transformed into a type of Christian elitism. Revivalistic currents that had once been bent to the liberation of the slave now allied themselves with wealth and power against the civil rights movement. Churches and movements that had pioneered a new role for women became the most resistant to contemporary movements seeking the same goals" (134).
Gordon College and Gordon-Conwell Seminary left Finney's type of evangelicalism (Gordon was criticized by Warfield in their day) and would eventually follow the Princeton model. Wheaton would go the same way. If Finney emphasized redemption, the Princeton school emphasized sin. Even the Wesleyan Methdodists would be impacted by some of these these forces under the influence of individuals like Stephen Paine and, ironically, people like Donald Dayton's own father, Wilbur Dayton.
Among the changes in post-Civil War revivalist groups was a shift toward pre-millennialism. Thus while the original Wesleyan Methodists tended toward postmillennialism and an optimism about the possibility not only of personal but of societal redemption. The Wesleyans after the Civil War became increasingly premillennial and withdrew more and more from social involvement.
Dayton does mention another very significant factor, although very briefly. The rise of things like evolution, biblical criticism, and so forth were also major elements in catalyzing the influence of the old Princeton school on revivalist traditions like mine. The old Princeton school put its emphasis on right doctrine while not so much emphasizing the new life that revivalism did.
But this was not the emphasis of John Wesley or revivalism. John Wesley, for example, while certainly orthodox in doctrine, never tired of affirming that religion does not "consist in orthodoxy or right opinions... A man may be orthodox in every point... He may be almost as orthodox as the Devil... and may, all the while, be as great a stranger as he to the religion of the heart."
Even today I have often said this. Revivalist evangelicalism of the Wesleyan sort is interested in your head. But we are far more interested in your heart and life. Thus, "it was revivalist Evangelicalism that supported the antislavery movement and opened up new roles for women." The evangelicalism that Mark Noll and George Marsden portray as the mainstream might just as well be interpreted, at least in the nineteenth century, as the backwater.
Here are the previous posts on this book:
Evangelical Heritage
Finney and Weld
Oberlin and Civil Disobedience
Louis Tappan Quotes
Luther Lee and Antoinette Brown
Gospel to the Poor
The Epilogue was enticing because it has stuff I am actually more interested in than what this book covers. Dayton was writing in the wake of the civil rights conflict and the Vietnam War and was trying to justify the social action history of American evangelicalism. My sense is that the current generation of evangelical children are, if anything, focused more on social action than they actually are on personal salvation (although I sense the political climate in relation to the Obama administration, in addition to a generation that was just beginning to look around at the world when 9-11 happened, could actually result in some sort of a reveral of this trajectory--we'll see). In any case, I am much more interested in the history of my own tradition than in recovering a sense of our past social action.
I hope to read through Bebbington next. But I am especially interested in what Dayton calls "two types of Evangelicalism," which I'll call the old Princeton school and the revivalist school. Finney, Dayton says, represents a reaction to the "old Calvinism" of B. B. Warfield and Charles Hodge. The Princeton school opposed the abolitionist and women's rights movement represented by Finney, Oberlin, Wesleyan Methodists, and so forth.
We find Hodge saying things like, "females... are judged... incompetent to the proper discharge of the duties of citizenship." And of abolitionists, that they were "a small minority of the people. They have never included in their ranks either the controlling intellect or moral feeling at the North." Hodge also could proudly say, "I am not afraid to say that a new idea never originated in this [Princeton] seminary."
I am quite happy to say that my Wesleyan roots had nothing whatsoever to do with the likes of Hodge and Warfield. I do not have to be embarrassed by the B. B. Warfields and Charles Hodges of nineteenth century Christianity. They are like those Christians in the 60s who opposed letting African-Americans sit anywhere on a bus or in a movie theater or to use any water fountain or go to any school. These are all on the wrong side of history, individuals who were out of touch with the Holy Spirit.
The nice thing about history, as Gamaliel once reminded us, is that it doesn't care who you are, how much power you have, or how loudly you can shout. History, like truth, simply doesn't care about people's feelings. The Flood comes, some people are saved, some people drown with "Oops" as their final words.
But Dayton also tells of "what happened to evangelicalism," remembering that the majority of the Christian institutions recognized by a magazine like Christianity Today as evangelical have their roots not in the old Princeton type but the revivalist type of evangelicalism. What happened was that "the sociological, theological, and historical currents produced a movement that in many ways stood for the opposite of what an earlier generation of Evangelicals had affirmed. What had begun as a Christian egalitarianism was transformed into a type of Christian elitism. Revivalistic currents that had once been bent to the liberation of the slave now allied themselves with wealth and power against the civil rights movement. Churches and movements that had pioneered a new role for women became the most resistant to contemporary movements seeking the same goals" (134).
Gordon College and Gordon-Conwell Seminary left Finney's type of evangelicalism (Gordon was criticized by Warfield in their day) and would eventually follow the Princeton model. Wheaton would go the same way. If Finney emphasized redemption, the Princeton school emphasized sin. Even the Wesleyan Methdodists would be impacted by some of these these forces under the influence of individuals like Stephen Paine and, ironically, people like Donald Dayton's own father, Wilbur Dayton.
Among the changes in post-Civil War revivalist groups was a shift toward pre-millennialism. Thus while the original Wesleyan Methodists tended toward postmillennialism and an optimism about the possibility not only of personal but of societal redemption. The Wesleyans after the Civil War became increasingly premillennial and withdrew more and more from social involvement.
Dayton does mention another very significant factor, although very briefly. The rise of things like evolution, biblical criticism, and so forth were also major elements in catalyzing the influence of the old Princeton school on revivalist traditions like mine. The old Princeton school put its emphasis on right doctrine while not so much emphasizing the new life that revivalism did.
But this was not the emphasis of John Wesley or revivalism. John Wesley, for example, while certainly orthodox in doctrine, never tired of affirming that religion does not "consist in orthodoxy or right opinions... A man may be orthodox in every point... He may be almost as orthodox as the Devil... and may, all the while, be as great a stranger as he to the religion of the heart."
Even today I have often said this. Revivalist evangelicalism of the Wesleyan sort is interested in your head. But we are far more interested in your heart and life. Thus, "it was revivalist Evangelicalism that supported the antislavery movement and opened up new roles for women." The evangelicalism that Mark Noll and George Marsden portray as the mainstream might just as well be interpreted, at least in the nineteenth century, as the backwater.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Gospel to the Poor (6)
The previous post in this series was on Luther Lee and others.
With chapter 9 we are getting close to the end. I frankly don't know how common it is for churches to have food pantries for those who might wander by looking for food, but I certainly grew up with it in the Wesleyan Church. Despite often being very conservative on issues like governmental welfare, the Wesleyan pastors I grew up with saw it as important to have these sorts of things available at the parsonage for the needy.
Now mind you, there were also the stories of abuse. The person who called yesterday and was given yesterday. Then calls again today forgetting where they were in the phone book. There is an old Latin expression though that exposes yet another common fallacy of logic like the various fallacies associated with labelism that I mentioned last week: "Abuse is no excuse." If last week I mentioned the fallacy of jumping to conclusions (hasty generalization), presuming everyone is a certain way because some are a certain way (fallacy of composition, sometimes called prejudice :-), this is the fallacy of diversion, of changing the subject.
The question of whether we should try to help the poor is one question. The question of whether some will abuse our attempts is a different question. And the question of how to help them is yet another. The answer to the first question is so well established biblically that it is beyond reasonable doubt. The answers to the second and third are where practical complications come in. But it is the fallacy of diversion to think they in any way undermine the fundamental Christian concern for what has long been called "social justice." The term is not so important--to focus on the term is again a diversion, a changing of the subject. I suspect, however, it would be rather inappropriate to abandon the term just because of some passing comments by the uninformed on television. He and that hype will pass. Social justice goes back to Deuteronomy, Jesus, Christianity throughout the centuries...
... and evangelicalism in the 1800s, as Dayton discusses in his chapter 9. It is not to be confused with the social gospel, which was a form of liberal Christianity in the early 1900s that rejected personal salvation, miracles, and historic Christianity but retained the Christian emphasis on helping those in need. This is an important point. Those who promoted the social gospel lost their historic faith and were only left with a general concern for humanity. But the faulty thinking that has often gone on here absolutely boggles my mind.
Their concern for the poor and for humanity was not some evil aim that cropped up because they were liberal. Rather, this was all that was left of their Christianity after they had lost their faith in the historic tenets of the faith! Like I said, I am dumbfounded with the way many Christian groups came to dismiss concern for the poor because "the liberals" were concerned for the poor. Death by association. If the people who don't believe Jesus was God are concerned for the poor, then it must be wrong to be concerned for the poor. Heaven help us!
This of course is not our Wesleyan heritage, to drive a wedge between personal salvation and social justice. Abolitionist drives after the Civil War were channeled into a fight against prostitution and alchohol. But the flavor of these quests were not of sticking it to the sinner--not at all. The flavor was to rescue girls who were part of the "white slave trade" and to pull the drunkard out of his stupor.
This is, by the way, an interesting difference between the fight against homosexuality today and the fights of the 1800s. There is a potentially significant difference between the fight against abortion and the fight against homosexuality, for example. Many think of the "fight against sin" in terms of speaking against. But the evangelical social activists of the 1800s were "speaking for" in their speaking against. They were speaking for the slave, for the prostitute, for the drunkard or at least his family. The abortion movement fits this pattern--speaking for the unborn. The flavor of the homosexuality fight seems different. It does not tend to speak for anyone as it speaks against. It seems a distinction worth some reflection.
The Free Methodist Church, a sister denomination I hope we will one day merge with (and with whom we once came very close to merging with, if not for a parliamentary maneuver by a general superintendent), was founded both in favor of the freedom of the slave and against the practice of the day of renting pews. The effect of renting pews was to give the wealthy the best seats and to sequester those without resources to certain pews that by their very nature said, "I'm a nobody." Prior to the Civil War there were also special pews for African-Americans whose name I won't mention here.
Free Methodists again withdrew from the Methodist Episcopal Church over this issue. By the way, it is pretty clear from these chapters why groups like mine often have not thought much of the Methodist Church, and it wasn't originally because they were "liberal." In fact, their siding with slavery and with burgeoning capitalists looks rather conservative from the standpoint of debates today. It was later that some Methodists would go theologically liberal, after we revivalists left their fold. We can all rise above our history, of course, and as I've said, am not anti-Methodist today.
B. T. Roberts saw following Jesus' example in relation to the poor as an essential sign of a true church. "It may be that there cannot be a church without a bishop... There can be none without a gospel, and a gospel for the poor." "They are not called up. The great are called down." The Christian and Missionary Alliance also started when A. B. Simpson's efforts were rejected by his Presbyterian Church in New York. His new movement had a special call to the "neglected classes both at home and abroad."
The Church of the Nazarene again had similar founding, another denomination I hope we might one day also merge with. Phineas Bresee wrote, "We can get along without rich people, but not without preaching the gospel to the poor." During this period rescue missions like the Pacific Garden Mission were formed. The Salvation Army came to America from England, a church in the holiness tradition so dedicated to the impoverished that most people don't even know it is a church in the Wesleyan tradition.
Again, we can debate how it is best done. But this is who Wesleyans are, this is who Christian are, take it or leave it. God is not elected.
With chapter 9 we are getting close to the end. I frankly don't know how common it is for churches to have food pantries for those who might wander by looking for food, but I certainly grew up with it in the Wesleyan Church. Despite often being very conservative on issues like governmental welfare, the Wesleyan pastors I grew up with saw it as important to have these sorts of things available at the parsonage for the needy.
Now mind you, there were also the stories of abuse. The person who called yesterday and was given yesterday. Then calls again today forgetting where they were in the phone book. There is an old Latin expression though that exposes yet another common fallacy of logic like the various fallacies associated with labelism that I mentioned last week: "Abuse is no excuse." If last week I mentioned the fallacy of jumping to conclusions (hasty generalization), presuming everyone is a certain way because some are a certain way (fallacy of composition, sometimes called prejudice :-), this is the fallacy of diversion, of changing the subject.
The question of whether we should try to help the poor is one question. The question of whether some will abuse our attempts is a different question. And the question of how to help them is yet another. The answer to the first question is so well established biblically that it is beyond reasonable doubt. The answers to the second and third are where practical complications come in. But it is the fallacy of diversion to think they in any way undermine the fundamental Christian concern for what has long been called "social justice." The term is not so important--to focus on the term is again a diversion, a changing of the subject. I suspect, however, it would be rather inappropriate to abandon the term just because of some passing comments by the uninformed on television. He and that hype will pass. Social justice goes back to Deuteronomy, Jesus, Christianity throughout the centuries...
... and evangelicalism in the 1800s, as Dayton discusses in his chapter 9. It is not to be confused with the social gospel, which was a form of liberal Christianity in the early 1900s that rejected personal salvation, miracles, and historic Christianity but retained the Christian emphasis on helping those in need. This is an important point. Those who promoted the social gospel lost their historic faith and were only left with a general concern for humanity. But the faulty thinking that has often gone on here absolutely boggles my mind.
Their concern for the poor and for humanity was not some evil aim that cropped up because they were liberal. Rather, this was all that was left of their Christianity after they had lost their faith in the historic tenets of the faith! Like I said, I am dumbfounded with the way many Christian groups came to dismiss concern for the poor because "the liberals" were concerned for the poor. Death by association. If the people who don't believe Jesus was God are concerned for the poor, then it must be wrong to be concerned for the poor. Heaven help us!
This of course is not our Wesleyan heritage, to drive a wedge between personal salvation and social justice. Abolitionist drives after the Civil War were channeled into a fight against prostitution and alchohol. But the flavor of these quests were not of sticking it to the sinner--not at all. The flavor was to rescue girls who were part of the "white slave trade" and to pull the drunkard out of his stupor.
This is, by the way, an interesting difference between the fight against homosexuality today and the fights of the 1800s. There is a potentially significant difference between the fight against abortion and the fight against homosexuality, for example. Many think of the "fight against sin" in terms of speaking against. But the evangelical social activists of the 1800s were "speaking for" in their speaking against. They were speaking for the slave, for the prostitute, for the drunkard or at least his family. The abortion movement fits this pattern--speaking for the unborn. The flavor of the homosexuality fight seems different. It does not tend to speak for anyone as it speaks against. It seems a distinction worth some reflection.
The Free Methodist Church, a sister denomination I hope we will one day merge with (and with whom we once came very close to merging with, if not for a parliamentary maneuver by a general superintendent), was founded both in favor of the freedom of the slave and against the practice of the day of renting pews. The effect of renting pews was to give the wealthy the best seats and to sequester those without resources to certain pews that by their very nature said, "I'm a nobody." Prior to the Civil War there were also special pews for African-Americans whose name I won't mention here.
Free Methodists again withdrew from the Methodist Episcopal Church over this issue. By the way, it is pretty clear from these chapters why groups like mine often have not thought much of the Methodist Church, and it wasn't originally because they were "liberal." In fact, their siding with slavery and with burgeoning capitalists looks rather conservative from the standpoint of debates today. It was later that some Methodists would go theologically liberal, after we revivalists left their fold. We can all rise above our history, of course, and as I've said, am not anti-Methodist today.
B. T. Roberts saw following Jesus' example in relation to the poor as an essential sign of a true church. "It may be that there cannot be a church without a bishop... There can be none without a gospel, and a gospel for the poor." "They are not called up. The great are called down." The Christian and Missionary Alliance also started when A. B. Simpson's efforts were rejected by his Presbyterian Church in New York. His new movement had a special call to the "neglected classes both at home and abroad."
The Church of the Nazarene again had similar founding, another denomination I hope we might one day also merge with. Phineas Bresee wrote, "We can get along without rich people, but not without preaching the gospel to the poor." During this period rescue missions like the Pacific Garden Mission were formed. The Salvation Army came to America from England, a church in the holiness tradition so dedicated to the impoverished that most people don't even know it is a church in the Wesleyan tradition.
Again, we can debate how it is best done. But this is who Wesleyans are, this is who Christian are, take it or leave it. God is not elected.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Lewis Tappan Quotes (4)
To sneak back
Arthur and Lewis Tappan were business men of the 1800s who helped subsidize a good bit of abolitionism, Finney, etc. Here are some quotes from Don Dayton's chapter on the two men.
Lewis Tappan: Children should be raised sensitive to the issue of race so that as adults they, with African-Americans, would "be able to meet at the polls, sit on juries, attend political meetings, practice at the bar, unite in processions, and mingle with their fellow-men in the various walks of life, on equal terms, as the religion of Jesus, and the laws of the land require." Sad that it took the civil rights movement over a hundred years later to get us anywhere close to this vision. I continue to attribute a good deal of the degree of anger toward Obama to the fact that he is black.
In 1863, near the end of his life, Tappan joked that while some claimed blacks were superior to whites in intelligence and strength, he wasn't so sure. Just maybe "a white man was just as good as a black man, if he behaved himself." Tappan ended with this poem:
"Judge not of virtue by the name, Or think to read it on the skin; Honor in white nad black the same--the stamp of glory is within."
Arthur and Lewis Tappan were business men of the 1800s who helped subsidize a good bit of abolitionism, Finney, etc. Here are some quotes from Don Dayton's chapter on the two men.
Lewis Tappan: Children should be raised sensitive to the issue of race so that as adults they, with African-Americans, would "be able to meet at the polls, sit on juries, attend political meetings, practice at the bar, unite in processions, and mingle with their fellow-men in the various walks of life, on equal terms, as the religion of Jesus, and the laws of the land require." Sad that it took the civil rights movement over a hundred years later to get us anywhere close to this vision. I continue to attribute a good deal of the degree of anger toward Obama to the fact that he is black.
In 1863, near the end of his life, Tappan joked that while some claimed blacks were superior to whites in intelligence and strength, he wasn't so sure. Just maybe "a white man was just as good as a black man, if he behaved himself." Tappan ended with this poem:
"Judge not of virtue by the name, Or think to read it on the skin; Honor in white nad black the same--the stamp of glory is within."
Friday, March 26, 2010
Oberlin and Civil Disobedience (3)
Just read chapter 5 of Donald Dayton's Discovering and Evangelical Heritage. If you want to follow the crumbs back, the previous one is here.
I had a number of thoughts about the incident of chapter 5, one in which an escaped slave being hid on the Oberlin campus was seized by some southerners who had come looking for him. A crowd of Oberliners met up with them in nearby Wellington and retrieved him, then sent him north to Canada. The Democrats who held sway in Cleveland were going to have their way with these Oberliners as violating the Fugitive Slave Law, but the Republicans of Oberlin cleverly set the trial for the southerners for kidnapping at the same time. In the end the compromise was that both charges were dropped.
I am struck by a number of things. First, the Oberliners used "higher law" arguments for civil disobedience. This is always a tricky thing, as I think we now know and many knew then. Although I support the civil disobedience of the Oberliners, recourse to "higher laws" is always iffy because everyone has a different sense of what that higher law is. For example, those who are threatening Democratic congressmen right now might easily say they are following a higher law, as might someone who shoots abortion doctors or sets homosexuals on fire. If you truly believe something like the Oberliners did, you must simply be willing to face the consequences of civil disobedience because you disagree with the law.
Probably the most striking thing is how much the values of the Republicans and Democrats have reversed in the last century and a half. The Republicans used to be the ones advocating civil rights and the power of the federal government over the states. Now these are values of the Democratic party. In that sense, I am an old Republican.
I have not studied the issue thoroughly, but it seems to me that somehow, seemingly without much reflection, the issue of abortion has inadvertantly pushed conservative Christians toward a states rights orientation. I suppose since a large portion of conservative Christians are southerners, it is natural that many conservative Christians would take this position anyway. But it is fascinating to me how others have absorbed this point of view that really has nothing to do with conservative Christianity and is actually antithetical to the original orientation of Republicans.
States' rights issues, for example, are involved in Roe vs. Wade. Its repeal will only send the issue back to the states. In itself, its repeal will not stop a single abortion. What I think we would prefer is a federal ban on abortion. But would the Supreme Court justices Republican presidents have sent up support such a federal law any more than Roe vs. Wade?!
I had a number of thoughts about the incident of chapter 5, one in which an escaped slave being hid on the Oberlin campus was seized by some southerners who had come looking for him. A crowd of Oberliners met up with them in nearby Wellington and retrieved him, then sent him north to Canada. The Democrats who held sway in Cleveland were going to have their way with these Oberliners as violating the Fugitive Slave Law, but the Republicans of Oberlin cleverly set the trial for the southerners for kidnapping at the same time. In the end the compromise was that both charges were dropped.
I am struck by a number of things. First, the Oberliners used "higher law" arguments for civil disobedience. This is always a tricky thing, as I think we now know and many knew then. Although I support the civil disobedience of the Oberliners, recourse to "higher laws" is always iffy because everyone has a different sense of what that higher law is. For example, those who are threatening Democratic congressmen right now might easily say they are following a higher law, as might someone who shoots abortion doctors or sets homosexuals on fire. If you truly believe something like the Oberliners did, you must simply be willing to face the consequences of civil disobedience because you disagree with the law.
Probably the most striking thing is how much the values of the Republicans and Democrats have reversed in the last century and a half. The Republicans used to be the ones advocating civil rights and the power of the federal government over the states. Now these are values of the Democratic party. In that sense, I am an old Republican.
I have not studied the issue thoroughly, but it seems to me that somehow, seemingly without much reflection, the issue of abortion has inadvertantly pushed conservative Christians toward a states rights orientation. I suppose since a large portion of conservative Christians are southerners, it is natural that many conservative Christians would take this position anyway. But it is fascinating to me how others have absorbed this point of view that really has nothing to do with conservative Christianity and is actually antithetical to the original orientation of Republicans.
States' rights issues, for example, are involved in Roe vs. Wade. Its repeal will only send the issue back to the states. In itself, its repeal will not stop a single abortion. What I think we would prefer is a federal ban on abortion. But would the Supreme Court justices Republican presidents have sent up support such a federal law any more than Roe vs. Wade?!
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Evangelical Heritage 2
I've read chapters 2-4 since last I posted. Chapter 2 was on Finney. Chapter three on someone named Theodore Weld. Chapter four on the "Lane rebellion" and the founding of Oberlin College.
Don Dayton's main point in chapter 2 is that social reform was a principal element of Charles Finney's ministry, sometimes excised from sources about him. He even encouraged women to pray in the presence of other men.
Theodore Weld was a vocal opponent of slavery and advocate for immediate abolition. He lived, ate, worshipped with freedmen from the south. Dayton makes a strong case that Weld demonstrates that abolitionists were not all long distance friends of the slaves. Weld truly lived out his belief that these freedmen were entirely equal to him. He was also refused to take over his wife's property upon marriage because he considered her an equal.
Probably most striking to me was the story of the founding of Oberlin College. I feel quite confident that, if the 43 year old Ken Schenck who is typing this post were transplanted to 1834 and didn't know much of what came after, he would be a moderate abolitionist rather than some of these radical individuals.
Oberlin vowed to "strive continually... while living, provide for the widows, orphans, and famlies of the sick and needy." Blacks were admitted to Oberlin right alongside whites from the college's inception (the first college ever to do this). They were opposed to the relocation of Indians. Many of them were pacifists, some even vegetarians as a physical discipline. Antoinette Brown, the first ordained woman in America (ordained in a Wesleyan Methodist church), was not allowed to take classes officially but did so unofficially.
Let no one call un-Wesleyan anyone who advocates social activism along these lines--toward civil rights, toward equal rights for women, toward the empowerment of the stranger in our midst. Perhaps we might argue the wisdom of the tactics some of these individuals took at the time. But it goes without saying that the founders of the Wesleyan Methodist Church were not particularly considered "conservative" in their day, and we should share their values.
Don Dayton's main point in chapter 2 is that social reform was a principal element of Charles Finney's ministry, sometimes excised from sources about him. He even encouraged women to pray in the presence of other men.
Theodore Weld was a vocal opponent of slavery and advocate for immediate abolition. He lived, ate, worshipped with freedmen from the south. Dayton makes a strong case that Weld demonstrates that abolitionists were not all long distance friends of the slaves. Weld truly lived out his belief that these freedmen were entirely equal to him. He was also refused to take over his wife's property upon marriage because he considered her an equal.
Probably most striking to me was the story of the founding of Oberlin College. I feel quite confident that, if the 43 year old Ken Schenck who is typing this post were transplanted to 1834 and didn't know much of what came after, he would be a moderate abolitionist rather than some of these radical individuals.
Oberlin vowed to "strive continually... while living, provide for the widows, orphans, and famlies of the sick and needy." Blacks were admitted to Oberlin right alongside whites from the college's inception (the first college ever to do this). They were opposed to the relocation of Indians. Many of them were pacifists, some even vegetarians as a physical discipline. Antoinette Brown, the first ordained woman in America (ordained in a Wesleyan Methodist church), was not allowed to take classes officially but did so unofficially.
Let no one call un-Wesleyan anyone who advocates social activism along these lines--toward civil rights, toward equal rights for women, toward the empowerment of the stranger in our midst. Perhaps we might argue the wisdom of the tactics some of these individuals took at the time. But it goes without saying that the founders of the Wesleyan Methodist Church were not particularly considered "conservative" in their day, and we should share their values.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Evangelical Heritage 1
I feel compelled to follow through with a book idea I've suggested before, "A Great Time for the Wesleyan Tradition." After Easter, I plan to start writing it on the seminary Dean's blog bit by bit.
The lead off chapter is, "What is a Wesleyan?" and I am reading Donald Dayton's Discovering an Evangelical Heritage this week as research. Today I read his 1988 Preface, the Prologue, and the first chapter.
Dayton is a feisty soul. The eccentricities of mortals should make us smile, not offend us--unless of course they are dangerous. I do not find Wallis and Campolo dangerous, nor my friends and relatives that are extremely conservative (like the conservative friend I ran into at lunch who suggested a Marion high schooler could beat Obama in the next election).
So Dayton is a typical intellectual, even a typical genius. If you met him you would agree. I think those who know him (which is not me) would agree that he is sometimes an offensive person and is not particularly gifted when it comes to social skills. But he is brilliant and has very much of value to say. I chuckle when such individuals bite--it's just harmless eccentricity.
All that is to say that I thoroughly enjoyed his 1988 Preface, remembering that the first edition was with Harper & Row in 1976. His dissatisfaction with Harper & Row comes through loud and clear as he moved to Hendrickson for the second edition. Delectable Dayton.
There are some great quotes: "[M]ost historical writing is implicitly a form of advocacy" (x). "Personal experience and cultural questions can open up true insights into Christian experience and the scriptures as well as obscure them" (x). "[M]ost books arise out of the author's personal history" (1).
His central point appears in the new Preface: "'[E]vangelicalism' is better understood as a specific wing of the nineteenth-century revivalist tradition that took shape before the emergence of fundamentalism and along different lines..." (xii). He thus disagrees with Marsden's sense of the purer race of evangelicals that is suspiciously Reformed and respectable. "[I]t's an interesting comment on evangelical historiography and on those who do the writing that such things as the ministry of women apparently really only begin to happen when they happen in the circles of those cultural elites who write most about such things!" (xi).
The Prologue tells of Dayton's experience at an evangelical college in the 1960s (Houghton, I think). Again, fun for those of us with similar background--peculiar to the mainstream. "[T]he contrast between the pettiness of the issues that troubled us and the magnitude of the issues that were being dealt with in society is frightening... prohibitions against drinking, smoking, dancing, card-playing, and theater-going. Our lives were largely bound up in testing the limits of these prohibitions" (2).
"We tended to be apolitical, but when political instincts did surface, they were conservative... Our great fear was communism, and we found signs of it everywhere" :-) He catalogs Christianity Today's embarrassing positions on social issues during the decade, what John Oliver later called "A Failure of Evangelical Conscience." He tells of his departure from his Wesleyan Methodist Church heritage (although he never names it) only in grad school to discover something about it he had never even known. Mind you, Don is the son of Wesleyan Methodist evangelical pillar, Asbury Seminary, Wesley Biblical patriarch Wilbur T. Dayton--extremely well connected!
"Though never helped to understand its history in college or in church life, I discovered much to my surprise that the denomination [The Wesleyan Methodist Church] was a product of the closest parallel to the civil rights movement in American history--the abolitionist protest against slavery in the pre-Civil War period" (4).
Chapter 1 then deals with the founder of Wheaton College, which was of course founded by Wesleyan Methodists in 1848 as Illinois Institute. The Wesleyans could not sustain it financially, however, so Congregationalists took over. Dayton's point in this chapter is to question the kind of evangelicalism Billy Graham represented in a comment on the Vietnam War in 1973: "God has called me to be a New Testament evangelist, not an Old Testament prophet! While some may interpret an evangelist to be primarily a social reformer or political activist, I do not! An evangelist is a proclaimer of the message of God's love and grace in Jesus Christ and of the necessity of repentance and faith" (8).
Dayton shows quite easily that the first president of Wheaton, Jonathan Blanchard, would have had no part in Graham's position. Blanchard was a fiery abolitionist. Now, mind you, I'm not sure of the prudence of Blanchard. His debate partner, N. L. Rice, at least as Dayton describes him, seemed wiser.
But Dayton makes his point. Activism was in the blood of the nineteenth century "evangelicals." I myself am ambivalent toward the label today. But Dayton will make a case that revivalism is where the heart of evangelicalism was in the 1800s.
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