A generational shift in evangelical Christianity?

[Cross-posted from my "secular" blog, [A]mazed and [Be]mused. By the way, my university-aged son has just joined me as a co-blogger over there, and I'm feeling pretty pleased about it!]

Evangelicals are increasingly motivated by a broader range of social concerns, from disease in Africa, to the environment, to racial reconciliation. And they want to be a witness to these values instead of a tool in the power games of others.

Newsweek. The last sentence of the quote aptly characterizes where American evangelicals have positioned themselves for the past twenty-five years:  as a tool in the power games of others.

(Perhaps I should speak of "Christianists" — the term by which Andrew Sullivan distinguishes this politicized group from other evangelicals.)

The mainstream US media has recently published a couple of articles hailing the arrival of a kinder, gentler evangelicalism. The New York Times reported:

The founding generation of leaders like [Jerry] Falwell and [James] Dobson, who first guided evangelicals into Republican politics 30 years ago, is passing from the scene [either dying or retiring]. … Meanwhile, a younger generation of evangelical pastors — including the widely emulated preachers Rick Warren and Bill Hybels — are pushing the movement and its theology in new directions.

There are many related ways to characterize the split:  a push to better this world as well as save eternal souls; a focus on the spiritual growth that follows conversion rather than the yes-or-no moment of salvation; a renewed attention to Jesus’ teachings about social justice as well as about personal or sexual morality. However conceived, though, the result is a new interest in public policies that address problems of peace, health and poverty.

In my experience, concern for the environment is also taking root among younger evangelicals.

I hope Newsweek and the Times are right to suppose that this represents a generational shift. I'm not quite convinced yet, but I'm hopeful.

There are two trends to consider. The Times is alert to one of the trends, which involves very large, "seeker sensitive" churches.

The church pastored by Bill Hybels averages 20,000 in attendance each week. To maintain a more personal touch, it makes use of 2,600 small groups. The Times comments:

Hybels, founder of the Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago, is very possibly the single-most-influential pastor in America; in the last 15 years, his Willow Creek Association has grown to include more than 12,000 churches. Many invite their staff members and lay leaders to participate by telecast in Willow Creek’s annual leadership conferences, creating a virtual gathering of tens of thousands. …

As his stature has grown, Hybels has seemed more willing to irk Christian conservative political leaders — and even some in his own congregation. He set off a furor a few years ago when he invited former President Bill Clinton to speak at one of his conferences. And the Iraq war has brought into sharp relief Hybels’s differences with conservatives like Dobson.

… On the eve of the Iraq invasion, Hybels preached a sermon called “Why War?” Laying out three approaches to war — realism, just-war theory and pacifism — he implored members of his congregation to re-examine their own thinking and then try to square it with the Bible. In the process, he left little doubt about where he personally stood. He called himself a pacifist.

The other trend is more of a grass roots phenomenon. There is a rising interest in something called the "Emergent" church. Or "movement", or "conversation" — Emergent leaders are uncomfortable being defined by labels.

The Emergent movement reminds me of the internet-driven political campaigns of Howard Dean and Ron Paul. Yes, there are identifiable leaders (e.g., Brian McLaren), but the movement as such has no hierarchy, and is not identified with any individual. It is amorphous — a concept that has spread virally — a meme.

As such, it isn't clear how much impact the Emergent movement will have on Christianity. It could self-destruct, as Howard Dean's political campaign did in 2004. On the other hand, it might represent the beginning of something new in Christianity:  a way of doing church differently in a postmodern era.

The thing to note is that these two trends, so different in approach, have similar ideals with respect to social issues. There's an amusing, semi-serious description of the seven layers of Emergence on a Christianity Today blog. Consider the seventh "layer":

Maybe the mission of the church isn’t simply to become a bigger church? … To their amazement, [the article's hypothetical congregation] discovers significant swaths of the Bible (such as the Pentateuch, prophets, gospels, and epistles) talk about justice, poverty, and compassion. The church begins to speak about social issues and participates in efforts to combat poverty, AIDS, and global injustice.

This paragraph takes a bit of a cheap shot at the Hybels model of doing church — "Maybe the mission of the church isn’t simply to become a bigger church?" Emergent folks tend to be critical of the megachurch model. Nonetheless, the paragraph's emphasis on poverty, AIDS, and global injustice is consistent with the mission objectives of Hybels's church.

In the convergence of these two trends, there is hope for the next generation of evangelicals. The reader may note an approving nod to the Emergent movement in the name of this blog, Emerging From Babel.

A time to tear down, and a time to build up

Some years ago, I knew a woman who had taken a course in pastoral counselling at a local seminary. The course was a syncretistic blend of Roman Catholic theology and Jungian psychotherapy. She had to go undergo psychotherapy sessions as part of the program.

When I met her, she was a mess. Maybe she was emotionally fragile before she took the course — I don't know. But my impression was, her therapists had taken her psyche apart and failed to put it back together again.

Sometimes I think seminaries do the same thing to their students.

You apply to a seminary innocently expecting to be equipped for pastoral ministry. Instead, you are introduced to the modern "science" of critical scholarship, which takes scripture apart, piece by piece. (All science uses this process of breaking a thing apart into its constituent pieces to try to understand it.)

You enter seminary with a heart overflowing with faith and devotion; you exit seminary wondering if you can trust anything the Bible says on any topic. And voila! — here's your degree — you've graduated into pastoral ministry!

The experience isn't unique to seminarians, of course. University studies undermine the faith of many young Christians. Let me quote a post by Avdat, who shared this gem from Walter Brueggemann:

Walter Brueggemann would give a rather cheeky talk about how one's changing view of scripture parallels one's changing view of the family of origin:

1. "The Bible is the Word of God." This is what we say when we're young and our knowledge of the scriptures is limited to what we learned in Sunday School.
   
   This statement is not unlike saying, "I have a normal family." It's a statement of love, respect and great naivete.


2. "The Bible is a mess of contradictions, myths and legends." This is what we say after we take a religion class in college. Or, after we're put through the meat grinder of Biblical studies in a mainline seminary.
   
   It's not unlike saying, "My family is a dysfunctional mess, and I'm not coming home for Christmas!" The latter statement, like the former, is the product of some distance and new, third-party perspective, the therapist substituting for the professor. Oh yes, and there's anger in both statements.


3. "But they're still my family." After a while you own them again as your own. You don't pretend that you haven't learned that your father is an alcoholic and your mother is co-dependent, but they're yours, and you still love them, warts and all.
   
   And if we can say, "It's still the Word of God" (two creation stories and all), then we've made the parallel and necessary third move.

Brueggemann admitted that seminaries are a lot better at moving people from stage one to stage two than they are from stage two to stage three.

Brueggemann's other way of putting this is to speak of a cycle of (1) Orientation; (2) Disorientation; and (3) New Orientation.¹ In time, the "new" orientation will suffer disorientation in its turn.

It's a rather cynical analysis, I suppose, but how else would one grow? You can't make progress while keeping everything the same. It is to have one's cake and eat it, too. Thus remaining innocent (ignorant?) isn't an option. God has a way of shaking us out of our complacency, however disturbing we may find the process.

Not so long ago, I left a comment on a blog in which I applied this paradigm to evangelicals and liberals.

I have had some experience in both liberal and evangelical churches. The evangelicals have a blinkered perspective; they duck the hard questions. But the liberal pastors are very, very confused, which of course filters down to their parishioners!

I am fond of Brueggemann's notion that believers pass through a cycle of orientation / disorientation / new orientation. Evangelicals seem to me to be stuck at the "orientation" stage — they need to go on a voyage of discovery, have their world rocked a bit. But many liberals are stuck at the disorientation stage.

They're stuck there because that's where liberal seminaries leave their pastors.

I submit that all seminaries should attend to Ecclesiastes 3:3. Evangelicals need to understand that there is a time to tear down, in good scientific fashion. A time for analysis ("the abstract separation of a whole into its constituent parts for study").

But all scholars and professors need to understand that there is also a time to build up. A time for synthesis ("the combination of ideas into a complex whole").

Indeed, the building up is the most important part — the goal of the whole undertaking. If our seminaries tear the Bible apart and fail to put it back together again, they do pastors — and the Church — a grave disservice.

I've been through this process of disorientation myself. In some ways, I feel as if I'm only now entering the "new orientation" phase. Hence the title of this blog:  Emerging From Babel.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
¹This is the outline Brueggemann utilizes in his survey of the Psalms.