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Andrew C. Thompson

Category Archives: Christianity & Culture

The Struggle Between Covenant & Schism in the United Methodist Church

22 Saturday Jul 2017

Posted by Andrew C. Thompson in Christianity & Culture, Ecclesiology, John Wesley, United Methodist Church

≈ 22 Comments

Returning from annual conference each year offers a great opportunity for reflection on the unity of the church in her witness and mission. Our annual conference session a few weeks ago in Arkansas was especially encouraging.

The Holy Spirit was present in worship, the teaching was encouraging, and conference initiatives like 200,000 Reasons to Fight Childhood Hunger were inspiring. It all made me excited to be among the People Called Methodists!

And yet, you only have to look more broadly within the United Methodist Church to see ways that the church is fracturing. Particularly in other parts of the United States, the actions of some bishops, boards of ordained ministry, and whole annual conferences are putting stress on the United Methodist connection in ways that threaten to tear the church apart.

The actions in question are related to the way that some forces in the church have refused to recognize the authority of the General Conference, Judicial Council, and the Book of Discipline itself. When that happens, the very idea that we are a church bound by a common covenant starts to fracture.

The word that often comes up when talking with others about the current troubles in the UMC is “schism.” The word has to do with a split or a division. It’s also a loaded term, not to be taken lightly.

John Wesley had a perspective on schism that can help us think through what the word really means in a church context. That Wesleyan perspective offers us clarity in the present.

In his sermon “On Schism,” Wesley defines schism in the Bible as “a disunion in mind and judgment—perhaps also in affection—among those who, notwithstanding this, continued outwardly united as before” (¶I.2).

He’s talking about the way the word is used in 1 Corinthians, when the Apostle Paul is giving counsel to the Christians in Corinth about divisions in the church there. Wesley contends that true schism doesn’t happen at the point that a group of people leaves the church. Schism actually occurs before that—when the actions and attitudes of a group cause division within the body as it exists.

John Wesley (1703-1791)

Wesley’s point is that the biblical meaning of schism “is not a separation from any church … but separation in a church” (¶I.1).

Wesley is also unsparing in his criticism of such action. As he puts it, schism is “both evil in itself, and productive of evil consequences” (¶II.10). It is evil in itself because it constitutes a “grievous breach of the law of love,” tearing apart that which God desires to be united. And it is productive of evil consequences in that it leads to anger and resentment within the body of Christ.

The issues that have led to schismatic actions within the UMC are no secret. The primary issue is the way that people read the Bible and understand biblical authority. Closely related to that is how we identify and interpret the work of the Holy Spirit. And of course, the actual presenting issues are those related to God’s intention for our sexuality, the definition of marriage, and the standards for ordination.

The current fervor of progressive theology aims to force change on a United Methodist Church that has chosen, time and again, to affirm the traditional biblical understanding of marriage and sexuality (including all the points in our Book of Discipline that support traditional doctrinal positions). What is different now than in the past is the strategy being employed. Whereas once upon a time, opposing voices in the church bided their time and waited for the church to “catch up to the culture,” now they have determined to ignore church teaching and church polity to impose their own views by any means necessary.

The consequences of schism are always tragic—as John Wesley well knew. The Commission on a Way Forward has yet to report its work, and there is a General Conference called for 2019. Yet what hope does the church have if the very church leaders responsible for upholding the covenant we share treat it as if it is entirely optional? It is a vexing question.

There is either a covenant, or there is not. If there is a covenant, then there is a church. But if those within the covenant insist on willfully ignoring it, then the United Methodist Church will dissipate before our very eyes.

The great dilemma that those who believe in the covenant of the United Methodist Church are facing now is what we do when schism is forced upon us by the actions of those who seemingly don’t care about the consequences of what they are doing.

None of this is easy. But I am convinced that God is not finished with us. There will surely be a covenant to embrace and a church to serve when our current schism has been overcome. Veni Sancte Spiritus!

This essay also appeared in the Arkansas United Methodist newspaper’s July 7, 2017 edition.

Mental Health Awareness

05 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by admin in Christianity & Culture, FUMC Springdale

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Mental Health Awareness WeekThis week marks the National Mental Health Awareness Week for 2015.

Yesterday evening we hosted a Candlelight Vigil for Mental Health Awareness as a way to kick off the week in this area. The event was sponsored by Mental Health America in Northwest Arkansas and the Springdale Affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). I was glad that First Church could provide the hospitality for an event that was advocating for such an important cause.

I doubt there is a single adult living who hasn’t either suffered from a mental illness or had a close family member or friend who has. At the Candlelight Vigil yesterday, we heard numerous testimonies of or about people who have suffered from anxiety or depression, P.T.S.D., schizophrenia, and dementia. One of the challenges of mental illness is the stigma that has traditionally been associated with it. And that’s exactly why events like National Mental Health Awareness Week are so important.

One of the most poignant parts of the event yesterday evening was the point where we were all invited to take the “Stigma Free Pledge” which focuses on a commitment to learning about mental health, seeing the person (and not the illness), and taking action to help spread awareness about mental health. You can find one version of that pledge here:

I pledge to show compassion by reaching out to those in need.
I pledge to have the courage to speak up and challenge stereotypes and attitudes.
I pledge to teach by sharing my own experiences w/ mental illness and encouraging others to do so.
I pledge to work for a change in how we view and address mental illness.

That pledge contains some wonderful goals, which I think all people can join together to support.

Pastoral leadership in a Wesleyan framework

16 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by admin in Christianity & Culture, John Wesley, Leadership, Local Church Ministry, Wesleyan Theology

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How should we think about leadership in a Christian context? Given the popularity of leadership as a topic in print and online media, it is something work thinking about. Is Christian leadership any different than leadership in general? For those of us in the Wesleyan tradition, is there a particularly Wesleyan form of leadership?

Here are four approaches to leadership that are common in our culture:

1. Natural genius — the “born leader”
2. Bureaucratic manager — the “cog in the wheel”
3. Master of effective techniques — the “guru”
4. Leader of noble character — the “master craftsman”

No approach to leadership is perfect, but some can be viewed as better than others in a given context. The first approach — which is a charismatic leadership model — is great if you were born with natural charisma. The problem is that such a thing can really be taught. The second model worked well in the mid-twentieth century (the heyday of big institutions) but is seen as distasteful by most people today.

Probably the most common leadership approach is the third one — which we might call the entrepreneurial model. You see this a lot in the realm of business and finance. It is concerned with a leader having the right kind of skill set to apply to a given task (and by extension to the persons the leader is leading).

The only problem with the third model is that a leader can be talented without being good. You could be the CEO of a multinational corporation, the head coach of an NFL football team, or the mayor of a large city and have a fantastic skill set for the job in each instance. Yet you could also be positively wicked, carrying out your job in Machiavellian and fashion. It might work in business or politics (although even there people can get fed up with it) but it isn’t going to work in a Christian setting where the heart of a person is seen as truly important (and often a marker of the authenticity of that person’s faith).

I think the best conception of pastoral leadership in a Wesleyan framework is the fourth model: the approach to leadership that is grounded in the right kind of character. This is a virtue-based approach to leadership, where the leader is seen as needing to have the right sort of formation in order to lead well. In fact, I think this kind of approach fits best with any conception of Christian leadership — in the church, business, education, politics, or non-profit work.

If you read the New Testament epistles that are focused on pastoral leadership — e.g., 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, 1 and 2 Peter — you find that they are very concerned with qualities of character in church leaders such as faith, humility, and gentleness. John Wesley embraced this biblical concept of good leadership, both in his own person and in every level of Methodist leadership under him. He believed that the fruits of the Spirit would be borne out in persons whose lives were being transformed by grace and that these were the same persons who could be entrusted to guide others.

In the sermon, “The Circumcision of the Heart” (1733), Wesley focuses on the formation of the virtues of humility, faith, hope, and love as markers of a Christian’s growth in grace. He sees these virtues in progressive fashion, as building upon one another as the believer is transformed by grace. It is a wonderful example of a particularly Wesleyan appropriation of the virtue tradition. And while that particular sermon is a meditation on sanctification in general, I think it can be read with profit for those who want to think about the intersection of faith and leadership.

The cultivation of the virtues is never easy, but neither is leadership itself. For those who want to respond to the call to serve as Christian leaders, dedicating themselves to formation in virtue is an absolute necessity. There are no shortcuts to mature, authentic discipleship.



UMCNA
Note:
Part of this post is drawn from a presentation I did at a Residency-in-Ministry retreat in the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church earlier this week. My thanks to the Board of Ordained Ministry in that annual conference for the invitation and the opportunity to work with the conference’s provisional elders & deacons. We had a great day together at Camp Sumatanga near Gallant, AL.

From Wesley's pen — May 12, 1759

28 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by admin in Christianity & Culture, John Wesley, JW Journal, Pastoral Care

≈ 3 Comments

Wesley_Journal title page 1758-60_WITH BORDERJohn Wesley had a lifelong interest in medicine. He made medical advice and pharmaceuticals available to the poor in a number of ways during his ministry. He also believed that a human being was fundamentally a union of body & soul, so he thought that salvation should have to do with both the material and spiritual aspects of human life.

One of the areas that Wesley showed real foresight was the way in which he grasped the psychosomatic aspects of illness. That is, he realized that the mental and emotional parts of human experience could often play a role in physical symptoms. If we want to treat the body, Wesley knew, we have to treat the soul as well. There is a deep interconnectedness between body and soul.

Take this entry from Wesley’s journal as an example, where he comments on the condition of a woman he met and the limitations of the standard medical treatments of his day:

“Reflecting today on the case of a poor woman who had a continual pain in her stomach, I could not but remark the inexcusable negligence of most physicians in cases of this nature. They prescribe drug upon drug, without knowing a jot of the matter concerning the root of the disorder. And without knowing this they cannot cure, though they can murder the patient.”

The problem with most physicians, Wesley argues, is that they want to treat the body like a broken machine. They don’t have an adequate understanding of the way in which stress, anxiety, depression, traumatic experiences, and the like can manifest themselves through bodily ailments. A proper diagnosis—and treatment!—requires a deeper understanding of illness. Wesley goes on:

“Whence came this woman’s pain? (Which she would never have told, had she never been questioned about it.) From fretting for the death of her son. And what availed medicines while that fretting continued? Why then do not all physicians consider how far bodily disorders are caused or influenced by the mind? And in those cases which are utterly out of their sphere, call in the assistance of a minister—as ministers, when they find the mind disordered by the body, call in the assistance of a physician?”

This is a good example of Wesley’s concern for holistic health and healing. Today, of course, we’d add to his two examples of the physician and the minister: nutritionists, psychologists, pastoral counselors, strong friendships, and a supportive faith community all play a big role in how we can be healthy and whole persons. The Wesleyan insight into the body-soul union is not always appreciated even today, though, and that’s a good reason to take his pastoral wisdom to heart.

Do you have thoughts on this issue? Experiences of your own that relate to it? Feel free to share below.

[This post is part of an ongoing series that highlights important themes that emerge in the Journal that John Wesley published throughout his adult life. For other posts in the series, click here.]


 

Up Close: The Frank Schaefer Appeal

24 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by admin in Christianity & Culture, United Methodist Church

≈ 2 Comments

The Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church met in Memphis, Tennessee, this week.

On Wednesday morning, the public hearing was centered on the appeal in the Frank Schaefer trial. So it had some interest for me on a number of levels. I was able to attend the hearing, which offered insight into the working of the Judicial Council—clearly one of the less well known parts of United Methodist polity.

I’d never before experienced a Judicial Council hearing before. So I took some notes on how the proceedings went. Here is how the ‘movement of the morning’ went, so to speak:

1) Dr. William B. Lawrence, the chair, called the hearing to order and offered a description of the nature and function of the Judicial Council for the benefit of those present.

2) Dr. Lawrence then explained the purpose of the public hearing that day (i.e, the Schaefer appeal), and the procedure to be followed throughout the hearing.

3) The nine Judicial Council members then introduced themselves.

4) An opening prayer was offered by one of the JC members.

5) The hearing proper began with the presentation of the church’s argument by Chris Fisher, counsel for the Eastern Pennsylvania Annual Conference of the UMC.

6) Next the presentation of Schaefer’s argument was given by Scott Campbell, who was serving as his counsel.

2014-10-22_Judicial Council 4

Frank Schaefer speaking to the media

7) Mr. Fisher was then allowed 5 minutes for a rebuttal, since the appeal was made by the church (and thus had the burden of overturning the decision of the lower court in the Northeastern Jurisdiction).

8) Dr. Lawrence opened up the floor for questions by members of the Judicial Council to either party, which followed for the next several minutes.

9) A closing prayer was offered by a Judicial Council member.

10) The public hearing was adjourned. (I believe the entire process took around 1 hr 30 mins.)

In all, it was an orderly and eminently reasonable expression of how the United Methodist Church goes about discerning difficult issues within the life of the church. There were clearly supporters of both parties present in the room, but no one attempted to disrupt the proceedings or cause a ruckus. (The only annoyance was a local member of the news media, who couldn’t get his microphone adjusted the way he wanted on the lectern and kept moving around between speakers in a way I found fairly unprofessional.) I would suggest that the hearing I witnessed ought to serve as a model for how all public meetings of the church should occur: with order, decorum, a respect for our polity, and mutual faith in the goodwill of all those present.

For what it’s worth: One of the first questions I was asked when I mentioned to some people that I had attended the hearing was which side (counsel for the church or counsel for Schaefer) seemed to do better in oral arguments. My only answer is that both litigators (Chris Fisher and Scott Campbell) seemed to me to present their cases well.

The problem in making a judgment any more specific than that due to two factors: the objective strength of the arguments they were making rests on their use and interpretation of numerous previous Judicial Council decisions (cited by decision #) and clauses in the Book of Discipline (cited by paragraph #). I have no familiarity with the Judicial Council decisions, and the Book of Discipline references were made so quickly that I didn’t get to write them down. (The one exception here that I noticed was an interesting strategy by Chris Fisher, the counsel for the church, which involved an interpretation of the “just resolution” provisions of the Discipline, which can be found in par. 2701 and following; I remembered this part of Fisher’s argument because it came up numerous times in his argument and would typically be the kind of theme I would have expected from his counter party.). So I’m sorry I can’t offer more substantive commentary than that.

Note: I believe the Judicial Council will announce its decisions for this case and the other matters before it during this session sometime early next week. When I see that news release, I will link to it here.

Update 10/27/14: The Judicial Council has upheld the appeals court’s reinstatement of Frank Schaefer. See the article by Linda Bloom of the United Methodist News Service on the Judicial Council affirming Schaefer’s reinstatement as clergy. Kathy Gilbert writes that the decision won’t end United Methodist same-sex debate. The text of Judicial Council decision 1270 can be found here.

 


 

Wesleyan Accent: Discipleship in the Wesleyan Way

25 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by admin in Christianity & Culture, Discipleship, John Wesley, Sanctification/Holiness, Spiritual Formation, Wesleyan Accent, Wesleyan Theology

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The church today puts a lot of focus on the need to make disciples of Jesus Christ. But do we take seriously what that work requires of us?

I’m not so sure. I am very sure, on the other hand, that we’re living in a culture that does us no favors when we even begin to approach the work of disciple-making.

Think about it. In the West, we live in a world where most things we want are within reach. We’re not good at delayed gratification. We think we have a right to gratify every felt need we have. We don’t like to suffer.

Discipline isn’t easy. That’s particularly the case when we’re talking about a discipline beyond what it takes to make it to work on time, get through the day, keep the kids fed, and pay the mortgage.

So what about the discipline required to become a disciple? Click here to continue reading…

_______________________________

Wesleyan Accent

Wesleyan Accent provides free and subscription resources for Christian spiritual formation, catechesis, and discipleship in the Wesleyan way. By clearly articulating the Wesleyan understanding of Christian faith, WA seeks to strengthen discipleship, empower mission and evangelism, cultivate ministry gifts of young leaders, and nurture the professional and service life of young theologians.

Andrew C. Thompson joined the writing team of WA upon its launch in the Fall of 2013. For the full catalog of his articles on the WA site, click here.

The Prophet of Port William

27 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by admin in Christianity & Culture, Ethics

≈ 6 Comments

I spent last weekend at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Baltimore, Maryland. It was a wonderful conference, where I was able to both watch invigorating presentations and connect with colleagues & friends.

Without doubt, one of the highlights of the weekend was an interview between Norman Wirzba of Duke Divinity School and Wendell Berry, the agrarian novelist, essayist, and poet. The forum was simple: Wirzba and Berry sat together on a stage and engaged in conversation for an hour and a half. The audience was packed, and I suspect everyone there would have stayed twice as long if given the chance.

I was first introduced to Wendell Berry by a friend who shared with me the poem, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” which critiques that mode of life detached from the creation and obsessed with material gain, while encouraging the reader to reacquaint himself with the goodness of the creation and to live according to the rhythms of the earth rather than the rhythms of the profit motive. (The poem concludes with the evocative phrase, “Practice resurrection”).

Later, I began to read Berry’s novels: Jayber Crow, Hannah Coulter, Nathan Coulter, The Memory of Old Jack. They all meditate on themes of place, kinship, community, and living in harmony with agrarian rhythms of which most people today have little firsthand knowledge. The response Berry’s fiction elicits in me is what I’d describe as a deep longing—and I don’t mean that in a nostalgic or romantic way. It is a longing for something I’ve never really known. This ‘something’ is not an easy Eden, or some type of panacea for the frustrations of rootless modern life. But it is a something that suggests a kind of coherence and concreteness that would allow life to make more sense. Call it a woven tapestry that is more natural to who we are as created beings than the hastily assembled and disjointed collage that most of our lives represent now.

In the interview with Norman Wirzba, Berry touched on many of the themes for which he’s well known. I jotted down a few notes while

Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry

listening, which I’ll offer here without editorial comment:

We live in an age of divorce — and not just divorce from our marriages. We are witnessing the divorce of all good things from one another. Beauty from utility. Patriotism from nationalism. Ourselves from the land.

I’d like to see the Christian gospel amount to something. And right now it does not seem to be amounting to very much at all. I don’t think it will amount to much of anything until we connect it with economy. Not “the” economy, but an economy — a household. In all of what the gospel tells us, I am most caught up with the idea of a neighborhood.

A neighbor is someone who helps you and whom you do not have to pay. And a neighbor is someone who depends on you — who has a claim on you. What an awful idea in our present culture. Yet it lies at the heart of a true religious faith.

We are all city people now. Even country people live like city people. They are mostly consumers rather than producers. They buy all that they use. They have urban interets, and entertainments, and aspirations. They do not watch over the land.

In contemporary culture, to be successful you have to leave home. We are taught to pursue a career rather than a life. What would it mean for us to make a life for ourselves instead? What would it mean for us to build a household rather than a resume?

____________________

Links:

  • The official Wendell Berry site from his publisher, Counterpoint LLC.
  • For the text of Wendell Berry’s 2012 Jefferson lecture, click here.
  • An interview with Wendell Berry on the Brian Lehrer Show.

Teresa MacBain: Setting the record straight

27 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by admin in Christianity & Culture, Theological Education, United Methodist Church

≈ 32 Comments

Teresa MacBain

Teresa MacBain

Teresa MacBain made national headlines in 2012 by publicly declaring herself an atheist. What’s newsworthy about that, you ask? Her announcement made headlines because Ms. MacBain had been serving as a pastor to a United Methodist congregation in Florida prior to her “conversion.” So her story had shock value, and she embraced the celebrity that came her way as a result.

The American Atheists gave her the podium at their national convention (where she ridiculed the Christian belief in the afterlife). NPR did a sympathetic feature piece on her—which took care to emphasize the “hateful” response she received and the cold shoulder that church officials gave her upon her return from the Atheists Convention. She parlayed her media exposure into jobs as the executive director of the Humanists of Florida Association and as public relations director for the American Atheists. Heman Mehta of the Friendly Atheist Blog remarked on the “beautiful story” of MacBain’s journey to non-belief, and the Religion News Service did a lengthy piece marking the one year anniversary of her new life.

Humanist Community at Harvard logo_9-27-13The remarkable level of fame that Ms. MacBain had achieved seemed to be only increasing when it was announced that she would become the new director of the Humanist Community Project at Harvard University. She went from obscurity in the middle of Florida to being profiled in the New York Times.

That’s when things started crumbling. In fact, the NY Times article to which I’ve linked in the paragraph above is not the one you would have read when it first appeared on September 20th. The original article stated that Ms. MacBain earned a degree from Duke Divinity School. In talking about her service in the United Methodist Church, the story also made a comment identifying her as an ordained minister—I can’t reproduce the exact quote, unfortunately, as the original version of the story is no longer available online.

Interesting claims. Interesting, that is, in the sense that they are outright fabrications. I received an e-mail from Dean Richard Hays of the Divinity School at Duke yesterday which was distributed to faculty, staff, students, and alumni. In the e-mail, Dean Hays writes, “We have checked our records carefully, and confirmed that [Ms. MacBain’s] claim to have a Duke degree is fraudulent.”

Dean Hays goes on to write, “Here are the facts: Ms. MacBain attended one four-week session of our summer Course of Study program in 2010—i.e., year one of a five-year program designed to train licensed lay ministers. She did not return in subsequent summers to continue the program. She was never enrolled in our M.Div. program at any time. Ms. MacBain has subsequently acknowledged to the New York Times reporter that she misrepresented her credentials; she has done so in numerous other public venues.”

MacBain's profile on the Humanist Community at Harvard's website trumpeted her celebrity status

MacBain’s profile on the Humanist Community at Harvard’s website trumpeted her celebrity status

The Duke administration contacted the NY Times which led to the Times heavily redacting its profile of Ms. MacBain. The references to the Duke degree are gone in the new version of the story, although it still describes her as “the product of a divinity school.” That is unfortunate and misleading; the editors have included a note to the bottom of the article, but they should have taken out any reference to a divinity school entirely.

One sidenote: Because only the new version of the Times article is now available, I can’t be sure of the exact quote from the original version about her claims about ordination. I did, however, contact the Florida Annual Conference to inquire about MacBain’s claims to ordination. The response from the official who got back to me: “I can confirm that Teresa MacBain was never an Elder in the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church.” (For what it’s worth, the original NY Times article also referenced Ms. MacBain formerly patterning her life after a John Wesley “quote” which was—ironically enough—a common misquote that gets wrongly attributed to JW.) At any rate, the ordination claim certainly fits with Dean Hays’ comment about Ms. MacBain misrepresenting her credentials widely. The Religion News Service profile of her from last spring describes her as an “ordained minister” in the first line. If she was ordained at all, I can assure you that it was not in the United Methodist Church (which is unfortunately what the RNS story is suggesting by referring to her later in the story as “pastor of a United Methodist church”).

[Update: I have been given the original text of the NY Times article from a number of sources. The relevant paragraph reads as follows: “She tried to solve her dilemma — and answer God’s call — by earning a degree from Duke Divinity School and being ordained as a United Methodist minister in the early 2000s. She took her Christian mantra from the denomination’s co-founder John Wesley: ‘In the essentials, unity. In the nonessentials, liberty. In all things, charity.’” All three factual points in this quotation are false, as I explain in the comments section below.]

The New York Times' follow-up story on Sept. 26 reported on Duke Divinity School's challenge of Teresa MacBain's academic claims

The New York Times’ follow-up story on September 26th reported on Duke Divinity School’s challenge of Ms. MacBain’s academic claims

The results of all this coming to light have been predictable. The NY Times issued a completely new story yesterday covering Ms. MacBain’s deceptions. And later in the day, Humanist chaplain Greg Epstein released a statement saying that Ms. MacBain was no longer with the Humanist Community Project at Harvard. My guess is that her days as an atheist celebrity are over.

So why comment on this story at all? Is it to engage in a little Christian schadenfreude over the public humiliation of Teresa MacBain? No, it is not. I wanted to post this article for the following reasons, for anyone who cares to know:

  1. Ms. MacBain made false claims about her academic credentials to advance her career. She claimed to hold a Master of Divinity degree from Duke Divinity School—an institution that, in addition to being one of the finest theological schools in the country, is also an official United Methodist seminary. The whole narrative of Ms. MacBain’s escape from the Christian faith that she so publicly trumpeted for 18 months implicitly indicts those communities and institutions of which she was a part. Since she was blatantly lying about much of it, the record should be set straight.
  2. Ms. MacBain also made false claims about ordination as a United Methodist minister. My guess is that she played on the public’s ignorance about how ordination actually works in a denomination like the UMC. That is, you can serve as a minister licensed by an annual conference to lead a congregation without going through either the academic or ecclesiastical processes to be ordained as an elder (or presbyter). But your licensure in such instances is of a very different kind than the office you would hold as member of the ordained clergy. (And this is why the district superintendent wouldn’t have been terribly interested in meeting with her following her address at the Atheists Convention—a comment presented in the NPR feature as indicative of those hard-hearted Christians and their narrow mindsets.) News reporters generally wouldn’t understand various levels of ecclesiastical office, for obvious reasons, so Ms. MacBain was able to pass herself off as whatever she wanted. She was lying about her ecclesiastical credentials just like she was about her academic credentials. Her claims allowed her (and the press) to put other institutions in a negative light and the facts deserve to be set straight.
  3. The media often depict the traditional Christian faith (and those who practice it) as backwards, hypocritical, unsophisticated, and unenlightened. When you read the various stories to which I’ve linked above, that’s the underlying narrative. I’m not surprised when I encounter it, even if it remains a frustrating bias in many media organizations. Those organizations can do what they want to do, obviously. But when they use a charlatan to advance that kind of perspective and the truth comes to light, it deserves to be pointed out broadly.

I am, as always, open to your comments and feedback.

Do Christians in America require a Christian America?

11 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by admin in Christianity & Culture, Evangelism & Mission

≈ 9 Comments

Cross_Flag-732069From time to time I get e-mail responses from people I don’t know who have encountered my writing online. These letters are often sensitive and thorough engagements of the issues I’ve raised in my own work—and they often push me to look at those issues in ways I probably would not have otherwise. These responses are one of the truly enjoyable things about doing the kind of writing I’ve done over the past few years.

Case in point: I got an e-mail from someone in Wisconsin a few days ago, engaging me about a United Methodist Reporter article (and accompanying blog post) I wrote back in 2009. The article and blog post were written in reaction to a rather silly and sensationalistic article that then-editor Jon Meacham published in Newsweek about the “decline of Christian America.”

My commentary on Meacham’s article took issue with the idea that there ever had been a Christian America, argued that attempts to “Christianize” a large secular society were doomed to failure anyway, and suggested that the church ought rightly to be focusing on forming faithful discipleship and manifesting a robust ecclesial life as a witness to the wider society. This is what some have called ‘culture making,’ and it is likely the best way to influence secular politics and social norms in any event.

In other words, I was arguing against what I’d call a Constantinian view of society by casting a church/world distinction in bold relief. (In the UM Reporter article, I did so with the help of theologian John Howard Yoder.)

The gentleman who responded by e-mail a few days ago challenged the either/or standpoint I had taken. (I’ll allow him to remain anonymous, as I have not asked his permission before writing this post.) His view is well-stated, and I want to offer it here as a good example of the kind of thoughtful engagement with serious theological and ecclesial issues that, in my experience, laypeople do very often (and which stands in stark contrast to the kind of shrill and superficial arguing that goes on in a lot of social media). Here’s an edited version of what he wrote:

Dear Andrew –

Came across your 2009 article and blog post yesterday as I was looking out to see how other faith communities are reacting to discussions of “Post-Christian America.” We’re about to start a series on this topic in our adult education program. So, even though I’m four years late to your party, thought I’d share a few thoughts and invite you to reply.

Up front, I appreciate your comments about fidelity to the gospel. I agree the church, empowered by the Holy Spirit, is God’s primary agent in the world today to reach the lost and suffering with His love.

I also agree that for many centuries Christianity was equated with Western culture, and to spread the gospel in that era often meant imposing Western culture in non-Western lands, often through the power of the state … I believe we’re in a very different era today.  I’m not aware of any significant efforts to spread the gospel by the power of the state or the sword. Evangelism and Christian Formation require personal experiences with the Lord. And the people I know working in evangelism are much more appreciative of indigenous cultures than the crusaders of Christendom past.

Having said that, here’s the part where the discussion of a Christian America or Post-Christian America remains relevant.

I believe there was a time when basic tenets of Christian faith and practice were accepted as fundamental tenets of American civil society. Not everyone believed or practiced them individually, but we as a culture accepted them and in our imperfect ways attempted to apply them to family life, law, medicine, education, ethics, etc. This acceptance and application of Biblical principles in civil society is how I understand the term Christian America. Historically, we enjoyed much personal liberty, freedom, justice and prosperity as a result.

I believe we have crossed over into post-Christian America. The result of this transition, as evidenced by any number of cultural indicators, is more despair, more desperation, more broken families, more unwanted children, less regard for life, etc. If this trend continues, law and justice will become more and more arbitrary, and freedom and prosperity (which funds a lot of gospel outreach) will continue to decline.

Does Christ ultimately win? Of course. That’s a certainty. But how people experience that victory could look very different depending on how effectively we engage the culture and civil society. I have two daughters in college. I’d like them to grow old in a country that has rediscovered the importance of applying Biblical faith and practice to civil society. As believers, they are Heaven bound either way. As their father, I’d rather see them enjoy the great temporal blessings of Christian America and support evangelistic outreach than have them become a marginalized and persecuted minority in post-Christian America just trying to survive.

Best regards,

———–

I was trained at Duke Divinity School, where the kind of postliberal position I take in the blog post and column referenced above are standard fare. I tend to think they make for the most coherent approach to how we can possibly be faithful in the way Jesus Christ calls us to be, both as individual disciples and as a church. But as I mentioned in my response to the author who sent me this e-mail, I recently had a conversation with a noted Methodist theologian who challenged the notion that real Christian fidelity (in the church) and advocacy for a Christian-themed civil religion (in the society) constitute an either/or proposition. This scholar argued that a civil religion that is positively inclined (or at least neutral) toward the Christian faith provides the proper cultural context in which a more robust Christian life in the church can take place in a liberal democratic society. Lose the civil religion, and we create a perpetual uphill battle for the church—whether it be because Christian views are directly persecuted, or whether the larger culture simply becomes more and more corrupt due to the waning influence of Christian beliefs and moral norms. I think my respondent is expressing a version of this same view in the e-mail above. I find it challenging.

There is a flip side to the argument, of course. It is that overlaying a Christian veneer onto the civil religion of the nation gives the nation’s government license to do all kinds of things in the name of “God and country” that are directly at odds with the actual norms of Christian belief and practice. Taken to an extreme, this kind of thing can lead to a kind of patriotic zeal that identifies the actions of the state as the expression of God’s will. (This is a view of which my respondent is quite aware, as seen in the third paragraph above; he does indicate that he believes this era is in the historical rearview mirror.)

What both my respondent here and my Methodist theologian friend are pressing me on is a subject worthy of serious consideration: Do we really think the church would be better off in a culture decidedly hostile to Christianity? And do we really want to raise our children in a society whose moral context doesn’t bear at least a passing resemblance to cultural Christianity? If not, do we not need to put some effort into articulating a public theology that seeks to influence the social and political views of the body politic?

Tickled till it hurts

24 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by admin in Christianity & Culture

≈ 4 Comments

Photo credit: Teresa Hooper

Photo credit: Teresa Hooper

Last month I posted about Phyllis Tickle and her theory about 500-year cycles of history. The result was one of my most visited blog posts in a long time, along with copious amounts of feedback both on this website and via Facebook.

The responses I got generally fell into a number of categories:

1) Those who felt similarly about Tickle’s interpretation of history and offered their own insights.

2) Those who believed I had missed the point–either that Tickle’s interpretation of history is not deterministic, or else that her theory is simply window dressing for her cultural interpretation and therefore not a proper subject for critique.

3) Those who seemed put off that I would critique Tickle’s work at all.

For those who fell into category #1, I thank you and I appreciate some of the additional thoughts you shared in your comments. For those in category #2, I am going to try in this post and explain more about why I am critiquing Tickle’s interpretation of history (as I did in my previous post), and why I think that critique bears on her analysis of culture. And to those in category #3–I’m not sure what to say. I’m pretty sure there is no eleventh commandment that says, “Thou shalt not criticize Phyllis Tickle.” But if I’m wrong on that one, let me know. (As I pointed out in the comments section of the last post, Tickle is a public intellectual who serves up her work for popular consumption; I take it as a given that any such figure opens herself up for engagement by others.)

To jump back into this, let me review what I was (and was not) criticizing Tickle about. I was not making any judgments about the content of her cultural analysis as it relates to what is going on right now in the history of Western culture or (more specifically) the history of the church. I used to do cultural analysis myself, through my old Gen-X Rising column in the United Methodist Reporter and on my website by the same name. My own interest then was in generational theory, and it played into a book I edited in 2011 with Abingdon Press. Cultural interpretation is done in the present-tense. By its nature it is something different from historical study, and it is not subject to the same canons of historical inquiry. Cultural interpretation tries to “read” the situation we are all living in today; it can be helpful for a number of reasons. At its heart it is a form of social commentary, which draws on an eclectic number of sources for its statements–sociology, demographics, politics, history, etc. In the case of Tickle, I find a lot of her own interpretation to be very interesting. How accurate it proves to be will only be told over time.

History is something different. It is an academic discipline beholden to certain standards of academic inquiry, and it is based in the study of texts, historical figures, movements, institutions, etc. Anyone can make claims of an historical nature, but they are open to analysis and critique by others. The point is: Tickle is doing both. She’s doing both cultural analysis and historical interpretation. Moreover, she presents her interpretation of history both as true and as something that supports her cultural interpretation. In fact, her cultural interpretation is dependent on her analysis of history insofar as she claims that the justification for her claims about the present are grounded in her reading of history as it has progressed in discrete 500-year cycles. That’s where I’ve got a big problem with what she’s doing, and so that’s where I’ll try to elaborate upon what I wrote back in June. (It is also, of course, why her theory of history is not just window dressing and absolutely must be engaged on its merits.)

There were a number of respondents who insisted that Tickle’s published books contain a depth of explanation about her theory of history that her lectures and The Great Emergenceinterviews do not. I was not presuming to do a book review in my first post–a point I believe I made clear, although that didn’t stop a few people from expressing condemnation that I was criticizing Tickle “without having read the book.” As I explained both in my post and in follow-up comments, Tickle gets to choose where and how she promotes her ideas. So far as I can tell, she utilizes a variety of media: public lecture, short-form essays and interviews, and long-form monographs. Once chosen, though, she does not get a ‘pass’ on any one form of her work. It’s all fair game. I was engaging her lecture and interview material, and I only engaged her ideas as they were present in the examples I cited.

With that little bit of explanation in place, I’ll admit that I was intrigued by the vocal protests that Tickle’s book-length treatments of the “Great Emergence” contain a depth and complexity that her other work does not. So I’ve gone back and read what I take to be her two most substantive works that lay out her views on “Emergence Christianity.” They are The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why (Baker, 2008) and Emergence Christianity: What It Is, Where It Is Going, and Why It Matters (Baker, 2012).

What I discovered from reading these two monographs is that Tickle doesn’t say anything substantially different in her books than what she says in her lectures and short-form pieces. She says more of it, of course. That’s the nature of books. But the thesis is the same. And in fact, I think that the way in which she goes to greater length in the books only makes her historical theory on cycles of history more problematic. Let me explain. In the following paragraphs, I’ll abbreviate The Great Emergence as “TGE” and Emergence Christianity as “EC.”

Tickle describes the 500-year cycles of upheaval in Western culture and church history using “patterning” language. This is present in both books. In TGE she refers to the Great Emergence itself as “first and foremost the product of a recurrent pattern in Christian affairs” (41). And in EC, she suggests that the church is “susceptible to … [a] pattern of five-hundred year upheavals” (21n.1). Some have suggested that this isn’t a claim for determinism by Tickle but is rather simply an historical or sociological observation. The problem is that the language she uses to describe the cycles is, in fact, deterministic. This isn’t a pattern that, lo and behold, just happens to have repeated a number of times over the past few millennia. It is instead something that has a kind of force behind it. For Tickle, the present Great Emergence is following “the historic pattern that we are once more reenacting” (TGE, 72), as if we have no control over the matter. Elsewhere, she is even bolder. She employs phrases like “the fated number of five hundred years” (EC, 18) and “semi-millennial tsunamis” (EC, 20).

If this kind of thing happened only once or twice in her historical analysis, we might chalk it up to Tickle’s flair for rhetoric–something that anyone who has heard her in person can attest to her having in spades. The problem is that she uses this type of language repeatedly. She can refer to the “tsunami-like transition” that occurs each 500 years, and the “kind of pattern that always reasserts itself,” with such frequency that it simply becomes a part of the rhythm of her prose (EC, 181).

I submit that a theory of history that appeals to a tsunami metaphor to describe historical change, and that boxes periods of change into neat 500-year cycles, is an appeal to determinism. That deterministic approach in Tickle’s case contains elements of all three of my critiques from the first post: numerology, a “Whiggish” interpretation of history, and an arbitrariness that chooses the “great” historical moments simply because they fit (more or less) into her 500-year schema. (Much more could be said about each of these with reference to both TGE and EC; I’m going to refrain at present because of the length of this post.)

Now, simply because one’s theory of history is deterministic does not mean it is a false theory. But it does cry out for greater support. Is this determinism a providential thing effected by the God of Christianity, some form of nouveau dispensationalism that Tickle intends to advance? Or is it rather a particular manifestation of Hegel’s Weltgeist expressed in concrete historical phenomena? What is the causality behind the 500-year cycles? She refers vaguely at points to philosophies of history she is drawing upon. But given the chance to explain herself, she essentially punts by stating that her claim about cyclical history itself draws on “so complex an academic and scholarly history as to almost defy imagination” (EC, 22n.2). So complex as to defy imagination?? So are we to believe that Tickle has done the painstaking academic work to formulate a thorough philosophy of history but that she simply doesn’t want to bother us with the details? Or is it just another rhetorical move?

I began by stating that I didn’t intend to criticize Tickle’s read on the current culture. She may be right–maybe we are going through a “Great Emergence” that is seeing a change in everything and can be compared to the birth of Jesus (a point she makes explicitly in EC, 209). Time will tell. I will reveal my suspicions here, though. I think the technological and democratic movements in society have changed an awful lot even in the past few decades. But to combine the political, social, and spiritual in the ways that Tickle wants to do requires you to look at historical change from a bird’s eye perspective. She’s suggesting that there is a kind of progressive unity to what we see around us, and that the religious practice of a small handful of mostly white, middle to upper-class Westerners is on the vanguard of all of this. The problem is that history reads much differently when the bird comes down to earth, or when you slow down and start sifting through the past (even the recent past!) more carefully. Picking and choosing what you emphasize can always lend a semblance of unity to events over time. But it is a false unity that is proven to be false when you do something other than a speed-read through historical events of one period or another.

Tickle works best in her lectures, because her personal charisma and the force of her rhetoric have the ability to dazzle. Her books can convey some of that, but if you slow down and really look at what she’s saying and how she’s saying it, it all starts to come apart at the seams. That’s particularly the case with her read on history, which is bunk. (And no, that is not too strong a word.) Insofar as she’s using her theory of history to fund her cultural interpretation, it does call her unitary vision of what we’re seeing right now into question as well. Generations from now, perhaps history will look back on Tickle as the great prophet of the 21st century. But if it does, then history will have been kinder to her than she’s been to history.

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