Thin, Ephemeral, Light, Profoundly Unsatisfying

For a decade I worked at and became contextualized in a conservative Bible college. We understood ourselves to be true to the Bible (that was in the name of the school and the church I centered my life around. And my Bible was dog-eared, so it must have been true) and thus to God. And we understood that other types of Christians were classified under a few different labels, but they were all like hell-bound heretics. Not necessarily - for God could save anyone. Just most likely. I, quite honestly, didn't understand why they even bothered with the name "Christian." That was OUR name.

First were the old orders: Catholics and Orthodox. Then were the liberals. After that, and less on the heretical slide, were the weirder denominations (y'know, like Charismatics) and then the liberal Evangelicals (those who, like some from Wheaton, thought the world to be more than 6,000 years old!).

And I was pretty good at this safeguarding. I couldn't tell you that you were going to hell for your sins, but you were probably on not-safe ground traveling around in your Liberal Hippy Christianity Bug. On the way to hell, of course.

Weeeee! Jesus may or not be the Son of God, but I'd be on my way to hell if I believed in such an ontological destination!

This is fundamentalist Christianity 101. We take the Bible seriously and we know and are sure of what the Bible teaches! The Bible is the Word of God and it teaches what is true and if you don't believe what we believe about God through our understanding of the Bible, you don't take the Bible's revelations seriously! And if you don't take the Bible seriously, you don't take God seriously! You have no faith and your non-faith will send you to hell!

But I wasn't a strict fundamentalist. I was a conservative Evangelical. So that meant I was nicer in my fundamentalism. You're not necessarily going to hell... Just more likely to.

Roger Olson, post-fundy Evangelical New Testament professor, reminded me of those uncharitable descriptions in his post, Why I Am Not a "Liberal Christian." He gives several rubrics to identify if a person or church is a liberal Christian by what she, he or they believe. And that, in itself, is instructive. The first, for example:

How do they approach knowing God? Do they begin with and recognize the authority of special revelation? Or do they begin with and give norming authority to human experience, culture, science, philosophy, “the best of contemporary thought?”

As Tony Jones says, this is bunk. Neither I nor you nor Pastor Jack nor Roger Olson can "recognize the authority of special revelation" without having begun with (and giving "norming authority" to) experience, culture and other contextualizations.

But there's the awareness. The awareness of context and how that enables and helps and stifles and gives us room to build or not build - but mostly to be. And with the awareness comes the acknowledgement - according to a traditional theological view, if not a correct one - that we are adversarial to faith. Knowledge is forbidden in many corners of Christianity because knowledge diverts from this traditional view of faith. Knowledge could cause us to see that maybe things aren't the way we're led to believe they are.

The rest of Olson's checklist also sets up these dichotomies, though not quite as contradictory. Although the age of the earth and whether or not one accepts evolution isn't on Olson's list, the virgin birth and literal resurrection of Jesus are. In such a list, one must be sure of either the veracity or the nonsense of such claims - one can only be sure that it did happen or that it did not happen. Such a list based on what one is sure of in doctrinal terms fails to make sense to me anymore. Since in many of these positions, I find myself in between one point or another. And I sense very much the same position that I myself limited myself and other Christians to just a scant few years ago.

But then there's this definition, which struck a chord:

Historical theologian Claude Welch... boiled it (viz., “liberal Christianity”) down to a phrase: “maximal acknowledgment of the claims of modernity” in theology.

But of course my approach to viewing the bible and theology and Christianity and acts of faith is informed by modernism. Of course it is. How could it not be?

So is yours. So is Roger's. So is the pastor of the local Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Church. And the Church of Christ across the tracks from it. As well as any atheist. That's because that is where we live and how we are contextualized: In modernism. My postmodernism is contextualized in modernism. Fundamentalism is a rejection of modernity - but it's contextualized and fully a product of modernism.

So a liberal Christian, then, is aware and accepts the fact that we live and breathe and think in a landscape thoroughly influenced by modernism. However, I - and most progressive Christians I know - would deny many of the claims of modernism: that we can become better people simply through knowledge, that the world evolves towards a more enlightened sense, that knowledge is fundamentally moral. But I won't deny that living in a post- modern world shapes my reality fundamentally. It shaped everything.

So I guess by this standard, I am a liberal Christian. Scare quotes optional.

But in case one would think that this is a neutral or positive label to the Evangelical Gatekeepers:

If I ever wake up and find that I think like a true theological liberal, I hope I will be honest enough to stop calling myself “Christian.”

This conviction - one I shared just a scant decade ago - is based on some idea that a liberal Christianity is weak and lacking distinctive features. Which is odd to me, at least on this edge of "liberal Christianity" (or whatever it is I am).

I and those like me follow a religious practice that is, in Roger's words, "[T]hin, ephemeral, light, profoundly unsatisfying." We lack prophetic voice and identity, apparently. (Post-Evangelical Eastern Orthodox Frank Schaeffer apparently argues the opposite, claiming that all Protestants, and at the height of that, Evangelicals and Fundamentalists, lack Christian identity because they don't hold to liturgy. None of this surprises me, I suppose. In building and maintaining our own tribes often we tear down others that are less recognizable). My actualization of my faith has been called many things, but lacking in prophetic utterances has hardly been one of them.

But here I stand. Thin. Ephemeral. Light. Profoundly unsatisfying.

We are Eucharist wafers, apparently.

The fundamental problem I have with all of this is that Roger defines us all by what we "believe" - ie, what we profess to or acquiesce to as being real or true. And when I say "all", I mean "all." We all, according to this theology, this perspective, will enter or be denied entry to heaven and the presence of God by whether or not we agree with and can check off certain beliefs that are, frankly, not consequential to our current reality. Does it - in the grand scheme of things - matter whether one can agree with the Nicene Creed? Is that what Jesus required to enter his Kingdom? Did he ever mention those as prerequisites, as keys to the gates, as the entrance points into which one comes into the sheep fold?

No. But Jesus wasn't a very good gatekeeper, I guess.

Sometimes It Just Takes a While

Having a Palestinian Christian speak at my church earlier this week caused me to revisit my old views once again. Growing up in the Evangelical/Fundamentalist church, I was led to believe that Jesus was going to come to Earth again in a cloud of glory, take all of his people home to be with him and melt down the world. The state of Israel - and its relationship to its heathen neighbors - was key to this apocalyptic event.

To us, Israel was the chosen nation. Although most every Jew now rejects Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior, at this future date, 144,000 (give or take a few) of them will magically accept him as the incarnate YWHW.

This was, as ridiculous as it may seem, how we viewed the world. We weren't trying to be offensive or cloistered from the world and reality. We figured it was the real reality. We thought we were following the Word of God. So if we were offensive, well, so was Jesus, right? Right? right?

Immediately after high school, I worked for a conservative Evangelical Christian school. Much of what I was taught about the Bible - including our end-times theology - was reinforced and given academic clothes at this school. But it was also there, while working my first days for a paycheck, that I first encountered a real, live Palestinian Christian.

I didn't think he was an enemy. Nor that his existence was in God's way - at least not initially. But when he told us that Zionism (the belief that the land of Israel belongs solely to the Jews) is false prophecy, I just thought he was just wrong. I couldn't grasp the idea that there were other ways of taking the Bible seriously that didn't coincide with my views.* When he shared that his people and he are living as refugees throughout the Arab and Muslim world, I thought that wasn't such a bad thing. After all, the important thing is that Jerusalem and the ancient promised land of the Bible was finally back into the hands of God's chosen people.

It would be another ten years before I really started considering other theological views. It would be some time after that the evils of mass displacement would really sink in. It would be some time after that wherein I felt burdened by the plight of Palestinians as a result of Zionism, as well as the plight of Arabs as a result of fear-mongering and shallow American jingoism. As I was slowly able to distance myself from my old worldviews and to see the resulting hardships that we Evangelicals pass on and exacerbate to those outside of our bubble, I end up apologizing quite a bit. And trying to forcibly change my friends' and family members' views on some of these subjects. Much to their chagrin.

All of this goes to say, it takes time to make a change in people's hearts - especially if they're convinced that their worldview is fundamentally correct. It takes a while to foster trust, to share not only our stories, but the stories of others who are likewise affected. It takes villages. It takes miles. It takes a lot to humble ourselves and hear what others are really trying to say. So why am I surprised, since I - of all people - am still learning?

*Whether that's as a result of teen-aged narcissism or fundamentalist thinking, I'm not sure that there's much of a difference, to be honest. Fundamentalism is, at its heart, a willingness to subject yourself to an extremely self-centered view of the world. The difference is that teenagers tend to think that they're self-defined (although their viewpoints are at the least informed by their cultural and familial contexts) and largely buck against authority. Fundamentalists are told what and how to believe and act and fall in line accordingly. There are figures who are trusted with immense and otherworldly authority in their sphere - it's just that those figures have to be within their sphere. Everybody else is treated with suspicion. So in that way, Fundamentalists are anti-authoritarian.

Evangelicals, Markers and the World

We evangelicals are a people obsessed with badges and identifiers. It's a way to tell, in a quick overview, if the new couple in the church are really saved, if we can hang with Sally and Joe even though they go to a different church. It's a way of checking out, of making sure that they are us, but also of making sure that 'us' are exclusive and, thus, special. In some ways, it's a leftover from the high tide of Fundamentalism's knee-jerk reaction to Liberalism (yes, I'm using Capital Letters like some Nutwing...).

Essentially, it's supposed to be a way of making sure that Christians are not of the "world" - that we are not "worldly." We are set apart, we are special, we are God's own for God's use.

This phenomenon can be dated back to the Reformation and the ensuing Counter-Reformation. And then back to the Church Fathers, even predating Emperor Constantine's meddling in the affairs of the church. In fact, it can be seen most prominently in the actions of the Pharisees and in their laws.

Of course, identifying each other through markers and labels is not just limited to the religious community. People groups have always found protection of one sort or another in labeling. Often the labeling is completely unnecessary (it never takes away from one group to have another group have the same rights and privileges as the first) and the categories and degrees of separation dangerous (think of the hierarchies inherent in your typical middle school or of the sub-human designation given to slaves, lower caste members, non-natives or, more specifically, black-skinned people in the US and South Africa) and therein lies the problem with such reductive measures.

In the loose affiliation that my childhood's independent Bible church belonged to, there is a list of sixteen doctrinal points that they pride themselves on and consider key to their identity, each with several sub-points. Many of the points and sub-points are, at best, of secondary or tertiary importance, un-historical (eg, Dispensationalism), or down-right divisive (cessation of the gifts of the Spirit, separationism). As if those did not cause enough division, they outright call out four "movements" as being "Contrary to Faith" - apparently meaning apostate or heretical. Among those movements are Neo-Evangelicalism (as in, Billy Graham, Christianity Today, Philip Yancey, Chuck Colson, most other Evangelicals...) and, oddly enough, NeoOrthodoxy (is that even a movement anymore?).

This type of 'holiness' (in the case of separatists like the aforementioned affiliation, they do not associate with those who associate with those they consider apostate) is not just limited to fundamentalists either. In typical evangelical fashion, we do it in our everyday mundane.

What type of church do you belong to?

Who do you read?

What kind of music do you listen to?

Are you Calvinist or Armenian?

Pentecostal or Cessationist?

Where you with the Promise Keepers?

Do you attend a megachurch?

Do you listen to such-and-such's podcasts?

How should clergy/lay leaders dress for church?

How old is the world?*

There are other questions, of course - some unasked like: Do you drink alcohol? How much/how often? Are you politically conservative or liberal? Did you really vote for ol' crazy face?

Further complicating the issue, some of these markers are synonymous with sin issues, or at the very least of being separate with "the world." A common scene when we encounter new friends is the 'beer in the fridge' syndrome. In this scenario, we try to get our toes wet in regards to finding out if they are ok with drinking. Which sounds absolutely bizarre and bewildering to anyone outside of the Evangelical fold, I know. But because of our Fundamentalist tendencies and some rather arbitrary picking and choosing, conservative evangelicals had largely shunned any sort of alcoholic drinking as if it would automatically lead to debauchery, orgies, and wife-beatings. This is considered a marker, how a pastor or sister in the Lord would know if one needed deliverance from the world. Furthermore, one shouldn't go to a bar at any time, nor play pool (up until the 1990's it was a rule at the college I worked at through college), nor smoke or play face cards (also because it was associated with gambling). These are related markers, of course, because proximity to a bottle is not enough to establish holiness but is apparently enough to drag yer alcoholics-lovin' self to hell.

Some of these identifiers can be readily and easily addressed - they're just plain legalism. Dancing, associations, alcohol consumption, music - these may affect some people in regards to their own spiritual walk, but that cannot be extended to all. Others are varied attempts at Christian acculturation. Business attire is standard wear in typical older churches on Sunday morning; one common argument being that it's less distracting than informal wear, another that we should dress up for God - as if all the time it takes preparing or buying 'non-distracting' clothes doesn't distract from trying to get in a proper mood, or as if God pays more attention to white collar people than for blue collar.

The ancient church also faced the same problems. The first gentile Christians were told that they had to accept a Jewish signifier (odd as it were, since circumcision isn't instantly identified - I would guess at least...). But the primary and first missionary to the gentiles got pretty upset at these troubled purists. In the fifth chapter of the book of Galatians, St. Paul writes:

When we place our faith in Christ Jesus, there is no benefit in being circumcised or being uncircumcised... You were running the race so well. Who has held you back from following the truth? It certainly isn’t God, for he is the one who called you to freedom. This false teaching is like a little yeast that spreads through the whole batch of dough!** I am trusting the Lord to keep you from believing false teachings... I just wish that those troublemakers who want to mutilate you by circumcision would mutilate themselves.

The Saint Paul may have a history of mixing phrases (which would confuse gentiles not as familiar with his world and theology much later in time), but never of mincing words.

The over-arching problem - I strongly suggest - is that we are choosing the wrong markers:

They will know you are Christians by your love.

From the same passage as quoted above:

So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law... What is important is faith expressing itself in love...For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

And this, in turn, should change everything.

Everything.

*A large percentage of American Evangelicals believe that it is questioning of God's creation and revealed truth that the world would be much older than 6,000 years. This is actually a modernist reading of the Bible that believes that if the bible records it, it must be literally true. But more on this phenomenon later.

** I can't be the only person somewhat amused by the massive irony that separationists quote from this verse when it's they who are yeasting up the bread, when it's they who've got the knife on the foreskin?