The Decline of the West?

You see a lot lately about the decline of western Christianity. How the former sending nations are now a mission field themselves. I'm not disagreeing with the truth behind these statements, nor saying that western culture is somehow inherently superior. But I think that we are just having our noses rubbed in a situation that has pretty much always been there.

Take, for example, the "religious right" rallying around Glenn Beck and the Kristallnacht-esque desires of some regarding Cordoba House. These things are terrible, honestly. Glenn Beck is no Christian theologian (and no Christian), and the attitudes toward Cordoba House are deplorable. But what's the underlying issue that causes this? Are Americans really so naïve to think that this is right? Well, yes. And not just Americans. The problem is that people who call themselves Christians get lumped in with those who really are.

You here just as much, in some circles, about the secularization of Europe, and the fall of the great "Christian nations." And you get some of the same reactions to Islam over here (anyone remember Switzerland's mosque ban?). But the fact is, this is just a reflection of the way things have probably always been.

Christian theologians tend to divide the idea of Christianity into two segments, the visible and the invisible church. In Europe, the visible church was huge. In America, it still is. But membership in the visible church has nothing to do with being a Christian – and everything to do with assuming cultural Christianity, nominal Christianity, and peer-pressure Christianity (in fact, what a lot of western-superior minded missiologists accuse "native" churches of doing). When one is a Christian because of family or culture, one isn't a real Christian, and one isn't following Christ. Faith doesn't come by wanting to fit in, but from God alone.

Christianity in America gets associated with middle-class mores, ethics, and culture – the bürgerliche Gesellschaft, if you will. It happened in Europe, and was revealed as bankrupt, and now it's happening in North America. This shouldn't surprise us, really. We're supposed to be following a difficult way, but increasingly churches tout the effectiveness of a vending machine God, who basically wants you to be good and is there for you when you need him – emotional-psychological monotheism, not Christianity. Or worse, some even claim the physical benefits God gives – the prosperity preachers, or how one gets one's "best life now". This is a tragedy. People, even those who genuinely care about Christ, get more caught up in issues connected to culture than the Gospel.

This tragedy is nothing new, and it's probably not going away. The real Christians will always be the chosen few of God. While stamping Christianity out didn't work, covering it in mediocrity and derailing it has done far more damage. The Reformation shook things up, but both sides ended up in the position of either change for the sake of change or tradition for the sake of tradition (note: I'm just meaning tradition as "the way we've always done it, not traditio as Catholic doctrine, I'm not opening that box just yet).

It's time to focus on what really matters. It has been a national, an international movement before, and can be again. It too often isn't now. We've had our fill of church and culture, our fill of Gospel and, (Gospel and abstinence, Gospel and Republicanism, Gospel and Socialism, etc.), and we want something more. In every land, in every people, in every tongue, we thirst for God, for the Gospel proclaimed, and for our faith not to be co-opted for an agenda.

Don't play along anymore. Make a difference by deciding to live with your priorities in order, you who claim to follow Christ. Prove that, and stop proving your political affiliation or your commitment to comfort.

Your life is not yours, it was bought with a price.

Why does „conservative“ seem to really mean „bullheadedly offensive“ ?

Word of warning: I'm using conservative in this post in a strictly theological sense.

 

You know, I'm a relatively conservative theologian. I moved away from fundamentalism, sure, and I hold a lot of opinions unpopular in the church I grew up in, but really, there are some folks out there who make all of conservative Christianity look bad without even being super-fundamentalist!

 

There's a "movement", if you can call it that, to "re-start" the reformation here in Germany. A certain guy in Heidelberg, Sebastian Heck, has gotten support from the PCA to plant new churches over here as there's "no church or denomination today in Germany that can claim to legitimately be an heir of the Reformation" and "Germany is a thoroughly secular nation." I saw this video on the Heidelblog (http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/a-great-god-and-a-great-goal-reformation2germany/) which, although I read, is not on my blogroll because I have to take him with a huge grain of salt. Now, I have comments about this idea, but first, as if this idea isn't enough, take a look at some of the response to it (http://cyberbrethren.com/2010/08/28/the-reformed-are-aiming-at-planting-the-calvinist-faith-back-in-germany/) (Yeah, I don't read that one at all)

 

Egad. So working backwards:

 

Firstly, the SELK is NOT an heir of the Reformation, because they hold to the idea of a special status for the ordained. It's a 2-class system, just not as strong as what Luther had an issue with (of course, I'l make this argument, slightly changed, for several US denominations that deny women ordination in today's cultural situation, but here I mean even among men).

 

Secondly, the idea of exporting American evangelicalism over here even offends me! The assertions made by Herr Heck and his supporting Americans are puerile and unfounded, and I would doubt if those "statistics" even hold true in the former east. (Übrigens, meine deutschsprächige LeserInnen, ich habe mal versucht den Herrn Heck zur Rede zu stellen, und überraschenderweise hatte er keine Lust mit mir über Theologie zu reden, oder sogar zu erklären warum er meinte solch ein Programm erforderlich sei. Ich vermute, es wäre wohl schwerer zu behaupten daß man von amerkianischen Gemeinden Geld bekommen soll zu jemandem der kennt sich aus mit der Theologie wie sie heute in Deutschland ist...). There's a spectrum in the member churches of the EKD, but the fact that this spectrum exists hardly means that they are not heirs of the Reformation. No, there's not a repressive shouting down of any idea less than 100 years old, but I'm proud to be a member of an EKD member church. See four.

 

Thirdly, the R2G assertion is entirely too simplified. Yes, the EKD is an umbrella organization, and yes, the Reformed and Lutheran churches have communion with each other, as well as some theological bleed-over. But even if he wants to say there's no Reformed church, due to the EKD, he can only do so by ignoring the Reformierte Kirche that are part of the EKD (as well as the independent ones). Hey, I'm pretty sure my advisor is a member of the Reformierte Kirche in Bayern and not the Evangelische Lutherische Kirche in Bayern (well, he dedicated a book to the newest congregation here in München). Not to mention the fact that the church in Baden-Württemburg is so influenced by the Reformed side of things that going to church one Sunday in BW and another in Bayern is enough to make you wonder if they agree on ANYthing.

 

Fourthly, I talk to pastors, theologians, and those who will be pastors in EKD member churches nearly every day. In general, both here and in the States, I find the ur-conservative bogeyman, the overplayed, stereotyped "flaming liberal" to be a straw man. The big fight was years ago, when we saw Machen and Bultmann and others going nuts. When Barth tried to walk a middle ground. I've got news, folks – none of those theologians wanted to do anything but love and serve Christ as best as possible, and a lot of the excesses on both sides (or all three) have balanced out – except in those denominations that checked out of the dialogue because they couldn't handle someone having a different opinion.

You know, you folks embarrass me for your lack of understanding and willingness to dialogue as much as the backwoods fundamentalists embarrass me for the characterizations they've caused (and yes, being an American Christian in Europe means you get immediately compared with them if you don't distance yourself).

 

I could rant a lot longer on this, and connected topics, but I'll stop for now, it's probably healthier.

An Explanation of the Change

So if you're reading this, you probably haven't read the previous posts. That's fine. I began this blog primarily as a way to think through things myself, and to share concepts with those close to me. It wasn't a very good vehicle for that, mostly because I wasn't very good at updating, and I didn't have a good idea of what I wanted to write.

That's changing now.

I've read from several places recently on the idea of blogs as academic and theological discourse, as well as the idea of the blogosphere, or at least the internet, possibly replacing peer-reviewed journals for the purpose of publication, in the interest of exposing ideas to a wider audience and enabling the academic conversation to take place much faster. While I don't believe that online scholarship without a review process can replace peer-reviewing entirely, these ideas have made me rethink what I'm doing and why.

I don't intend on reporting much on the news, or my personal life – for the first, there's plenty of other places to go, and for the second, well, you're less interested in that than you believe yourself to be, really. I do intend on writing more on topics that interact with my current research, research I'd like to do, and things I encounter reading other bloggers. I may even(gasp!) add a blogroll.

An Adjustment

I've recently read Benjamin Myers' article about theological blogging in Cultural Encounters, and it's made me think some about why I'm writing this blog. I won't be finishing the series on complementarianism that I started, at least, and the coming posts will reflect a change in how I understand what I'm doing. So I'll be writing about some different stuff from here on.

Why I’m Not a Complementarian Part 1

One of the arguments still going around in Protestant circles, especially in Evangelical ones, is the nature of the relation between men and women. There's two major opinions on the issue, "complementarian" and "egalitarian":

Egalitarian: Men and women are equal. Everything one can do, the other can do, and they are of equal worth. (Think "Egalité")

Complementarian: Men and women are of equal value, but have different God-ordained roles. Most complementarians would prohibit women from being Pastors, for example (Think they "complement" each other).

 

I remember when I was about 16 years old, the Youth Pastor at my church introduced me to the idea of complementarianism. Of course, he didn't call it that, but during a phone conversation, he had me look up 1 Timothy 2:9-15. This reads, in the HCSB:

⁹ Also, the women are to dress themselves in modest clothing, ^(A) with decency and good sense; not with elaborate hairstyles, gold, ^(B) pearls, or expensive apparel, ¹⁰ but with good works, ^(C) as is proper for women who affirm that they worship God. ¹¹ A woman should learn in silence with full submission. ^(D)
12 I do not allow a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; instead, she is to be silent. ¹³ For Adam was created first, then Eve. ^(E)
14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and transgressed. ^(F)
15 But she will be saved through childbearing, if she continues ^[a] in faith, love, and holiness, ^(G) with good sense.

Paul writes something similar in 1 Corinthians 14:34-36:

³⁴ the women ^[h] should be silent in the churches, ^(T) for they are not permitted to speak, but should be submissive, as the law also says. ³⁵ And if they want to learn something, they should ask their own husbands ^(U) at home, for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church meeting. ³⁶ Did the word of God originate from you, or did it come to you only?

 

I was totally shocked to hear him teach me this. I had some real problems, too, because I had always been taught about equality – had I been fooled?

 

There's a big question looming here: Is Paul talking about the same thing in both places? There's some pretty good reasons why he might not be.

In Corinthians, that last verse is directed at men, so Paul was in a sense saying "did the word of God only come to you men?" And just a little bit before, Paul was talking about women praying and prophesying in the church (Chapter 11)! Paul's letter to the church in Corinth was a reply – here in ch 14, he quotes from the original letter to deny it: the position of the men-only crowd in Corinth is demonstrated to be false.

 

1 Corinthians 11, by the way, is a pretty good parallel to 1 Timothy 2, in this issue. So how do we deal with this?

The question to ask here is if Paul was prescribing how things should be or describing how they are. Timothy was in Ephesus, the cult-city of the goddess Artemis. Corinth was the center of Aphrodite worship. So there's good reason to believe that Paul is dealing with very time- and place-specific issues here. The other reason is this: If you want to believe that he was prescribing behavior, you have to take the whole package. No gold, no pearls, no elaborate hairstyles, no expensive clothing (Timothy) no short hair, no uncovered hair (Corinthians)….and worst of all, in the same letter, in 1 Timothy 6:1, you give slavery the OK.

 

So if Paul meant something else, how do we deal with the relationship between men and women? How about Galatians 3:28:

²⁸ There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, ^(A) male or female; ^(B) for you are all one ^(C) in Christ Jesus.

 

There's not differences between us, and we are all equal. Equal in value as well as in function.

Interestingly enough, Paul accepts this pretty clearly in Romans 16:7:

⁷ Greet Andronicus and Junia, ^[a] my fellow countrymen ^(A) and fellow prisoners. ^(B) They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were also in Christ before me.

What's the big deal here? Junia is a woman's name. Some say it's a short form of Junius, but there's no evidence for that, and there's hundreds of instances of Junia as a woman's name. Junia may well have even been a female apostle (there's some argument about the second sentence), but she was clearly a woman of some importance. Not enough? Look at Romans 1:1, where Pheobe is the diakonos of the church.

 

There's going to be a part 2 to this, in the next day or so.