I want to draw your attention to two articles in the Feb 2008 issue of CT. I'll start in this post with just one.
Intertwining of Movements within "Younger Evangelicalism":
ancient-future, new monasticism, emergence, Anabaptism, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy
First, the cover story "The Future Lies in the Past", which is one writer's take on the ancient-future movement. "Ancient-future" was a new term to me only a few months ago; I think I saw it first in a conference advertisement in CT. It typically has to do with evangelicals who are interested in patristic studies, and who emphasize the relevance of the church fathers to the contemporary church.
The article talks about the movement positively, indicating that ancient-future scholars are less naive than they once were. Rather than "viewing the early church by moonlight", at a recent conference Joel Scandrett articulated an awareness of pitfalls from within the movement:
(1) Anachronism: Naively interpreting the tradition in light of
contemporary assumptions;
(2) Traditionalism: Being unwilling to see the flaws in the early church's
traditions;
(3) Eclecticism: Selectively appropriating ancient practices without regard
to their original purposes or contexts.
In his book Younger Evangelicals an early leader of the movement, Robert Weber (recently deceased) identifies
three phases of evangelicalism since 1950, each dominated by a different
paradigm of church life and discipleship. Each group continues in some
form today, but the first two have been superseded by the third: "traditional"
(1950-1975), "pragmatic" (1975-2000), and "younger" (2000-).
Traditionals focus on doctrine-or as Webber grumps, on "being
right." They pour their resources into Bible studies, Sunday school
curricula, and apologetics materials. The pragmatics "do" church
growth, spawning the culturally engaged (and hugely successful) seeker-sensitive
trend, with full-service megachurches and countless outreach programs.
Currently, the younger evangelicals seek a Christianity that is
"embodied" and "authentic"--distinctively Christian. In this they follow
Stanley Hauerwas's and William H. Willimon's widely read 1989 manifesto, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, which calls the church
to reject individualism, consumerism, and a host of other modern malaises.
What was interesting to me was that the writer of this article associated "emerging" evangelicalism, interest in Catholicism and Orthodoxy (including recent evangelical converts to these communions), the new monasticism, and evangelicals attracted to the counter-cultural 16th century Anabaptist tradition. I don't think he meant to melt all these different movements into the same pot--anyone should recognize their diversity. But they do overlap--in me, for instance, and in others in my age bracket I know at my small urban Mennonite church. And they may be driven by common or at least similar frustrations and dissilusionment with the Fundamentalists (capital "F", meaning the "traditional" or doctrinally-focused group within American Protestantism) and the consumerist evangelical megachurches from which evangelical Protestant Christians in our generation are coming.
Anyway, I strongly recommend taking a look at this article, if you can get your hands on a copy of the issue. Please leave comments and let me know what you think.
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"He Himself is our Peace." (Eph 2)
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3 comments:
So, 2 weeks later the library and I finally agreed on a date when I would be at Trinity, and it would not be closed due to snow. My thoughts on this article are that it seems to be more or less accurate; I do wish, though, that it spent a little more time talking about how these historical movements are evangelical, and not just that they are.
I read the other article too, if you want to talk about that one next.
The problem, it seems to me, is the "evangelical" is a word that just gets tossed around to approve positions (and hence, the identity crisis). We like Bernard of Clairvaux, so he's now an Evangelical. We don't like Trent, so it's not an evangelical council. We're warming up to Catholics and Orthodox, so they're coming closer to evangelical truth.
Also, I'm not sure how much I care for the distinction between the "ideal" of evangelicalism and its "accidental manifestations." The problem is, I don't see what that ideal is or where it comes from. What I see, is group almost entirely conditioned within its own history and with little outside of that conditioning to guide it. It's reaction after reaction; simply from the three phases listed, you start with the traditionalists (themselves reacting against liberals), then have the pragmatists who are tired of arid (and often tunnel-visioned) theologizing who decide that getting people in the church is all that matters, followed by the emerging evangelicals who are reacting against the capitalistic, consumerist pragmatists. Now, all movements are historically conditioned, but Evangelicalism in particular seems to have trouble finding a guiding star outside of what crisis hits at the moment. So, the "accidental" characteristics of the movement are the movement, and if these are failing, then there isn't much left. Thus, people see this bankruptcy and convert to a movement which seems to actually offer something with some sort of basis, whether through the Anabaptists or through Catholicism.
Your criticism makes sense to me. My response to it would be rather repetitive. As I've said before in our recent conversations, I would be inclined to provide a loose doctrinal definition of evangelicalism (maybe a "stereotype" would be better than a definition...grr I've forgotten too much from my Concepts seminar! What are the other alternatives to classical definition theory of meaning?). Or else a loosely interpreted requirement relating to the authority of scripture for theologizing (don't leave it out utterly).
My theological/doctrinal definition of evangelicalism would include a lot of people: more than would be included by my sociological/cultural/political definition of "evangelicalism". But it would probably exclude enough to be somewhat worthwhile.
I consider myself your inferior with respect to knowledge of Church History. But how would you respond to the suggestion that being defined by reaction to "heresy" or "bad theology" and/or "bad practice" is typical of the entire history of Church Tradition, not just evangelicalism? As I understand it, the main councils and creeds, and most of the writings of the fathers, were written in reaction to what they saw as dangerous heretical ideas. For that matter, much of the NT could be seen in that light.
You're right about the formation of doctrine being largely in response to heresies. As to how that differs from the Evangelical cultural phenomenon, I could take one of (at least) 2 different responses, depending on how I'm feeling:
(1) If I'm feeling cynical, there really is no difference. The messiness of early church tradition disqualifies it from being a standard just as much as the reactionism of Evangelicalism (maybe Paul stands out as a cut above, though). We can mine it for what good it may have, but it cannot settle anything or give us our grounds for faith. The lack of reflection and the relish with which people put on their blinders have really ruined things for everyone else, even the intellectuals who attempt to make something of the mess and manage to get something good out of it.
(2) For my more charitable moments, I could argue that while they are similar in their process of growth, their origins are different. The early church began with the experiences concerning Jesus and went forth with eyewitness testimony; the reactions were then attempts to keep that testimony pure. In that case, the testimony itself is the truth unless it has been corrupted, and so the job is to keep out heresy rather than to keep in orthodoxy. By contrast, the Evangelical movement starts even within the midst of church conflict, with no real reason to have a particular claim to the gospel truth beyond the rest of the church, and stunted by bad theology from expectations of a "literal" interpretation of Scripture. So, even if it has preserved its message, there is no guarantee that its message was the correct one from the start.
As for the "recent comments" thing, set up a feed in your layout section, and give it the URL http://gandalf83.blogspot.com/
feeds/comments/default . You may need to set up feeds somewhere in your setup as well.
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