Send This to Members of Praise Bands Before It is Too Late!!!

Published on by D. G. Hart25 Comments

If only James K. A. Smith had been the editor with whom John Frame worked on his worship books, the world of conservative Presbyterianism might be a lot more liturgically coherent than it is. I (all about me) don’t usually agree entirely with Smith, though I admire his provocations within the world of neo-Calvinism. But his recent letter to praise bands was largely on target — a bull’s eye would have been doing away with bands altogether.

1. If we, the congregation, can’t hear ourselves, it’s not worship. Christian worship is not a concert. In a concert (a particular “form of performance”), we often expect to be overwhelmed by sound, particularly in certain styles of music. In a concert, we come to expect that weird sort of sensory deprivation that happens from sensory overload, when the pounding of the bass on our chest and the wash of music over the crowd leaves us with the rush of a certain aural vertigo. And there’s nothing wrong with concerts! It’s just that Christian worship is not a concert. Christian worship is a collective, communal, congregational practice–and the gathered sound and harmony of a congregation singing as one is integral to the practice of worship. It is a way of “performing” the reality that, in Christ, we are one body. But that requires that we actually be able to hear ourselves, and hear our sisters and brothers singing alongside us. When the amped sound of the praise band overwhelms congregational voices, we can’t hear ourselves sing–so we lose that communal aspect of the congregation and are encouraged to effectively become “private,” passive worshipers.

2. If we, the congregation, can’t sing along, it’s not worship. In other forms of musical performance, musicians and bands will want to improvise and “be creative,” offering new renditions and exhibiting their virtuosity with all sorts of different trills and pauses and improvisations on the received tune. Again, that can be a delightful aspect of a concert, but in Christian worship it just means that we, the congregation, can’t sing along. And so your virtuosity gives rise to our passivity; your creativity simply encourages our silence. And while you may be worshiping with your creativity, the same creativity actually shuts down congregational song.

3. If you, the praise band, are the center of attention, it’s not worship. I know it’s generally not your fault that we’ve put you at the front of the church. And I know you want to model worship for us to imitate. But because we’ve encouraged you to basically import forms of performance from the concert venue into the sanctuary, we might not realize that we’ve also unwittingly encouraged a sense that you are the center of attention. And when your performance becomes a display of your virtuosity–even with the best of intentions–it’s difficult to counter the temptation to make the praise band the focus of our attention. When the praise band goes into long riffs that you might intend as “offerings to God,” we the congregation become utterly passive, and because we’ve adopted habits of relating to music from the Grammys and the concert venue, we unwittingly make you the center of attention. I wonder if there might be some intentional reflection on placement (to the side? leading from behind?) and performance that might help us counter these habits we bring with us to worship.

Chances are that readers of Old Life don’t worship in churches where they have trouble hearing themselves while singing. But in case Old Lifers have friends or family members who are either in a band or are having the ear drums blown out by a band, this letter may be useful. After all, our motto here is servants serving servers.

Santorum, W— V—, and the Michigan Primary

Published on by D. G. Hart67 Comments

Is it a coincidence that Rick Santorum, the former Senator from the virtuous commonwealth of Pennsylvania, has started to drop “w— v—” into his remarks this past week, a time when Grand Rapidians are deciding for whom to vote among the Republican contestants? First, Santorum questioned Obama’s w— v—. Then he attacked Obama’s plans to increase college enrollments because of the hostile w— v— students receive at college. The timing is striking.

But the appeal to w— v— has its limits and this video suggests what they are. It is of course biased toward Ron Paul and mocks Santorum. But it does remind me of how invoking w— v— often reassures and inspires instead of supplying answers to a society’s difficult questions. The key phrase is, “I like my w— v— a lot. It makes me happy” and can be found around the 3:15 mark in this video.

Hodge on Revival

Published on by D. G. Hart116 Comments

Our friend from Iowa reminds us that Charles Hodge was not a sucker for the experience of Phebe Bartlet.

. . . The men who, either from their character or circumstances, are led to take the most prominent part, during such seasons of excitement, are themselves often carried to extremes, or are so connected with the extravagant, that they are sometimes the last to perceive and the slowest to oppose the evils which so frequently mar the work of God, and burn over the fields which he had just watered with his grace. Opposition to these evils commonly comes from a different quarter; from wise and good men who have been kept out of the focus of the excitement. And it is well that there are such opposers, else the church would soon be over-run with fanaticism.

That the state of religion did rapidly decline after the revival, we have abundant and melancholy evidence. Even as early as [March] 1744, (Jonathan) Edwards says, “the present state of things in New England is, on many accounts, very melancholy. There is a vast alteration within two years.” God, he adds, was provoked at the spiritual pride and self confidence of the people, and withdrew from them, and “the enemy has come in like a flood in various respects, until the deluge has overwhelmed the whole land. There had been from the beginning a great mixture, especially in some places, of false experiences and false religion with true; but from this time the mixture became much greater, and many were led away into sad delusions.”

Makes me wonder what happened to Phebe once she turned 24.

Faith Matters but Not Enough to Follow Jesus

Published on by D. G. Hart20 Comments

This week’s national holiday allowed the Gospel Coalition to don its patriotic colors and wave the flag of civil piety. A post by Thomas Kidd on the faith of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln took a fairly modest line by arguing that the first and sixteenth presidents were not orthodox Christians or even the best of believers. (This concession touched off a debate among the comments on the merits of Peter Lillback’s book on Washington, which is interesting in its own right.)

I believe that Washington, an Episcopalian, was a serious but moderate Christian, but there are reasons to wonder. Whether from personal scruples concerning his worthiness, or some other concern, he never took communion. And he displayed a remarkable aversion to using the name of Jesus in his voluminous correspondence. As Edward G. Lengel’s delightful Inventing George Washington has shown, 19th-century biographers eagerly recalled shadowy memories of Washington being discovered praying privately, to the extent that you’d think the man did little else besides kneeling in the woods. He almost certainly did pray privately, but as a proper Virginia gentleman, he did not wear his faith on his sleeve.

There are graver doubts about Lincoln’s faith, especially early in his life. He developed a reputation as a skeptic as a young lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, and Mary Todd Lincoln concluded that he was not a “technical Christian.” He struggled to put his faith in Christ even as the events of later years took the edge off his religious infidelity. Lincoln grew up in a strongly Calvinist Baptist family, and though he did not embrace all his parents’ beliefs, he became ever-more convinced of the Calvinist doctrine of God’s sovereign rule over human affairs. Richard Carwardine, one of Lincoln’s finest biographers, says that Lincoln presented “his deterministic faith in a religious language that invoked an all-controlling God.”

But despite the weaknesses and errors in Washington and Lincoln’s devotion, Kidd tells us not to worry (maybe even adding a pinch of “be happy”).

Evangelical history buffs spend a lot of time speculating about the personal faith of great historical figures such as Washington and Lincoln. This is an important topic, but there’s a sense in which, for historical purposes, it doesn’t really matter if these presidents were serious Christians. When you broaden the scope of the question, it is easy to demonstrate that religion was very important to both of them. Both endorsed a public role for religion in America, and Lincoln particularly employed religious rhetoric, and the words of the Bible itself, to the greatest effect of any political leader in American history. For Lincoln and Washington, a secularized public square was inconceivable.

So even if we won’t trust these presidents’ profession of faith, we should trust them on the importance of religion to public life. In fact, Kidd even believes that the presidents’ pro-religious views accounts for their political accomplishments.

So yes, I would love to know exactly what Washington and Lincoln believed personally about Jesus. But there’s no question that, in a public sense, faith mattered to them a great deal, and featured centrally in their concept of a thriving American nation. Their reverence for faith’s vital role in the republic helps account for Washington and Lincoln’s greatness.

This is another case where 2k would allow for sound historical and political judgment without having to contort the gospel in the process. After all, if Lincoln and Washington succeeded simply by being pro-faith, what reason would they have for trusting in Christ truly? Kidd does not consider that these presidents might have been less successful because an explicit embrace of Christianity and establishing policies in accord with such support would have violated the Constitution and alienated some voters (especially Roman Catholics who were not so willing to separate morality from theology). For a coalition dedicated to the gospel, it is an odd admission to suggest at TGC’s website that any religious affirmation less than the gospel will do. Not to mention that the kind of utilitarian and generic faith that Washington and Lincoln promoted makes it harder for the gospel to get a hearing since, again, things go as well with a generic Christian God and his morality as they do with an orthodox Christ and the good works that follow from faith.

At the same time, 2k would allow Kidd and his TGC editors to give as many thumbs as they have up to the first and sixteenth presidents — that is, of course, if you agree with the Federalists and Republicans. Since Washington and Lincoln were officers of the United States, the criteria for evaluating their presidencies should not be religious or quasi-religious but political. 2k allows a Christian to esteem Washington and Lincoln without having to run them through the grid of where they come down on the gospel, the deity of Christ, or how many times they invoke, in Washington’s less than orthodox phrasing, “the benign Parent of the human race.”

I Loved "The Artist" because Jesus Made It

Published on by D. G. Hart118 Comments

Well, technically, Jesus was not the director, producer, or screen writer. But he is the creator of all things and he did produce the remarkably clever creators of “The Artist.” It is particularly good at evoking the early period of Hollywood — the time of the silents — and how radical the shift was to talkies. At the same time, it shows how charming those silent films were, even in suggesting the genre may have life in it still.

The reason for bringing Jesus into my enjoyment of “The Artist” is simply to remind the those who want Christian piety to be always visible and earnest that the joy — see, I can say it — that believers experience at the movies need not be in competition with their trust in Christ or desire to glorify him. John Piper has a post about Christians who take more pleasure than they should in movies:

What should you do if you know someone who seems to be more excited about movies than Jesus?

Many professing Christians give little evidence of valuing Jesus more than the latest movie they have seen. Or the latest clothing they bought. Or the latest app they downloaded. Or the latest game they watched. Something is amiss.

We are not God and cannot judge with certainty and precision what’s wrong. There is a glitch somewhere. Perhaps a blindness going in, a spiritual deadness at heart, or a blockage coming out. Or some combination. Christ doesn’t appear supremely valuable. Or isn’t felt as supremely valuable. Or can’t be spoken of as supremely valuable. Or some combination.

One important weakness in Piper’s point is that he begins with the word, “seems.” The great problem with the piety he promotes is that none of us can see into the heart so that every display of piety, from raised hands and psalm singing to sermon listening and eating the bread of the Lord’s Supper, only seems to be indicative of an inward reality. The joy that members of Bethlehem Baptist exude is not inherently more reliable a guide to genuine devotion than the Orthodox Presbyterian who memorizes the catechism.

But the bigger problem is that Piper does not seem to acknowledge that joy may take different forms. I was incredibly happy when the Phillies won in 2008. I was feeling much more energized that October night than any time I have left a church service. Did that indicate that I took more joy from the Phillies than I do from Christ? Maybe, and if I continue to wear my Brad Lidge long-sleeve T-shirt to worship the elders may need to pay a visit. But sometimes ephemeral pleasures produce intense experiences of joy. Eventually, those emotions fade and recede in importance compared to the ongoing and deeper joy a believer experiences in the week-in-week-out attendance on the means of grace. In other words, celebration is not joy and that distinction would have gone a long way to deciding the worship wars (that Piper’s piety unwittingly abets through an earnestness that rarely distinguishes between excitement and joy).

I would bet that Piper himself even knows this difference even if he does not talk about it. I suspect that he was remarkably joyful when his first child walked, or better, said, “daddy.” Was he at that point more excited about the love of a child than his love for Jesus? To an observer it might seem so. But to an Old Lifer, who knows that all of life is a gift of God, and that temporal joys are good but not ultimately great, Piper’s delight in a child’s development would not qualify as a sign of infidelity. To set up such a competition — the more you delight in aspects of human existence, the less you love Christ — is to take the joy out of life. How sad.

Doubting God

Published on by D. G. Hart24 Comments

I passed a milestone today that may be worthy of comment. John Calvin (1509-1564), Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), and J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937) — the three Johns — did not live to see their fifty-sixth birthday. In fact, Calvin and Edwards both died just short of their fifty-fifth birthday. I, on the other hand, made it to the beginning of my fifty-seventh year today, thus meaning that I share the same birthday as Michael Jordan (which is about the only thing we have in common despite my slow, white man attempts at basketball).

All of this leads me to wonder if God knows what he is doing. Okay, I’m no fan of Edwards but perhaps if had lived longer he could have straightened out the Connecticut River Valley and prevented the rise of Hopkinsianism, Taylorism, and the New Measures. And surely, Calvin and Machen could have accomplished a lot more if they had lived into their seventies. Yet, God in his infinite wisdom takes superior churchmen and theologians in their prime and allows also rans to meander on.

The Lord works in mysterious ways. (And if anyone attempts to reply with birthday greetings, to borrow a line from Karl Hungus, I’ll cut off their johnson comment).

Charles Finney Wasn't the Only New York Pastor to Defend Revivals

Published on by D. G. Hart97 Comments

The Redeemer Report features an article by Tim Keller defending revival and conversion as biblical. Keller’s outspokenness on revivalism should not be a surprise since he was a student of Richard Lovelace (Dynamics of Spiritual Life), and since he has defended revivals on other occasions. Followers of Keller’s career and writings may be forgiven if they wonder how revival goes down with the upwardly mobile and aesthetically informed Manhattanites who gravitate to Redeemer Church. (You can take the boy out of Gordon-Conwell, but can you take Gordon-Conwell out of the boy?)

Keller’s latest column offers a succinct biblical theology of revival. What caught my eye, though, was less the theology or revival than the unspoken interlocutors behind Keller’s argument. Why all of the biblical data he assembles needs to be called a revival or a conversion is a question Keller does not answer. Revival itself is a confusing metaphor for spiritual life. It suggests someone who was alive, died, and is now brought back to life. How helpful can it be to use this image with reference to a person who is not regenerate? And just as pertinent, can it ever be used for a saint? Do saints die spiritually and then need resuscitation? If so, doesn’t revival imply that saints won’t persevere? This might explain the appeal of revival to the likes of Finney.

But back to Keller’s unidentified readers. He writes with a measure of hostility rarely seen:

As I sat looking at my computer screen at the title I’d written for this article, I was somewhat bemused by the fact that a defense of conversion and revival was even necessary. But so it is. There are quarters of the church now questioning whether or not conversion, the new birth, giving oneself to Christ, etc., are topics that should even be raised. Conversion, and its corporate expression, revival, are thought to be manifestations of Western individualistic thinking.

Keller adds, again with a surprising edge:

The point of this article is not so that you (or I) can win arguments with those of a different persuasion. Christians throwing theological brickbats at one another is only amusing the Evil One. Rather, we should move forward positively to seek revival in our own lives and churches and to joyfully share the Gospel with those who do not yet know Christ. Changed lives and changed community will both glorify God and fill us with the joy unspeakable.

Let me be clear, I am critical of revivals and revivalists not for the sake of throwing brickbats (whatever they are). I am interested in the ways in which revivals have undermined reformation. I would contend (and have) that the better word to use for improvement in the church is not revival but reform. The rise of Protestantism was not a revival. It was a reformation. Meanwhile, the interior turn that experimental Calvinism nurtured and that gave rise to revivalism, acted as a solvent on those marks of reformation by which we identified a true church — proclamation of the gospel (creeds), rightly administered sacraments (liturgy), and discipline (polity). If revivalists were not inherently anti-formalists, they might be more willing to consider the importance of these formal aspects of church life. But ever since George Whitefield, revivalists have been more concerned with “the heart” than they have with the churchly qualities that manifest the heart and unite believers to the body of Christ.

Of course, other good reasons exist for raising questions about revivals and conversion. From Charles Finney’s New Measures to Jonathan Edwards’ — another pro-revival New York pastor — gullibility over the conversion of four-year olds, revivalism has a checkered past. If Keller is such an effective apologist for revival, he needs to be as empathetic with revivalism’s critics as he is with Christianity’s unbelieving opponents who live in large metropolitan centers.

I Didn't Know Brian McLaren was Asian-American

Published on by D. G. Hart9 Comments

Preoccupation with Jeremy Lin continues among evangelicals and it has produced an effort to distinguish Asian-American evangelicalism from white evangelicalism. The result, in the case of Carl Park’s piece, is an attempt to avoid the constraints of one kind of particularity (the white kind) by appealing to the experience of another kind of particularity (Asian-American). (Why folks can’t recognize that Asian-American is as much a construction devoid of particularity as “white” I do not know. After all, Park is a name associated with Koreans and Lin is of Thai Taiwanese descent and Asian hardly does justice to differences among all the ethnic groups produced by Asia. China and Taiwan are vying for Lin, which raises an entirely different problem for the concept of Asian-American.)

Asian American evangelicals also have a different history than white evangelicals. We have, by and large, never been a part of the Religious Right. We never marched after Roe v. Wade, and we didn’t know who Pat Robertson was. We knew James Dobson from Focus on the Family tapes, but we did not know his politics.

We weren’t a part of the fundamentalist-liberal divide from the early 20th century. So we, as gospel-pondering Christians, might attend a debate about whether or not social justice is an essential part of the church’s mission, but we’re sort of perplexed by the question. In our history, immigrant churches preached the gospel and took care of the everyday needs of the immigrant community—explaining the water and electric bills, providing loans to one another, helping each other’s children get into college—without any bifurcation or angst.

Our Presbyterians spoke in tongues, our mainline pastors preached the exclusivity of Jesus. We wondered how any Christian could have qualms about something called “liberation theology,” until we read Cone and Guttiérez, and we were shocked to learn that some “Christian” seminaries do not confess the Nicene Creed. Our piety and worship tend to feel trans-denominational. Today, Asian American evangelicals in New York who don’t join a predominantly Asian American church are happy to be a (large) part of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, but we are also happy to be with Times Square Church. Both churches’ spiritualities feel familiar.

We aren’t quite Emergents or New Calvinists, because we’re not emerging from a white 80s-and-90s megachurchish spirituality that those groups take to task. We can identify with some aspects of those groups—we are urban and charismatic-friendly, and we were the Other long before it was cool to be—but much of the rhetoric does not connect. We have had more than our share of problems, but a mechanistic or programmatic model of church has not been one of them, and our parents’ churches sang plenty of hymns.

If Park’s point is that evangelicalism a religious identity that obliterates ethnic differences and the history of distinct peoples, well, he has a point. And that point applies in spades to distinct Protestant communions (which happened to fall along ethnic [read: national] lines). Evangelicalism can’t do justice any more to Thai-American Protestants than it can to Reformed Protestants.

But what is curious about Park’s piece is how he is willing to affirm the particularity of ethnicity but not grant a similar import to the specificity of fundamentalism, neo-evangelicalism, or the Religious Right. It is a denial similar to the one that emergents make of evangelicalism; you reject the political provincialism of Falwell for the social justice cosmopolitanism of Campolo. But how that works for affirming ethnic identity is a question that needs more attention. (BTW, interesting to see how this cosmopolitan, yet ethnic, faith is comfortable at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City where Presbyterian particularity is often in short supply compared to identities supplied by modern urban demographics.)

Ron Paul, Two-K, and Manliness

Published on by D. G. Hart31 Comments

Rabbi Bret may be surprised to learn that he is a sissy because he is supporting Ron Paul. That is the testosterone filled conclusion of the Brothers Bayly who in a recent post have asserted that two-kingdom advocates and Ron Paul supporters share a similar trait — distaff cowardice. (I am not making this up.)

Ron Paul is to national politics what R2K is to the salt and light of the Church. Both Paulites and R2Kites have never seen a battle they want to fight. So instead they come up with sophisticated reasons why Little Round Top is the wrong hill to defend and Colonel Chamberlain’s bayonet charge was over the top. The wrong man led the wrong troops in the wrong charge using the wrong weapons at the wrong time and the wrong location.

In fact, watch these men closely and you find the only battle they’re willing to fight is the battle opposing battles. But of course, I use the words ‘battle’ and ‘fight’ quite loosely because both require courage. I don’t write this to demean them, but so readers will see the connection between their techniques, commitments, and character.

They’re the skinny boy in the corner of the schoolyard shouting “Nanny nanny boo-boo” at the real boys over on the baseball diamond trying to catch the ball, swing the bat, hit something, and run. Over in the corner of the playground with his back to the wall is R2K’s favorite cultural icon, Woody Allen, making jokes about how he refuses to play baseball because baseball is a stupid game with stupid rules played by stupid boys. But of course, he did try to play baseball once, and when the ball was flying toward his face, he misjudged where to put his mitt, he took his eye off the ball, and the ball hit him square in the face, and it really really hurt. He’s never forgotten it and now he makes fun of boys who play baseball.

All the boys who play baseball think he’s a coward, but he’s always surrounded by the other boys who got punched in the face with a baseball and decided never to play baseball again. They laugh at his jokes. Then there are the girls who never wanted to play baseball and don’t know a coward when they see one, and they think he’s kinda cute and sweet. They pity him for being an outcast and one day that pity will cause them to allow him to kiss them.

On the level of politics, the Baylys are clueless and always have been since they supported George McGovern in 1972 (though Ron Paul is closer to McGovern on foreign policy than the Baylys know — talk about not fighting battles). They are less interested in resisting tyranny than they are in establishing a regime of justice and morality. They don’t mind ignoring the distinct responsibilities of institutions and the separate spheres established by documents like constitutions and confessions in order to apply their moral truths justly everywhere. This puts their moral idealism much closer to the French Revolution than to the American, and makes their he-mannish bravery sound more like Robespierre than Madison. To justify the reign of terror, Robespierre wrote: “Terror is only justice prompt, sever, and inflexible — it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country.” Manly? Sure. Cruel? You bet. Despotic? No doubt.

On the level of biblical interpretation, I continue to wonder where their unrivaled affirmation of macho Christianity finds a warrant in Scripture. Was Jesus manly when he submitted to an unjust verdict and execution? Was our Lord feminized when he told his followers to forgive seventy-times-seven? Was Paul light in the loafers when he counseled moderation, self-control, and submission to authorities?

I get it. Jesus is going to return and will judge sins and the sinners who commit them. But the Baylys’ antics suggests yet another form of immanentizing the eschaton — a rush to judge, confront, and topple in the name of Christ here and now. They don’t seem to understand the inverse logic of the gospel. Christ defeats Satan by dying. The kingdom of grace beats the kingdom of Satan by forgiving sins. I don’t particularly understand what chromosomes have to do with this.

Postscript: I linked to one of the Baylys’ posts about men singing and how the church needs hymns on judgment and justice triumphing over wicked men for men to sing with gusto. This points to another part of the Baylys’ errors. They are also clueless culturally. They have never witnessed big, beefy men — namely, Welsh rugby players — while singing their national anthem.

Aggregators and the Aggregated

Published on by D. G. Hart31 Comments

Justin Taylor does an interesting job of posting various and sundry. But as always, I have a few questions:

1) Do we need to read Piper in order to have access to the high priest of Christian hedonism, Jonathan Edwards? Why can’t we receive Edwards without a mixer?

2) Has Jed been reading Chuck Colson? It seems that the evangelical hierarchy is headed toward civil disobedience.

3) Why do evangelicals need professional athletes to show the importance of faith? (This may be one of the greatest indicators of a difference between young “Calvinists” and Reformed Protestants — Mike Horton doesn’t know anything about sports.) BTW, how could anyone outside metropolitan New York in good conscience root for the Knicks?

4) Why did Justin miss this one, an editorial (you need to read to the end of the post for the original editorial) that seems to have gone viral among Southern Baptists? Gerald Harris, editor of the Christian Index, is worried about the spread of Calvinism in the SBC. What is interesting is how the associations between Calvinism and Mark Driscoll (yuck!) are hurting the appeal of Reformed theology among Baptists. Those associations may have something to do with the way that Southern Baptist leaders seem to be backing away from the Calvinist label. Plant T-U-L-I-P under a bushel? Yes!