Teflon Megachurch

Published on by D. G. Hart5 Comments

Jake Meador blames the poor styles of Jen Hatmaker on the megachurch. Evangelicalism of the 1990s relied more on personal branding than on churchly boundaries. The result is Hatmaker’s inability to see what’s at stake in LBGT debates. She’s a product of her megachurch culture.

Meador is especially hard on Bill Hybels and Willow Creek:

At the heart of this evangelical movement was the megachurch, which we have already mentioned. But the suburban megachurch calls for closer attention because it is in the megachurch that we find the methodological keys to understanding both the evangelicalism of that era and the second-generation spin on this same model that is embodied by women like Hatmaker as well as her friend Shauna Niequist, herself the daughter of the founder of this movement, Bill Hybels.

The seeker-sensitive movement began with a simple idea: Charitably stated, it was that the Christian faith was increasingly nonsensical to modern Americans and it needed translators who could listen to the culture and then speak about the faith in ways that were sensible to them.

Unfortunately, the way that Hybels and others like him attempted to do this work of translation depended far too heavily on secular ideas about marketing, branding, target demographics, and so on. The faith became a product, churches became places of entertainment and commerce, and pastors became the heroic CEOs with the right vision to grow the business:

So churches like Willow Creek leaned on a method for doing evangelism and outreach that essentially amounted to selling the Gospel using marketing strategies targeted at specific demographic groups. They did market research, figured out what people wanted in a church, and began shaping church services accordingly.

The problem with this method is that it can only ever be reactive. Seeker-sensitive evangelism and churches can only react to what they learn in their market research and what they gather from observing mainstream culture. But they cannot create work that drifts from the basic grammar and vocabulary that they inherit from the culture they’re attempting to reach.

My question is why does Tim Keller and Redeemer NYC get a pass? Redeemer is a megachurch, uses strategies designed for its urban context, and it came along at the same time as Willow Creek.

Meador may object that Hybels is not Keller when it comes to communicating or defending the truth of Christianity. But Meador forgets that Lee Stroebel was a big part of Willow Creek’s brand back in the 1990s and no one could apologize better for the faith than an atheist-journalist who studied at Yale Law School turned Christian teacher.

Plus, if you consider where some of the junior pastors in Keller’s New York City outreach landed, Meador could conceivably add Redeemer to his lament about evangelicalism and millennials. Anyone remember this (two years before Jen’s hatmaking went haywire)?

This aligns with our existing core vision: the doors of this church are as wide as the arms of the Savior it proclaims. We remain passionate about having as many people hear the gospel as possible. City Church will continue to receive into membership all those with a credible profession of faith and expect the same commitments represented in their membership vows.

On the other hand, we want to be clear what this now means. We will no longer discriminate based on sexual orientation and demand lifelong celibacy as a precondition for joining. For all members, regardless of sexual orientation, we will continue to expect chastity in singleness until marriage. Please pray for our Board as we continue to discuss pastoral practices with our LGBT brothers and sisters in Christ. Pray for our denomination, the Reformed Church in America, as it does the same.

So I ask, what gives?

Last Minute Election Advice

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments

Since chances for Congress electing POTUS are non-existent (for now), Old Lifers may want to take this counsel to the polls tomorrow:

Here’s the most shocking illustration of the GOP’s Supreme Court problem: in the 19 years between Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Republicans lost only one presidential race. The Court that decided Casey in 1992 included two Bush I appointees (Clarence Thomas and David Souter) and four Reagan appointees (William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Kennedy), in addition to a Ford appointee (John Paul Stevens) and a Nixon appointee (Harry Blackmun). Only one justice had been appointed by a Democrat, and that was Byron White, who’d dissented from Roe and supported overturning it.

And yet the Court upheld a constitutional right to abortion, though Roe’s seven-vote consensus for such a right was whittled down to five and several restrictions were also upheld. Three of the justices who helped keep Roe alive were consistent liberals during their time on the Court despite having been appointed by Republicans.

Before You Put On Any More Sackcloth and Ashes

Published on by D. G. Hart8 Comments

Consider that secular judges are not always out to get Christians (even though it’s a good narrative to whoop up hysteria):

A decisive legal victory in British Columbia has put an evangelical Christian university one step closer in its bid to secure recognition for its proposed law school.

The Appeal Court of B.C. released a decision in favour of Trinity Western University on Tuesday, describing efforts by B.C.’s law society to deny accreditation to the school’s future lawyers as “unreasonable.”

The legal dispute centres around the university’s community covenant that bans its students from having sexual relations outside of heterosexual marriage.

In a unanimous decision, a panel of five judges said the negative impact on Trinity Western’s religious freedoms would be severe and far outweigh the minimal effect accreditation would have on gay and lesbian rights.

“A society that does not admit of and accommodate differences cannot be a free and democratic society — one in which its citizens are free to think, to disagree, to debate and to challenge the accepted view without fear of reprisal,” says the 66-page judgment.

Warning: stay on your meds. No reason to return to the mania of postmillennial optimism.

Why Cubs Fans Aren’t Loveable

Published on by D. G. Hart17 Comments

If Chicago had only one sports franchise, such ebullience might be plausible:

Like all great stories, though, the most important part of this one is that it can serve as a picture of gospel hope in miniature. The Cubs’ saga, because the drought was so much longer and more desperate than any other North American professional sports franchise, actually illustrates that hope uniquely. Think of it: more than a century of constant struggle, doubt, and disappointment. Hopes for a glorious and cathartic future of which we’ll all be an emotionally and spiritually invested part, despite not being the main actors.

But don’t Cubs fans know they live in a city with four — not three — four other franchises. And lo and behold, the other teams’ championships hardly constitute a 2016 Cubs World Series victory as an oasis in a desert of sports futility.

Bulls — 6 Championships
-1991 defeated LA Lakers, 4-1
-1992 defeated Portland Trail Blazers, 4-2
-1993 defeated Phoenix Suns, 4-2
-1996 defeated Seattle Supersonics, 4-2
-1997 defeated Utah Jazz, 4-2
-1998 defeated Utah Jazz, 4-2
MVP for each championship: Michael Jordan

Blackhawks — 5 Stanley Cups
-1934 defeated Detroit Red Wings, 3–1
-1938 defeated Toronto Maple Leafs, 3–1
-1961 defeated Detroit Red Wings, 4–2
-2010 defeated Philadelphia Flyers, 4–2
-2013 defeated Boston Bruins, 4–2

White Sox — 3 World Series
-1906 defeated Chicago Cubs
-1917 defeated NY Giants
-2005 defeated Houston Astros

Cubs — 2 World Series|
-1907 defeated Detroit Tigers
-1908 defeated Detroit Tigers

Bears — 1 Super Bowl
-1985 defeated the Patriots

Hardly a drought. Compared to Atlanta it’s a veritable feast: 1. Atlanta, Georgia – 162 seasons per title

Now if Cubs fans only root for the Cubs and follow no other sports, that doesn’t add up to a point but it moves such people closer to Hillary Clinton’s basket of deplorables. Instead, they need to act like they’ve been there before. They have.

Update: by the way, this thought about Chicago fans first occurred to me last night while talking with Chortles and Wresbyterian.

To Paraphrase Freud, Sometimes a Vote is Only a Vote

Published on by D. G. Hart37 Comments

Are evangelicals this concerned about family farms when they buy their food or about the U.S. military when the pay their taxes?

So why so much attention to conscience when it comes to voting for the next POTUS?

For some reason, this vote says more about evangelicalism than the gospel that pastors preach (maybe that’s an indication that you’ve lost perspective?):

Evangelicals, deeply divided over Donald Trump, are wrestling with what the tumultuous 2016 election will mean for their future.

His candidacy has put a harsh spotlight on the fractures among Christian conservatives, most prominently the rift between old guard religious right leaders who backed the GOP nominee as an ally on abortion, and a comparatively younger generation who considered his personal conduct and rhetoric morally abhorrent.

“This has been a kind of smack in the face, forcing us to ask ourselves, ‘What have we become?'” said Carolyn Custis James, an evangelical activist and author who writes about gender roles in the church.

Then we have the argument that Christianity is a helicopter faith (it hovers over everything):

To undertake this particular activity—voting—the Christian must be convinced that the ballot is cast as an obedient response to the command of God in discipleship. The Christian seeks to discern the word God has for them and to act upon it faithfully. One participates willingly in democratic elections as a disciple or not at all. This might mean that the Christian abstains from voting or votes for an alternate candidate who they believe (again, in good conscience) will best carry out the office. Yes, God works through material affairs themselves to inform the Christian of whom a candidate is and what is at stake in voting for them, but his revelatory providence is by no means restricted to the empirical and obvious.

Whatever happened to the idea of Christian liberty?

God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are, in anything, contrary to his Word; or beside it, if matters of faith, or worship. So that, to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commands, out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience: and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also. (Confession of Faith, 20.2)

So unless we have a proper warrant from Scripture for not voting for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, like not supporting a self-centered windbag (think Nero) or not voting for a sinner (think Nebuchadnezzar), what’s the big deal here? Aren’t Christians free? Can’t we disagree about politics, just the way we disagree about novels, cars, food, and banking?

But if you are a w-w Christian and every single millimeter of life is shot through with spiritual significance . . .

Well, then why not more hair pulling about the World Series and trying to discern God’s commandment for which team to root?

Protestantism as Trump

Published on by D. G. Hart1 Comment

While Pope Francis is commemorating Martin Luther in Sweden, Karl Keating is doing what apologists do — deriding Protestantism:

We commemorate December 7, the “day that will live in infamy,” because it was the prelude to a long and costly war. Again, there was heroism, but we wish that heroism had never needed to be called up.

We commemorate Bastille Day and the October Revolution not because what came from them, the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution, were good but precisely because they were evil, and we want to remember that evil so that it won’t return in another guise. . . .

I see nothing to celebrate in the Protestant Reformation. It was the greatest disaster the West suffered over the last millennium. It brought theological confusion, political turmoil, and decades of war. The religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries killed about three percent of the world’s population, the same proportion that died in World War II. The religious wars would not have occurred had the Reformation not occurred.

But unlike the critics of Trump, Keating acknowledges that the other candidate has problems:

Much was wrong in the Catholic Church of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Personal morality was lax (though not matching today’s laxity), and corruption was widespread among the clergy and was particularly scandalous the higher one’s gaze went up the hierarchical ladder. One should keep in mind, though, that, however bad things were in the decades before Luther took out his hammer, they had been worse in the tenth century. If there were a few “bad popes” in Luther’s era, there were worse popes, and more of them, five or six centuries earlier.

The Church of the tenth century desperately needed reform, not revolution, though it might have fallen into the latter if reform hadn’t come about. But reform did come about, and the Church not only soldiered on but prospered. The result was the High Middle Ages, the era in which Catholic principles most effectively (but still inadequately) undergirded Western society.

By the turn of the 1500s a once-again-complacent Christendom was in trouble. It again needed reform, but what it got was the Reformation.

What Keating doesn’t answer is whether his communion ever experienced reform, or if his very different interpretation of the Reformation compared to Pope Francis is another indication that calls for reform, like the poor, are always with us.

My Namesake

Published on by D. G. Hart1 Comment

Get this. They would have called her Adoniram if Ann Judson Henderson were born a boy:

Historian David S. Schaff, son of the famous historian Phillip Schaff, was surely right when he noted that the name of Ann Hasseltine Judson (1789–1826) “is one of the immortal names in missionary biography.” Francis Wayland (1796–1865), the major nineteenth-century biographer of Ann’s husband, said after he spent time with her in 1822: “I do not remember ever to have met a more remarkable woman.”

With her husband Adoniram Judson (1788–1850) she was the first of a long line of American evangelical missionaries. In fact, her embrace, and that of her husband, in 1812 of Baptist principles is one of the key turning points in the history of the American Baptists: it marked this community’s entry into the modern missionary movement, an event sealed two years later by the formation of the Triennial Convention, so called because it met every three years. Moreover, Ann’s life story was repeated innumerable times in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—almost every year between 1830 and 1856 there was a new edition of her biography, which prompted one author, Lydia Maria Child, to describe it as “a book . . . universally known.”

Thus, she became, along with her husband and others such as William Carey (1761–1834) and Hudson Taylor (1832–1905), a key source of inspiration for the modern missionary movement.

Subsidiarity Matters

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What happens when you locate the vitality of your religious tradition in the officers who are far removed from the socializing and rearing of human beings?

American Protestants are keeping their children in the faith at a higher rate than Catholics or the unaffiliated, according to the latest study from the Pew Research Center.

Four out of five children raised by two Protestant parents remained Protestant into adulthood. For those raised in Protestant homes where religion was very important or often discussed, the retention rate jumps even higher (85% and 89%, respectively).

For those raised by a single parent who was Protestant, the retention rate doesn’t dip much. Three-quarters of American adults who had a Protestant single parent still identify as Protestant.
Those raised by two Catholic or unaffiliated parents, on the other hand, were equally less likely (62%) to remain in their parents’ religion—or lack thereof.

A theology of the body for the trenches?

“One pattern regarding the passing on of religious identity from one generation to the next is clear,” Pew stated. “Among those who were raised in a single religious background (especially within Protestantism), the family’s religious commitment is closely linked with retaining one’s religion into adulthood.”

Papal Golf

Published on by D. G. Hart3 Comments

The president of Catholic University of America seems to have taken too many meals at Outback — no rules, just right (no hell, just purgatory?):

What I really love about Pope Francis and the message that he’s trying to get across is that we’re Catholics, we belong to the Church, and we believe what the Church teaches because Jesus came to redeem us and show us His mercy.

The message to others isn’t, “Gosh, you ought to be Catholic because you should follow this or that set of rules.” The message is, “Good news: you’re redeemed. Here’s what a life lived in response to that truth looks like.”

Imagine you’re speaking to someone from Finland who has grown up north of the Arctic Circle, and had never seen a golf course and had no idea what golf was. You’re trying to explain to this person why you love golf and how important it is.

One way of doing it is saying while you’re in the tee box, you don’t want to hit it outside the white stakes because that’s out of bounds and the penalty is a stroke and distance, and you don’t want to go past the red stakes because those are lateral hazards and there’s a stroke penalty. And you don’t want to get in the sand trap because, while that doesn’t cost you a stroke, it’s hard to get out of.

You’d rather say, “Here’s the deal: you see that hole down there-we’re going down this short grass here and we’re putting it in the hole in the least number of strokes, and we’re going to have a nice visit while we do it.”

It’s not that there aren’t rules for golf-no out of bounds, no lateral hazards, no sand traps-it’s that focusing on avoiding sin is not the message that brings people to love Jesus.
Pope Francis is exactly right-the bull’s-eye of the Catholic message of the gospel is, “Jesus loves you.” Your life is messed up? We’ve got some good news for you. That’s what I love about Francis. There is nothing in any of that that doesn’t appeal to all of us. . . .

That’s not to say there aren’t out of bounds or rules or anything, which he’s stipulated, but because he’s so inviting, people are willing to take a first listen. Some in the media on the left would like to take from that the lesson that the Catholic Church has abandoned all the rules about lateral hazards and sand traps, and some on the right take the same mistaken view. And of course Pope Francis makes clear that’s not what he’s saying.

But when it comes to discerning a difference between the church and the world, no problem. The U.S. bishops are doing nothing different from the ACLU (I kid not):

When we invite someone to be a commencement speaker, the university is saying something. That’s why the American Catholic bishops say that Catholic universities shouldn’t give honors, platforms, and awards to people whose view is at odds with the views of the Catholic Church.

What they are saying literally is that universities like us shouldn’t endorse people like that. We should not say “Yay, Barack Obama, you support enshrining the ‘right’ to kill the unborn.” We shouldn’t give him honorary degrees or hold him up to our students as our example.

On the other hand, I would be perfectly happy to invite President Obama to Catholic University, even to talk about abortion if he wanted to. What better place than to have a conversation with the President about an issue that is important to Catholics and others? We’re just not going to give him a prize for taking a position that we condemn.

So, this notion isn’t at all inconsistent with notions of academic freedom on campus. It follows the standard kind of distinction that other universities follow.

Here’s a parallel example. Every year we see the ACLU bashing, say Montana State, for inviting some preacher to say an invocation before the commencement. The First Amendment rule about that is that public universities should not endorse religious positions, therefore, the preacher is welcome to come on campus to talk or to say prayers but they can’t make him the commencement speaker.

The ACLU doesn’t come in behind the bishops on their position, but they are saying the same thing.

Speechless.

He Dehumanized First

Published on by D. G. Hart65 Comments

With all the talk of human dignity these days, and all the recognition that Donald Trump doesn’t recognize it in Mexicans and Muslims, what happened to the capacity to recognize Trump himself as human? In other words, why don’t Christian historians model the charity and perspective in discussing Trump that they expect the Republican to display? John Fea (sorry to write so much about you big guy but you know, iron-sharpening-iron and all) once again sees what so many already see:

As Christian students of the past they strive to tell the stories of all human beings. The goal of such teaching and writing is not political correctness, but a fundamental belief in the dignity of individuals. Everyone’s story counts.

When Trump disparages women and people of different races and religions he dehumanizes them. He sends the message that some human beings are not as important as others. In the process he fails to recognize the Imago Dei in all of God’s human creation.

Historians know a few things about this kind of dehumanizing rhetoric. We have studied its manifestation in the past and are trained to recognize it in the present.

I have already commented on evangelical historians who seem to pride themselves on the value they add to discussion of the present.

But I don’t for the life of me understand why the historians who are so quick to condemn Trump don’t admit that the really challenging part of studying the past is to humanize characters like the Republican nominee. How a scholar does that is not obvious and that is why they pay historians the big bucks. To look beyond the surface and see the wider set of circumstances that contribute to a human being’s assets and liabilities is what makes history valuable (and for me fun).

Regarding a person in merely moral categories doesn’t measure up to the standards of good historical knowledge. It does what everyone else already does. And when done in the name of evangelical history it actually shows that born-again historians have a moral imagination but little removed from Jerry Falwell (Sr.) or James Dobson. What they did to President Clinton, evangelical historians are ready and willing to do to Donald Trump.