Is there a way forward from cultural withdrawal on one hand (20th century pre-millennialism) and recurring optimism (21st century post/a millennialism) on the other? Yes, I believe that what is known as classic pre-millennialism gives us a way to meaningfully engage society. Classic pre-millennialism recognizes that conflict with society is endemic to a fallen world. The world is indeed ruled by evil principalities and powers and people not only seek their own interests but also will harm others for no reason. This mixture of demonic presence and original sin creates the cosmos, the world which John warns us against loving. This cosmos is a spiritual construction and its deconstruction can only occur by a supernatural event, namely, the resurrection of the dead. This event has occurred already in Jesus Christ, but its full manifestation awaits the Christ’s appearance at which time death – which is the spiritual lynch pin of the whole world system -- will be defeated.
Thus for God's people there is a true waiting, a true anticipation of an event yet to come, the inbreaking of God in Jesus Christ. However, while waiting Christians are not to be quiet or passive in their interaction with the world. They are instead to be agents of the Kingdom, agents of the second coming. And yes, this calls for the aggressive expansion of the church as the work of announcing this good news of the Kingdom is aggressively around the world. While doing the work of evangelism the church must also display the coming Kingdom.
What I mean by display is that the world should be able to look at the Church and see what the future kingdom will be like. The Church is the called out people of God and as such should be a mirror, so to speak, of the coming Kingdom. In the lived community of the Church we should find the old order of the world, with its lust for power and aggrandizement, in other words all the things that are driven by the fear of death, disappearing, and in its place a robust growth of all the things that grow from a belief in the resurrection.
Let me give a try at an example. An exclave is a part of a country that is surrounded by another country. And example is Ceuta, an exclave of Spain which is surrounded by the country of Morocco. Spain proper is across the Strait of Gibraltar, but this small spot of territory, surrounded by Morocco, is part of Spain. For me this is a partial picture of the church, in the world as some have said, but not part of it; a foreign country within a foreign country, with real and dynamic connections to the real country, for Ceuta - Spain, for the Church - The Kingdom of God, but in dynamic relation with the surrounding country, Morroco in the case of Ceuta, the world in the case of the Church.
So, in summary, the world is structured by sin, rooted all the way back in what we call the fall. This structure finds its operating principle in the fear of death, which the Bible shows as the primary motivation of this present age. And finally, it is evilly empowered on the supernatural level. While, as I stated above, this system can only be changed by the supernatural action of God in Jesus Christ the risen one, it can be affected, its evil can be mitigated, and by God’s grace, good can be accomplished in its midst.
I believe this is the way forward; to cross the border of our exclave and bring the grace and goodness of our God to the culture. I am not sure of Hunter’s eschatology, but I believe he has something like this in mind when he speaks of “faithful presence.” He gives this quote from the Prophet Jeremiah.
Jeremiah 29:4—7:
4 This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:
5 "Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.
6 Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.
7 Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper."
Hunter sees these instruction to the Children of Israel in exile as being instructions to Christians who are “strangers in a strange land.” Christians need to be involved as citizens, they need to have a theology of work that praises the jobs that people have, they need to live in ways that bring the grace and presence of Christ to those around them.
Not that these thoughts are new, but in the current deteriorated state of Christian thinking about the surrounding society they need to be restated and re-explored.
Hunter spends a great deal of time calling for a theology of work which includes seeing ones work as a calling, a vocation. Here he is especially concerned with what he perceives as the stance of the neo-Anabaptist movement which in his opinion denigrates work, especially work that is part of the capitalistic system – which is most work. This commitment to a vague economic model where there are neither poor nor rich means that all the business people in the church and all the ones who are working for them are simply aiding and abetting the anti-god powers of this age.
Instead we need to instruct people that they have been called to their field of work to be the presence of Christ, not only in the workplace, but in the culture.
I must say that our own movement, the Alliance, has to an extent reflected this sense that if a person goes into full time Christian work, that is golden, but what others do is not really a concern of the church. Thus our people may lack a sense of spiritual fulfillment in their work and as a result the local church frequently competes with the community and the workplace for time and attention.
Hunter uses the old categories of the true the good and the beautiful to divide up human activity. All that humans do falls into one of the three categories, or, is opposed to one of them. Those working on the true are those who, among other things, comment, write, teach, and establish laws. The good are those who care for our health, maintain our cities, houses and machines, work on public policies – it is a wide category. The beautiful is perhaps more obvious as it is those who create art and media in all of its variety.
So, the exhortation “whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your heart” applies to the Christian at work, that is, we are to do all our work as a service to the Lord. This is the first response and it shapes us in the work place because we do not work to rule, we do not simply work to get by, but we seek to make our work an offering to Christ.
In this way we do not enter into a false reaction against the proper work of the Church which is to speak the good news of Christ to people, to invite them to faith, to initiate them into the church and to teach them to obey all the things that Jesus taught. I see this false reaction growing in a number of places and so I want to speak against it with some vigor. It is a betrayal of our commission to downplay evangelism, to make the mission of the Church the changing of the ills of this world, to project that somehow we can in fact obliterate disease, heal the environment and bring justice for all. No we cannot, for those things are tied to, are outgrowths of, the primary architecture of the cosmos. One day they will change, they will in fact be shattered, but not by our doing. So, to throw out the work of evangelism, of church planting, of discipleship, for these goals is to go off mission so severely that the Church itself will be in danger of being lost.
Instead of this false reaction we act as agents of the kingdom that is still yet to come. Christianity Today interviewed James Hunter and asked him for an example of “faithful presence.” He asked us to imagine if 20,000 Christians in the state of Illinois signed a petition in which they pledged that they, the undersigned, would be willing to adopt any child, regardless of race, creed or state of health, and then said, as a summary: “there are no unwanted children in Illinois.” This, Hunter said, would be a faithful presence response to the issue of abortion, and I would add that it is a response devoid of resentment, free of anger, and which abandons the will the power. It is a response that mirrors a whole new order, a new Kingdom that is yet coming.
I believe this is a way forward.
Several wonderful comments have been left and I will try to say some things in response in future posts.
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Stop Driving in Circles, Turn on a GPS
I am going to take another trip. Where am I going? And what will I do when I am there? The answer shapes the means of travel, cost, time etc. The destination is everything. We have to know the final destination, and we have to know how to get there. Yes, I am one of millions of men who will be forever grateful to whoever invented the GPS.
The evangelical church seems to be driving without a GPS. In fact, we seem to have left the map at the last rest stop. What is the end? What does it look like? How are we supposed to get there? Does anyone have any idea?
For the church, what we believe about the end times is determinative in setting priorities and putting into play the methods we use. Somewhere in the mid-1980’s evangelicals became so fried with useless bickering over the fine points of eschatology that they fell into what I would coin as an "a-eschatology" which in reality is a solid step toward anti-supernaturalism. But I don’t want to get into that here. Instead I want to think about the fact that the very phrase “to change the world” is inherently eschatological, and therefore we cannot think deeply on the topic without surfacing our own eschatological assumptions and without examining their impact on whatever ministry project we are engaged in.
Here is my take on the relevance of eschatology to James Davidson Hunter’s book: To Change the World.
Hunter speaks of the Christian Right as having taken a position toward the current culture as “defense against.” He does not deny that there is good reason for this as the current culture is extremely harmful on many fronts to faith and also to people. I wish to ask, apart from Hunter, does the eschatology of the Right influence this “defensive position?”
Through the early twentieth century two factors shaped the evangelical stance toward society. First, liberalism, which proclaimed social engagement as the way to bring in the kingdom, caused evangelicals – including A. B. Simpson and Alliance leaders, to react by abandoning social engagement. Second, the rise of dispensational eschatology provided a theological underpinning for a stance that can be described as social non-involvement. It worked out this way. Please be aware that I know that the following summaries are not nuanced and are overly brief.
Dispensationalism positioned itself this way: if Christians are going to be raptured, and if then immediately thereafter a terrible and earth devastating tribulation is going to erupt, and if, after that Christ is going to return and rule, then there is no need to be involved in the improvement of society, no need to seek to establish justice or work for peace, because all of those efforts are going to be swallowed up in the tribulation. Christ will establish justice and peace when he comes; hence the main work of the church is to evangelize so that as many people as possible are spared from the future tribulation. Thus evangelism became the one and only focus of the evangelical church.
No one should gainsay the impetus to evangelism which this view inspired. However, there were two factors which evangelicals were not thinking about when they disengaged from culture. First, culture is the air we breathe and just like air we are not always aware of it. Evangelicals were in a culture which, while not an evangelical culture, and not a Christian culture, was nonetheless tied to enough Christian reference points to create a certain illusion of being a Christian culture. Consequently, evangelical cultural disengagement from approximately 1900 through the 1970’s was done from within a certain cultural comfort zone, however illusory that comfort zone might have been. Thus, they disengaged, but their disengagement did not leave them with a sense of danger.
When Francis Schaeffer pulled the fire alarm with How Shall We Then Live? everything shifted. Evangelicals suddenly tuned into culture and saw serious and real threats to their lives and their children’s lives. For Schaeffer the flashpoint was abortion; for Dobson, the rise and legitimatization of pornography; and other issues were targeted by other evangelical elite leaders, all of which triggered the rise of what we now identify as the Christian Right.
At the same time, Hunter points out; one of the tactics of evangelicals was to attempt to shield themselves from the culture by setting up what Hunter calls a parallel culture. The mainstream culture has rock music; we can do that with Christian rock! And entertainment stars? We can do that too. You want publishing companies, and television shows, even comedians; we can do all of that. In this way, through the creation of a parallel evangelical culture, we maintained the defensive postion of dispensationalism. Withdrawal from the world, withdrawal from the surrounding culture while we wait for the cataclysmic end, continued as the order of the day.
While trying to stay safe in its parallel evangelical culture, evangelicalism also took a cultural offensive by becoming involved in the political right. I would suggest that this shift from political non-involvement to involvement was caused by a weakening of dispensationalism and an uncritical absorption of the program of alternate eschatological matrixes. This weakening happened in part because of the excess of dispensational writers in predicting the end of the world, and also in interpreting current events and predicting that various end time events such as the rise of the antichrist were going to happen within the immediate future. When these predicted events did not occur, some pastors and theologians found themselves ready to move on to a different eschatology. For many this void was filled by the resurgence of post/a millennialism.
Enter post/a millennialism. These old relatives who had been banished to live in the evangelical basement now began showing up for dinner dressed in newly pressed tuxedos. I put these two together because while there are differences as far as the interpretation and timing of the appearance of the Antichrist, the conversion of Israel, etc., there is a commonality in regards to the possibility of a worldwide presence of the Kingdom of God which does not arise as a result of the sudden and cataclysmic coming of Christ, but instead arises from the work of God’s people in fulfilling the creation mandate and by the evangelization of the world. This I believe is at least one of the sources of language which speaks of “building the kingdom” and it seems to underlie much of the current talk about being a “missional church.” Many emergent church writers reflect this view which is clearly articulated by N. T. Wright.
At the same time there is a dissonance in current talk about the Kingdom and the missional church. This dissonance is found in the obvious disjunction between the call to reject the Constantinian project of making a Christian society, and the desire to see the kingdom of God fill the earth. I would ask some simple questions. In relation to the environment: how do Christians hope to see the environment restored without the whole world culture becoming Christian in the sense of being a people who see the environment as a gift from God and understanding that we are charged with caring for it? Likewise, justice for women, the end of poverty, -- how are any of those issues to be finally, once and for all resolved without a worldwide Christian society? You can’t have your cake and eat it too. In essence the a/post millennial project is the Constantinian project.
If I may I would like to risk reducing all of this to a small sentence. The project of the post/a millennialist is to bring in the Kingdom rather than to bring back the King. This brings us to Hunter’s forceful points, that while this or that particular effort at change may be successful, in the final analysis this is a neo-Constantinian project with the ultimate goal of changing the culture of America/Canada/the world into a Christian culture, a project which in reality is failing and cannot succeed. And, I will add, this is something that A. B. Simpson and Karl Barth both clearly understood.
I believe the shock with which Hunter’s book is being received by evangelical leaders is because there is an underlying awareness that Christians are not accomplishing their “change the world” agenda. At the same time there is a cry, a shout, to try harder, sign this petition, write a letter -- and on and on. Some of that is needed, but it can be just a continuation of the power agenda. On the other hand, should we go back to cultural withdrawal and wait for it all to burn? Should we collapse into Christian quietism? Who wants that?
Surely there must be a way forward.
The evangelical church seems to be driving without a GPS. In fact, we seem to have left the map at the last rest stop. What is the end? What does it look like? How are we supposed to get there? Does anyone have any idea?
For the church, what we believe about the end times is determinative in setting priorities and putting into play the methods we use. Somewhere in the mid-1980’s evangelicals became so fried with useless bickering over the fine points of eschatology that they fell into what I would coin as an "a-eschatology" which in reality is a solid step toward anti-supernaturalism. But I don’t want to get into that here. Instead I want to think about the fact that the very phrase “to change the world” is inherently eschatological, and therefore we cannot think deeply on the topic without surfacing our own eschatological assumptions and without examining their impact on whatever ministry project we are engaged in.
Here is my take on the relevance of eschatology to James Davidson Hunter’s book: To Change the World.
Hunter speaks of the Christian Right as having taken a position toward the current culture as “defense against.” He does not deny that there is good reason for this as the current culture is extremely harmful on many fronts to faith and also to people. I wish to ask, apart from Hunter, does the eschatology of the Right influence this “defensive position?”
Through the early twentieth century two factors shaped the evangelical stance toward society. First, liberalism, which proclaimed social engagement as the way to bring in the kingdom, caused evangelicals – including A. B. Simpson and Alliance leaders, to react by abandoning social engagement. Second, the rise of dispensational eschatology provided a theological underpinning for a stance that can be described as social non-involvement. It worked out this way. Please be aware that I know that the following summaries are not nuanced and are overly brief.
Dispensationalism positioned itself this way: if Christians are going to be raptured, and if then immediately thereafter a terrible and earth devastating tribulation is going to erupt, and if, after that Christ is going to return and rule, then there is no need to be involved in the improvement of society, no need to seek to establish justice or work for peace, because all of those efforts are going to be swallowed up in the tribulation. Christ will establish justice and peace when he comes; hence the main work of the church is to evangelize so that as many people as possible are spared from the future tribulation. Thus evangelism became the one and only focus of the evangelical church.
No one should gainsay the impetus to evangelism which this view inspired. However, there were two factors which evangelicals were not thinking about when they disengaged from culture. First, culture is the air we breathe and just like air we are not always aware of it. Evangelicals were in a culture which, while not an evangelical culture, and not a Christian culture, was nonetheless tied to enough Christian reference points to create a certain illusion of being a Christian culture. Consequently, evangelical cultural disengagement from approximately 1900 through the 1970’s was done from within a certain cultural comfort zone, however illusory that comfort zone might have been. Thus, they disengaged, but their disengagement did not leave them with a sense of danger.
When Francis Schaeffer pulled the fire alarm with How Shall We Then Live? everything shifted. Evangelicals suddenly tuned into culture and saw serious and real threats to their lives and their children’s lives. For Schaeffer the flashpoint was abortion; for Dobson, the rise and legitimatization of pornography; and other issues were targeted by other evangelical elite leaders, all of which triggered the rise of what we now identify as the Christian Right.
At the same time, Hunter points out; one of the tactics of evangelicals was to attempt to shield themselves from the culture by setting up what Hunter calls a parallel culture. The mainstream culture has rock music; we can do that with Christian rock! And entertainment stars? We can do that too. You want publishing companies, and television shows, even comedians; we can do all of that. In this way, through the creation of a parallel evangelical culture, we maintained the defensive postion of dispensationalism. Withdrawal from the world, withdrawal from the surrounding culture while we wait for the cataclysmic end, continued as the order of the day.
While trying to stay safe in its parallel evangelical culture, evangelicalism also took a cultural offensive by becoming involved in the political right. I would suggest that this shift from political non-involvement to involvement was caused by a weakening of dispensationalism and an uncritical absorption of the program of alternate eschatological matrixes. This weakening happened in part because of the excess of dispensational writers in predicting the end of the world, and also in interpreting current events and predicting that various end time events such as the rise of the antichrist were going to happen within the immediate future. When these predicted events did not occur, some pastors and theologians found themselves ready to move on to a different eschatology. For many this void was filled by the resurgence of post/a millennialism.
Enter post/a millennialism. These old relatives who had been banished to live in the evangelical basement now began showing up for dinner dressed in newly pressed tuxedos. I put these two together because while there are differences as far as the interpretation and timing of the appearance of the Antichrist, the conversion of Israel, etc., there is a commonality in regards to the possibility of a worldwide presence of the Kingdom of God which does not arise as a result of the sudden and cataclysmic coming of Christ, but instead arises from the work of God’s people in fulfilling the creation mandate and by the evangelization of the world. This I believe is at least one of the sources of language which speaks of “building the kingdom” and it seems to underlie much of the current talk about being a “missional church.” Many emergent church writers reflect this view which is clearly articulated by N. T. Wright.
At the same time there is a dissonance in current talk about the Kingdom and the missional church. This dissonance is found in the obvious disjunction between the call to reject the Constantinian project of making a Christian society, and the desire to see the kingdom of God fill the earth. I would ask some simple questions. In relation to the environment: how do Christians hope to see the environment restored without the whole world culture becoming Christian in the sense of being a people who see the environment as a gift from God and understanding that we are charged with caring for it? Likewise, justice for women, the end of poverty, -- how are any of those issues to be finally, once and for all resolved without a worldwide Christian society? You can’t have your cake and eat it too. In essence the a/post millennial project is the Constantinian project.
If I may I would like to risk reducing all of this to a small sentence. The project of the post/a millennialist is to bring in the Kingdom rather than to bring back the King. This brings us to Hunter’s forceful points, that while this or that particular effort at change may be successful, in the final analysis this is a neo-Constantinian project with the ultimate goal of changing the culture of America/Canada/the world into a Christian culture, a project which in reality is failing and cannot succeed. And, I will add, this is something that A. B. Simpson and Karl Barth both clearly understood.
I believe the shock with which Hunter’s book is being received by evangelical leaders is because there is an underlying awareness that Christians are not accomplishing their “change the world” agenda. At the same time there is a cry, a shout, to try harder, sign this petition, write a letter -- and on and on. Some of that is needed, but it can be just a continuation of the power agenda. On the other hand, should we go back to cultural withdrawal and wait for it all to burn? Should we collapse into Christian quietism? Who wants that?
Surely there must be a way forward.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
No One Evangelical Hot Dog Stand Has All The Answers
Outside of Rogers Stadium are a number of hotdog stands. Whenever my wife and I attend a Blue Jays game we head for one, because eating on the street is to us a cool part of the experience, but not for everyone. Some like to eat in one of the many restaurants along Front Street, others wait for the game to start then bring hotdogs and beer to their seats. And even among the “street eaters” there are subtle differences in the hotdog stands. Those further away are cheaper, but if you buy near Gate 14 you may ensconce yourself in a tiny park and quietly munch away.
I see our pastors as milling about, ready to go into the game, but hungry. Around them are choices, and usually, instead of picking the best from each vendor, they become fiercely loyal to one. The Religious Right which is currently dominated in the United States by Focus on the Family and Chuck Colson, and in Canada and the United States given theological underpinning by a resurgent five point Calvinism, presented by Mark Driscoll, John Piper and others, represents if you will one family of choices for the church leader.
Another is the Left which is perhaps more popular in Canada. For awhile the writings of Brian McLaren and a whole raft of others calling for new paradigms in church and a re-orientation of denominations, doctrine and the Christian life received great attention in Canada.
Looming perhaps larger in Canada than in the United States, and particularly the Alliance in Canada, are the Anabaptists writers and thinkers such as Allen Hirsch who, while not Anabaptist, have a message which seems to resonate with the Anabaptist paradigm in certain interesting ways.
A brief synopsis of Hunter’s analysis of the three movements is that they have all succumbed to the dominant cultural motif of the politicization of everything. Hunter writes:
Politics has become so central in our time that institutions, groups, and issues are now defined relative to the state, its laws and procedures. Institutions such as popular and higher education, philanthropy, science, the arts and even the family understand their identity and function according to what the state does or does not permit. … Issues gain legitimacy only when recognized by law and public policy. It is only logical, then, that problems affecting the society are seen increasingly, if not primarily through the prism of the state; that is, in terms of how law, policy, and politics can solve them. (p. 103)
When one boils it all down, politicization means that the final arbiter within most of social life is the coercive power of the state. (p.106)
Hunter’s analysis is that the Christian Right and Left have both plugged into the politicization of everything in the culture in that they not only look to the state for solutions, but they also seek political power. While the Anabaptists eschew involvement in the body politic they define themselves as not being part of the body politic.
The Right seeks change by going back to what was. For Canadians the Christian Right is quite weak partly due to the backlash against its visibility in the United States. However, I sense a residual longing for what might be called the myth of a pristine past, a Canada defined by the Protestant consensus of the United Church and by the Roman Catholic Church.
The Left seeks a future which conforms in some sense to the Enlightenment ideal of a society where there is economic parity and libertarian social justice. Although the Christian left is not as strong in the United States as it once was, it is still very powerful in Canada. The Left has accepted the liberal concept of progress which Hunter points out as originally a secularized notion of Christian eschatology. (p. 134) However, the Christian Left has also capitulated to a motif of resentment and a will to power.
Thus, according to Hunter, both the Right and the Left are following along the well trodden path of Nietzsche in being motivated by resentment and having a will to power.
This leaves the neo-Anabaptists who have a growing appeal among younger Christians in both the United States and Canada. Historically the Anabaptist movement has self-identified as a church that stands apart from the world and its structures. Through history, with a few exceptions, Anabaptists have refused to be involved in politics, even to the point of refusing to vote. Government is seen to be an institution of the world held in thrall by the “principalities and powers” of this age.
To literally demonize such powers as the State and the market means that the neo-Anabaptists draw much of their identity and purpose from a cosmic struggle with, and dissent from, the state and the larger political economy; as those institutions are represented in the culture of late modernity. Thus, for Hunter, the neo-Anabaptist identity depends on the state and on the state's powers being corrupt. And the more unambiguously corrupt those institutions are the clearer becomes the identity and mission of the church. (p.164)
To what extent then are we influenced by the agendas of the Right, Left and neo-Anabaptists? As I pointed out above, in Canada the Right has not had as much influence as it has in the United States. Canada is the only major country in the world with no law governing abortion and there is no powerful movement to change that; same sex marriage came into law with little more than a whimper; and Canadians of all persuasions see universal health care as the right thing to do. In my opinion this is because the Left, i.e., the United Church and the Anglican Church, have driven the communitarian agenda for decades. Yes, in Canada, those churches certainly had dense networks of elites in high prestige locations.
For evangelicals the most pointed influence is from the neo-Anabaptist movement as it is filtered through various contemporary writers. As is to be expected such influence has, in my opinion, both a positive and negative aspect.
The positive aspect is the neo-Anabaptist examination of the contemporary evangelical church for spiritual coldness; an examination conducted from the platform of the church's need to stand in antithesis to the principalities and powers of this present age. From this analysis the neo-Anabaptist is able to identify spiritual coldness in the following: the evangelical church's symbiotic relationship to corporate structures, producing a consumer driven church which commodities ministry and, the lack of concern for the disenfranchised of society, i.e., a lack of concern for justice.
Having heard this piercing analysis I think there is a growing desire among many to move from such coldness into a place of renewed spiritual vitality. In some writers this desire is translated into a call for the church to be “missional,” – a label that seems to mean different things to different people – and a desire to more truly relate to people outside of the church by bringing love and compassion to them. Note, I did not say “bring love and justice…” and the reason for that, in my opinion, is that the evangelical church has for so long endorsed the surrounding culture that it is having difficulty identifying violations of justice and is having even more difficulty articulating how injustice should be addressed apart from the will worn paths of politics.
Negatively the influence of the neo-Anabaptists may possibly be seen in some of the following trends. Here what I say that it is very difficult to prove so these points should be taken as my private read of the current situation. Take it or leave it.
First, I see the naïve rejection of the institutional church with the hope for an ideal church that somehow is like the pristine pre-Constantine church, as a negative product of the neo-Anabaptist influence. This attitude: “I am above and beyond the institutional church” pops up in many ways and places, but has Hunter points out; it reveals an amazingly weak ecclesiology as well as a total lack of understanding of sociology. Institutions have a reality and are critical to the functioning of society. The church, from its beginning, is both a heavenly or spiritual entity and an earthly institution. Both its earthly structure and its heavenly dwelling must be embraced by Christians.
Second, I see the gradual drifting from doctrinal anchor points which give identity to both the Christian faith and particular church communities as arising from this movement. One spin off of the loosing of doctrinal moorings has been a deep controversy among those who work among people of other religions and a call for the use of a methodology that in its extreme at least flirts with syncretism. I am referring to the contextualization debate in missiological circles. Another is the growing inability to identify error and deception which continually presents itself to the church.
A legitimatization of compassion work (seen as a proper work of the church) and a commensurate de-legitimatization of evangelistic work (seen as a concentration on the individual which is a result of enlightenment thinking) is another by-product, so that, as a denominational leader, I can raise over one million dollars with a single email for any disaster that is highly publicized by the media, but must beg to raise an equivalent amount to sustain the training of young people in our university college or to sustain our worldwide evangelistic effort. Let’s be honest. Evangelism is virtually dying out in Canadian evangelical churches. And I can bring forward empirical data from our denomination to back this statement up.
The three segments, The Right, The Left and the neo-Anabaptists have each addressed legitimate issues, have raised consciousness in regards to those issues, and have created some legitimate responses. However, they have not delivered on the promise to change the world, or America, or even Canada. Next let’s pull together the reasons why.
I see our pastors as milling about, ready to go into the game, but hungry. Around them are choices, and usually, instead of picking the best from each vendor, they become fiercely loyal to one. The Religious Right which is currently dominated in the United States by Focus on the Family and Chuck Colson, and in Canada and the United States given theological underpinning by a resurgent five point Calvinism, presented by Mark Driscoll, John Piper and others, represents if you will one family of choices for the church leader.
Another is the Left which is perhaps more popular in Canada. For awhile the writings of Brian McLaren and a whole raft of others calling for new paradigms in church and a re-orientation of denominations, doctrine and the Christian life received great attention in Canada.
Looming perhaps larger in Canada than in the United States, and particularly the Alliance in Canada, are the Anabaptists writers and thinkers such as Allen Hirsch who, while not Anabaptist, have a message which seems to resonate with the Anabaptist paradigm in certain interesting ways.
A brief synopsis of Hunter’s analysis of the three movements is that they have all succumbed to the dominant cultural motif of the politicization of everything. Hunter writes:
Politics has become so central in our time that institutions, groups, and issues are now defined relative to the state, its laws and procedures. Institutions such as popular and higher education, philanthropy, science, the arts and even the family understand their identity and function according to what the state does or does not permit. … Issues gain legitimacy only when recognized by law and public policy. It is only logical, then, that problems affecting the society are seen increasingly, if not primarily through the prism of the state; that is, in terms of how law, policy, and politics can solve them. (p. 103)
When one boils it all down, politicization means that the final arbiter within most of social life is the coercive power of the state. (p.106)
Hunter’s analysis is that the Christian Right and Left have both plugged into the politicization of everything in the culture in that they not only look to the state for solutions, but they also seek political power. While the Anabaptists eschew involvement in the body politic they define themselves as not being part of the body politic.
The Right seeks change by going back to what was. For Canadians the Christian Right is quite weak partly due to the backlash against its visibility in the United States. However, I sense a residual longing for what might be called the myth of a pristine past, a Canada defined by the Protestant consensus of the United Church and by the Roman Catholic Church.
The Left seeks a future which conforms in some sense to the Enlightenment ideal of a society where there is economic parity and libertarian social justice. Although the Christian left is not as strong in the United States as it once was, it is still very powerful in Canada. The Left has accepted the liberal concept of progress which Hunter points out as originally a secularized notion of Christian eschatology. (p. 134) However, the Christian Left has also capitulated to a motif of resentment and a will to power.
Thus, according to Hunter, both the Right and the Left are following along the well trodden path of Nietzsche in being motivated by resentment and having a will to power.
This leaves the neo-Anabaptists who have a growing appeal among younger Christians in both the United States and Canada. Historically the Anabaptist movement has self-identified as a church that stands apart from the world and its structures. Through history, with a few exceptions, Anabaptists have refused to be involved in politics, even to the point of refusing to vote. Government is seen to be an institution of the world held in thrall by the “principalities and powers” of this age.
To literally demonize such powers as the State and the market means that the neo-Anabaptists draw much of their identity and purpose from a cosmic struggle with, and dissent from, the state and the larger political economy; as those institutions are represented in the culture of late modernity. Thus, for Hunter, the neo-Anabaptist identity depends on the state and on the state's powers being corrupt. And the more unambiguously corrupt those institutions are the clearer becomes the identity and mission of the church. (p.164)
To what extent then are we influenced by the agendas of the Right, Left and neo-Anabaptists? As I pointed out above, in Canada the Right has not had as much influence as it has in the United States. Canada is the only major country in the world with no law governing abortion and there is no powerful movement to change that; same sex marriage came into law with little more than a whimper; and Canadians of all persuasions see universal health care as the right thing to do. In my opinion this is because the Left, i.e., the United Church and the Anglican Church, have driven the communitarian agenda for decades. Yes, in Canada, those churches certainly had dense networks of elites in high prestige locations.
For evangelicals the most pointed influence is from the neo-Anabaptist movement as it is filtered through various contemporary writers. As is to be expected such influence has, in my opinion, both a positive and negative aspect.
The positive aspect is the neo-Anabaptist examination of the contemporary evangelical church for spiritual coldness; an examination conducted from the platform of the church's need to stand in antithesis to the principalities and powers of this present age. From this analysis the neo-Anabaptist is able to identify spiritual coldness in the following: the evangelical church's symbiotic relationship to corporate structures, producing a consumer driven church which commodities ministry and, the lack of concern for the disenfranchised of society, i.e., a lack of concern for justice.
Having heard this piercing analysis I think there is a growing desire among many to move from such coldness into a place of renewed spiritual vitality. In some writers this desire is translated into a call for the church to be “missional,” – a label that seems to mean different things to different people – and a desire to more truly relate to people outside of the church by bringing love and compassion to them. Note, I did not say “bring love and justice…” and the reason for that, in my opinion, is that the evangelical church has for so long endorsed the surrounding culture that it is having difficulty identifying violations of justice and is having even more difficulty articulating how injustice should be addressed apart from the will worn paths of politics.
Negatively the influence of the neo-Anabaptists may possibly be seen in some of the following trends. Here what I say that it is very difficult to prove so these points should be taken as my private read of the current situation. Take it or leave it.
First, I see the naïve rejection of the institutional church with the hope for an ideal church that somehow is like the pristine pre-Constantine church, as a negative product of the neo-Anabaptist influence. This attitude: “I am above and beyond the institutional church” pops up in many ways and places, but has Hunter points out; it reveals an amazingly weak ecclesiology as well as a total lack of understanding of sociology. Institutions have a reality and are critical to the functioning of society. The church, from its beginning, is both a heavenly or spiritual entity and an earthly institution. Both its earthly structure and its heavenly dwelling must be embraced by Christians.
Second, I see the gradual drifting from doctrinal anchor points which give identity to both the Christian faith and particular church communities as arising from this movement. One spin off of the loosing of doctrinal moorings has been a deep controversy among those who work among people of other religions and a call for the use of a methodology that in its extreme at least flirts with syncretism. I am referring to the contextualization debate in missiological circles. Another is the growing inability to identify error and deception which continually presents itself to the church.
A legitimatization of compassion work (seen as a proper work of the church) and a commensurate de-legitimatization of evangelistic work (seen as a concentration on the individual which is a result of enlightenment thinking) is another by-product, so that, as a denominational leader, I can raise over one million dollars with a single email for any disaster that is highly publicized by the media, but must beg to raise an equivalent amount to sustain the training of young people in our university college or to sustain our worldwide evangelistic effort. Let’s be honest. Evangelism is virtually dying out in Canadian evangelical churches. And I can bring forward empirical data from our denomination to back this statement up.
The three segments, The Right, The Left and the neo-Anabaptists have each addressed legitimate issues, have raised consciousness in regards to those issues, and have created some legitimate responses. However, they have not delivered on the promise to change the world, or America, or even Canada. Next let’s pull together the reasons why.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Why We Are Not Going to Change the World -- Hunter's Sociological/Theological Analysis
After giving some of my own experiences with the three motifs for change presented by James Davidson Hunter in his book:To Change the World, I will now continue to present some of his key ideas.
To the thesis that individuals can change culture James Davidson Hunter presents a counter thesis: culture changes individuals. Cultural change does occur but not in the ways we as Christians have thought. We have thought that a great individual, acting alone has at various times changed the culture. We have thought that certain key ideas have changed culture. We have thought that if enough people became Christians and in so doing changed their values, culture would change. However, culture is changed very slowly, and with conflict “…through dense networks of elites operating in common purpose within institutions at the high-prestige centers of culture production.” (p. 274).
This statement is worth careful consideration.
Dense networks. Hunter gives example after example of dense networks throughout history that have worked together. Almost always there are key people within those networks, people who formulate and articulate concepts and modes of action, but without the network they would be mere voices in the wilderness. (For an excellent discussion of this read Malcome Gladwell, The Tipping Point.)
Elites. Culture, says Hunter, is about how societies define reality, and the capacity to do that is not spread evenly throughout the society. “Deep-rooted cultural change tends to begin with those whose work is most conceptual and invisible and it moves through to those whose work is most concrete and visible.”(p. 41). Thus there is what Paul Ricoeur spoke of as a sedimentation process. Picture a lake with various streams coming into it. The input contains various chemicals, minerals, salts, etc. which hang in the water, but which eventually sink to form the sediment. The input, says Ricoeur, is innovation. This is what Hunter’s elites do. They live in universities, they head major corporations and control the media. As they work and play together their ideas gradually sink down to form the sediment of society, that is, the culture.
Within institutions. One of the failures of contemporary evangelical thinking, in my opinion, has been to naively underestimate the importance of institutions. This, as Hunter points out, is especially true of those who do not grasp the importance of the institutional side of the church. Institutions, be they churches, universities, charities, various societies such as The Order of Canada, are places where elites can form networks, and are a vehicle for the elites to transmit change into the culture.
High-prestige centers of culture production. Culture is produced in many places, but there are places which have high prestige, and the culture production that comes from these places spreads. Thus, the high prestige place for theatre is New York City, movies, Los Angeles, social and political commentary, the Eastern seaboard, and much of that influence spreads to Canada from those centers. Canada’s social and political commentary as well as its media production is based in Toronto.
Culture production that comes from dense networks of elites operating from high prestige locations becomes the texture and fiber of society. Christians, but in particular, Evangelicals, have failed to be part of this production. Evangelicals have not produced enough elites to form dense networks, and they do not locate themselves in prestige locations. Hunter gives a stunning and, for an evangelical, embarrassing rundown of what appears to be almost a conscious effort to do the exact opposite, that is, to place ourselves as far from the centres of influence as possible; to maximize our marginalization in the culture.
Briefly:
• While there is evangelical scholarly work that is good, much of it is published by evangelical presses, not by high prestige presses.
• The works of literature produced by evangelicals are huge in volume, but are seldom reviewed in prestige publications, i.e., The New York Times.
• There is not one evangelical research university.
• There is little evangelical presence in the media, in any location.
So what’s the point? Is the point that we should, as James Dobson says in one place, work harder? Should we take Hunter’s analysis, absorb it, figure out what we are doing wrong, raise ten billion dollars and launch a new strategy to create a Christian culture, to change the world? No. Give it up. It’s not going to happen. Hunter points out that America has never had a Christian culture. And in my opinion Canada has never had a Christian culture. And, even if everything was done right it – elites were enlisted, culture production from high prestige locations began, etc., it would take about three hundred years to bring about the true culture change that is envisioned. And that won’t happen because the main problem with all of this will continue to be a problem -- sin, or, as Hunter puts it, the corruption of power.
This is the irony that lurks in the title. Those who have embarked on this project are quickly enmeshed in what Nietzsche called the will to power. This is especially true for the Christian right and the Christian left, but surprisingly it is also true of the neo-Anabaptist movement also. I might here recommend SJS' comment to my "If not Chicago, how about Detroit" post.
Next, a closer look at Hunter's analysis of the Christian triad of Right, Left and Anabaptist.
To the thesis that individuals can change culture James Davidson Hunter presents a counter thesis: culture changes individuals. Cultural change does occur but not in the ways we as Christians have thought. We have thought that a great individual, acting alone has at various times changed the culture. We have thought that certain key ideas have changed culture. We have thought that if enough people became Christians and in so doing changed their values, culture would change. However, culture is changed very slowly, and with conflict “…through dense networks of elites operating in common purpose within institutions at the high-prestige centers of culture production.” (p. 274).
This statement is worth careful consideration.
Dense networks. Hunter gives example after example of dense networks throughout history that have worked together. Almost always there are key people within those networks, people who formulate and articulate concepts and modes of action, but without the network they would be mere voices in the wilderness. (For an excellent discussion of this read Malcome Gladwell, The Tipping Point.)
Elites. Culture, says Hunter, is about how societies define reality, and the capacity to do that is not spread evenly throughout the society. “Deep-rooted cultural change tends to begin with those whose work is most conceptual and invisible and it moves through to those whose work is most concrete and visible.”(p. 41). Thus there is what Paul Ricoeur spoke of as a sedimentation process. Picture a lake with various streams coming into it. The input contains various chemicals, minerals, salts, etc. which hang in the water, but which eventually sink to form the sediment. The input, says Ricoeur, is innovation. This is what Hunter’s elites do. They live in universities, they head major corporations and control the media. As they work and play together their ideas gradually sink down to form the sediment of society, that is, the culture.
Within institutions. One of the failures of contemporary evangelical thinking, in my opinion, has been to naively underestimate the importance of institutions. This, as Hunter points out, is especially true of those who do not grasp the importance of the institutional side of the church. Institutions, be they churches, universities, charities, various societies such as The Order of Canada, are places where elites can form networks, and are a vehicle for the elites to transmit change into the culture.
High-prestige centers of culture production. Culture is produced in many places, but there are places which have high prestige, and the culture production that comes from these places spreads. Thus, the high prestige place for theatre is New York City, movies, Los Angeles, social and political commentary, the Eastern seaboard, and much of that influence spreads to Canada from those centers. Canada’s social and political commentary as well as its media production is based in Toronto.
Culture production that comes from dense networks of elites operating from high prestige locations becomes the texture and fiber of society. Christians, but in particular, Evangelicals, have failed to be part of this production. Evangelicals have not produced enough elites to form dense networks, and they do not locate themselves in prestige locations. Hunter gives a stunning and, for an evangelical, embarrassing rundown of what appears to be almost a conscious effort to do the exact opposite, that is, to place ourselves as far from the centres of influence as possible; to maximize our marginalization in the culture.
Briefly:
• While there is evangelical scholarly work that is good, much of it is published by evangelical presses, not by high prestige presses.
• The works of literature produced by evangelicals are huge in volume, but are seldom reviewed in prestige publications, i.e., The New York Times.
• There is not one evangelical research university.
• There is little evangelical presence in the media, in any location.
So what’s the point? Is the point that we should, as James Dobson says in one place, work harder? Should we take Hunter’s analysis, absorb it, figure out what we are doing wrong, raise ten billion dollars and launch a new strategy to create a Christian culture, to change the world? No. Give it up. It’s not going to happen. Hunter points out that America has never had a Christian culture. And in my opinion Canada has never had a Christian culture. And, even if everything was done right it – elites were enlisted, culture production from high prestige locations began, etc., it would take about three hundred years to bring about the true culture change that is envisioned. And that won’t happen because the main problem with all of this will continue to be a problem -- sin, or, as Hunter puts it, the corruption of power.
This is the irony that lurks in the title. Those who have embarked on this project are quickly enmeshed in what Nietzsche called the will to power. This is especially true for the Christian right and the Christian left, but surprisingly it is also true of the neo-Anabaptist movement also. I might here recommend SJS' comment to my "If not Chicago, how about Detroit" post.
Next, a closer look at Hunter's analysis of the Christian triad of Right, Left and Anabaptist.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Institutions Can Be Change Agents
I have written of my own experience with the first two ways by which evangelicals believe they can change the world, namely, through evangelizing enough people to reach critical mass, and through changing values by gaining political power. Hunter also speaks of the institutions of society.
Those of us who have only a passing acquaintance with sociology sometimes overlook the crucial role that institutions play as they mediate between the body politic and individuals. I have been involved with many institutions through the years. I was on the board of a small Christian school in Chicago and in Detroit much action occurred through community organizations. However, those organizations seemed to be exclusively focused on being agents of influence on the political machine.
After our daughter was killed in a crash my wife and I became involved in one of Canada’s best institutions, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or MADD. In my opinion the people who run MADD really know what they are doing. They understand how to act on multiple societal fronts at the same time, how to bring about political change, and how to influence a change of values in society.
MADD caries on a continual political lobbying effort. They gather statistics, they make presentations and apply pressure. As a result they have seen a gradual change in laws that have raised the penalties for drunk driving while lowering the legal tolerance level.
MADD also seeks to change the values of society. They do this through advertising and through presentations. My wife and I have spoken at The Rotary on behalf of MADD and we also coordinated a contest among school children in Grey County whereby children drew a billboard against Drunk Driving and the winning design was actually turned into a billboard and displayed.
MADD also cares for people who have lost family members to drunk driving. This was in fact our first contact as a nearby chapter called us and offered support.
What we see from this institution is an example of a number of things which Hunter speaks of. MADD speaks to the cultural forming elites of society. Because harm from drunk driving is no respecter of persons they have been able to enlist the support of a number of people who are part of Canada’s elite opinion making class.
As a result society has begun to change its values in regards to drinking and driving. Drunk driving is no longer a joke, it is no longer socially acceptable to drink and drive. That is not to say it does not happen, it happens all the time. But society no longer considers it to be permissible behaviour. And this real shift in attitude is largely credited to MADD which effectively, year in and year out, harnessed the power of the opinion making elites. Thus, as I see it, they have functioned brilliantly as an institution by mediating between the political sphere on one hand and seeking to influence the value system of individuals on the other. And further, to a limit extent, they have sought to give care to people at moments of great vulnerability.
MADD however understands its limitations as an institution. It does not, as far as I know, set as a goal the one hundred percent elimination of drunk driving. Nor does it seem to be tempted to go off mission and become involved in other worthwhile causes. Thus MADD seeks change but seeks it within a reasonable framework.
One more thing should be added from my perspective. Many of the people who are active in MADD are people who have lost part of their lives to a drunk driver. And this fact is ever before the organization. Yet, in spite of its title, the majority of people who compose MADD are not consumed with anger, or what Hunter would call resentment. They are people who wish to spare others the horror that they have experienced. This has added to the institution’s impact.
I do see in mediating institutions a way to bring positive influence on society.
Those of us who have only a passing acquaintance with sociology sometimes overlook the crucial role that institutions play as they mediate between the body politic and individuals. I have been involved with many institutions through the years. I was on the board of a small Christian school in Chicago and in Detroit much action occurred through community organizations. However, those organizations seemed to be exclusively focused on being agents of influence on the political machine.
After our daughter was killed in a crash my wife and I became involved in one of Canada’s best institutions, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or MADD. In my opinion the people who run MADD really know what they are doing. They understand how to act on multiple societal fronts at the same time, how to bring about political change, and how to influence a change of values in society.
MADD caries on a continual political lobbying effort. They gather statistics, they make presentations and apply pressure. As a result they have seen a gradual change in laws that have raised the penalties for drunk driving while lowering the legal tolerance level.
MADD also seeks to change the values of society. They do this through advertising and through presentations. My wife and I have spoken at The Rotary on behalf of MADD and we also coordinated a contest among school children in Grey County whereby children drew a billboard against Drunk Driving and the winning design was actually turned into a billboard and displayed.
MADD also cares for people who have lost family members to drunk driving. This was in fact our first contact as a nearby chapter called us and offered support.
What we see from this institution is an example of a number of things which Hunter speaks of. MADD speaks to the cultural forming elites of society. Because harm from drunk driving is no respecter of persons they have been able to enlist the support of a number of people who are part of Canada’s elite opinion making class.
As a result society has begun to change its values in regards to drinking and driving. Drunk driving is no longer a joke, it is no longer socially acceptable to drink and drive. That is not to say it does not happen, it happens all the time. But society no longer considers it to be permissible behaviour. And this real shift in attitude is largely credited to MADD which effectively, year in and year out, harnessed the power of the opinion making elites. Thus, as I see it, they have functioned brilliantly as an institution by mediating between the political sphere on one hand and seeking to influence the value system of individuals on the other. And further, to a limit extent, they have sought to give care to people at moments of great vulnerability.
MADD however understands its limitations as an institution. It does not, as far as I know, set as a goal the one hundred percent elimination of drunk driving. Nor does it seem to be tempted to go off mission and become involved in other worthwhile causes. Thus MADD seeks change but seeks it within a reasonable framework.
One more thing should be added from my perspective. Many of the people who are active in MADD are people who have lost part of their lives to a drunk driver. And this fact is ever before the organization. Yet, in spite of its title, the majority of people who compose MADD are not consumed with anger, or what Hunter would call resentment. They are people who wish to spare others the horror that they have experienced. This has added to the institution’s impact.
I do see in mediating institutions a way to bring positive influence on society.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
If not Chicago how about Detroit?
In my seventh year in Chicago, while in the midst of the Vietnamese refugee re-location project, I was called by David Clark, District Superintendent in another district, and asked to consider coming to a church in Detroit’s inner city. This was quite a different situation from Chicago in almost every way. Chicago, under Mayor Daley, was a well run city. People worked, raised their families and were frequently involved in community organizations. Even so there were of course massive problems in Chicago, problems large enough to challenge thousands of pastors and workers for their entire lives and I don’t wish to understate that reality.
Detroit however sat in contrast to Chicago, for Detroit was then beginning the slide to its current decrepitude. Riots has seared the soul of the city. White flight took on epidemic proportions and was encouraged by various policies. City government had as its goal to establish political power and to skim money. I will never forget walking into a city hall office and reading a large sign which said something like this: “Employees are forbidden to talk to the FBI without permission of their supervisor.”
The church itself was a result of the split of Central Alliance -- the old mother church of the Alliance in Detroit. Wayne State University wished to buy the old church to make a parking lot and so the congregation sold and moved to Dearborn. But a small group stayed behind and took up residence in another large building which was already owned by the city and slated to be demolished for even more parking.This "stay behind" group was the church that called me. I answered the call and went.
When I arrived the whole city was politicized in a way which has only recently become familiar to wider society. The presence of the city government was like humidity on a hot day and I knew that we would not be able to establish ourselves or have any relevance without becoming immersed in the political milieu.
And so I did. To this day I display in my office a plaque of appreciation given to me by one of the community organizations. Voter registration drives, court injunctions to stop this or stop that, appearing before City Council and being on a first name basis with many, including the now well known United States Senator Carl Levin, I was there, fully present and active, I worked the system.
It was generally accepted by many that community political action was going to save Detroit. Individual houses would be spared demolition, work programs would be brought in, prostitution bars closed and “hot bed” hotels zoned out – by community action. And all of this happened, and more. If political action could save even a local society, Detroit would have been saved. But Detroit was not saved.
Perhaps Detroit activists have moved on from those dreamy days of believing in change through politics. An article on Detroit in The National Post September 13, 2010 reveals the current state of affairs. Individuals act to plant gardens or to develop farms, art projects are erected in empty areas, and local people band together to push out drug pushers from their neighbourhoods. Promises from the government are met with scepticism, a scepticism that I totally resonate with. From the article I sensed that there may be glimmers of hope, not that yet another Federal grant will be obtained, but that a modest sense of community may be formed in this once great city. People are doing good things, seeking to live healthful lives, bringing healing and joy where they can.
It seemed to me as I read The National Post article that the people being described were practicing something like what Hunter calls “faithful presence.” That is, they are trying to breath life into their society. This is something for us as Christians to think about in Canada. Can we breath health, temporal health and eternal health, into Canada?
Detroit however sat in contrast to Chicago, for Detroit was then beginning the slide to its current decrepitude. Riots has seared the soul of the city. White flight took on epidemic proportions and was encouraged by various policies. City government had as its goal to establish political power and to skim money. I will never forget walking into a city hall office and reading a large sign which said something like this: “Employees are forbidden to talk to the FBI without permission of their supervisor.”
The church itself was a result of the split of Central Alliance -- the old mother church of the Alliance in Detroit. Wayne State University wished to buy the old church to make a parking lot and so the congregation sold and moved to Dearborn. But a small group stayed behind and took up residence in another large building which was already owned by the city and slated to be demolished for even more parking.This "stay behind" group was the church that called me. I answered the call and went.
When I arrived the whole city was politicized in a way which has only recently become familiar to wider society. The presence of the city government was like humidity on a hot day and I knew that we would not be able to establish ourselves or have any relevance without becoming immersed in the political milieu.
And so I did. To this day I display in my office a plaque of appreciation given to me by one of the community organizations. Voter registration drives, court injunctions to stop this or stop that, appearing before City Council and being on a first name basis with many, including the now well known United States Senator Carl Levin, I was there, fully present and active, I worked the system.
It was generally accepted by many that community political action was going to save Detroit. Individual houses would be spared demolition, work programs would be brought in, prostitution bars closed and “hot bed” hotels zoned out – by community action. And all of this happened, and more. If political action could save even a local society, Detroit would have been saved. But Detroit was not saved.
Perhaps Detroit activists have moved on from those dreamy days of believing in change through politics. An article on Detroit in The National Post September 13, 2010 reveals the current state of affairs. Individuals act to plant gardens or to develop farms, art projects are erected in empty areas, and local people band together to push out drug pushers from their neighbourhoods. Promises from the government are met with scepticism, a scepticism that I totally resonate with. From the article I sensed that there may be glimmers of hope, not that yet another Federal grant will be obtained, but that a modest sense of community may be formed in this once great city. People are doing good things, seeking to live healthful lives, bringing healing and joy where they can.
It seemed to me as I read The National Post article that the people being described were practicing something like what Hunter calls “faithful presence.” That is, they are trying to breath life into their society. This is something for us as Christians to think about in Canada. Can we breath health, temporal health and eternal health, into Canada?
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Could I At Least Change Chicago?
Church planting in Chicago first brought me face to face with questions of the involvement of Christians/church in the world. Race, war, poverty, the environment, it was all on the table and Christians around me where trying to be relevant. As part of my Ph. D. studies at Northwestern University I was in classes at a seminary where the students were trying to apply the theories of social involvement which they drew from their studies of then contemporary theologians – trying to develop their praxis as some would say. A fairly large group of them decided to have a sit-in at the seminary to protest the development of a certain coal burning power generating plant in Chicago. As I walked by one day I noticed that the whole area of the sit-in was thick with cigarette smoke. Later I asked one of the participants if he did not think this a bit odd, that they would protest air pollution yet pollute each other’s air. He didn’t see my point. Of course now, everyone sees that point. This incident really brought home to me that Christians –desiring, as they do. the best for others-- are quick to get on bandwagons, right or left, without considering the wider ramifications.
As my wife and I planted a church, we faced the question: what should be our attitude toward the issues of the day? I took the stance of focusing on planting a church, believing that a church, a group of people committed to Jesus Christ, could best address the issues of the neighbourhood. Thus, most of our programs were in some way or another slated as “outreach.” Friday youth night with a full basketball program run by volunteers from Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College. Door to door visitation, small group Bible studies by the dozens. I kept a written log of my time and sought to spend fifty percent in evangelism. As a result my wife and led more people to Christ and baptized more people than we have at any other point in our lives. It was an amazing period in our ministry.
However I did very little with the structural issues of the community. I would say there were several reasons for this. During that time the government answer to poverty was welfare, and I saw welfare destroy people’s lives. I also observed some effective government sponsored programs, such as one that trained youth in marketable skills. Ironically, that particular program was cancelled during a period of budget cutting while programs that produced few results continued.
In was for sure in Chicago that I developed a deep cynicism toward almost all government run/sponsored anti-poverty programs. At the same time I learned to respect the lives of the working people around me. My father was a member of a union and worked his whole life. The people I knew in Chicago were not rich like the people in the suburbs, but most of them brought home a paycheck and lived happy lives and hoped for better things. At the same time, teens dropping out of high school, a rising gang presence, the insidious entrance of drugs, these and other community dysfunctions were an incoming storm.
In the end I left Chicago for Detroit realizing that just being a church like all the churches I had known growing up was not enough for the tumultuous seas of the inner city. By then I had worked on a number of things beyond youth basketball night, but was still trying to see how the church could truly be a church and truly be a place where people’s lives could be holistically changed.
As my wife and I planted a church, we faced the question: what should be our attitude toward the issues of the day? I took the stance of focusing on planting a church, believing that a church, a group of people committed to Jesus Christ, could best address the issues of the neighbourhood. Thus, most of our programs were in some way or another slated as “outreach.” Friday youth night with a full basketball program run by volunteers from Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College. Door to door visitation, small group Bible studies by the dozens. I kept a written log of my time and sought to spend fifty percent in evangelism. As a result my wife and led more people to Christ and baptized more people than we have at any other point in our lives. It was an amazing period in our ministry.
However I did very little with the structural issues of the community. I would say there were several reasons for this. During that time the government answer to poverty was welfare, and I saw welfare destroy people’s lives. I also observed some effective government sponsored programs, such as one that trained youth in marketable skills. Ironically, that particular program was cancelled during a period of budget cutting while programs that produced few results continued.
In was for sure in Chicago that I developed a deep cynicism toward almost all government run/sponsored anti-poverty programs. At the same time I learned to respect the lives of the working people around me. My father was a member of a union and worked his whole life. The people I knew in Chicago were not rich like the people in the suburbs, but most of them brought home a paycheck and lived happy lives and hoped for better things. At the same time, teens dropping out of high school, a rising gang presence, the insidious entrance of drugs, these and other community dysfunctions were an incoming storm.
In the end I left Chicago for Detroit realizing that just being a church like all the churches I had known growing up was not enough for the tumultuous seas of the inner city. By then I had worked on a number of things beyond youth basketball night, but was still trying to see how the church could truly be a church and truly be a place where people’s lives could be holistically changed.
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