When Sectarians Attack! (Again)

Via The Morning Retort I was directed to a stimulating exchange between two bloggers at ICTHUS debating the merits of “sectarian” and “transformist” Christian approaches to culture and society at large. (See here, here, and here for starters.)

In comments to this post, Jennifer defends her sectarian comrades against the assaults of Fr. Neuhaus:

I guess Neuhaus has never heard of Jennifer’s Rule: No One Criticizes the UMC But Me (Or A Fellow United Methodist Whom I Authorize To). So Neuhaus is criticizing Hauerwas (or Dan Bell, or any other Methodist theologian – or me, for that matter, since I was taught by all these sectarians) for not abandoning the UMC to the liberals, for not washing his hands of it, for not repudiating his vow to “uphold the United Methodist Church with your prayers, your presence, your gifts and your service?” Perhaps his insistence upon the primacy of the community of the Church leads him to actually take his commitment to the UMC seriously?

I think this is an excellent point. You don’t jump ship just because you don’t like the direction it’s going in. Of course, Neuhaus might argue that Protestant churches are incapable of being the kinds of communities Hauerwas, et al. want them to be, since they are committed to individual judgment. In other words, this may not just be the result of liberal capitalism and its worship of “choice” but a theological principle embedded pretty deeply in Protestantism. I’m not sure I’d endorse that argument, but there is enough rampant individualism in the history of Protestantism to give me pause.

Jennifer continues:

The Ekklesia Project – this organization of sectarian/emergent/whatever Christians – clearly states that we are to work “with, within, across, and beneath existing churches and structures.” Not to create another denomination! Is that what Neuhaus thinks we should do? Create a new denomination that so we have “actual membership in an ecclesial community that is in political tension or conflict with the culture of liberalism.” Cause where is that ecclesial community? Does he say it is the Catholic Church?

You are right to wonder where this is and what it looks like. But in denominations or churches that are practically throttled by liberalism, we’re not going to see it overnight. We all have to go back to the churches we already attend and start the change there. Also, the Ekklesia Project is starting a congregational formation initiative, to “develop creative and effective ways of supporting congregations that are committed to making lifelong formation and genuine discipleship central to their life together.”

As for asking the Church to be more than it’s supposed to – a political order – I want to say more about that but will need to get back to you later.

I hope she keeps her promise on this last point, cause this is where I’ve really been getting hung up in trying to wrap my head around what people like Hauerwas are saying. For a contrarian view on the sectarians’ idea of church as polis, see this essay by Robert Benne. He calls the desire for a parallel churchly order the “neo-Augustinian temptation.”

Excerpt:

The movement, if it is cohesive enough to be called that, is committed to the construction of an independent and distinct churchly culture based upon the full narrative of Israel and the Church as it has been carried through the ages by the Great Tradition. Theologically, the neo-Augustinians are anti-foundationalists who believe that a religious tradition like Christianity is a cultural-linguistic system that cannot and should not be compromised by any standards not its own. They learned that from Lindbeck.

Biblically, they argue that the early Christianity depicted in the Pauline letters was a churchly “public” or culture of its own, flourishing along side of but radically distinct from the Roman, Jewish, and Hellenistic cultures of the time. “Paul already regards the Church as a new public order in the midst of the nations with its own distinctive culture,” argues David Yeago. Christians who entered such a culture were “dying to the world” in the sense that they were entering a new ecclesial world.

Ethically, they contend that the practices of this distinct, living tradition form the Christian virtues that sustain such an ecclesial world. The Church’s worship, preaching, teaching, and communal life shape the virtues that maintain the practices of marriage and family life, charity, hospitality, governance, art, and thought that provide a real alternative to the dying world about us. The Church essentially needs no sources other than its own for the ethical task. Milbank asserts that the Church produces its own “ecclesial society,” with an attendant ontology, social theory, ethics, and economics.

However, says Benne:

As attractive as this neo-Augustinian vision is, it is finally more a temptation than a real option. The main reason is theological. If God is indeed the creator and sustainer of the larger world of economics, politics, and culture, then we as Christians are called to witness there. Our salvation is not in that witness, but our obedience is. And though we know that much of contemporary culture is debased, we also know that it is not beyond redemption. Indeed, reminding ourselves of the illusions of perfectionism, we might even grant that, relatively speaking, it is not all that bad. In any case, modernity’s own norms of procedural justice and individual rights offer openings for Christian witness.

From this theological perspective, it is better to side with those who are willing to struggle for a decent, common culture—even though success is by no means assured. The right-to-life groups, the Christian Coalition, Bread for the World, the American Family Association, and many others make a worthwhile difference in the struggle for America’s soul. And these religious groups have secular allies. The “principled pluralism” suggested by Os Guinness that aims at an overlapping moral consensus is not without prospects of success in the lively world of American politics. There is still much that is good—given and sustained by the Creator—in our common life outside the church.