A Thinking Reed

Category: Theology & Faith

  • Affirming liberalism (and conservatism)

    There’s a newish Church of England group calling itself “Affirming Liberalism” that, I gather, is kind of like Affirming Catholicism, but not tied to a particular form of churchmanship.

    In any event, the webiste has some interesting articles, including this one from Keith Ward called (perhaps optimistically) “Why the Future Belongs to Liberal Faith.” Ward’s is talking specifically about holding the Christian faith in a liberal way, and he identifies seven marks of a liberal faith:

  • Christians enjoy freedom from the absolute authority of any written text, including the Bible
  • The church should include different interpretations of the Christian faith
  • People should be free to dissent from any human authority, including the church
  • The search for truth is best served by critical discussion and inquiry
  • Faith is a relation of trust in a person more than an affirmation of propositional truths
  • Religious belief may need to be re-evaluated in light of new knowledge from other areas
  • The church exists to serve the world and contribute to the flourishing of all creation, both material and spiritual

    • Now, I substantially agree with all these points, so why would I be uncomfortable describing myself as a theological liberal? I think it’s because, while I affirm the need for critical discussion, acceptance of diversity and dissent, and the possibility of revising traditional theological beliefs, I still think there is a core of orthodox Christian belief that retains, if not unchallengable authority, then at least a strong presumption in its favor.

    I don’t think Ward would necessarily disagree with this if his other writings are anything to judge by. But I think his article is nicely balanced by this passage from one by Mark Chapman at the same site:

    I want to begin with the bold claim that a certain amount of woolly liberalism is necessary for the functioning of a healthy Christianity. This is something that needs to be re-asserted in the contemporary church, particularly when there are so many who would like to confine Christianity solely to its more dogmatic and sectarian forms. And I would contend that the reason for this is extraordinarily simple and uncontentious: whatever else religion might be it is a human practice open to all the distortions of human sin which means it simply demands to be scrutinised and criticised. That is something that would be understood by the Hebrew prophets and virtually every reformer since. For the greater glory of God there is thus a responsibility to open up our practices and beliefs to critical scrutiny. This, I think, is where a dose of liberalism becomes necessary for all Christians. Liberalism is consequently far more an attitude of mind than a church party, and it can even look prophetic.

    Now, I would not want to belong to anything called a liberal party in the church. My religion is really quite traditional Anglo-Catholic, but my disposition and attitude is liberal. It doesn’t take much to reveal the ironies, hypocrisies and idolatries of Anglo-Catholicism. But at the same time the continued vitality of religion requires that it be practised, cherished and loved and approached with reverence and awe.

    The “liberal” and “conservative” dispositions, then, can be seen as complementary, and even necessary for one another’s health. A merely corrosive and critical liberalism will lack “reverence and awe.” But an uncritical conservatism will confuse religion with God, and ironically fail to revere the very God religion aims to worship.

  • The worst kind of cocktail party – one with no booze

    Marvin, Jonathan, and Jennifer have been going around a bit about some of the same issues I talked about here regarding Christians, patriotism, politics, and Stanley Hauerwas. Now, unlike these three, I’ve never formally studied theology, much less under the man himself, so I always feel a little underqualified jumping into these discussions. But, fools rush in…

    I agree with Jennifer’s point that there are lots of ways of being “political” that can’t simply be reduced to voting and conventional political activism. Moreover, she’s right to point a finger at the mainline: all too often mainline Protestantism assumes the shape of a vaguely religious humanism that seeks to usher in utopia through political activism, seemingly willing to replace the gospel of Christ with the UN Millenium Development Goals.

    But Marvin gets at what I was trying (rather long-windedly) to say when he says in a comment on Jennifer’s post:

    the same scriptures that call the Church to be a different polis demand respect for the Emperor while ascribing fear to God, and demand subjection to the governing authorities while acknowledging the Lordship of Christ. The family, the corporation and the state do have legitimate claims on us. Subordinate to the claims of Christ and his Church, to be sure, but legitimate claims. Hauerwas frankly has nothing to say about how to do this balancing act, and this is the crucial pastoral theology issue of our time. How do you be a faithful Christian when you’re also a cog in the machine?

    I think there are resources in the Christian tradition for addressing this issue–concepts like natural law, vocation, “orders of creation” and so on–which have long been endorsed by mainstream Christians. But these are also the very things the “Hauerwas school” have railed against for downplaying or sacrificing Christian distinctiveness.

    My view, though, is that these are still useful approaches, even if they might need retooled a bit (e.g. a version of natural law that takes evolution seriously; a concept of vocation that doesn’t reinforce the status quo). There are resources out there for this which, as far as I can tell, the churches haven’t made a great deal of use of. But I do think they provide a more promising way forward.

  • More on the churches and patriotism

    After reading this comment thread over at Chris’ blog, it ocurred to me that there might be a communication breakdown of sorts between mainline Protestant and evangelical responses to the quote from Stanley Hauerwas under discussion.

    When Hauerwas first started churning out his jeremiads, they were aimed primarily at the liberal mainline establishment that, in his view, had compromised itself in taking “responsibility” for American society. But now, it seems that he’s finding a lot of readers among American evangelicals who find him a bracing antidote to the uncritical nationalism of a lot of their churches.

    To a large extent, these two groups may have very different experiences of what it means to be a church in American society. For instance, I’ve never been a member of a church that traffics in the kind of uncritical nationalism that others seem to be referring to here; if anything, the churches I’ve attended have no problem recounting the litany of American evil. Plus, I’m well-acquainted with secular critiques of American exceptionalism, nationalism, and military intervention; so hearing that God’s kingdom isn’t to be identified with the Pax Americana doesn’t exactly comes as shocking news. Becuase of that I tend to focus on what I see as the dangers of quietism and churcholatry arising from Hauerwas’ perspective. But if I was an evangelical I might have a very different impression.

    In light of this conversation I was particularly attuned to any potential nationalistic overtones at church this morning. I worship at an ELCA church that is definitely left-of-center, but also has many congregants who work for the government, non-profits, are in the military, etc. (The church is on Capitol Hill just a few blocks from our place.) The pastor’s sermon, as far as I was concerned, struck just the right notes. He talked, based on the gospel passage, about how Jesus’ yoke being “easy” means that it is perfectly fitted for us. He then went on to talk about how the American colonists threw off the yoke of the British Empire in order to craft a “yoke” based on human rights, democracy, and opposition to monarchical power.

    We are, he said, inheritors of that legacy which carries with it a responsibility to extend those blessings more consitently throughout our society. But beyond this, he went on, is our higher loyalty to Jesus’ more excellent way of agapic love. What we do as citizens of a republic must be set in the context of our allegiance to Jesus and the way of being in the world that he pioneered.

    We did sing “America the Beautiful,” but we closed with this song, which one would, I think, be hard pressed to identify with jingoistic nationalism:

    This is my song, O God of all the nations,
    A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
    This is my home, the country where my heart is;
    Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;
    But other hearts in other lands are beating
    With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

    My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
    And sunlight beams on clover-leaf and pine.
    But other lands have sunlight too and clover,
    And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
    Oh, hear my song, O God of all the nations,
    A song of peace for their land and for mine.

    I quite like this vision of patriotism. We can love our country and have a special responsibility for it because its ours, not because we think it’s better than everyone else’s. And we can recognize that other people love their homelands too, and that this shouldn’t be an obstacle to peace between nations. It appeals to my “little Americaner” sensibilities (or whatever the proper analogue of a “Little Englander” is).

    At any rate, though, I think this illustrates my point about different experiences of what it means to be a church in America and how to relate to the larger society.

  • How should Christians celebrate the 4th?

    Speaking of Christians and patriotism, I liked this piece from the Christian Century.

    I mean, I personally spent the 4th helping my wife study for the bar exam, but in principle I like what this article has to say.

  • Christianity, patriotism, and divided loyalties

    Ben Myers posted this bombastic Stanley Hauerwas quote (is there any other kind?) for Independence Day:

    I assume most of you are here because you think you are Christians, but it is not all clear to me that the Christianity that has made you Christians is Christianity. For example: How many of you worship in a church with an American flag? I am sorry to tell you that your salvation is in doubt. How many of you worship in a church in which the fourth of July is celebrated? I am sorry to tell you that your salvation is in doubt.

    The quote is from an address to a group of seminary students, but it’s a good encapsulation of much of what Hauerwas has said about the relationship between Christianity and America over the years. Jim West provided a stern rebuke of Hauerwas here; Fr. Chris has some thoughts here.

    The question here is one of loyalties, but I think the terms in which it is debated are often simplistic: you’re either loyal to the nation (in this case, the US) or to the church. This misses the point that we have multiple overlapping and interpenetrating loyalties, which cannot be neatly and hierarchically ordered. (With one important exception that I’ll get to in a minute.)

    We find ourselves, simply as a result of the place we occupy in the world, with loyalties to family, friends, spouses, children, communities, employers, professional associations, charitable organizations, social clubs, religious bodies, and various levels of political community. As a general rule, these don’t need to be justified by recourse to some ethical theory, they are simply the warp and woof of our life together. Nor is there any simple algorithm for settling the conflicts that arise between these loyalties. Sometimes I may have to choose between loyalty to my family and loyalty to my spouse, or between my employer and my country, or between my religious community and my political community.

    An important qualification of all loyalties, though, is the more universal ethical context in which we exist and which, for theists anyway, flows from, is rooted in, or reflects the divine mind. This means that particular loyalties can only make limited claims on us. For example, a father’s duty to care for his children doesn’t entitle him to harm other people’s children. Loyalty to my country doesn’t justify inflicting injustice on citizens of other countries. In other words, preferential treatment of those to whom we’re connected by special bonds isn’t wrong per se, but it’s subject to qualification in light of more universal duties.

    Because our highest loyalty, if we’re Christians, should be to God, we are called to follow God’s will, so far as we can discern it, in all areas of our life. The national community, though it can and has become an object of idolatry, can, acting through the government, be one instrument for advancing these values. And, I’d add, that in many cases it’s the only agent in society that can do certain things. Self-styled radical Christians who want us to live in anarchist communes rarely seem to address things like infrastructure, environmental protection, and the social safety net. Are Christians supposed to abandon our concern with these things and leave the “dirty work” to the “heathens”?

    The problem I see with the Hauerwasian view is that it has a tendency to elevate the church to the object of highest loyalty and threatens to collapse the distinction between Christ and the church. Gerhard Forde warned against seeing the church as an “eschatological vestibule” where the kingdom of God has already come in its fullness instead of as an earthen vessel where we hear God’s word and receive the sacraments. The church, as a human institution, is no more immune to corruption than any other, so we can’t assume that it deserves our unconditional loyalty any more than the nation does. In fact, a good candidate for the essence of Protestantism might be the imperative to criticize the church in light of the gospel.

    All of which is not to say that Christians should traffic in American exceptionalism. No nation can, contrary to what most of our politicians seem to think, be the world’s last, best hope. That title belongs only to God. Which is why we’re obliged not to identify any of the powers and principalities of this age with the divine will but to seek to embody that will in our life together. The point is that we all have “divided loyalties,” but Christians are supposed to (however imperfectly) order them to our universal duty to God.

  • CofE RIP?

    Though I often think of myself as a closeted Episcopalian, I don’t usually comment on Anglican matters. But I thought this piece from the always-interesting Theo Hobson was worth pointing out. Hobson argues that, in trying to hold the Anglican Communion together come hell or high water, Rowan Williams has unwittingly doomed the Church of England.

    Obviously, I’m in sympathy with the “revisionists” here, but it’s worth pointing out that, at least as far as I can tell, the “conservatives” have been proposing a radical revision of their own in the understanding of the Anglican Communion itself. They’ve sought to change it from a loose confederation of autonomous national churches held together by “bonds of affection” into a much more centralized institution with quasi-universalist pretensions. That alone would be enough to get my localist/libertarian hackles up.

  • A democracy of sinners

    Via Christopher, a meditation on violence, redemption, and the importance of holding on to our doctrine of sin:

    There is Good News hidden in the doctrine of sin. Sin is the great equalizer. Sin levels the playing field and throws us back on God’s loving kindness. In Paul’s vision, Jews are no better and certainly no worse than Gentiles. In other words, insiders are neither better nor worse than outsiders. We have been called but not because we deserve it. We have been chosen—not for privilege but for service.

    This makes me think of Alan Jacobs’ “universal democracy of sinners” that Jeremy blogged about a while ago.

  • Henry Chadwick, RIP

    An esteemed Anglican scholar and ecumenist passes. The obituary by Rowan Williams is here (via Derek).

    For what it’s worth: I highly recommend his history of the early church and Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition. Highly readable works that wear their (ample) scholarship lightly.

  • Rays of hope

    Marvin has a review of Diana Butler Bass’ Christianity for the Rest of Us, which tries to identify characteristics of thriving mainline congreations (often believed to be a contradiction in terms).

    Based on Marvin’s post, Bass confirms something that I’ve long thought: that you need to integrate both the “vertical” and “horizontal” dimensions of religion to have a thriving church. Which isn’t really surprising when you think about it.

  • Heaven is not optional

    Austin Farrer was, among other things, a renowned Anglican theologian and a friend of C.S. Lewis. I’ve been reading his book Saving Belief – a kind of primer of sorts Christian theology originally delivered as a series of lectures to undergraduates. In his chapter on “Heaven and Hell” he has this to say about Christians who want to downplay or remain agnostic about the resurrection and the world to come:

    Christ in glory is the heart of heaven, and it is difficult to see how those Christians who leave the life to come an open question can be Christians at all. If Christ is not now in glory, then this is a Christless world and God is a Christless God and we are Christless men. Those who say heaven is nothing to us now but an optional hope, may say the same of Christ; unless, that is, they have received a revelation not imparted to the rest of us, making heaven to be a place for one glorified man, and for no more. (p. 146)

    I’ve always thought it odd when devotees of a religion founded on the resurrection of a dead man shove discussion of heaven off to one side. While some of the reasons for doing it might be laudable– to encourage a focus on creating a better world here and now, say–the end result is to drain Christianity of any lasting hope. After all, even if (per impossible) we succeeded in creating a perfectly just society, there would still be millions and millions of creatures who never lived to see it. Should people be deprived of the hope in heaven for the sake of a far off worldly utopia that may never arrive (and, even if it did, wouldn’t last)?