Tag Archive for 'history'

The Importance Of The Christian Story

Published by Bryan July 22, 2008 in Essays, Religion, Philosophy and Theology. 9 Comments
Cultures are identified by their stories, and the Church is a culture. It follows that they Church too is defined by her story. But what is that story?

-Peter J. Leithart, Against Christianity

If you were to spend some time in a Christian Church today, would you be able to discover what their story is from the preaching you hear? More often then not, Christian preaching disregards the story. This happens in one of two ways:

First, the story is told, but only as a means to draw out abstract theoretical considerations.  What happened is therefore of far less importance then the abstractions that can be drawn out of it an universally applied to the Church.

Second,  the story is not told, and instead what is offered as preaching is not anything drawn from the Christian story, but from the stories of the world around us.  Pop psychology, self-help, and the latest in cultural trends become the message delivered to the people.

Is it any surprise then that we have a generation of Christians who either are full of only theoretical knowledge, or Christians who are nothing other then moralists? But these two things are only the way the story is disregarded, we should before going any further, answer Dr. Leithart’s question about what our story is.

The answer should be obvious, and every Christian knows it, they just simply don’t understand what it means.  The story, the Church’s story, is our history.  Beginning in the beginning, through the Old and New Testaments, through the early Church, the medieval period, the Reformation, the revivals, and right to today.  Unfortunately, the Church has not only forgotten it’s history, but has actively sought to at best limit the importance given to it, and at worse repudiate it.  All that is allowed to be discussed as the history of the church is what can be found in the scriptures from the death of Christ onwards.

The Old Testament is nice for children’s stories that offer good morals (which shows just how little these stories are stripped of what they actually say and are made into abstracts), but is really the history of the Jews.  After the New Testament the Church began to go bad very fast so we can learn very little from it.  The Reformation was a great period in Church history, but lets keep with the slogans we have inherited from it and understand them outside of any context.  Revivals are great, but let us not study the First Great Awakening.  I once read some of “Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God” and it’s obviously not what the Church needs today.  No, lets keep with what we have today, let us remember no more past Billy Graham.  We have the truth, and it’s unchangeable so why worry about the past anyway?

This view has set the Church adrift.  We are swept along with whatever currents come our way because although we may have a a solid ground under the waves in the form of scripture, we have no way to anchor to it anymore.

Stories have the ability to anchor to something. They connect us, and bind us to something, yet more then that they conform us to it.  By reading the Church’s stories, we learn what it is to live the life of someone following after God.  Although abstract theological knowledge has it’s place,  it cannot, in practice, conform us to anything.  We may learn what we are to do in general, but stories show us, in specific instances, how God’s people in the past dealt with how to live out their faith.

Christians today can deal in the abstraction, in the theoretical,  but put them into flesh and blood situations and they no longer know what to do.  No one has trained them how to act as Christians, how to follow after Christ in practice.  That is the job of stories, they show us what we can be, what we should be.  They show the failures we may have, and the successes that are possible.

More then that, if the Church has lost it’s own stories, it must seek new ones out.  Every culture, every institution, needs something to conform to; it needs stories to remember who it is.  The Church, in giving up it’s own stories, has embraced the world’s stories.  Secular humanism is the story that has crept into the Church.  Our stories allowed us to speak to all issues of society; politics, medicine, finance, religion…etc.  Today, with the stories we appropriated into the church we can speak only on religion.

This is the tragedy of modernity for the Church.  We’ve embraced the story of it, and by doing so have relegated us to observer, occasional commentator, but mostly leftover appendage trying to find something, anything but our own story, to rally around.  The Church must re-discover it’s history, it’s story.  It needs to look again at the Old Testament, and take seriously the people and stories in it.  It needs to look at it’s glorious, and sometimes not-so-glorious, history and rally around it.  Hold it up as what it means to follow after Christ, learn from it, and use it as boundaries to keep us walking on the same path we have for all of history.

The Church must become radical again.  We must cast off the philosophical positions that was not just pushed on us, but often readily embraced.  We need to begin once again work out the implications of the gospel (that is the announcement that Jesus is Lord, that He has begun to set up His Kingdom and will allow no rival one) and begin to apply it to all areas of our lives.  Only then will the world take note of the Church, only then will the world will realize the power of Christ, only then will the world see the threat that the Church posses to it.

From Vietnam to Iraq: Learning from Our Mistakes

Published by Colin November 28, 2007 in Essays, Politics and Current Events. 65 Comments

In the fall of 2004, as I was getting closer to finishing my undergraduate education, I began to breathe easier knowing that I’d soon be leaving the constant barrage of “left-wing propaganda” at the University of Oregon. Like many current college-aged conservatives - I was holding on for dear life to the mainline conservative mantras in the hope that I would pull through my college experience without succumbing to the mind-washing ideologies surrounding me.

No conservative agenda was more attacked than the War in Iraq, and naturally, I defended that war all the more fiercely. But that began to change when I took a seemingly unrelated class on the history of Vietnam. Reading former Communist Minister of Justice Truong Nhu Tang’s book A Vietcong Memoir allowed me to look at a conflict similar to Iraq without being concerned about the current political debate.

An Overview of Ideology in Vietnam
For Americans on the outside looking in, the politics around the Vietnam War were commonly drawn up in the oversimplistic terms of American might versus the global Communist revolution. Yet for those within South Vietnam’s nationalist struggle for independence, like Truong, the War and the time period surrounding it meant something completely different. Starting from his first encounter with Ho Chi Minh until his eventual exile a few years after the War, Truong and many like him in the various organizations he helped pioneer and participate in, saw independence as the ends of a struggle that employed various means.

He did not want to see Vietnam be the subject of a colonial power (such as France), occupying country (such as the United states) or global ideology (such as Communism). Truong was above all, a nationalist who wanted to see an end to foreign occupation, influence and manipulation in the South as well as a strong, liberal, free and democratic government structure to eventually be unified with the North through peaceful means.

How Violence Becomes the Answer
Why was an otherwise peaceful, democratically-minded individual like Truong drawn to ally himself with such radical and violent communist groups? After all, Truong was not a communist, nor was he sympathetic with their ideology, methods or goals - however, he hated seeing his country occupied. He wanted to be free - left alone by the powers of the world so that he, and his countrymen, could make for themselves a society that reflected their values and culture.

But the US, the latest in a line of occupying powers, was not leaving anytime soon. Moreover, they subverted these noble ideals as illegitimate regime after regime was set up by US agencies. For people like Truong, it was clear that the US was not going to be bargained with and that war was the only alternative left open to them in order to secure freedom. The communists were the most prepared for war and they had plenty of funding from China to make things painful for the US in the South.

The Iraq Parallels
In a war against occupiers, people who would otherwise be enemies (communists and nationalists in this case) are drawn into tight alliances. In many ways, we are seeing the same thing in Iraq - there is strong support for democracy oriented movements in the middle-east. Iraq was burgeoning with such a movement before the US-led invasion, hence the easy sell to the public by US officials. Vice President Dick Cheney, for example:

I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. I’ve talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House. The president and I have met with them, various groups and individuals, people who have devoted their lives from the outside to trying to change things inside Iraq. And like Kanan Makiya who’s a professor at Brandeis, but an Iraqi, he’s written great books about the subject, knows the country intimately, and is a part of the democratic opposition and resistance. The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.

But liberation soon turned into another long occupation in their land and those who originally welcomed us are ready for us to go and let them pick up the mess. But we aren’t leaving, and our leaders and future leaders are pledging years of occupation. Naturally, at some point, after seeing his family and friends traumatized by the violence surrounding him, the typical peace-minded Iraqi is going to give up on waiting and instead join with terrorists and insurgents. Though he is probably a moderate Muslim and hates the terrorists, he hates the US (and the occupation it represents) more and would rather ally with radical terrorists and try to do something about it than sit back as his life is destroyed as collateral.

In fact, we should consider that imitation is the best form of flattery. Many of the insurgents, rather than hating US ideals, are demonstrating the universality of freedom and liberty. They love those ideals which founded the US - and they are fighting an occupying power just as our founders did some two centuries ago.

Consider the state motto of New Hampshire, “live free or die” - it is a noble phrase, and yet in many ways, it is the rally cry of those moderate Iraqis who have joined with their enemies (and ours) to fight the US.

Changing Church Part. 6

Published by Bryan October 16, 2007 in Religion and Emerging Church. 4 Comments

This is the final part of the Changing Church series. For reference see: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.

Due to the size of this topic, the previous entries in this series have been all over the place. We began in the first part by identifying that a shift is taking place and pointing to some examples of that shift particularly in the Emerging Church. Then in part 2 we looked at how the historical church can be used as a critique of the modern church, and finally we have been examining some ways the evangelical church has begun to embrace its past; looking at its history (part 3), using creeds (part 4), and prayer (part 5). In this entry we will return to the to the beginning of the series and attempt to wrap it up by examining an underlying reason for this shift from an a-historical evangelical tradition to the embracing of a historical understanding of the church.

Reconnecting with Church History
Although there have been various efforts in the last couple hundred years to reconnect with church history, the current trend that we have been discussing has, for the most part, been the recent emerging church attempt. Why has the Emerging Church spearheaded such a movement? I believe there are two answers to this question.

The first was dealt with in the second post in this series; they use earlier church tradition to critique the current evangelical landscape. However, this is still only a surface level answer. There are many ways to critique the current evangelicalism without bringing in church history to the extent some in the Emerging Church wish to. Dissatisfied Evangelicals have critiqued the Evangelical churches philosophy, practices and theology often without really offering a historic critique. The deeper answer appears to lie in part with the postmodern worldview that the emerging church has (depending who you believe and look at) either adapted or is responding to.

The Post-Modern Issue
In a recent entry on this blog, Jasen discussed the relationship between post-modernism and the Emergining Church. Although it is difficult to understand what one means when they say “postmodern” these days, for the purposes of this entry I will define it simply as: “The lack of faith in meta-narratives” which follows Lyotard’s famous definition. What does this mean? Taken in a descriptive sense it means that people no longer believe in grand-overarching stories of the world. No longer for many people, particularly those younger, does communism or capitalism make sense of the world anymore. They are recognized as stories that try to make sense of the world, but can not be held universally true.

Christianity is a meta-narrative. It is a grand story that explains how the world works for everything and everyone, and because of this, it is facing a new attack. The point here is not to judge if the rejection of meta-narratives is correct, but to simply point out that this is a current challenge to Christianity. It is also not to judge if the response to this current attack on Christianity is correct. Christianity has always been under intellectual attack, and has always been devising responses. Some of these responses have done damage to the faith (consider the removing the mystical from Christianity in response to modernity), while others have often upheld it (the scientific research into Christianity also in response to modernity).

If people have begun to believe that there is no over-arching story of how the world works, but all stories are local, what are the Christian faithful to do? How are they to respond to this? There are two possibilities; one is to fight against post-modernist assumptions and show that Christianity is the only true and valid meta-narrative , or one can embrace the destruction of meta-narratives and yet try to maintain their Christian faith.

Moving Forward
If one chooses the second, as many (but not all) in the Emerging Church have done, how can they proceed? One way would be to make Christianity local. Remove it from it’s worldwide position and place it in the local context. This process was begun by Stanley Grenz (See his Renewing The Centre) who sought to make the local church the locus of Christianity. It is still unclear at this point what exactly the results of placing the local church at the forefront of Christianity will entail, but if one puts the focus on the local church, what is each church’s connection to the others? Placing emphasis on the local church disconnects it from the universal church which is how evangelicals view churches as connected.

A way to solve this, is to emphasize the historical connection between churches. This keeps Christianity local in context, but allows for meaningful connection with other local Churches around the world. Although some types of Christianity have done this throughout their history (think of Eastern Orthodox), the evangelical tradition has never emphasized its history as a way of connecting their local churches; it has always relied on a universal notion of the church to create unity.

This, I believe, is the underlying reason for the growing historical interest in the traditions of the church among evangelicals. The need to find a connection to the universal church has come to the forefront for evangelicals, and with the new challenge of post-modernism - evangelicals can no longer fall back to the common line that the universal church provides this connection. For a Christian movement that has never had a robust theology of the church, this new need to discover/create (depending on your view) this process will be slow and difficult. But it has begun and will move forward as long as people continue to lack faith in meta-narratives.

Changing Church: Part 5

Published by Bryan October 2, 2007 in Religion and Emerging Church. 17 Comments

This is part 5 of a 6 part series

Recently I finished the book Praying With The Church by Scot McKnight. The book is a look at different traditions (Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, and roughly protestant ecumenical) of communal prayer. It’s an important book because it seeks to introduce protestants from non-liturgical traditions (Baptists, Charismatics, E-Free Church…etc) to a type of highly liturgical prayer.

Within the vast majority of evangelical protestant churches, prayer is strictly an individual endeavor. Yes, many churches have prayer meetings where the church gathers to pray, but the prayers that are offered are all individual prayers. Each person prays what is “on their heart,” others may agree and nod, or pray along similar lines, but it is really praying alone in a group. There is nothing wrong with this type of prayer of course, as McKnight makes clear, there is a time and place for it, but it has become the only type of prayer many protestants know.

Historical Corporate Prayer
If one is serious about looking at church history, one must look at the type of prayers offered up by past generations; both their content and their form. It is clear that praying alone in a group as we do now has not been the only way the church has historically prayed. Set prayers, at set times, is a tradition reaching back into Judaism and was employed right from the early church to today. Yet for fear of participating in “vain repetitions” and being “too Catholic” the majority of evangelical protestants have given up this tradition long ago. But should we have?

Much like reading through and reciting the creeds of the church can connect one to the past (as discussed in the last entry) so too can prayers anchor a person in the historic church. One of the major shaping factors of any group is its practice. This is even more true with prayer. I’ve heard the expression before from evangelicals that “you are what you pray” meaning that your prayer life will direct the type of person you become. If that is the case I want to be one who is conscious of my history.

The daily prayers of various traditions not only teach us a lot about where they come from - they go beyond academic knowledge and offer us new ways of looking at God outside of our tradition. Today in our churches, prayers of every kind are often offered up “off the cuff.” Little thought is put into the words used to describe God, man, and our relationship, often leading to clumsy wording that listeners find hard to follow or at worst promote incorrect teaching.

One of the beauties of set prayers is that a tradition has often wrestled with these prayers for ages. They are detailed, theologically set out prayers that one should have no problem learning from. Emphasis put on the central themes of scripture (Christ, sin, repentance, gospel) and not on whatever the preacher feels the congregation needs today (which is important but must be balanced with the whole of scripture).

Vain Repetitions or Consistent Communication?
The evangelical argument against set prayers is that they constitute “vain reputations”, but does repeating the same prayers each morning (with some changes) make for vain reputations? If we think about the words, and mean them is that vain?

There is a danger yes, one may start to only say them without thinking and without meaning them, but doesn’t that same danger exist with “off the cuff” prayers? If one has been in the church for a few years, you know how to formulate a prayer that sounds good, means nothing, and keeps the people around you happy. Vain reputations is not a scourge only on set prayers but exists on all types of prayers: it should not be an excuse to discount one type but instead to redouble the efforts to mean what you pray and think about it.

To go into detail about how to begin praying set prayers is beyond the scope of this post. McKnight’s book seems to be a good place to start. I myself have begun this past week to attend Anglican morning prayers each Friday for, among other reasons, to learn more about this tradition and develop the habit of praying with those who have come before me in the church. I loved the experience this past week.

Changing Church: Part 4

Published by Bryan September 18, 2007 in General and Emerging Church. 4 Comments

This is part 4 of a series yet undetermined in length.

With Protestant evangelical churches’ historical animosity toward church history, there are few resources to help those who are trying to bring older practices into today’s churches. This is particularly true in free churches (Baptist, E-Free, Pentecostal…) that do not have a set liturgy. Churches that have come out of the magisterial reformation (Anglican, Reformed and Lutheran) and kept the liturgy (although modified for each denomination) have part of the historical church passed down in their liturgy week after week. The liturgy provides a common reference point, a kind of living memory for a church from which a connection with the historical past can be emphasized and explored. In churches without a liturgy and a general a-historic view of the church it can be difficult to find a way to begin to explore the past with the church community.

The one resource that most churches, even free churches, have to use is church creeds. No matter what denomination, nearly everyone will agree with what is said in the Apostles and Nicaea Creed. There are some exceptions here, the Church of Christ (and some others smaller groups) do not use creeds, there is disagreement on Christ descending into Hell and the Filioque clause with the orthodox church, but the these two creeds come the closest to being catholic (in the universal sense) documents that the church today has.

When churches and denominations recognize the authority and truthfulness of these creeds, they are often doing so out of a sense of tradition - or only because they wish to remain within the bounds of orthodoxy and recognize somehow that is set by these creeds. Most churches and denominations within the free churches have not given much thought as to why they use, or at least recognize these creeds, which provides an amazing chance for a church to begin an investigation of the history of the church.

We have, in our churches, examples of how scripture and tradition have historically interacted with each other in the church that are waiting to be investigated and explored. Among Emerging Churches, Dan Kimball seems to take the creeds the most seriously. In his chapter in Listening To The Beliefs Of The Emerging Church he spends a lot of time discussing what their role in the church should be. He seems to understand what I have been saying here; that they are a doorway that we can use to enter into the past, but more importantly are the bounds of orthodoxy. Kimball represents the emerging church at its best on this point.

There are many resources available to churches wanting to begin an investigation of the creeds. With the internet, documents such as Philip Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom and other writings on the creeds are available to everyone. There is also a newer book by D.H. Williams entitled Evangelicals and Tradition, which, among other things, discusses the formation of the creeds and is an important book which I hope to review in full at a later date.

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