Subversive Christianity

Last week I spoke at the "all-school devotions" at my school, which is a private Christian university of the sort that dot the Midwest like a pox.

I basically proposed three models which stem (I propose) from three different understandings of the Kingdom of God. The first was the reclusive/substitionary model, which presumes that we have to keep ourselves as untainted by the world as possible so that when Jesus returns and brings God's kingdom with him, we'll be prepared to receive it. I mentioned monasticism here, as well as fringe Christian groups like the Bruderhof, etc. The second model was the transformational/legislative model, which attempts to turn the broader society into a Christian one with or (more likely) without its consent, on the basis that Jesus left it up to us to create the Kingdom of God on earth. This is the medieval Catholic church, and this is liberal protestantism today.

Then I mentioned that the Evangelical church itself is difficult to qualify, because it shows elements of both of these. Trying to create a Christian subculture outside which we never need to step (Christian clothing lines, Christian bookstores, Christian coffee shops, Christian private schools/homeschool, etc.), while at the same time trying to legislate morality on the assumption that America is a Christian nation, etc. I didn't mention Focus on the Family specifically, but I think everyone caught my drift.

Then I proposed what I think is the best model, what I call the subversive/redemptive model, which sees the Kingdom of God as a present spiritual reality - being understood as the rule of God within the community of believers - that stands in contradistinction to the kingdoms of this world. The task of the subversive Christian is to present this attractive alternative through being a community defined by love, acceptance, redemptive storytelling, hospitality, etc., and to take these facets into the broader world with them.

What I wish I had time for then was to make a few concrete examples, which I will instead do over the next few days and post here:

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In regard to sexual ethics the reclusive or substitutionary church has the stance that they will do everything they can to keep their members from unhealthy and immoral sexual behavior to avoid the issue altogether. If a member of the community does become pregnant outside marriage, for instance, she is sometimes cared for very well, with the community becoming her collective husband. Perhaps more often, she is sent away for the duration of the pregnancy and the child given up for adoption before she is quietly returned, and nobody speaks of it. Perhaps rarely, but certainly sometimes, she is excluded from the community altogether.

The transformational/legislative church may do any of the above actions when a member of the community is in such a position, but in addition attempts to reorder the wider society so that such situations are rarer across the board. They may lobby for an overturn of Roe vs. Wade and/or protest abortion clinics, or put pressure on agencies like Planned Parenthood who refer women who want abortions to clinics. They may put pressure on public schools and text-book publishers not to teach safe sex but rather to teach abstinence. They may put pressure on television stations and/or movie production companies to "clean up" the media, and make an organized effort to boycott the shows and films deemed too sexual.

The subversive/redemptive church will for the most part leave the broader society to its own devices, not because it believes that prostitution, promiscuity, abortion are all "just fine," but because it realizes that its task is to be salt and light on the earth, and realizing that "a little yeast will leaven the whole batch." To this end, the redemptive church welcomes those "living in sexual sin" to come and see the redemptive way that God works within and through their community. The redemptive Christian will not judge those outside the church, remembering the words of Paul in I Corinthians that, "It is for God to judge those outside the church," and in Romans, "Who are you to make yourself judge of another's servant? It is before their own master they will stand or fall, and their master can uphold them."

Therefore the redemptive church will focus its efforts not at changing legislation on abortion, but on creating a community that will make abortion a less necessary option for those the community is in contact with. When the burden of paying for medical costs, taking care of herself as she is pregnant, and raising a child without a father is supplanted by the community of God (without even forcing her to take a membership class!), much of the problem resolves itself.

(Clearly, this redemptive model requires a watchful eye and a nuanced understanding of socio-cultural motivations. Is abortion common because it is legal, or for some other reason, for instance? Clearly, I believe the failure of the family is a part of the reason, though my answer is not to re-strengthen the family through legislation, but rather to do what Jesus taught and to form a church that in many ways replaces the biological family.)

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Well, I don't want to overstate this all at once. (I'd rather take a long time to overstate it.) So more examples will be forthcoming.

Ideas? Comments? Critiques? Thank you.

The Surprising Results of Postmodernism

Part of me is baffled by the overwhelmingly negative and fearful accounts of postmodernism in general that come from the conservative church sector. It makes no sense to me because the same sector that labels postmodernism the refuge of secular liberals labels the post-enlightenment liberal Christianity (e.g. Bultmann and his ilk) that postmoderns are (rightly) incredulous toward as secular humanists in Christian's clothing.

In other words, postmoderns and conservative Christians have 'enemies' in common. Or at least targets of incredulity in common.

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What I personally have found is that the further I gravitate toward postmodern understandings (i.e. stories of understanding), the further I have gravitated away from Protestant liberalism (my implicit assumptions coming into all of this) and toward a comfortably conservative theology.

For instance, in a postmodern schema, a text has to be approached on its own terms. Unlike in liberal Protestantism, the Bible does not need to be dismantled and made to resemble Rationalist or Enlightenment ideals. Old-Testament narratives stand on their own - though by no means divorced in meaning from other books of the Bible or the Bible as a whole (or, for that matter, from the history of Biblical understanding and the way that that history and those narratives themselves have informed our own lives: intertextuality) - without a need to draw abstract propositional truths from them, or excise the 'Jewish' elements, or any other misguided Enlightenment project.

This is only one example, but my point is that postmodern studies always lead me back to a position that I think most conservative opponents of postmodernism itself and of the emerging church movement in general would be quite comfortable with. Hence my bafflement.

Comments? Ideas? Critiques? Thank you.

A thought experiment

This is how it works: You read a statement, a paragraph, an essay, a chapter, a book, a play, a movie*, or what-have-you. And then, no matter what it says, no matter how mundane or how preposterous, you say this:

"If this is true, then what?"

For instance, I just came across the line "Christian spirituality has developed as six traditions, each emphasizing certain themes: Contemplative, Holiness, Charismatic, Social Justice, Evangelical, and Incarnational," in the book Are You Sure You're Right?: Evangelicals and the Church of God.**

If this is true, then what tradition wd. I fall in? If this is true, then what am I missing from the other five? If this is true, then what shd. I do about it?

-ND

* Yes, this is proper terminology. You read a movie if you do more than watch it at the surface level, for sheer entertainment.

** Yes, it is interesting reading, and no, it is not for class. It is a criticism of the Church of God (Anderson) for falling away from its theological, political and other roots, and becoming simply another Evangelical group. Interestingly enough, it was published by Warner Press, official publisher for the Church of God (Anderson). This speaks volumes about the integrity of those there. As the acknowledgement puts it, "Publication of such a work is an act of courage on their part."

Jesus' teaching

What is the central teaching of Christ and the New Testament?

Well, it really depends on whom you ask.

I hear two main answers in the circles I run.

1. "Justification by grace through faith as a result of the death of Christ on the cross," usually accompanied by a lot of legal and monetary language.

2. "The announcement of the Kingdom of God," usually accompanied by a lot of narrative and ethical language.

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The answer to this question seems pretty important to understanding what Christianity is, or at least what it is supposed to be.

So what do you think? Which one is it, if either, and why do you think that?

My thoughts coming soon.

-ND

Thinking about the emerging church

The emerging church is often characterized solely on its rethinking of Christian story (which is taken as an affront to orthodox Christan belief, to the Bible as God's word, etc.) and on its hesitance to state its beliefs definitively. From those speaking within the church existing, all doubts, fears, concerns and attacks toward the church emerging focus around "belief-issues." Common accusations are:

• They want to "redefine" Christianity
• They redefine certain elements as being "non-literal
• They question scripture
• They question absolute/propositional truth
• They value emotion over logic

Every avenue of attack centers around belief, and especially around the difficulty of naming what exactly 'emerging belief' is.

I think that this is categorically unfair, insofar as the emerging church itself is not chiefly concerned with these theological statements (or lack of statements). What the church existing seems unwilling to do is look beyond these red flags into the real issues that the emerging churches are addressing.

Where Evangelical churches can look at emerging churches and protest, "You don't take the Bible seriously," and mean that they don't support a doctrine of inerrancy, emerging churches can look at Evangelical churches and protest, "You don't take the Bible seriously," and mean that they support a never-ending war in Iraq, that they ignore the 2,000 or so verses concerning the poor, that they equate Christianity with the NRA.

These are, if not the central issues of the emerging churches, at least more central than supposed statement of heresy - or the nonexistence of heresy.

And, no, Mark Driscoll isn't helping.

Ideas? Comments? Critiques? Thank you.

Right belief, right practice?

I've been hearing a lot of talk about the importance of orthopraxy, or right practice, alongside orthodoxy. I hear that orthodoxy without orthopraxy is dead (James 2.17), and at the same time that orthopraxy without orthodoxy is blind.

I wonder, however, how valid this distinction and setting side-by-side of belief and practice is. Not to mention the suffix. The emphasis is clearly modernist, dividing the spheres of human existence neatly into the abstract/intellectual/spiritual and the concrete/practical/bodily.

Is it enough to bring these spheres into equal standing with one another? Is that doing justice to the human experience, and the human experience of the divine (or, for that matter, the divine experience of humanity)?

Take two biblical examples brought to my attention by Professor Bogaski today.

In conventional Hebrew speech, the phrases 'remember' and 'forget' are inextricably related to actions. In Psalm 106, the actions of the Israelites are summarized as, 'They forgot God their savior,' a verse that stands in paralellism to 'They exchanged their glory for the image of an ox that eats grass.' Further, the same language is applied to God in the Exodus account, as he hears the cries of the Israelites and 'remembers' them. He had never forgotten them in the modernist sense of having lost a cognitive knowledge of their existence or his covenant with them. But he had 'forgotten' them for a time in the unified sense of knowledge-inextricable-from-action.

A second example is the parable of the good Samaritan, in which the Samaritan's aberrant theology counts for nothing over-against his right practice in this case. In contrast, the relative orthodoxy of those who passed the man by, rather than being praised but carefully set aside as "not enough by itself," is utterly ignored.

What this leads me to think is that it isn't enough to say that orthopraxy needs to stand alongside orthodoxy. Rather, there is some problem even in the casting of doxa and praxis as seperate entities. The modern solution, as I perceive it, has been to drill doxa in the hope that correct praxis will, with sufficient encouragement, follow of its own accord.

Assuming (as I do) that this is not a fair solution to the (apparent) dilemma, I am left looking at two options. Some within the emerging church have argued that orthopraxy fairly defines the scope of human living, by framing through action and practice (not to mention dialogue) what its true beliefs are.

(To phrase this in deconstructionist language, statements and thoughts of beliefs are signs with no final referent, while practices, symbols (such as Eucharist), etc., are signs with actual final referents, those being the beliefs of the one performing the actions.)

The second option, as I see it, is to abandon talk of orthodoxy and -praxy, and find a new medium of expression altogether.

As I am just starting this blog, I haven't generated much traffic yet, even among those who know me. Of those who do read this, please encourage me by weighing in on these thoughts. So, as usual:

Ideas? Comments? Critiques? Thank you.

A few thoughts on 'redemption'

I have fallen into the habit lately of insisting that Christian talk is best expressed in terms of redemption rather than of salvation. As such, it occurs to me that it might be helpful to explore some meanings of redemption, bearing in mind, of course, that I speak as one deeply entrenched in North American western dogma, and feeling no need to speak in particularly theological terms, as theology is nobody's native language. Here goes.

1) To redeem might mean to make up for a poor performance, in the sense that I might say that a particular actor redeemed his mediocre acting by delivering a vital line precisely right, or a baseball batter redeemed himself of several strike-outs by delivering a home run in the ninth, just when it was needed.

The idea of cruciality seems to be central to this meaning of redemption. In order to be acting redemptively, the batter's home run must come at the brink of losing. In this sense, both the danger of losing and the last-minute victory must be conceivably real.

To apply this Christianly, my idea is that in acting redemptively, God "makes up for" the poor performance of the world. Whether this implies an initial failing on God's part which he must then redeem or not is debateable.

2) A second sense of redemption that I think of us particularly "redemption from" some thing. If this meaning appears in modern usage, it is probably most often in the banking world, where collateral can be claimed as the property of one issuing a loan if the borrower is
unable to meet their interest payments. In many cases, once the borrower is able to pay back the due interest, the collateral is redeemed from the loan party back to the borrower.

To apply this Christianly the meaning comes closest, I think, to what most mean by 'salvation.' Payment (or back payment) is made to return one's property that had been lost. In other words, God frees people (and, often overlooked, situations) from oppressive powers
that either bind or control them. Now, by "oppressive powers" I do not primarily mean the satan of medieval teleology, but concrete situations in the perceivable world. Christianly speaking, redemption need not refer to being saved from hell for a spiritual afterlife, but rather of being redeemed in any context.

3) A third possibility is that to redeem can mean to make good on a promise. This might be the most familiar sense to many of us who have worked in sales, and have to turn in sales reports of "gift card sales" and "gift card redemptions." Even travelers cheques function in these terms, with the result that losing one is like losing so much cash.

To Christianize this meaning of redemption is to generalize it, pulling it away from strictly monetary meanings into simply "making good on a promise." Does this mean that a promise itself can be seen as redemptive so long as the one making the promise is trustworthy? If so, many of the tensions of Biblical theology and Christian theology become somewhat more bearable (if no less tense).

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These thoughts are meandering, and guided at no ideology in particular. More than anything, I am just trying to get a feel for the contemplative terrain and topology.

Ideas? Comments? Critiques? Thank you.

-ND