Bill Bailey suspects joggers, plays jazz:
Okay, I’m back, at least for now.
I hope you are sitting down, because I think I’m about to agree with something that the Pyromaniacs said. In response to the Manhattan Declaration, Dan Phillips of the Pyros posts a series of questions that generally point toward how he doesn’t like that Protestants are co-signers of the Declaration alongside Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians since he thinks they have a lousy gospel. Because of this he fears that the gospel itself might be diluted. Now, compared to Phillips I think I have a bit more of a charitable view of our RC and EO brothers and sisters, but nonetheless he’s on to something. For reasons slightly different than Phillips I would agree that the Manhattan Declaration does dilute the gospel.
What is the Manhattan Declaration after all? It’s a group of socially conservative Christians coming together and signing a document that says they are socially conservative. Regardless of how you feel about the topics discussed in the Manhattan Declaration, is anyone actually surprised by it? Is it a shock that conservative Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox are pro-life, anti-euthanasia, anti-gay marriage, and would like their freedom of religion protected so that they may continue to hold these views? The sporting world’s equivalent would be if a large number of high-profile Yankees fans signed a declaration stating that they were of the opinion that the Yankees are the best, Yankee Stadium is the best, A-Rod is innocent, and that Boston sucks at everything forever. Well duh.
What this does though is beyond Dan Phillips having the spectre of the Pope haunting him. Instead I fear that it reinforces the broad cultural stereotype that Christianity is primarily a political platform that seeks to tell everyone else what to do with their reproductive organs. Now here the temptation is to say that God is god of everything so, yes, that includes your reproductive organs – but that line of thinking only works if you’re already a Christian! Even then, most Christians would say that there are several far more important, primary truths about Christianity of which someone should be aware. Instead, the broader culture’s view of Christians as busybodies just gets another layer of shellac. Things like the Manhattan Declaration further obfuscate the central message of Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection in favour of telling everyone something that they already knew about socially conservative Christians.
Lastly, here’s the Leonard Cohen song (as sung by Jennifer Warnes) if you got excited by the title of this post:
Dan has introduced the overall concept of this series, so I won’t repeat his comments again. I will note that in my case, several of my choices could be replaced by other very similar people that I read around the same time as those figures, but ultimately this whole exercise is on the arbitrary side and is for fun, so here goes!
1. CS Lewis. In the early half of my high school career I started to read Christian apologetics and study the Bible, and one of the first major apologists I came into contact with was CS Lewis. I think, as I look back, that God especially blessed me. Lewis was an exceptional man and Christian scholar, and had gifts beyond that of apologetics. However, one of the main things I learned from Lewis which has stuck with me since those years was that Christianity was really true: that there was good reason to believe it, and that it claims to be the correct description of reality (both nature and history). Lewis’ classic Mere Christianity was seminal for me in this stage of my growth.
2. Cornelius van Til. Outside of American and/or conservative Presbyterian circles, van Til is often known for his acerbic criticisms of Karl Barth, but for me he will always be synonymous with the recognition that ultimately our covenantal loyalty to Christ must control everything else in our thought and life. He was the founder of one of the more popular versions of presuppositional apologetics, which attempted to mount a kind of Kantian transcendental argument for Christianity: that the Christian system was a logical prerequisite to all thought, period. I have since come to recognize that van Til’s apologetic is more helpful as an agenda rather than as a single argument, but still am appreciative of van Til for first introducing to me to the “biased” nature of all thinking.
3. John Frame. I feel Frame’s influence continually on me in my theological method. Unlike many today, Frame has articulated a philosophically sophisticated biblicism: Frame always keeps front and center that for Reformed theologians, scripture is always the ultimate standard in every area of human life. In addition, consciously and unconsciously I have sought to emulate and follow Frame’s intentionally irenic and evangelically ecumenical project: to always try to put the most charitable construal on any opponent’s comments that one can, and to always try to anticipate and incorporate their perspective into your own.
4. Peter Leithart. Leithart is perhaps the biggest influence on me in many ways. From him I have learned to see the centrality of the church and the sacraments to God’s plan and God’s kingdom for and in history, and to be cautiously but truly “For Constantine” in philosophical and theological disputes over the relevance of religion and the church to society and the state. In many ways, Leithart has put flesh on idealistic “worldview” thinking I learned from van Til. As well, I have learned from Leithart how to read the Bible in a whole different way: instead of reading the Bible simply to confirm my Reformed heritage, I have come to love the Scriptures for their internal complexity and beauty (especially in the typological patterns suffused throughout), and I have come to absorb Leithart’s project of trying to get Christians to “speak Bible” (rather than try to translate the Bible into other idioms, instead try to “fit the world into the text”). More than any of the others on my “5″, I hope gets more of a hearing in the wider Christian community in days to come.
5. Dallas Willard. Willard filled in a gap emphasized less in the above four: personal spirituality and moral development. While I’m sure the above four men would agree that these things are necessary, I have not found anyone who writes with so much wisdom and clarity on the formation of the soul into the image of Christ, and how practical that process really is meant to be. Further, through his work I have come to appreciate the charismatic and pietistic wings of the church in a way that would not be natural for the Anglican and Presbyterian theologies of the above four.
Links, glorious links!
What the early church taught about money and material wealth.
Do missionaries inadvertently spread secularism? A case study on modernity using Indonesia and Dutch missionaries.
Piper on putting things off.
No one told this creature that the land between the Humber and the Don isn’t for her kind any more.
(…or, you know, “no” women.)
Many times in the past I was under the impression that the evangelical Christian subculture had reached its nadir. And yet, just when I think it’s as bad as it gets, along comes something like white guys rapping about how you should only hug from the side:
Now I have heard Christians favour the side hug so that crotches don’t touch or whatever. How these people stand riding the subway at rush hour is beyond me, but anyway, it’s not the sort of thing that you’d rap about. But these guys did anyway.
Why is it so hard for people in Christian culture to say “no” to anything other Christians claim to be doing in the name of Jesus? If you question why another Christian is doing something that you think is dubious the answer is “Why are you criticizing what God is blessing?” This is of course a code for “Why are you criticizing something that I personally like or that my friends are working on?”
Bullshit.
If something is looks like a bad idea, then it should not be above criticism. This seems obvious enough yet Christians (particularly evangelicals) circle the wagons when someone says something negative about anything in Christianity that they like. People in far too many churches irrationally defend the most wicked (Benny Hinn), the most banal (Joel Osteen), the most kitschy (those guys above), or the most crude (Mark Driscoll) from any criticism whatsoever because they believe that “God is blessing what they are doing.” Whether or not that’s true in every case, it still doesn’t preclude criticism.
Actually that argument doesn’t even make sense. If I was doing something that God was blessing then that’s all the more reason that I’d want to be doing it with excellence. If you ever think that God is actually blessing something I’m doing, please, please, please tell me if I’m screwing it up. Paul even had to go rebuke Peter, was God not blessing what Peter was doing in the early years of the church?
Churches need more people to say “no” to things that are stupid. We should not conclude that because some new thing (or some old thing) a church is doing is mildly popular at the moment that therefore God is blessing it. If popularity is a sign that God has blessed something is anything more blessed these days than insipid teenie-bopper vampire flicks? By guarding against stupid ideas in ministry, we are not “criticizing what God is blessing” but actually guarding the ministry’s integrity. Continuing to do something stupid usually catches up with you and wrecks the program or church or ministry that you were babying from criticism in the first place.
Some links (I almost typed “kinks” instead):
The Saddam school of management: “For an economist, some of Saddam’s strategies are reminiscent of themes in the economics of organizations…promotion of dumb managers, though for quite different reasons, the difficulties of coordinating across divisions…“
I missed this as it was unfolding, but Christian publisher Zondervan learned a lesson about racism – I hope.
First we take Manhattan: Joe Carter on the Manhattan Declaration an ecumenical sort of political platform. Halden, Bene D and John Stackhouse dissent.
More harm than good? David Fitch on video-venue megachurches.
What’s wrong with Sunday morning?
Since at least Bill liked my QI installment last week, here’s more QI, this time on rabbits:
And spaghetti:
Friday links, get them while they’re hot:
The Bible is on Xbox – don’t know how it will stack up against killing Nazi zombies.
The worst attempt at compiling the greatest songs.
Staying with music: listening to the whole song is so last century.
Is yoga an exercise program or a spiritual practice? The tax authorities want to know.
The imonk defends his use of the term “post-evangelical” against the usual suspects.
Kester Brewin has a post about a new campaign brought to you by the “atheist bus” people. In this effort they pick up on a complaint made by Richard Dawkins that labeling children as belonging to any particular religious, political, or ideological group is somehow tantamount to child abuse. Of course we can all see the extreme examples of this, the kids of Westboro Baptist come to my mind as horribly mistreated props in Fred Phelps insane efforts. It seems easy enough to spot the dangers of the extremes.
A brief aside: I want to make it clear that I went to public schools and I fully intend to send any children that I have to public schools – what I am about to say is not any sort of pitch for homeschooling or Christian private schools. That said, it is impossible not impress one’s values on one’s children – and yes, this is an observation that homeschoolers and private religious institutions frequently make. Even if I differ with their solution, their analysis is fundamentally correct. The very value of religious choice – a characteristic of neo-Durkheimian and post-Durkheimian societies – arose out of the Westphalian system and its aftermath. Prior to this turn, one’s church was embedded in one’s identity with community, social order, and nation – Durkheim’s opponents after all were French Catholic Royalists. (Some more in-depth discussion here.) Thus religion was part of a broader construction of identity that could not – or ought not – be disentangled.
Insofar as evangelicals are, by definition, always trying to add to their numbers, both from non-Christians and Christians disaffected by their own church, it can be argued that contemporary evangelicalism is a product of neo-Durkheimian society itself. Nonetheless, giving individuals unfettered religious choice is a sort of late-Western value. (One that might have some ancient antecedents, but I haven’t the time to go into that right here and now.) At any rate, a commitment to at least some form of neo-Durkheimianism is something that the British Humanist Association (creators of the new campaign) and Western evangelicals share – whether or not either group is aware of it. Kester Brewin himself expresses his support for some kind of neo- or post-Durkheimianism stance towards religion by saying,
“Parents do not and should not see their children as blank canvases that they should not make any mark on. If they did there would be no education. It is the responsibility of every parent – and every society – to do its best to pass on the history and story of the family or culture they have come from – as long as this is then followed by an invitation to freedom beyond it.”
What the British Humanist Association is trying here is a classic trick that Žižek is often fond of pointing out: the effort to appear non-ideological or post-ideological as a way to smuggle some a priori ideology into an argument. For Žižek everything is ideological (on YouTube you can find his explanation of the ideological underpinnings of toilet design – I’m serious) and any attempt to appear non-ideological should be greeted with a great deal of suspicion as the “non-ideological” rhetorical trick often works since it allows one to accuse one’s opponents thusly: “Why are you being ideological about this?! I’m just proposing something here and now you’ve put your ideology in it.”
This ad campaign is an excellent example of the process: there is an advocacy for a particular sort of meta-religious attitude that at first appears to be non-ideological since is appears to be against imposing any sort of religious labels on children. As I’ve demonstrated above though this is an expression of a particular ideological stance – that religious choice – previously delegated to adults, should be extended to children as well. By saying that there should be no religious/political/ideological label on children, one creates and new sort of meaning for the word “children” that now means not only “younger persons” but also “pre-ideological.” Of course “pre-ideological” is a label that concerns ideology.
By saying that children should not be labelled by their parent’s ideology one is both applying a new label and making a statement about what said parents ideology should be.
