American Visions (5)

A vision of healing by faith
We are considering visions of America’s future that fall into what I’m calling the “over the rainbow” category of things as yet only dreamed-of. Besides the “politics of hope and change” another vision of the future emerged, at the end of the last century, from within that segment of the evangelical Christian community that orbits around what is called the “megachurch” movement, or, “new paradigm” churches.  

In his 1997 book, Reinventing American Protestantism:  Christianity in the New Millenium,[1] Donald E. Miller summarized his study of three major expressions of this phenomenon, which is rapidly becoming the benchmark form of evangelicalism in this country. Churches that cannot themselves rise to megachurch status are nonetheless patterning their approach to ministry after the better known exemplars in this movement, which provide training and materials to help churches of all kinds to become in some ways like them.  

Miller identified three primary characteristics of the new paradigm church movement, and these mark out the broad parameters of their vision for America as that was developing late in the last century. Together these three constitute a vision of America focused on the healing and renewing of individuals according to a view of Christian faith that borrows from aspects of historic Christianity, contemporary psychology, and leftover ‘60’s radicalism. 

Therapy
The first aspect Miller described as a therapeutic approach to Christian faith and church life.[2]  Individuals are drawn to new paradigm churches out of a deep sense of personal need. The new paradigm churches provide a context for facing up to one’s needs and finding healing and renewal through conversion to Jesus Christ. In these churches “the focus is on internal transformation,” on helping people find in a “relationship” with Jesus Christ the one who can meet all their needs and give them lasting peace and joy.[3] Conversion leads to an ongoing process of self-transformation as people learn to grow through their trials, deny their basic self-centeredness, and give themselves in service to others. The ministries of these new paradigm churches, from worship to study groups to programs of all kinds, focus on meeting the needs of people in the community by giving them “direct access to an experience of the sacred, which had the potential of transforming people’s lives by addressing their deepest personal needs.”[4] 

Experience
A second aspect of new paradigm churches is an emphasis on the experience of religion, feeling the presence of God rather than understanding dogma and reasons for belief. New paradigm churches, Miller reported, evidence “a certain exhaustion with reason,”[5] encouraging members to rely more on what they feel than on precise theological formulation: 

Many people told us that in the act of worshiping, they find their defenses and pretenses of everyday life vanish. They said that in communing with God, who knows the secrets of the human heart, feelings and emotions surface that are otherwise buried. Sometimes they get in touch with deep wounds inflicted by others; other times they return to personal failures that have been rationalized and repressed. Connecting with these memories and feelings and giving them to God for healing are important byproducts of worship.[6] 

Nontraditional
The third aspect of these churches is their strictly nontraditional character. New paradigm churches meet in converted warehouses, not formal church buildings. They sing contemporary music, not traditional hymns. They encourage free expression, bodily engagement, and even active movement during times of worship, as opposed to the staid demeanor characteristic of traditional churches. They call their pastors by their first names, and an air of democratic participation permeates all their activities. They do not belong to denominations but tend to stand alone or in loosely-coupled associations of churches. And they are growing in leaps and bounds, while traditional churches tend to be experiencing decline.

Miller concludes his study of new paradigm churches by saying,

In my opinion they have created a form of human community that addresses many of the crises of our late-twentieth-century postmodern culture, and they have also established a perspective that endorses change in their organizational structure. Drawing on their vision of the Holy Spirit, they have transferred authority from the socially constructed institution of the church to a divine presence, who can take them in unpredictable directions. What saves them from the potential chaos, the unpredictability, of a “spirit-led life” is their belief in the Bible as an immutable reference point and their conviction that all impulses and ideas should be tested in one’s ongoing relationship to a worshiping community.[7] 

New paradigm churches continue to spring up and expand all over America, many of them comprising congregations of thousands of members, the vast majority of them conservative in their political, social, and cultural inclinations. It would seem that the megachurch movement would be a voice to reckon with in the question of what the form of the American vision for the century ahead. 

Where’s the beef?
Many readers will recall the sudden and shocking admission of megachurch pastor Bill Hybels, early in 2009, concerning the state of his own, what many consider the “flagship”, megachurch. Hybels acknowledged that the staff and people of Willow Creek had led many people to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. Thousands had found a home at Willow Creek and were actively involved in the various ministry activities available there. Outwardly, it looks as if the new paradigm model is being proved at Willow Creek. 

But Hybels, to his enormous credit, admitted that, for all their outward success, the staff and leadership at Willow Creek had not made many disciples. 

This complaint is not uncommon on the part of observers of the megachurch movement. Personally, this writer had an opportunity to work on a project with one of the better known megachurches, involving creating study materials for their thousands of small groups. I was to write the student’s guide to a DVD series on Christian worldview. I was instructed by the staff at the church, who had seen some of my work in this genre, to keep it simple and basic, as the people at this particular church would not be able to handle anything too deep. 

The megachurch movement continues to prosper, and small churches continue to look to them for resources and models of how to “do church” right. This way may lie a new vision for America’s future – especially for the future of the American Church – but it does not appear to be a vision that is able to achieve what, historically, Christian churches have always regarded as of the utmost importance. 

For Reflection of Discussion

1. What experience do you have of the megachurch movement, or what do you know about

megachurches?

2.  Do you think a therapeutic, non-doctrinal, and strictly non-traditional approach to church can secure the full treasure of Scripture and the blessings and achievement of our Christian past for the present and future? Why or why not? Or does this simply not matter?

3. What do you think Bill Hybels meant when he admitted that his church had not been very successful at making disciples? What is a disciple, and how do we “make” them? 

4. What can we learn from the megachurch movement to help create a more flourishing future for the work of making disciples?

5. In what ways are the three primary characteristics of the megachurch movement reflected in your church? In what ways are these helpful? In what ways are they not helpful?

For more information on this topic, get the book, Outgrowing the Ingrown Church, by C. John Miller, from our online store. Or read the article, “Welcome to McChurch” by Charles Colson.

[1] Donald E. Miller, Reinventing American Protestantism:  Christianity in the New Millenium (Berkeley and Los Angeles:  The University of California Press, 1997).
[2] Ibid., p. 21.
[3] Ibid., pp. 67, 71, etc.
[4] Ibid., p. 183.
[5] Ibid., p. 133.
[6] Ibid., p. 88.
[7] Ibid., p. 155.

By T. M. Moore|Published Date: August 23, 2010

American Visions (4)

Not in Kansas anymore?

We’ve been looking at contenders for a renewed vision for the American experience. The country has lost its way, many insist, and the people are looking for a new direction for the future. Winds of change have blown us off course, and the moral and social terrain beneath our feet has changed dramatically. We’re not in Kansas, anymore. 

Some, as we have seen, insist that the only way to renew the future is by recovering much of America’s past. Whether the emphasis is on a stricter moral life, grounded in traditional institutions, or on recovering the vision of “out of many, one” that guided the country’s early development, some late-20^th century thinkers argued that only by getting in touch with our past greatness will the nation be able to secure the same for its future. Each of these views – renewed morals or recovered “melting pot” – has its supporters today. 

A second group of spokespersons we might refer to as holding to a “Somewhere, Over the Rainbow” view of the American vision. In the view of those whom we’ll be considering, America has not yet defined its true vision. That remains to be articulated. Thus, the future that we long for is still within our grasp. All we have to do is agree that where we want to go is somewhere we’ve never been before, somewhere vastly more interesting and desirable than anywhere we’ve been thus far, and then we can bring the institutions of society to bear on the task of getting us there. The yellow brick road to an American Oz awaits our defining it. 

Once again, we will consider two camps within this orientation toward the American vision, one a purely secular vision and one, closer to home, which emanates from a particular sector of the American evangelical Church. 

We begin with the secular version of this “Over the Rainbow” approach to articulating the American vision. 

Renewing the party of hope

A primary spokesman for a renewed secular vision at the end of the last century was the late philosopher Richard Rorty. In one of his last books, Achieving Our Counrty,[1] Rorty argued passionately for a vision of American to emerge out of a refortified political left. He believed that the recovery of a meaningful vision for the nation is the peculiar challenge of the political left, “the party of hope,” which “insists that our nation remains unachieved.”[2] 

He lamented the fragmentation of the left which occurred over the generation before him, during which time activists and academicians split into two separate groups opposed to the status quo. The activists insisted on working from the bottom up to organize the downtrodden and oppressed into effective political action for social change. Academics sought to work from the top down, focusing mainly on a cultural leftism that insists on greater individual freedom.  

Rorty believed that, “If the intellectuals and the unions could ever get back together again, and could reconstitute the kind of Left which existed in the Forties and Fifties, the first decade of the twenty-first century might conceivably be a Second Progressive Era.”[3] He looked to these two groups to generate “suggestions about how to make ourselves wonderfully different from anything that has been,”[4] so that we might become the country which would pride itself as one in which governments and social institutions exist only for the purpose of making a new sort of individual possible, one who will take nothing as authoritative save free consensus between as diverse a variety of citizens as can possibly be produced. Such a country cannot contain castes or classes, because the kind of self-respect which is needed for free participation in democratic deliberation is incompatible with such social divisions.[5] 

Religion need not apply

Rorty’s was a completely secular vision. He did not believe that a religious outlook had anything to offer the future of the American Vision, and he had only scorn for those who do. Nor, he insisted, must fixed principles be allowed to stand in the way of defining a new vision for America, either. As he wrote, “In democratic countries you get things done by compromising your principles in order to form alliances with groups about whom you have grave doubts.”[6] Rorty hoped to reunite the activist, or reformist, left and the academic, or cultural, left by calling all members of the left to “put a moratorium on theory.” The left, he wrote, “should try to kick its philosophy habit.” 

Further, he called the left to look back to Lincoln, Whitman, and Dewey to consider what might be achieved in the light of their ideals and accomplishments.[7] In other words, as Rorty saw it, the theories and philosophies that brought the left into being in the first place were good enough and ought to be recovered in order to re-activate the left once again for the sake of a future yet to be determined. 

Political activism

Political activism on a small scale is the key to achieving the country that Rorty envisioned – activity on a community-organizer scale. The effect of his approach, he hoped, would be to exalt individual liberty around the world, celebrating the individual and liberating persons from the constraints of the past and the confines of chauvinistic nationalism: 

        Someday, perhaps, cumulative piecemeal reforms will be found to have brought about revolutionary change. Such reforms might someday produce a presently unimaginable nonmarket economy, and much more widely distributed powers of decision making. They might also, given similar reforms in other countries, bring about an international federation, a world government. In such a new world, American national pride would become as quaint as pride in being from Nebraska or Kazakhstan or Sicily. But in the meantime, we should not let the abstractly described best be the enemy of the better. We should not let speculation about a totally changed system, and a totally different way of thinking about human life and human affairs, replace step-by-step reform of the system we presently have.[8] 

Hope and change

Except for Rorty’s gradualism, this vision almost precisely summarizes the “hope and change” agenda of President Barack Obama and the neo-progressive movement he represents. 

Richard Rorty would surely have rejoiced to see the ways President Obama has tried to soften the image of America in other countries; used his academic background and community-organizer experience to forge an alliance bridging the disparate interest groups of the political left; increased the reach of government into more of the private sector, in the name of redefining individual American life; and continued to vilify a previous Administration which Rorty would have seen as the very embodiment of everything he believed America needed to leave behind. And, while Mr. Obama’s push for major overhauls, comprehensive legislative programs, and grand, sweeping change might have caused Richard Rorty to raise an eyebrow, in the main, I believe the late philosopher of pragmatic postmodernism would see in the President the embodiment of his hopes. 

But what began with such promise – an Administration and agenda aggressive and effective across many fronts – has, in the face of a tenacious recession and a rapidly-mounting national debt, stalled and bogged down; and it is not all certain that this vision of “hope and change” is what will guide the Republic into its next season of life. 

A bumper sticker I noticed in a parking lot not long ago captures the growing skepticism over the viability of this approach to renewing the American vision: “So How’s That ‘Hope and Change’ Workin’ for Ya?” 

For Study or Discussion

1. What kinds of policies and positions do you associate with the “political left”? Why do such views appeal to people?
 
2. How can you see that Richard Rorty’s approach to renewing the American vision has some things in common with the “Back to the Future” thinkers? What does this suggest for Christians as we begin to re-think the American vision?
 
3. Do any aspects of the vision of Richard Rorty trouble you? Which? Why?
 
4. Is it possible to articulate a compelling vision and construct a stable society apart from spiritual and moral convictions? Explain. 
 
5. How would you begin to formulate a response to this “hope and change” vision for America’s future?
 

For more insight to this subject, get the book, Scaling the Secular City, by J. P. Moreland, from our online store. Or read the article, “Three Meanings of Secular,” by Douglas Farrow.

[1] Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).
[2] Ibid., p. 14.
[3] Ibid., p. 56.
[4] Ibid., p. 24.
[5] Ibid., p. 30.
[6] Ibid. p. 52.
[7] Ibid., pp. 91, 92.
[8] Ibid., p. 105.

By T. M. Moore|Published Date: August 16, 2010

American Visions (3)

To save the fabric of the nation
A second proponent of what I am referring to as a “Back to the Future” approach to renewing the American Vision is Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. As compared to Gertrude Himmelfarb’s, his is a decidedly “American” approach to recovering our lost vision. Schlesinger set forth his views in the book, The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society.[i]

In this book Schlesinger decried the rise of group politics in America, seeing in this the major threat, not only to the national vision, but to national unity as well. Prior to this generation Americans were able to keep their multiethnic society together by adhering to a national creed:

The United States had a brilliant solution for the inherent fragility, the inherent combustibility, of a multiethnic society:  the creation of a brand-new national identity by individuals who, in forsaking old loyalties and joining to make new lives, melted away ethnic differences – a national identity that absorbs and transcends the diverse ethnicities that come to our shore, ethnicities that enrich and reshape the common culture in the very act of entering into it.[ii]

For various reasons American life in the twentieth century undermined this vision and began to supplant it with one of “every ethnic group for himself”, a process which is only accelerating in this first decade of the 21^st century. “A cult of ethnicity has arisen…to challenge the concept of ‘one people,’ and to protect, promote, and perpetuate separate ethnic and racial communities.”[iii]

Schlesinger believed that this development has the potential to rend the national fabric, as could be seen in the “culture wars” on college campuses, ethnic political caucusing, and such trends in the education of young children as Afro-centrist curricula. Schlesinger had only unkind words for those who promote ethnicity over national interest:

But even in the United States, ethnic ideologues have not been without effect. They set themselves against the old American ideal of assimilation. They call on the republic to think in terms not of individual but of group identity and to move the polity from individual rights to group rights. They have made a certain progress in transforming the United States into a more segregated society. They have done their best to turn a college generation against Europe and the Western tradition. The Afrocentric and bilingual curricula they would impose on the public schools are well designed to exclude minority children from the American mainstream. They tell minority groups that the Western democratic tradition is not for them. They encourage minorities to see themselves as victims and to live by alibis rather than to claim the opportunities opened for them by the potent combination of minority protest and white guilt. They fill the air with recrimination and rancor and have remarkably advanced the fragmentation of American life.[iv]

Stern stuff, that.

Recovering the American creed
Schlesinger believed that recovering the “American Creed” is the best way to combat this trend and restore our national vision. That creed, he wrote, “envisages a nation composed of individuals making their own choices and accountable to themselves, not a nation based on inviolable ethnic communities.”[v] The “American democratic faith”, as he calls it, is not an impervious, final, and complacent orthodoxy, intolerant of deviation and dissent, fulfilled in flag salutes, oaths of allegiance, and hands over the heart. It is an ever-evolving philosophy, fulfilling its ideals through debate, self-criticism, protest, disrespect, and irreverence; a tradition in which all have rights of heterodoxy and opportunities for self-assertion. The Creed has been the means by which Americans have haltingly but persistently narrowed the gap between performance and principle. It is what all Americans should learn, because it is what binds all Americans together.[vi]

Schelsinger’s approach to recovering the American Vision centered on the re-education of the people, beginning in the public schools. He was appalled at the abandonment of what he insisted are “books that have described, defined, and enriched America’s sense of itself,”[vii] books such as The Federalist, the Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Democracy in America, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. These have been substituted for by more contemporary, group-oriented literature, much of it of specious scholarship and all of it designed more to advance the cause of the ethnic group rather than the nation as a whole.

The place to begin in this re-education effort is with a recovery of American history. Schlesinger explained that,

Properly taught, history will convey a sense of the variety, continuity, and adaptability of cultures, of the need for understanding other cultures, of the ability of individuals and peoples to overcome obstacles, of the importance of critical analysis and dispassionate judgment in every area of life.[viii]

With a proper sense and study of history, Americans can begin to recover their national vision in a way that will preserve what was great and noble from the past while, at the same time, making room for the diversity of ethnic and interest groups, without rending the fabric of society as a whole.

Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck represents the loudest voice of anguished populism in this sector of the “Back to the Future” camp. His daily lectures on American history, heroes from the nation’s past, and warnings against the “progressivist” turn which began early in the last century, together with his plea for a revival of the American civil religion, make him the torchbearer into our day of Schlesinger’s warning and cry. Beck represents a view of the future with which a great many Americans, including many evangelical Christians, resonate, as witnessed in the Tea Party Movement and the annually predictable calls from certain parts of the evangelical community to “take back” our country.

Any attempt to redefine America’s vision for the future must, of course, take account of our past, in particular, of those founding principles which set the cornerstone for the greatest experiment in republican government and individual liberty the world has ever known.

For Study or Discussion

1. How would you evaluate Dr. Schlesinger’s argument about the effect of ethnic politics on the American vision?

2. Review the quote that begins, “is not an impervious, final, and complacent orthodoxy…” Can you see anything in this quote which advocates of group ethnicity might latch onto in order to support their view?

3. In what ways can you see that Dr. Schlesinger’s concern is continuing to be exacerbated?

4. Is the “American Creed” a sufficient touchstone for renewing the national vision? Why or why not?

5.  Besides Glenn Beck and the Tea Party Movement, what other manifestations of this particular “Back to the Future” approach to renewing America’s vision have you observed? How do you assess these?

For more insight to this topic, get the book, How Now Shall We Live? by Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, from our online store. Or read the article, “Two Religions, Indivisible,” by Martin E. Marty.

[i] New York:  W. W. Norton and Company, 1998.
[ii] Ibid., p. 17.
[iii] Ibid., p. 20.
[iv] Ibid., pp. 135, 136.
[v] Ibid., p. 142.
[vi] Ibid., p. 145.
[vii] Ibid., p. 168.

[viii] Ibid., p. 146.

The first of these we will call the “Back to the Future” camp. Writing at the end of the 20^th century, representatives of this group hoped to redefine the American Vision in terms of what they considered to have been lost from America’s heritage and experience in the past.

The representatives of this camp approached the recovery of America’s past from different directions and with different motivations. What they had in common is a belief in America’s past greatness, which they regarded as in danger of being lost, and a desire to recover something of that greatness for the present century. I want to consider briefly two spokespersons who made their case for this “Back to the Future” option along particularly compelling lines.

By T. M. Moore|Published Date: August 02, 2010

Losing our national vision?

The American Vision is up for grabs.

Older Americans are suddenly waking up to the realization that the familiar legends, landmarks, and lore they grew up with are either unknown by or unimportant to their grandchildren, and that a younger generation of political leadership is lurching the nation far to the left of where they think it ought to be. The notion of the United States as a noble experiment in human liberty and a grand melting-pot of the nations has been substituted for by a multi-ethnic and progressive vision of everything for everyone, courtesy of Washington.

Further, a plethora of group rights movements has practically knocked the unum out of the national motto in order to advance the cause of one or another of the pluribus.

The educational system is faltering; the infrastructures of our great cities are breaking down; a deep recession lingers like the smell of cooked fish; and disquiet and unrest are visible in the grass roots at both extremes of the political spectrum.

The popular culture has become banal, venal, and seamy, thus accelerating, by its very success, the erosion of the national character. And the Internet has become the number one meeting place for socializing, news-gathering, and porn-watching.

Christians on the Front Lines of Culture (5)

We come at last to the text with which I introduced this brief study, 1 Corinthians 10.31: So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

In this and the verses that follow, Paul outlines five practical steps that believers can take in the everyday activities and culture of their lives to help ensure that, on the frontlines of the culture wars, they fight under the banner of God’s glory. Making these practices our own will be not only a matter of careful preparation, along the lines previously outlined, but of constant mindfulness, mutual encouragement and accountability, and prayerful reflection.

First, we must understand that by “the glory of God” we intend not merely the glory which is hidden in all creation, but which remains invisible to eyes that simply refuse to see it (Rom. 1:18ff.), but the glory of God that becomes manifest as believers employ their cultural opportunities to point to the Kingdom not of this world.

The weighty presence of God is made manifest to the eyes of those around us in glimpses of His eternal beauty, goodness, and truth as we master the art, like Jesus with Caesar’s coin and Cowper with his sofa, of drawing out the polychromatic presence of God in the various aspects of our everyday cultural lives. To gain this ability, we must train ourselves, through Scripture, study, and close observation, to see God’s glory in everyday things; and we must be ready, like museum docents, to aid others in catching a glimpse of that glory by excellent and virtuous example and gracious and patient conversation.

Second (v. 32), we must labor to keep from being a stumbling-block to others in the use we make of our culture. Here it would be good for us visit often such Biblical ideas as graciousness, modesty, courtesy, respect, and purity, especially where such everyday cultural activities as dress, conversation, work, and diversions are concerned.

We must not allow our lives to be a cause of someone else’s stumbling; instead, let us be careful that, in all things, we may put in place the guardrails of a pathway to the Lord, rather than potholes of hindrance or obstruction.

Third (v. 33), let us make it our mission to bring pleasure to others in all we do. The people before and with whom we engage everyday culture for the glory of God should experience us as warm, engaging, generous, edifying, thoughtful, attentive, and kind – not blaring and boastful, critical and condemning, or haughty and holier-than-thou.

Fourth (v. 33), we must ever bear in mind that the people to whom we would manifest the glory of God may be the objects of His redemptive love. Since many people come to faith in Christ by stages, we must be careful in all our activities to illuminate a pathway that leads, naturally enough, to faith in Jesus Christ.

This is not to suggest that every opportunity for showing the glory of God through the artifacts, institutions, and conventions of everyday culture must be considered as an evangelistic meeting. Evangelism, of course, includes the proclamation of the Gospel of the Kingdom – at some point. If we can keep that point in mind, and engage all our cultural activities as signposts along the road to that destination, we may find our witness to Christ will receive a more ready hearing when, in God’s timing, we are able to give an explanation for the hope that is within us (1 Pet. 3.15).

Finally (11.1), we may expect to grow in glorifying the Lord in every area of our lives to the extent that we embrace the lifestyle of Paul and the other apostles – self-denying, esteeming others better than ourselves, deeply and comprehensively spiritual, growing and fruitful, circumspect in all things, eager to serve, gracious and ready in all our speech, and characterized over all by love.

These five practices, built on a growing foundation of prayer, study, conversation, and accountability, can help to ensure, on the front lines of culture, that we will be able to engage each opportunity in a way that leaves the fragrance of Christ and the weighty presence of God lingering in the souls of those with whom we have to do.

Everyday culture represents the front lines of the contemporary culture wars. Here we have the most consistent and potent opportunities for “hand-to-hand” combat in laboring to advance the Kingdom of God. The tools and weapons at our disposal are as many and varied as all the cultural artifacts, institutions, and conventions we make use of at any moment. All day long the way we engage in everyday culture is making a statement about who we are and what we believe. Let us resolve that, increasingly, all our cultural activities will become staging-grounds for drawing out the glory of God, ministering His grace and truth to our neighbors, and advancing the Kingdom of light.

Questions for Study or Discussion

1. Review each of the five ways of bringing glory to God mentioned in this section. Evaluate yourself, 1-10, on each area. Why did you select the numbers you did?

2. What are some things you might begin to do right away to help you glorify God more consistently in your use of everyday culture?

4. Do you think that your witness for Christ would be enhanced if you could become more consistent in using all your cultural activities for the glory of God? Why or why not?

5. What’s the most important thing you’ve learned from these studies of Christians on the front lines of culture?