John H Armstrong

How Shall We Deal with Our Religious Identity Crisis?

The success of what Professor Ken M. Schultz has called “tri-faith America” there remain problems. One is the identity crisis I wrote about yesterday. Catholics and Protestants are no longer sure why they are Catholic or Protestant, at least to a significant degree. Few understand the theological debates and most do not live in the tensions of the past. How do Catholic and Protestant institutions self-identify when they have been so successful that they are losing their way? This question is as old as antiquity if you know the Old Testament.

The religious right has posed serious opposition to this new version of public expression Schultz calls “tri-faith.” But, he rightly concludes, “the success of the tri-faith idea shaped American life during the second half of the twentieth century and has continued to do so well into the twenty-first” (Tri-Faith America, 208).

This new public expression of faith in America helped to formulate new principles of group communalism, group rights, and religious privacy. While some conservatives debate the ultimate value of these principles I am one that welcomes them as a better way than that of our pre-civil rights past. Schultz notes, “It helped usher in the second disestablishment of religion in the United States, which still stands as the law of the land” (Tri-Faith America, 208). While this may be despised by some who long with nostalgia for an older America I believe it is the fruit, generally speaking, of our best ideals and principles as a people.

The tri-faith movement also “softened the ground for the civil rights movement” (Tri-Faith America, 208). This set the terms for all future debate about American diversity. This changed the landscape for women, homosexuals and others who have been socially and politically marginalized in various ways in America’s Protestant past. With this change the church now faces major concerns. Who are we? What makes us distinct? How do we become inclusive without losing our way morally and spiritually?

It is here that I end this brief series of comments about America and the role of religion in our public life. What is the role of missional-ecumenism in tri-faith America? I believe it is the only appropriate response to this change given the great mission field which is now America. American Christendom is dying, if not dead. How will we pursue the kingdom of God in America when America is no longer closely linked with that kingdom in the perception of most people? This is the question that gets me up in the morning and drives me to teach what I call missional-ecumenism. America is not going back to what it was. I, for one, am grateful. The question really is clear: “What is our role as Christians (not as Protestants or Catholics first) in this new context?”

Putting America’s Religious Change Into Perspective

Yesterday I gave a few observations about a new book, Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to Its Protestant Promise (Oxford, 2011). Author Kevin M. Schultz has done a major new analysis, as well as a critical update, of the thesis religious sociologist Will Herberg wrote on the impact of religion upon American culture.

Schultz demonstrates that religious pluralism and civic secularism were increasingly being wed before and after World War II. By 1962, when the Supreme Court outlawed prayer in public schools, Protestantism, and religion in general, was being disestablished in American life. This decision formalized that which had already been taking place for decades. Following this decision very conservative Protestants wanted to take back what they saw as “their country.” At first this response came from fringe voices but before long it became a vital part of Protestant evangelical Christianity in America. In 1963 Jerry Falwell got the idea to build a Christian school after the Supreme Court ruled against enforced Bible reading in schools. This decision further disestablished Protestantism in the schools. Falwell said, at that time, “the Christian world view was not only going to be pushed back but eliminated, and that another might replace it.” Lynchburg Christian Academy was opened in 1967 to be a place “for any and all who loved Christ and who wanted to study under born-again teachers in a Christian environment.” By 1971 Liberty University was started. The mission of both schools was not only to teach Christian values but “to oppose secularism.” By 1979 the Moral Majority was launched. This did more to help the religious right to enter partisan politics than any other development in modern American history.

By the middle 1960s we had elected our first Catholic president and anti-Semitism was increasingly disgusting to the vast majority of Americans. Racism was being exposed for its ugly evils and change was in the wings.  But by the 1970s conservative evangelicals were arguing that much of this was a result of secularism and secular ideals that would remove Jesus from America. Os Guinness noted that “nostalgia” was prominent during this time.

The focus of the religious right was on “perceived slights by a overly lenient mainstream . . . which was departing from pure Christian principles in the name of pluralism” (Tri-Faith America, 200). The religious right knew the power of names and thus co-opted the term Judeo-Christian America and “Judeo-Christianity” to promote their cause. Ronald Reagan would openly pursue the support of these religious conservatives quite powerfully and became a symbolic leader to the movement. (He did very little to alter the social and moral landscape in terms of actual presidential action, except for his personal statements from the White House pulpit!)

But as Schultz notes in the 1970s conservative Catholics, Jews and Protestants were becoming “co-religionists,” or as some put it, “co-belligerents.” They realized they did have more in common than they did with co-religionist liberals. Schultz concludes, “No longer were antipathies between Protestants, Catholics, and Jews animating social change; rather, the force behind change was the aversion between liberals of all faiths and conservatives of all faiths” (Tri-Faith America, 201-2). This had dramatic impact and demonstrated how radically different latter-day Protestants were from their mid-century heirs. As religious conservatives sought government aid for private religious schools they did not know they were standing against those Protestants who had held an entirely opposite position less than fifty years before!

Evangelicals now appealed to “minority rights” and employed strategies that would have been unimaginable only a few decades earlier. A complete shift had taken place and very few noticed. That shift still has rather dramatic impact upon religious and social life in America.

Tomorrow: The Increase of Other Faiths and the Future

Exploring Catholicism

My good friend Chris Castaldo, author of Holy Ground, is hosting a special event at Wheaton College next Tuesday evening, October 25th. The subject is “Exploring Catholicism.” If you are in the Chicago area I encourage you to consider attending. It will be well worth your time I am quite sure. Chris is a former Catholic who does not represent the far too common anti-Catholic spirit of many evangelicals. You may disagree with him, especially if you are a devout Catholic, but you will still love him as a brother filled with Christ’s Spirit. I hope you will check this out and/or follow Chris on his blogs and teaching. Few evangelicals can express their differences with Rome as well as Chris and in the spirit of genuine love and respect.

Tri-Faith America

Kevin M. Schultz, assistant professor of history and Catholic studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, demonstrates in his newly published study, Tri-Faith America (Oxford University Press, 2011), that the central drama of twentieth-century American religion was a tense, complex and successful course of change that ultimately led to mutual accommodation between America’s religious traditions.  Schultz follows the lead of Will Herberg (1901-1977) that was popularized in his famous book, Protestant, Catholic and Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (1955). Herberg, who was brought up in a secular Jewish family and became a communist, eventually turned away from Marxism and became a religious conservative. During the 1960s Herberg became the religion editor of the National Review, the conservative magazine begun by William F., Buckley (1925-2008), a devout Catholics. (I prize a small signed photo of Buckley, taken with me outside Edman Chapel at Wheaton College, when we met at  a event to honor and study Malcolm Muggeridge.)

In Herberg’s most famous aforementioned work, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, he created a sociological framework for the study of religion in the United States by demonstrating how immigration and the resulting multi-ethnic culture of America were profoundly reflected in our religious movements and institutions. This thesis has stood the test of time and thus Herberg’s book is still very important for the study of the social impact of American religion in the twentieth century.

In Kevin Schultz’s new book he goes where Will Herberg did in his famous book but Schultz develops the Herberg thesis further. He does so with rich subtlety and profoundly engaging insight. He balances the achievements of our religious changes, with what he calls ‘tri-faith America,’ against its weaknesses and liabilities. This balanced perspective prompts Wilfred McClay, one of my favorite current religion writers, to say that Schultz has attained a balance that is rare, showing both the strengths and weaknesses of this new social arrangement.

If you’ve been awake you’ve surely noticed that the social and religious complexity of America has rather profoundly changed in a little more than one generation. The ways in which these changes have taken place are recognized by very few non-scholars, especially conservative Christians and ministers who continue to appeal to donors and listeners for a return to a culture that hasn’t exited for more than seventy-five year!  Sadly, the results of this continuing social shift are missed by most evangelical writers who address culture and religion in America. This leaves the rest of us unable to make sense of what is actually happening to our common social and religious life. Frequent appeals are thus made for “taking back America” or “changing our godless culture.” These have been a part of our steady diet since the 1970s. But too few have stopped to realize that these conservative appeals arose only a decade after the Civil Rights movement had reached its greatest achievements. Why? Is this all part of a larger story our Christian leaders have missed? I think so.

Kevin Schultz puts the history of American religion at the center of our political and social history and specifically shows the true origins of our American version of religious pluralism. America was a Protestant nation. Make no mistake about this historical truth. But this idea was clearly abandoned in the twentieth century. What replaced it was a new national image premised on the idea of three separate, equally American faiths—Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism. By pressing their own versions of pluralism both Catholics and Jews changed everything from college fraternity life to our understanding of social etiquette, neighborhoods, the armed forces and what should or should not happen in public education. This altered our entire political and social landscape in ways that profoundly massively changed our lives by the early twenty-first century. These fundamental changes, according to Schultz, began in the early 1900s and led to the accomplishments of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s.  Through these changes Catholics and Jews forced America to change by confronting the new reality of religious pluralism.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt put the real story of America bluntly, if privately, in 1942. The president noted that the United States was "a Protestant country and Catholics and Jews are here under sufferance." This is fact. Everything else is religious and social mythmaking done by people who have an agenda of some sort or another.

I give you one simple point to demonstrate my point. By the time the Religious Right arose in the 1970s conservatives like Jerry Falwell (1933-2007) were talking about a “moral majority.” This loose-knit coalition consisted of Protestants, Catholics and Jews. He spoke, as did others in the movement, of a Judeo-Christian America. What he, and almost all those in the movement, never told you was that a Judeo-Christian America was a myth in terms of our century-plus of history. There simply wasn’t a Judeo-Christian America until the rise of religious pluralism (brought about by immigration and massive social change) in the twentieth century. Falwell, and his friends and followers, urged us to take back the country of our forefathers but their appeal was not even remotely close to historical reality. The early twentieth century had already begun to see great change in American religion and the Religious Right seemed tone deaf and oblivious to this reality.

Tomorrow: Putting America’s Religious Change into Perspective

Peron’s Argentina or Ancient Rome: How Should We Respond to Time’s of Great Unrest?

The more I watch the young idealists (yes, some of them are my age for sure) who occupy Wall Street in protest the more I “listen” to their cobbled together assumptions about life and modern society. This supposedly spontaneous movement, now four-weeks old, continues to grow in other major cities around the world.

One of the striking facts about this movement was recently heralded through its occasionally published newspaper, the Occupied Wall Street Journal. (The irony here is delicious I know.) The paper said, “In the great cathedral of capitalism, the dispossessed have liberated territory from the financial overlords and their police army.” Who are they kidding?

Gordon Crovitz, writing in the Monday (October 16) Wall Street Journal, seriously asks, “How did protestors manage to take over Zuccotti Park, a half-acre plot a few blocks from Wall Street?” (This is where they camp and live.) It seems that this land-use by the protestors came about through old fashioned crony capitalism, not the social media. The occupiers selected a park site that is not New York City land but rather privately owned property. Since Zuccotti is not a city park, with city restrictions on overnight sleeping, protestors remain there. There are about 500 privately owned public spaces in New York that were created by the city as part of zoning deals made with real estate developers. This is why Crovitz says “crony capitalism” provided the space for the protestors. These are, simply put, quasi-public spaces. It remains unclear who is responsible for what. Mayor Bloomberg said, “Kids have come from all over the country for a big party in our park.” Not so fast Mr. Mayor. This park belongs to a private corporation, Bloomfield Properties. Concludes Crovitz, who lives near this park, “Political extortion created Zucotti Park and it [now] allows protestors to remain despite the noise, filth and stink.” I wonder who will clean up when the protest ends? City officials paid by tax-payer money sounds likely to me.

Occupy Wall Street promises an Arab Spring of regime change. What on earth does this mean? The Arab Spring looks less and less promising every day if you follow what is really happening!

Behind the young idealism of the core leaders of this protest movement is a series of assumptions (some were mentioned by my friend Monte Wilson last week) about society and its long-term direction. This movement, which some have taken to calling an “American Autumn,” seems for the life of me to believe that its demands (which are still not entirely clear) are reasonable for one reason—those who protest were born in America. One leader, Sonia Silbert, herself a longtime political activist, said in Washington, DC, “We are not going to make demands. We are not going to become a political party. The second we start making demands, we start splintering and we are no longer the 99%.” Wow, that will create change! There are, in spite of what  the media has told us, considerable differences between this movement and the tea-party movement. The tea-party began with a clear, though not well defined, view of reducing government spending. It then found its big issue in President Obama’s health-care plan. It then organized and actually helped to elect members of Congress.

Marshall Ganz, a longtime civil rights and union organizer, says “we’re sort of in a period here where we’re searching for what the focal point is going to be. Just because it’s not being articulated now doesn’t mean there isn’t going to be one down the road.” Ganz argues that Occupy Wall Street has already shifted the debate to a focus on how to rein in government. He says we have heard from the right on this issue and now the other side is speaking loudly. Really?

What is quite clear to me is that this one month-old movement is rooted in a vague and ill-defined discontent with our present economic situation. And it is more specifically focused at wealthy corporations and Wall Street banks. Can this protest become an influence upon politics? Some Democrats hope so as they slowly test the waters to see if they should embrace this movement. They had best be careful since the potential here is to grab a live wire that could alienate the middle-of-the-road vote that they need to win again.

But even without clear focus this movement still spreads, now starting new protests over the weekend in Europe, parts of Canada and even Asia. (In Rome violence broke out.) In America 175 protestors were arrested in Chicago. It was the first mass arrest in the U.S. In Tucson 53 were arrested overnight Saturday and into Sunday morning.

Lee Forsythe, a 26-year old protestor in New York, said he was distressed that the middle class is “just gone” and that corporations wield too much political power. Forsythe left the Air Force a year ago and hasn’t been able to land a steady job, working three irregular ones: pizza delivery, cable installation and disc jockey. (That doesn’t sound incredibly awful to me, except for the “steady” part!) Forsythe said, “I will feel personally successful when you see a global change in the mindset of corruption. Policy will definitely have to be part of it, but it has to be cultural change.”

This last statement is what intrigues me most. Who can’t agree with it? But I suggest that behind Forsythe’s frustration is a deep expectation that our birthright is to live in the middle class if we were born in America. We want to create a society where all you have to do to survive and get good money is to be born in this affluent land.

This being said middle-class America is dying if you are paying any attention to the numbers. The job-market is flat or in decline. College fees are rising and the property market is in the tank. And the new health care legislation has already raised my own monthly costs by nearly 50%. The policies we now have are more restrictive and invasive than we’ve ever known. And more and more of us middle-Americans are noticing what is happening. My grandparents, who ran a family farm, faced a less precarious future than do my grandchildren who will likely get a college education but find out by 2025 that it was worthless.

But poorer Americans have it much, much worse. Their prospects are truly bleak. Consider the statistics for obesity, childhood diabetes and much more. Says columnist Mark Steyn, “Potentially, this is not decline, but a swift devastating downward slide, far beyond what post-war Britain and Europe saw and closer to Peronist Argentina on a Roman scale.”

Ironically, Mark Steyn, a strong political and social conservative, sees the overall problem more clearly than those who are protesting on Wall Street. This led him to write, “There is a strange lack of boldness in most of their proposals.” He concludes that they are stuck in their own sense of entitlement and believe they are owed something because they were born in America.

Is this a Peronist moment? Are we actually on the verge of a social (and economic) collapse that could bring even deeper challenges for all of us, personally and collectively? I have no idea how to answer that question (Steyn is quite sure this is the case) definitively. But there surely is growing evidence of such a culture-wide slide. While I do not read this moment in terms of some kind of biblical apocalypse I do see this time in history as tragic evidence that we are mindlessly falling into a social milieu in which few seem to understand the significance of what is really going on. And most of the solutions are shallow and thoughtless.

As a result of thinking about this growing protest movement I was drawn again to Paul’s counsel to the church in Rome. Please read the whole of this text and pay careful attention to verses 11-14 at the end. Remember, the context of Paul’s counsel was not a modern democracy or some kind of socialist state. He was living in the time when imperial Rome controlled the world around him. This is why I believe this is clearly God’s word to us for this unusual time of social and political upheaval.

Romans 13:1-14 NIV

Submission to Governing Authorities

¹ Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. ² Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. ³ For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. ⁴ For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. ⁵ Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.

⁶ This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. ⁷ Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

Love Fulfills the Law

⁸ Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. ⁹ The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁰ Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

The Day Is Near

¹¹ And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. ¹² The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. ¹³Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. ¹⁴ Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.

The Debt: A Sobering and Tense Thriller

Each of us has secrets that we keep to ourselves. We know this even though we often try to avoid it. Some of these secrets haunt us profoundly. Sometimes we are able to make a semblance of peace with them over time. This is why confession is so vital to true spiritual and emotional health. The ancient traditions of Orthodoxy and Catholicism have an established means for direct confession that involve a spiritual guide who hears and responds to our sins with a word of grace. Still, many of us act as if sharing our secrets will destroy us. The truth is the exact opposite.

This reality came home to me rather powerfully as I watched the new film The Debt. Based on an acclaimed 2007 Israeli film called Ha-Hov [The Debt], this new film—directed by Oscar-winning director John Madden, is a taunt and suspenseful story that will go deep into the mind and soul of the viewer who has a conscience.

In The Debt the viewer is also powerfully reminded of the horrors of Nazi cruelty. By the end there is a deep sense of justice that cries out for finality. How can these Nazi atrocities, particularly those committed by physicians, be brought to trial?

What makes this film difficult to watch is that the unfolding of the story repeatedly jumps back and forth between time periods over a span of thirty-plus years. This presents a real problem because different actors are playing the same person and at times this makes their roles a bit conflicted cinematically. The story, however, is tight and taunt. You can eventually get over this problem if you stay with the story itself.

Here is the story. In 1966, Mossad (the Israeli secret intelligence agency) sends secret agents Rachel (Jessica Chastain), David (Sam Worthington), and Stephan (Marton Csokas) to accomplish one goal: find the (fictitious) Nazi war criminal Dr. Dieter Vogel and bring him to trial. Vogel is the infamous "Surgeon of Birkenau," who sent thousands of Jews to their deaths at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp during the Holocaust. The problem is that Vogel now lives in East Berlin and getting him out will not be easy. When the team does capture him things go bad rather quickly. The gripping and tense drama then gets amped up big time by this point in the film.

More than thirty years later (1997) Rachel (Helen Mirren) and Stephan (Tom Wilkinson)—who married after their time in Berlin and now are divorced from one another—are in Tel Aviv for a celebration of the publication of their daughter's book about their experience back in 1965. But as they celebrate you have the sense that something is still powerfully amiss. David (Ciaran Hinds), the third member of their 1965 team, throws himself in front of a truck, committing suicide. It seems that the secret they have both protected for decades is soon to be revealed. In a state of shock they must face the truth of their real past and pay the debt they still owe, thus the movie title taken from the Hebrew.

I cannot compare The Debt to the original Hebrew film since I have not seen it. Some critics suggest that this remake was neither necessary nor an entirely fruitful experience. Frankly, I found The Debt riveting and provocative. The theme is one that we all must face at one time or another. What if your deepest, darkest secret(s) came back to haunt you after decades of lies? Lies can be woven into our lives in powerful ways. Few of us really thinks deeply enough about how to face the whole truth of our own story. How do we dig out the truth and move forward freely and openly? One thing is for sure—someday we must all face the truth. If we do not face the truth now then God will reveal it to us in the Final Day. The Debt is a powerful reminder of this sobering reality.

The Battle of Franklin

I recently spent some time in the Nashville (TN) area. I was about 15 minutes from Franklin, Tennessee. I had an appointment with a good friend in Franklin so I did some reading about the Civil War significance of this town. I was astounded by what I learned. I decided, after my brief research, to spend several hours visiting the Civil War sites. (I have visited more than a few Civil War battlefields and sites since I was trained in American history and retain a great interest in the subject.)

On November 30, 1864, the bloodiest and fiercest five-hour battle in the Civil War was fought in this town, which had only 750 residents at the time. In terms of the number engaged it was clearly the most destructive in the entire war. And of the five hours of combat more than four hours was fought in the dark of night, something that almost never happened. General Isaac R. Sherwood (111th Ohio Infantry) later wrote, “At midnight on the battlefield of Franklin, the finger of destiny was lifted pointing the open road to Appomattox” (meaning the end of the way a few months later).

Without providing a detailed sketch of this battle, which you can get on your own by research if you’re interested, the Battle of Franklin should never have happened. The Confederates (Army of Tennessee) brought 33,000 soldiers to fight in Tennessee. They wanted to liberate Nashville in order to break the supply lines of the Union Army. 22,000 of these men engaged in the Battle of Franklin. The Federal Army, which had literally snuck past the Confederates the evening before, was headed to Nashville to defend their stronghold. They dug in at Franklin because a bridge ahead of them was out so needed to wait in order to repair it. They numbered 23,000.

Late in the day of November 30, which was a bright and warm day of around 60 degrees, General John Bell Hood, decided to attack the Union Center about a mile or less south of Franklin where the troops were dug in with fortifications. Hood’s charge to the center of the Union line was a lot like Pickett’s famous charge at Gettysburg except it result in using more troops and even greater casualties. It was a brutal assault with very little chance of success. By the end of the battle five generals were dead and eight more wounded. Another was wounded and captured. I stood on the porch of the plantation home (photo below) where these five generals were laid on the morning of December 1, 1864. I walked in the fields of battle. I visited the cemetery where over 1,400 (only a portion) of the Confederate dead were buried. It all seemed surreal in a real sense. I simply cannot fathom these events with any degree of imagination that can do justice to the accounts I heard and the land and places I saw.

In the museum shop I looked over books and my eyes landed on one that interested me. It was an account of nine Confederate soldiers who were devoted Christians. Each explained their feelings and response to fighting in this bloody, terrible and tragic war. What interested me was the question each had to answer regarding why they felt they should fight in this war as a Christian. All nine had the same response to this question. First, they fought because their home land had been invaded. They believed their own state (Alabama, Tennessee, etc.) was their true homeland, not the union of the several states that made up the United States of America. Second, they all believed the Bible sanctioned slavery and it was just and right to die defending it. Most of those who died never owned a slave! They were too poor to own slaves. But they had been taught from childhood that slavery was biblical and they died believing this to be true.

I wondered deeply, as I walked across fields and into several homes that remain from this battle, “What do Christians believe today that is so deeply ingrained in them that it could cause them to fight and die for a cause that is neither worthy of their death or of a great bloody war?” Please never believe that how the Bible is used or interpreted makes no real difference. It did in 1864 and it still does today. The names and issues have changed but the dangers remain. Invoking the Scriptures in order to defend a war is always questionable business regardless of what theory of armed combat you endorse as a Christian.

My sunny, beautiful day in Franklin moved me to the depths of my being. It brought home the reality of how sincerely wrong some earnest Christians can be and what the cost will be in some instances. It also reminded me of how truly silly the nonsense is that we hear almost daily about how divided our nation is in 2011. We know nothing of the great divide of 1861-65 when we speak about our present struggles.

Could we have another American Civil War? Of course we could. I pray it never happens and one reason I write about peaceful and reasonable solutions to problems is to dampen down the enthusiasts who speak in apocalyptic terms about our present social and religious problems. The last I read the words of our Lord he said, “Blessed are the peacemakers” not “Blessed are those who are angry and want to take back their country for God!”

The Debate in the SBC About a Name Change

The Southern Baptist Convention is once again discussing a name change. I hope they do it this time.

The president of the SBC, Bryant Wright, recently told the SBC executive committee in a Nashville meeting that he had appointed a task force to look at a possible name change. Giving up a 166-year old name for this denomination will not be easy to do. But make no mistake about it—this should be done for the sake of the gospel and the witness of the SBC to Americans.

Wright said the SBC name represented a region of the country when the denomination is now scattered to every part of America. What this means, quite simply, is that the name SBC is simply not accurate. It wasn’t accurate forty-one years ago when I pastored a little SBC congregation in suburban Chicago but it is really not accurate in the 21st century. SBC churches are now in all 50 states and thousands of missionaries have taken the gospel all over the planet. Jonathan Merritt rightly notes: “It’s safe to assume that if the denomination were forming today, the name ‘Southern Baptist Convention’ wouldn’t even be considered” (USA Today, September 26, 2011).

Al Mohler rightly notes that the SBC is not driven by a “Southern agenda nor a Southern vision. In the context of the United States, ‘Southern’ refers to a region. That region gave birth to the Southern Baptist Convention, but it no longer contains it” (USA Today, September 26, 2011).

The real problem here is not about a region of the country. The real problem has been identified for some time and this is not a conservative/liberal issue in any sense of the term. A 2006 Center for Missional Research/Zogby poll found that more than 40% of those between the ages of 18-24 said knowing theat the name of a church was Southern Baptist was a negative. I would have guessed that the number would have been higher.

The SBC has often been a major player in the culture wars. This is slowly changing as a new generation of leaders are more focused on mission and discipleship. I applaud this change, support friends who are engaging in it directly with my prayers and friendship and hope and pray the SBC soon changes its name to reflect its growing missional intention. The church in America needs a healthy and mission-oriented SBC now more than ever!

9/11: Did America Overreact?

The Wall Street Journal offered an op-ed response to this question in their Friday, 9/9, issue. The responses were extremely varied. Some suggested that invading Iraq was a huge mistake. Some disagree. All thought a response to Afghanistan was called for militarily. You could predict the responses in advance if you knew their personal stance on international engagement and the use of military force. Paul Wolfowitz and Joe Lieberman were OK with the wide-scale use of force while Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert McFarlane were not. One commentator, the author Mark Helprin, argued that we should have invaded the countries that held terrorists in them, brought down the dictators, and then left! He argues that “reforming” the Arab world will never work so why should we have begun a course that has led to failure. Hmmmm.

What is the right answer? I have no idea. And if you do then I think you will believe in your own view of the world regardless of the complications involved in holding to unshakable views of international policy and America's military response.

I lean toward the opinion that we should never have gone into Iraq. I have grave doubts about our current policies in Afghanistan. But having said that these views are nothing more than my personal opinions.

So did our nation overreact? My guess is that history will debate this point for the next 50 to 100 years. Private papers and information will eventually come to light and the actions of our decision makers will be subjected to historical scrutiny. Until then I guess we would all do better to hold our opinions but to do so with a great deal of reservation about the hard facts, which none of us possesses at this point. Pundits will debate and make strong statements. The rest of us are simply left to our opinions.

Meanwhile, we should question all policy about how and when we use military force in places far removed from the U.S. It seems, increasingly, that our own generals have begun to express this view with clarity and urgency.

Major Demographic Shifts Will Require a New Christianity in the Coming Decades

Serious scholars now claim that the biggest change in the history of Christianity is underway as the center of the Christian faith decidedly shifts to Africa, Latin America and Asia.

"The story of Christianity as a worldwide faith is being written before our eyes," said Dr. Dana Robert, of Boston University School of Theology, to the Global Christian Forum (GCF) in Manado, Indonesia, October 4-7. The gathering, which I was invited to attend at the eleventh hour but sadly could not do, brought together leaders from major church traditions, theological perspectives, and world communions. These included the Anglican Communion, the World Council of Churches, the World Evangelical Alliance, the Pentecostal World Fellowship, and the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

Peter Crossing, of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, noted in Manado that in 1910 about 66 percent of the world's Christians lived in Europe; a century later it was only 26 percent. Crossing, a researcher for the Atlas of Global Christianity, said the overall percentage of Christians had remained fairly constant over the last century, but there had been a "dramatic change in the center of gravity of global Christianity." Crossing notes that one hundred years ago the center would have been near Madrid, but by 2010 it had shifted somewhere just south of Timbuktu in Mali. Though Christians in the northern hemisphere still dominate financially 60 percent of the world's Christians live in the southern hemisphere.

Dr. Sang-Bok David Kim of the World Evangelical Alliance told the GCF that huge changes in the church internationally meant "Christianity is no longer a 'white man's' religion. Christians are now everywhere." This is not a guess. It is a fact.

Dana Robert added that, "Contemporary Christians are focusing on mission for multiple purposes—both to recover tradition and to recover from tradition. Conversations about mission and witness have become an urgent agenda for declining mainline Christian. At the same time, adherents of new ministries often see their witness as a recovery of primitive Christianity that challenges the older denominations.”

Here is my problem. The center of the Christian faith is leaving the West and within a few generations the global church will look very, very different. I write about this in Your Church Is Too Small. I talk about this weekly. But few Western leaders understand it or show any willingness to face up to it. Why? Their “church is too small.” They think local and continue to refuse looking global. They think small paradigm shift and will not have the courage to give up the paradigm they trust in so deeply order to recover a biblical, missional paradigm rooted in pre-Christendom and the ancient church.

I do not want to throw out Western Christianity with all its great contributions to the global church. But I do want us to stop acting like we have the first and/or last word on the church and her mission from our culturally-colored Western perspective. Until we embrace the missional-ecumenical paradigm more fully I believe we will never wake up from our cozy slumber. In thirty years the reality of all this will have mugged us. The problem is that then it will be too late for most of what we could do correctly now.