Tuesday, May 28, 2013

The Emerging Emergents

One of my professors in grad school told us that we should always remember that our papers for him (and eventually the books/articles we would write) would never be "done."  When we turn them in or submit them for publication, we are simply ending our work for the time being, and opening things up for conversation and discussion.  We are never "finished" in other words.

Having published two books and lots of articles since that class, I can attest that in many ways it is a true statement.  No matter how comprehensive the research, there are always going to be sources that are missed.  No matter how well you discuss something, there always seems to be something else (often times new, sometimes derived from what it is you've published) that you wish you had included/known about.  And no matter what your bibliography looks like, it never seems to fail that the moment you publish something (or send back the proofs to the editor), a new book or article lands on your desk that would have been awesome (and maybe even transformed) what you just considered to be "done."

As we enter the second year since the publication of The Mainline, perhaps the most glaring thing I wish that I had included was discussion of the Emerging movement.  It is not because I had not heard about it, I had.  It is not that I had not thought about including them, I did.  It is just that by the time I really listened and thought, the manuscript was at a place where I didn't know where the emergents would fit into the narrative.  And, to be honest, when you are in the last stage of manuscript writing (and you know the next time you get something from the press it will be proofs), tackling a whole new body of literature for a few paragraphs really doesn't seem worth it.  Or, at least it didn't to me at the time!

That being said, if there has been one thing nagging me about the final form The Mainline took (even if it hasn't been something that has been raised by reviewers or readers, at least not to my knowledge) it is that the Emergents didn't make it into the final product.  For those of you who have never heard of the term, let me sum up the movement in very broad terms (while also pointing you to an excellent article by Scot McKnight here from Christianity Today).  The Emergent Church movement seeks to find the best way(s) to "do Church" in a post modern world, and its focus tends to be on how to live their faith in the world.

To some, the Emergent movement has become the chief opponent of the Religious Right, surpassing attempts by the old Mainline to form a sort of counter Religious Left, by appealing to evangelicals directly (espescially younger ones) who grew up within conservative congregations.  These disgruntled (?) or maybe displeased Christians have grown tired of the cultural wars of their parents, the desire for political power and influence by some church members, and feel let down by such engagement because they feel that such actions really aren't what their faith is about.  That is perhaps true for some members of the Emergent community, but hopes that such a movement will fit seamlessly into liberal politics are bound to be ultimately frustrating (many Emergents, for example, remain opposed to abortion), and just as disappointing (after all, being active in the political sphere is what caused some of these believers to depart from the Religious Right to begin with, remember).

If there is one thing that the Emergents do offer my take on the new Mainline, it would be to remember that American Christianity is deeply complex -- much more so than it is often given credit for -- and not as easily captured by labels (Religious Right, Religious Left, Emergent) as we in academia (and many in the general public) would like to think.  And if that is all there was to the Emergent movement, that would probably be where this blog post (and any additional material that might find its way into a second edition of The Mainline) would end.  But, it isn't.  Because while Brian McLaren is perhaps one of the best known proponents of the Emerging Movement in the United States, it was another pastor (or now I guess, former pastor) who really brought the movement to the attention of Americans outside evangelical circles:  Rob Bell.

Bell is the former megachurch pastor from Michigan, who turned away from the pulpit after both a spiritual awakening/conflict (depending on how you look at it) and the firestorm of both praise and debate of his 2011 book Love Wins (in which he questions the existence of an eternal Hell).  While this post is not a critique of either the book or the theology behind Bell's stance on matters of faith (if you want to read some of those, take a look at this, or this, or this), I raise Bell because he is perhaps the best example of the biggest problem I see with where Emergent theology fits within the scope of American Religious History, and that is post modernism.

Like McKnight, I agree that the emphasis on post modernism by some Emergents, and their critics, can be to much of a good/bad thing.  But if a bedrock of Emergent theology is that we can never know for sure, that truth is an abstraction (more or less), or that it makes us uncomfortable to think that there might be a Hell (where people we know might end up if they are not saved), then this flies in the face of not only what the majority of Christians in America have and do believe right up to the present, but also what Christianity has taught since its emergence.  While Christianity might be diverse in its application/manifestations, while its form has (and probably will continue to) changed, the rejection of truth seemingly has little pace within the Christian experience.  Indeed, if post modernism is correct about truth, how can it be true!  Twisting the word "truth" to mean the same thing as "opinion" or "belief" (such as "that is my truth") is a further undercutting of the very concept that somethings are right or wrong (your "truth" might be that 2+2=5, but that doesn't make your arithmetic correct).  And if there is a Hell, its existence should make Christians uncomfortable (not because they believe that God cannot abide by sin, and those who remain unrepentant must be banished from His holy presence) but rather because it is their holy duty to bring the Good News to the lost and unsaved.

While I'm going to keep thinking about such things (perhaps for that second edition of The Mainline), I'm also going to say based on the first edition, that if the Emergent movement follows the post modern path, it is likely to run out of steam.  If, on the other hand, it serves to remind us of the complexity of American Christianity (and Global Christianity as well), then it might just have a place at the table for years to come.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

On Religious Liberty

I was first introduced to the great British philosopher John Stuart Mill in an undergrad political science class.  We had to read his On Liberty, and his notions about rights -- whether I always agreed with him or not -- have stuck with me ever since as one of the best examples of classical liberal thought on the subject.

What does that have to do with The Mainline?  Well, Mill also wrote on the topic of religion (probably the best example being his essay "Theism") in which he explored the arguments for and against belief in God/the divine.  Mill's eventual claim, despite admitting early on that he was not religious and never really had been, is interesting chiefly because unlike some of his contemporaries in late Victorian Britain, Mill was unwilling to reject the idea of God.  For him, while he could not advocate belief, neither could he put forward a notion of unbelief either.  Rather, for some he argued, there was enough evidence to hope that religion, that God, might be.  And that was enough for Mill.

I got to thinking about Mill, liberty, and belief/unbelief a bit more in the past few days.  There have been some wonderful essays done by R.R. Reno (editor of  First Things) about religious liberty in America today (Reno argues in part that its definition is being altered by secular humanists to mean freedom from religion in the public square/religion is fine so long as it is private and kept that way) as well as by John C. Pinheiro (of Aquinas College) about the need to study Religious History (noting that the world's atheist population is estimated to be only 3 percent, meaning that 97 percent of humanity has some form of religious belief system, and so academia needs to take the study of religion seriously). In short, both these pieces reinforce arguments that I (hope I) made in The Mainline, about the importance of religious belief (both privately and in the public square) in American History, and why secular humanists were not only going against the tide of our history but also missing out on the ways in which religion and faith have (and will continue to) shape us.  The question really is not will religion/faith be a factor but which religion/faith will be influencing us in the twenty-first century (and I agree with these authors that secular humanism, even if at times given greater influence than it actually has, is a faith).

And those ruminations have also got me thinking about what it means for Christians (as that is the faith I write about in The Mainline) to accept a concept of religious liberty.  Not just in the spirit of toleration, but also internally.  How should those outside a particular denomination feel about the efforts of some denominational leaders to transform historic doctrines within their faith tradition (I talk about an earlier dust up in The Mainline, but for the latest from the Episcopal Church's Presiding Bishop, take a look at this)?  How should people within that denomination feel/react?  What does it mean for the future?  Should we treat them with Christian charity, extend to them religious liberty if you will, or do they present a threat to the faith that should be cast out?  For 97% of the world's population such issues matter.  For academics, beyond just being interesting things to study it matter as well, because such a discussion would help us not only make the case that religious history should be studied, but also force us to think in new ways about old concepts and investigate what it means to believe or not (whether in God or in a point of doctrine).

I'm not sure what Mill would say about all this.  But there is always hope.  Hope that we can disagree, without being disagreeable.  And hope that we can be honest enough to say that faith matters.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Course Work

As those of you who have read the book or this blog probably know, The Mainline was shaped by my time in the classroom.  For the first time since the book came out, I was able to teach with it in an American Religious History course.  While of course I'm biased, and hold out hope that nice things will be said on the student evaluations, I thought that it went quite well.  But rather than dwell on student reaction to having to read a book by their professor, I'd much rather talk about the work my students did in the course.

There were 11 students enrolled in the course (which was sponsored by the Honor's program at Butler University).  And I must say, they did some really exceptional work and provided their professor with, if not always new insights, then at least a reminder of why I thought writing the book in the first place was a good idea.  In short, the vibrancy of the field of American Religious History remains quite bright, and I'm as convinced as much as I ever way that there is still much more to study and learn from this field.

My students had three mini-research projects to complete in the areas of colonial religious history (they were assigned one of England's New World colonies and had to investigate the role religion played in its founding), the use of multimedia outlets to convey religious messages (looking at websites, television programs, movies, or listening to the radio), and modern worship (attending a worship service -- either new to them or regular).  Their findings were insightful:  In the colonial project, several of them noted how the Puritans created a "moral establishment of religion" in their colonies.  One student also pointed out, in what I found to be quite telling considering recent discussion of religious liberty, the degree to which political control of a colony's government seemed to dictate the degree of religious freedom colonists enjoyed.  For the multimedia project one thing that I took away (and seems to have changed somewhat since the last time I taught the course) was the degree to which these various media outlets are melded and blended together by both ministries and listeners/viewers.  And when it came to modern worship, what was evident in virtually all of the presentations was the vibrancy and variety of religious expression that is alive and well in America today.

We, as a class, were also fortunate enough to have four guest speakers over the course of the semester.  Two of the leaders of Butler's chapter of Cru (formerly known as Campus Crusade for Christ) came and spoke about the challenges and blessings of their campus ministry.  The directer of the Hillel Center on campus also came in and spoke about the Jewish American experience (both historically and on campus).  The president of the Muslim Student Association also spoke (and was kind enough to do so at the request of her former professor), giving students yet another (and in this case at the peer level) angle on American religious experience writ large -- and at the campus level.   Our fourth guest speaker, via Skype, was an old friend, Prof. Jason VanHorn of Calvin College.  Who talked about using GIS to study the Geography of Religion, including helping congregations in Grand Rapids, Michigan better understand their neighborhoods and what outreach services they might be best suited to bringing to their local communities.  All of these presentations were well received and sparked good discussion both during and after class.

But for me, perhaps the highlight of the semester was the final papers and the presentations (even if we had to rush through some of them).  My students had to research over the course of the semester a topic that interested them about American Religious History.  Four papers dealt with politics and religion (particularly the Founders and disestablishment), four dealt with various facets of the Catholic experience in the United states (three on immigrant Catholicism and one on Catholic schools), and three covered various angles within the topic of Religion and American Culture (two of which built upon their previous course work).

It was a great semester and bodes well, I think, not only for the use of The Mainline in the classroom, but further study of American Religious History.