the Outlook Blog

I see that our friends at the Layman are opposed to hate crimes legislation.

Imagine that ...

Nothing more delicious than "righteous hatred" of which there is no short supply.

Having just put down the latest issue, I remain stunned by it virulence ...

A few years ago Michael Dodd, an attorney and friend, invited me to speak at a seminar he leads in the International Business Fellows Program at The University of Texas at Austin. The interdisciplinary seminar brings together graduate students from the law school, the business school, and the LBJ School of Government. That evening three distinguished economists were making presentations. My assignment was to respond to them. Mike introduced me as a professor of applied ethics. I’m a practical theologian. Close enough for government work.

To say that I felt out of my depth and intimidated would be a gross understatement. After the economists concluded their presentations, I told them so. Economists, after all, deal in hard facts, in numbers, figures, complex mathematical models to predict production and consumption, and so forth. Theologians, I said, construct more or less rational belief systems based on faith assumptions. However, I continued, after hearing their presentations it appeared that economists and theologians have a lot more in common than I had originally thought. We’re both in the business of constructing belief systems based on faith assumptions, and both of us are subject to irrational forces.

One of the three economists laughed. The other two didn’t.

My hunch about economists has deepened into a conviction in recent days, especially since the global economic meltdown that has seen markets and main streets shaken to their cores and sent economic experts scurrying for cover. Some economists are responding in ways that theologians would call theological — though they still don’t use the term.

A book review in a recent issue of The Economist for Justin Fox’s The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street (HarperBusiness) makes this case. The economic models that, in large measure, led to the recent unpleasantness had all the features of religious faith: prophets (like Milton Friedman and Merton Miller) and unquestionable religious beliefs codified into the economic equivalent of creedal statements (such as the “efficient market hypothesis,” which the reviewer refers to as “the Nicene Creed of market rationalists” which “inspired a wave of innovative financial products, such as derivatives and securitized subprime mortgages, that believers claimed would allow users to exploit the wonders of the market”). (The Economist, “Slaves to some defunct economist,” June 13, 2009, p. 87).

The notion that human beings cannot be assumed to act in their best interest, that our behavior is rife with “foibles,” that we act irrationally, and can be at times lazy, lustful, greedy, gluttonous, envious, violent, and prideful, is not the discovery of psychology, however. Whether it is naïveté, ignorance, or superficiality that causes us to fail to factor-in our failings hardly matters in the end. To fail to take reality into consideration when predicting human systems and institutions, including economic ones, is to court disaster. This might be a news story, but it is not a new one.

From the opening pages of Genesis to the Gifford Lectures of Reinhold Niebuhr, from the theologies of St. Augustine and Jonathan Edwards to the ethics of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Stanley Hauerwas, we find not only the problem and mystery of pervasive, systemic irrationality and self-defeating in-dependence that we have called original sin, but also the insight that compels us not only to distrust ourselves (not even psychology can save us from ourselves!) but to trust that God’s grace trumps even our most phenomenal lapses in being and doing.

It is here, finally, that the self-help mentality fails us utterly, even when it is built on some fairly sane assumptions about human irrationality and applied to money matters (Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein have co-written a book, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness). What we most need we cannot do for ourselves, but remembering this fact may just be the first step into reality.

Karl Barth famously said we ought to do theology with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. Maybe today we should amend that to say we should read The Wall Street Journal with one eye on the Bible, if only to make sense of what’s going on in its pages.

 

MICHAEL JINKINS is academic dean and professor of pastoral theology at Austin (Texas) Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

From Calvin's "Institutes" - 3.7.5, "Now, in seeking to benefit one's neighbor, how difficult it is to do one's duty! Unless you give up all thought of self and, so to speak, get out of yourself, you will accomplish nothing here. For how can you perform those works which Paul teaches to be the works of love, unless you renounce yourself and give yourself wholly to others?"

As of late, I've been wondering why it's so difficult for Protestant Christianity to support justice - to stand beside the workers of America as their jobs are ripped out of their hands by a corporate power-grab that has overseen the largest transfer of wealth imaginable - billions out of the pockets of America's workers into the pockets of the rich, who have quickly shipped the money overseas. The hyper-concentration of wealth is destroying the middle class, but to raise a voice here is to be quickly branded a "radical" or a "socialist" or worse - but what would Jesus say? What would Paul or Jeremiah or Amos offer?

 

 

Thomas P Eggebeen

Los Angeles , CA

[...]

 

AGEISM : POLICY AND  PRACTICE

 

Ageism is the term coined in 1969 by US gerontologist Robert N. Butler to describe discrimination against seniors and patterned on sexism and racism.   In 1972 Maggie Kuhn, at the last minute, had to fill in for a friend and address the 181^st General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church.  From that speech the Gray Panthers was born to create a nation that put people over profit, especially for older adults.  In 1967 the Age Discrimination in Employment Act established protection for those aged forty and above.  In spite of these efforts to stop the practice of age discrimination in employment, the practice is alive and strongly entrenched within the American society.  More often ageism can be observed in the secular world, but age discrimination is practiced widely within the church.

When church professionals, ordained ministers and Directors of Christian Education, reach the magic age of older adulthood Search Committees overlook these experienced persons because they are "too old to attract young people."  Although these committees agree to follow the Equal Employment Opportunity Guidelines of the denomination and give equal opportunity to all candidates without considering race, sex, and age, they practice discrimination.  This agreement is a mere formality which in reality is not practiced by most congregations.  The current practice is to hire the youngest possible person to fill the position "to bring in the younger crowd."  The wisdom and experience of age no longer counts in churches.  If checked, many of the heads of staffs are thirty to forty something ministers. 

The practice of ageism is subtle in the church.  Committees can affirm they check out older persons, but they "did not meet their qualifications."  One of the qualifications is younger person.  Letters of rejection may be simple or flowery, but they all indicate that the rejected person did not meet their qualifications.  It appears to be legal, but in effect their guidelines established certain candidates as illegal because of their age. 

How does the denomination that espouses equal opportunity for all condone this practice?  Anyone who looks at the Personal Information Form (PIF), which must be completed in order to look for employment, can easily find the reason for this discrimination.  In many of the sections the person is asked to supply dates - dates of education, dates of employment, date of ordination, dates of service to the church.  It does not take much for someone to figure out a person's approximate age by the use of these dates.  Because of separation of church and state, the EEO has no effective power for the church.   Therefore, it is legal to discriminate.  Committees on Ministry rarely do anything which prohibits this practice of discrimination.

Through the practice of a standardized form we continue to entrench the reality of age discrimination within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  These forms must be changed in order to remove any information which will give Search Committees information on a person's age.  Committees on Ministry must become more aggressive in its condemnation of any discrimination.

 In Unchurched  Gabe Loyns and David Kinnaman present reasons the twenty and thirty somethings are not part of the church.  One of the reasons presented is a church that says one thing and practices another.  Is the church saying one thing and doing another in its Equal Employment Opportunity practices.  The PC(USA) in its Book of Order indicates that discrimination is not to be practiced.  There are statements that EEO should be implemented in each governing body of the church (G-9.0104 e, G-11.0502 g, G-12.0102 d, G-13.0201 b, G-14.0502 a).  General Assembly has issued "guidelines" for governing bodies.  In the very use of the term "guidelines" the implication is that it is not necessary, just suggested.  There are no teeth to deal with those who practice discrimination.  If the denomination does not really mean what it says, then the practice of EEO should be removed from the book that governs us.  If we truly believe that EEO is an essential practice for the church, then a method of enforcement with penalties should be developed.  

Ageism is going to be a growing problem within the church.  The beginning of the baby boomer generation who will have to work until 66 to retire will be just the beginning of a growing older adult population, not only in society but within the church.  Eventually when pastors will have to work to 70, what will the church do about ageism if we continue to tie retirement to social security?

Sam Hobson

Interim Pastor, Huntsville, AL

 

This morning as I was on my treadmill doing an imitation of a hamster in pursuit of lower cholesterol scores, I listened to NPR’s “Morning Edition.” Among many items was a letter from a listener who dismissed a story from the previous day about “Fatwa shopping” a phenomenon that is occurring among some Muslims. If, for example, a Muslim asks a religious authority for a judgment call on some behavior, and the judgment call differs from what he wants to do, he may simply shop for another religious authority with a different perspective. The listener said that such behavior is typical of all religions. The faithful all “drink the Kool Aid,” and if they don’t get the flavor they want at first, they look around for another flavor that suits their taste.


Obviously there’s some truth in this reading of contemporary religious culture. Christians also know the phenomena of “church shopping” and “church hopping.” And since Feuerbach and Freud we have recognized the tendencies among some of the faithful to externalize their desires, hopes and fears and to name these “God.” But, of course, our Reformed tradition calls it idolatry when we craft gods in our own image. Don Henley’s “Little Tin Gods” is Calvinism with a strong backbeat. And a purely cynical view of religious faith and the reasons why people adhere to faith (and others do not) does as little justice to the subject as any naïve or superficially pious one does.

 
If you will allow me to gallop through reports that deserve much more careful study I will try to arrive at my point.


A few weeks ago, many of us received the summary report of the American Religious Identification Survey by Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela Keysar (March 2009), and noted that the category of persons with “no religion” grew from 8.2% in 1990 to 15.0% in 2008, meaning that there are as many now in that group as there are among all Baptists (the largest Protestant group in the United States), and apparently without the benefit of the massive evangelistic efforts the latter sometimes employ. The core message of this report was conveyed by its authors (and I doubt if there’s a minister or priest in our country who would dispute what they have to say): “The challenge to Christianity in the U.S. does not come from other religions but rather from a rejection of all forms of organized religion” (Highlights, p. 1).


A few days ago, however, we received the report of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life titled, Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S. (April 2009). One of the most striking findings in the Pew report led to a fascinating Op-Ed piece by Charles M. Blow, “Defecting to Faith,” last week in The New York Times (May 2, 2009). Blow observes that a surprising number of children of agnostics and atheists are making their way to church. According to the Pew report, most people who grew up in families without faith affiliated as adults with faith communities because their spiritual needs were not being met (18).


Where does this leave us?

The answer is in a third study, this one a couple of years old, and of a smaller group in our society, college age adults. W. Robert Connor reported on this study in a fascinating essay, “The Right Time and Place for Big Questions,” in The Chronicle of Higher Education (June 9, 2006), where he observed that many young adults were frustrated that the big questions of life, the questions of meaning, of purpose, were not being addressed in their classrooms or by their professors, many of whom were hesitant to speak beyond the limits usually permitted in the public marketplace of ideas.


Young adults are searching for meaning that is not just of their own making and for purpose that transcends; they are looking for answers to life’s most persistent questions, the big questions, and they are finding in themselves longings unmet in a culture obsessed with itself and lacking a reference point for meaning beyond its own preoccupations. The fact that the parents of many of these young people do not believe doesn’t mean that the game is over. In fact, it means just the opposite. These young people, incidentally, are not asking to be entertained. They are seeking something much deeper. They are seeking faith. And faith is as much (if not more) about reverence, awe and wonder for the Holy who utterly transcends us as it is about a set of beliefs we may or may not share.

 
I know that today’s blog has rambled through a lot of material, and has not done justice to any of it. But I want to introduce one more resource to the mix, Paul Woodruff’s remarkable (and humanistic) study, Reverence: Recovering a Forgotten Virtue (Oxford, 2001). Paul has taught undergraduates for many years and is now dean of undergraduate studies at The University of Texas at Austin. If anyone has his hand on the pulse of young adults, it is Paul. He senses (rightly, I believe) the need for a recovery of reverence, “the well-developed capacity to have the feelings of awe, respect, and shame when these are the right feelings to have” (8). Maybe this is what young adults are saying they have not experienced. Maybe this is what’s at the heart of their big questions. Maybe this is why they are coming again through the doors of the church. If so, let’s make sure they are greeted by something more thoughtful and reverent than just a sacralized version of the popular culture that is not meeting their needs.


MICHAEL JINKINS is academic dean and professor of pastoral theology at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Austin, Texas. His most recent book Called to Be Human: Letters to My Children on Living a Christian Life was just published by Eerdmans Press.

[1] The title borrows from Stephen Carter, The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion (BasicBooks, 1993). Carter observed: “In contemporary American culture, the religions are more and more treated as just passing beliefs – almost as fads, older, stuffier, less liberal versions of so-called New Age – rather than as the fundaments upon which the devout built their lives” (14). The message that many people receive in this culture is: “pray if you like, worship if you must, but whatever you do, do not on any account take your religion seriously” (15).

On the blackboard I wrote a single sentence that had come to me the night before just as I was dozing off to sleep.

“Think of ministry in the midst of conflict as follows: the negotiation of difference for the sake of transformation.”

We were about half-way through the unit on conflict in our senior level seminary course, “Entry Into Ministry,” a course I have taught for fifteen years. And the point I was trying to make is obvious to any veteran pastor, though it is extremely difficult to put into action: If you think of conflict as something to be resolved, you may be tempted to try to return to some elusive past; if you think of conflict as something to be managed, you may be tempted just to try to navigate the status quo. But if you think of conflict as (at least potentially) an opportunity for transformation, you are liberated to explore what it means to negotiate differences of perspectives, values and interests as a genuine spiritual discipline in your church.

Obviously there are lots of theological and other assumptions underlying these statements. I believe, with John Calvin, that “in all of life we have our dealings with God,” so there’s no part of life that shouldn’t be subject to theological reflection, and there’s no theological reflection that can’t also be informed by social, historical, psychological and other kinds of inquiries. I also believe, with John Stuart Mill, Lewis Coser, and Nicholas Rescher, that differences and conflicts among people (if handled with respect) are potentially creative and transformative. Rather than avoiding conflict, we ought rather to “make the world safe for disagreement,” as Rescher once wrote.

One only has to look at the lives of the all-stars of the spiritual world, from St. Paul to Mother Theresa to see that spiritual growth is not all sunlight, roses and fluffy bunnies.

This is why this morning I was so struck by a statement I read in The New York Times in a story about a church experiencing a conflict, the specifics of which are not relevant to these reflections. In the last paragraph of the story a church member said, “I came here looking for a church for spiritual reasons… but it has really not been a very spiritual experience.”[1] This person’s comment could be replicated all over the country, in various churches, by people belonging to any number of denominations. He appears to assume that a spiritual experience is happy and ethereal; certainly it is non-political, certainly it is untouched by human interests and unsullied by conflict.

Several years ago I heard a distinguished biblical scholar dismiss the Nicene Creed because the council that gave rise to it was tainted by politics. I don’t find that argument wrong simply because it is naïve, but because it represents an inadequate understanding of the Holy Spirit. The same God who got his hands dirty in the incarnation continues to work through human means to accomplish redemptive purposes in the world. This is nowhere more true that at the ground level of transformation among ordinary Christians in ordinary congregations. Apparently God transforms us, not despite, but through living with others who are (often!) a royal pain in the posterior regions.

For pastors and other church leaders, while this insight is grounded in the Good News of Jesus Christ, it isn’t necessarily happy news. In a consumerist culture that treats faith as a commodity and church membership as the most disposable of voluntary associations, almost everything that works in favor of spiritual maturation, formation and transformation runs smack into the unwillingness of people to stay in a place and among a group of people with whom they are experiencing conflict and discomfort.

The preacher preaches a sermon that I don’t agree with, and I’m out of here!

My Sunday school teacher interprets a biblical text in a way that I find offensive, and I’m gone!

The hymns strain my sensibilities, and I’m not participating!

Of course, these issues only scratch the surface. And here’s the uncomfortable truth: we grow precisely in those moments when previous assumptions are tested and we experience cognitive dissonance; we mature precisely at those points where we have to move beyond clarity and into the realm of ambiguity; we are transformed when our hopes die and we witness God’s hopes standing in their place on the other side of Good Friday’s cold tomb.

Real spirituality, sooner or later, leads us through the crucible of conflict.

Pastors and other church leaders are right to be concerned that the commodification of spirituality and the spirit of voluntarism are undercutting the life of faith. Transformative ministry can’t run from conflict, but it must find ways to minister through conflict, bearing witness to Jesus Christ who entreats us to be merciful so that we can be recognized as children of a merciful God.

 

Michael Jinkins is dean and professor of pastoral theology at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Austin, Texas.

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[1] Paul Vitello, “New Pastor’s Compensation Divides a Famous Manhattan Church,” The New York Times, April 23, 2009, A22.

March 9, 2009 - So now I better understand the frequent complaint of Parker Williamson arising from times when he has been excluded from meetings that seemingly should be open to the press. I’ve been excluded from a meeting announced as open to the public.

Irony of ironies, those excluding me include Parker Williamson.

            The Association for Church Renewal kicked off two days of meetings this morning (March 9) in Arlington, Va. Given that their Web site issued a wide-open invitation to all who wanted to come, I made my plans to attend. I sent a courtesy e-mail to the organization’s president, David Runion-Bareford, March 5 to let him know I would be attending as press.

He responded by saying, “Thanks for your interest. We cannot invite you to join us. Our meeting this week is a membership meeting which is not designed to be available to the press.” 

            Sounded nice enough, except those words run contrary to the Web site’s invitation, posted November 2008:

Dear Companion in Christ,
We are writing to you today as brothers and sisters in Christ who share our passion for the renewal of the mainline churches in North America. …

… The next meeting of the Association for Church Renewal is scheduled for March 9 & 10, 2009 at the Holiday Inn, Key Bridge, Arlington, Va. (Washington, D.C.) from 9:00 A.M. Monday until Noon on Tuesday. It is our prayer you will join us. …

…We strongly invite you as the Executive of a Renewal Ministry, a Renewal Leader, or simply a passionate renewalist in one of the mainline churches of North America to join us for this important meeting!

In the years I served as moderator for the Presbyterian Coalition and as president of the board for Presbyterians for Renewal, I heard many times of the Association for Church Renewal, a gathering of executives and other renewal leaders from the PC(USA), the United Methodist Church, the Anglican Communion Episcopal Church, the Disciples of Christ, the United Church of Canada, the American Baptist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Church of Christ, and the Church of the Brethren. Various renewal leaders in the PC(USA) have attended from time to time over the years, including Betty Moore, Paul Detterman, and Terry Schlossberg, but all have withdrawn except Parker.  Apparently he often has been the only Presbyterian to attend. Nevertheless, I’ve wanted to attend at least once, but the opportunity never presented itself.

Now in my role as editor of The Presbyterian Outlook, as someone who still works and prays for spiritual renewal and reformation in my denomination, and as one who recognizes the pivotal role that the ACR performs in shaping such efforts across denominational lines, I have wanted to better understand and faithfully tell the story of ACR. 

When I saw the wide-open invitation to attend their meeting, I jumped at the opportunity. So when I was told I was not welcome, I challenged Mr. Runion-Bareford. 

… The Web site says nothing about “members only.” 

            Are you saying that everyone who wants to be there is welcome except for the press? 

            You operate behind closed doors?  You hold secret meetings?

My friend Parker Williamson would never abide having meetings closed to the press; I am copying this letter to him, given that he is quoted extensively on your Web site.

            Please explain.

Parker, editor emeritus of The Layman, long has championed the open meeting policy in our denomination, as have Jerry Van Marter of the Presbyterian News Service, and all my predecessors here at The Outlook. He has been quick to cry foul whenever he has run into resistance from denominational entities, most especially the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy.  Admittedly, when the Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity in the Church (of which I was a part in 2001-2005) was granted special permission by the GA to hold some of its sensitive discussions in closed session, it did so to the consternation of Parker and other press members, although it held scrupulously to the guidelines as stated, and it kept 80-90% of its meeting times open.

In the light of his strong convictions on doing work in the light, I did send a copy of my note to Parker.  He responded graciously, drawing a distinction between meetings of “official church gatherings that were funded and presumably accountable to the people in the pews”, and meetings “of any private, membership organization” such as “board meetings.”  He concluded, “So I think David’s response to you is appropriate, and I hope that on reflection, you’ll think so as well.”

While I agree with such a distinction, on reflection I did not and do not think David’s response is appropriate. I wrote back: 

Thanks, Parker, for your response.  I certainly respect the right of organizations to have closed board meetings.  It’s just that this meeting on Monday-Tuesday is being marketed on the ACR Web site as an open meeting. That sounds like a newsworthy gathering. To specifically exclude only the press sounds unethical and irresponsible to me.

Indeed the exclusion of this editor is particularly stunning in the light of the fact that on at least one occasion, the March 2003 meeting, the press was allowed to cover the meeting, for the Layman itself did report about it:  http://layman.org/News.aspx?article=12483

Nevertheless, Mr. Runion-Bareford closed the door:

Having carefully considered your e-mail and your correspondence with Parker, I have to insist that you do not attend our meeting. The integrity of a meeting where those who are serving Jesus Christ in Renewal come together to share their common vision and challenges requires a trust and openness that precludes the presence of press. The invitation we made is clear in its intent. I do not, upon reflection, believe your desire to attend this meeting has the integrity and best interest of renewal at heart. If you do come uninvited the membership of the ACR will decide whether to permit you to be seated in the room or not - but my expectation is that your journey would be in vain. This is not a personal matter, but the wellbeing of our membership must be assured.

So trust and openness is precluded by the presence of the press?  Rather, it thrives under a cloak of secrecy?

And, this fellow whom I’ve never met has passed judgment upon my motives, deeming them to be sinister, and then he adds, “This is not a personal matter.”  Huh?

Irony of ironies, every one of these reasons he outlines for excluding this member of the press echoes the reasons that have been used in the past to exclude other members of the press, including Parker, from what should have been open meetings of General Assembly entities. 

Recognizing the handwriting on the wall, I decided to save my gasoline and stay home.

            So now I better understand the frequent complaint of Parker Williamson arising from times when he has been excluded from meetings that seemingly should be open to the press.

 

Several months ago I was asked to write an article on heresy for the “What Presbyterians Believe Series” in Presbyterians Today.

When the article appeared this week I was surprised and dismayed to discover that the opening two paragraphs of the published article were so clearly not my work that I have had to take the unprecedented step (unprecedented for me at least) of formally distancing myself from several key aspects of an article that appears under my name.

In some thirty years of writing for church publications, this is the first time I have ever had to do this. I have asked the magazine to retract these paragraphs and to publish what I actually wrote because the editors’ changes do not reflect my theology. I am frankly embarrassed to have my name appear on the published article, and I do not want the erroneous views attributed to me to reflect negatively on the Presbyterian Church and the seminary I serve. I have informed the publisher of Presbyterians Today that I am posting this blog to set the record straight, and that I will refer readers to my original essay so they can read it if they want to know what I actually wrote.

As a Presbyterian minister, as a professor and as dean of a Presbyterian seminary, I take seriously the vocation to teach, the responsibility to hand on to the next generation of ministers the apostolic tradition and the richness of our confessional heritage, and I would never utter such irresponsible humbug as appears in the published version of this article, which opens with the appalling and untruthful sentiment: “Poor Arius. This upstanding churchman was labeled a heretic …,” implying that Arius was a sort of confessional victim. The impression is given that I sympathize with Arius, the arch heretic of the early church, and that I think he was simply an innocent, well-meaning, “upstanding churchman.” I do not! Arius was a heretic. His thought was perilous to the life of the Church. The very integrity of the Christian faith and the meaning of God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ were on the line in the Trinitarian controversies of the fourth century. Real lives were risked by real saints for the sake of the truth.

Neither would I have agreed to the published title of the essay, “How to Spot a Heretic,” accompanied by a cartoon of two people cowering behind a rock as a fellow with a telescope searches them out. My original title, “Heresy, the Temptation to Settle for a Smaller God,” may not have been as catchy as the editors wanted, but their title conjures up a predatory spirit that I find profoundly disturbing in the contemporary context when many people are only too ready to engage in “heretic,” “apostate,” or “witch” hunts. I would not want to feed the frenzied spirit of schism that lurks within some contemporary Christianity. Indeed, to do so goes against my deepest values as a Christian.

In a time such as ours when our church is trying to find its way through a complex web of conflicts and challenges, I (like many others) work hard to speak truthfully, clearly, compellingly, and in a manner accessible to general audiences. The published version of the essay on heresy trivializes matters of real significance and subtlety. For example, my original subheadings in the article were designed to stimulate thought, but also to qualify assertions so they are truthful. A heading like, “Today’s heresy, tomorrow’s orthodoxy,” in the published version of the article is simply inaccurate. Sometimes today’s heresy may become tomorrow’s orthodoxy. But sometimes today’s heresy will remain heresy tomorrow.

I appreciate the desire of editors to make an article appear attractive and lively. But to substitute inaccurate for truthful phrases just to make room for an inane cartoon illustrating the title is irresponsible. And to make changes that change meanings without first checking with the author is beyond irresponsible. I have already heard from one reader who emailed to say that he couldn’t imagine my saying the things that are said in the opening paragraphs of the article. For the record: I didn’t say them!

Perhaps the richest irony of this whole business is that my essay points out what can happen in a church when people are in such a hurry to sell ideas to the lowest bidder that they over-simplify the gospel, thus turning it into a heresy. As I say in the essay, Tom Long once observed that the greatest heresy the church faces today is not atheism, but superficiality. I’ve rarely seen a better illustration of Tom’s point.

Michael Jinkins is academic dean and professor of pastoral theology at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary

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The Original Version of the Essay:

 

Heresy: The Temptation to Settle for a Smaller God

Michael Jinkins

The name Arius is synonymous with heresy. As first-year seminarians know, Arius denied the divinity of Jesus Christ. What is less well-known is what made Arius a heretic. His heresy was not caused by theological recklessness or a lack of piety. It was his devotion that got him into trouble.

Basically Arius wanted to safeguard the God-ness of God. Ironically, in trying to do this, his teachings lapsed into a gross over-simplification. In his anxiety to defend God’s divinity, Arius lost the thread of orthodoxy and became a heretic.

Heresy is a kind of over-simplification

Heresy is not a word we use much these days. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as: “Theological or religious opinion or doctrine maintained in opposition, or held to be contrary, to the ‘catholic’ or orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church.” But the dictionary definition doesn’t help us understand what is at stake.

Tom Long once observed that the greatest heresy the Church faces today is not atheism, but superficiality. When, not long after hearing Tom’s remarks, I repeated them in an academic address, I was greeted with cries of “foul!” by a colleague who said that neither atheism nor superficiality could be considered a heresy. Only departures from accepted doctrines – like Arius’s rejection of the divinity of Christ, for example – are heresies.

In a sense my colleague was right. But Tom was also right. Tom points to the very essence of heresy, the thing that makes a teaching depart from orthodoxy in the first place: its superficiality.

One of my seminary professors described heresy as an attempt to reduce the irreducible tensions of our faith. These tensions in our faith, he believed, are given to us by the Bible and are enshrined in the church’s historic confessions. They are necessary to convey the unfathomable mystery of the God revealed in Jesus Christ.

Orthodoxy preserves the tensions. Heresy tries to resolve them. Thus heresy betrays the mystery of God by trying to make God more understandable, easier to handle, smaller.

Heresy, then, is a kind of superficiality, an over-simplification. Heresy opts for half-truths that have no choice but to become a whole lie.

This is why we consider the fourth-century theologian, Arius, a heretic. He refused to cling to the mystery of Jesus Christ, fully divine and fully human. He tried to resolve faith’s irreducible tension in favor of Christ’s humanity at the expense of his divinity.

From Arius’s perspective, he acted piously. He tried to safeguard the divinity of God against the dangerous idea of the incarnation. Arius was a theological conservative. And Athanasius and his colleagues who prevailed in formulating the Nicene Creed – the gold standard of orthodoxy – were the radicals.

Arius’s argument was consistent to a fault. He contended that it was impious to say that God became flesh. Flesh changes. Flesh decomposes. Flesh rots. God is immortal, invisible, and eternal. Arius’s theology was based on his profound devotion to the doctrine of divine immutability – God does not change. God will not rot!

Athanasius, on the other hand, was willing to hold two contradictory, but essential, truths in tension. Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human. He knew what was at stake if we let go of this tension. He understood that if Jesus Christ is not fully human and fully God then neither our knowledge of God nor our atonement with God are sure. Only if Jesus Christ is fully God can we say that when we come to know Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we encounter the very heart of God. Conversely, if Jesus Christ is not fully human then we remain unredeemed.

Jesus Christ, fully human, fully divine: this is a mystery. Not a puzzle, nor a riddle, but a mystery. Turn it around! Upside-down! In every light! From every angle! It remains unfathomable!

Matters of heresy and orthodoxy are matters of consequence today no less than sixteen centuries ago, because the Christian faith lives on mystery. And mystery is preserved in our beliefs through the irreducible tensions that greet us in the Bible and in the Church’s confessions.

The quest of orthodoxy is to preserve these tensions. Orthodoxy’s struggle to hold on to paradoxes, contradictions, and tensions at the heart of our faith is necessary not only to bear witness to God, but to maintain a sane view of ourselves.

Recently I was reminded of this fact as I sat quietly preparing for worship in our home congregation. A friend approached me and said: “I see you’re sitting on the back row again. Does that mean you’re a saint or a sinner?”

I smiled and said, “Simul justus et peccator.”

My friend smiled. She had taken a theology course with Dr. Cynthia Rigby, and she knew the passage I quoted. It’s from Protestant Reformer Martin Luther, and it describes the irreducible tension at the heart of humanity.

We are always, and at the same time, both justified by Jesus Christ (simul justus) and sinners (et peccator). To let go of one side of this tension (our justification in Christ) is to lose the assurance of God’s grace and to tumble into self-loathing and hopelessness. To let go of the other side (the fact that we never stop being sinners) is to lose hold of the reality of our need for God’s mercy and to risk falling into self-righteousness and cheap grace.

Sometimes today’s heresy becomes tomorrow’s orthodoxy

It’s tricky sorting heresy from orthodoxy. Today’s heresy can become tomorrow’s orthodoxy. This is why the “dictionary” definition of heresy does not help us much.

Usually something is thought to be a heresy because it calls into question conventional ways of thinking about God. Athanasius, the champion of orthodoxy, for example, was thought by Arius and his party to be the innovator and impious radical. From their perspective, Athanasius was the heretic who would sacrifice the incorruptibility of God for the sake of the doctrine of incarnation.

Jesus himself was considered a heretic and blasphemer by many of his religious contemporaries because of his views on the Sabbath (see Mark 1:21-31, 2:23-28 and 3:1-6). Peter had a lot of explaining to do to his early Christian friends when he extended the gospel to uncircumcised gentiles (Acts 10-11:18). Paul was the bad boy of the early church because he preached that in Christ there is now neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female (Galatians 3:28).

Charges of heresy are sometimes leveled when, in fact, a teaching is just new, different, strange, or innovative. God is on the move, and sometimes God moves faster than religious people.

C. S. Lewis once wrote, “God is the great iconoclast” who shatters our ideas about God time and again. Nobody ever said that following a living God would be easy (see: Hebrews 10:31). But, if there is one lesson we ought to have learned from the Bible, it is this: God’s Spirit relentlessly unfolds God’s Word in our world.

The church’s concern over orthodoxy can lead to heresy

When it comes to heresy in the Reformed tradition, no century was quite as bumpy as the nineteenth. No place was quite as perilous to preach or teach as Scotland, the home of Presbyterianism.

The most notorious of Scottish heresy trials culminated in 1831 with the deposing (we’d call it “defrocking” today) of a devoted young pastor, John McLeod Campbell, who served in the community of Rhu west of Glasgow. John Macintyre once observed that “heretics and those accused of heresy are more loveable than their accusers. This is certainly true of McLeod Campbell.”

Campbell’s trial illustrates the consequences of a church that rests on the laurels of its past creeds (in this case the Westminster Confession) while refusing to continue to think biblically and theologically about faith in the midst of contemporary life. It was the church’s desire to preserve “Westminster orthodoxy” that led it to place that confession’s authority above the Bible.

It is hard to imagine today, but Campbell was tried as a heretic in part because he preached that God is love. He taught that Christ died for all humanity. He insisted that faith consists in our confidence in God’s faithfulness to do what God has promised. He preached that Christ died to reveal the loving heart of God toward all humanity, not to change God’s heart toward us or to win the benefits of salvation for a select few.

Campbell’s teachings may appear to us so clearly orthodox that we cannot fathom why a church would declare him a heretic. But, while most of Campbell’s opponents were willing to maintain that God loves, they would not say God is love. To say “God loves” can mean simply that God arbitrarily chooses to love certain people, while arbitrarily choosing to hate others. To say “God is love” is to speak of the essence of who God is.

When McLeod Campbell laid out his arguments citing the Bible and other confessions, including the Heidelberg Catechism and the Scots Confession, as authorities supporting his teachings, he was sternly told by opponents: “We are far from appealing to the word of God on this ground; it is by the [Westminster] Confession of Faith that we must stand; by it we hold our livings.” In other words, the Westminster Confession tells us what the Bible means.

It is ironic that a court of the Church would refuse to admit the Bible into evidence, but perhaps it should not be entirely surprising. After all, the Bible is rich in precisely the kind of tensions that serve as signposts of God’s mystery. Being reminded that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him might not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16) jeopardized the prosecution’s case and complicated a settled view of God and the world.

We do well to remember that the canon, that collection of texts we call the Holy Bible, preserves the mystery of God in part through the tensions among the books that bear witness to a God much bigger than our categories. The Gospels, each of which is titled in Greek, Kata (“According to…”), can never be harmonized without irreparable loss. Taken together, the great faith confessions of our Church, assembled as a Book of Confessions, bear witness to the greatness of the God revealed in Christ. And they do this not least in the contradictions that linger between the statements of faith composed in various historical eras in response to specific crises.

Orthodoxy is willing to be surprised by God

George Tuttle described the Church of Scotland in Campbell’s time as “suffering from theological bankruptcy and party strife.” Ministers were so afraid of being perceived as unorthodox they sacrificed the sense of adventure which is essential to orthodoxy. The church forgot that orthodoxy’s duty is to preserve the irreducible tensions in our faith – if, that is, our faith is to be true to the always surprising God revealed in Christ. It was the church, anxious for its orthodoxy, which fell into heresy in its controversy with McLeod Campbell.

Superficiality is the essence of heresy, and we live in an age custom-made for heresy, addicted to shallowness and factionalism. Political pundits compete to reduce the most complex issues to slogans. Radio talk shows appeal to the lowest common denominator, addicted to sensationalism and rage. Even preachers are encouraged to follow suit. 

If heresy means settling for a smaller god, orthodoxy must be prepared to be surprised by God, by God’s greatness, grace and mystery. The adventure of orthodoxy inevitably leads us to St. Paul’s song of wonder: “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are God’s judgments! How unfathomable God’s ways!” (Romans 11:33).

Michael Jinkins is dean and professor of pastoral theology at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. He is the author of several books, including Letters to New Pastors (Eerdmans), Invitation to Theology (InterVarsity), The Church Faces Death (Oxford), and Invitation to Psalms (Abingdon).

[...]

Well the Presbyterian Church is finally getting around to marriage (see article on the marriage committee). Obviously, the unspoken context of the discussion is gay marriage. And I say, it's about time.

The progressives have always had it backwards -- strongly advocating for the ordination of a few gay activists before pressing for gay marriage for thousands. Gay marriage has always been a goal. (See the Covenant Network website, Jeffery Siker article.) Why hasn't it been the primary goal? Gay ordination would fall into place should gay marriage be blessed.

Whatever you feel about gay ordination, pro or con, Amendment B should not pass because it creates chaos and confusion.. The ordained gay officer and their partner would be put in limbo. The candidate, but not the partner, would pledge to presbytery to live, essentially in a marriage relationship. But the church, officially, would not recognize the relationship. This is a mess. The change to local option would also create mayhem and lawsuits as some presbyteries would reject ordained pastors from other presbyteries. Amendment B promotes chaos, confusion and mayhem and this -- and I use this word carefully -- is a sin.

To my traditional allies who oppose Amendment B, I say don't even mention sexual sin in your discussions at presbytery. No one is listening. For too many presbyters the justice/love hermeneutic trumps whatever we might say about Romans 1. Instead speak of the chaos and confusion this Amendment produces. There is no peace and unity with the passing of Amendment B -- just lawsuits, anguish and more division. And to my progressive friends I say, start over and do it right. Scrap the ill-conceived Amendment B and press for gay marriage if you must. Shouldn't this always have been the stated goal? For too long you have put the cart before the horse.

Rev. Paul Strand

Palos Verdes Estates, CA

 

 

 

 

Two recent and very ordinary events have set me thinking about a New Year’s resolution that might just be worthwhile for us all.  First, a conversation with a seminarian:

My conversation partner was a young adult who has grown up in a great and famed Presbyterian Church. She had asked me to clarify what it means to use the term “Reformed.” She wondered if the term applies to all churches that came from the Reformation? Are Lutherans “Reformed”? Are Episcopalians? Her concern, at least in part, was that we might be slighting other Protestants by not calling them “Reformed.”

I assured her that Lutherans and Episcopalians would not necessarily see it as a compliment to be called Reformed. Then I tried to clarify our history and theology as Protestants and as heirs of Calvin and Knox, and to distinguish our Reformed tradition from Lutheranism, Anglicanism, and others.

Second, a letter from a pastor:

A few days later a letter arrived in my “inbox.” It had been sent to the seminary by a member of a presbytery committee on ministry. He apparently sent the letter to Presbyterian seminaries nation wide. The letter lamented the lack of “Reformed sacramental theology” among recently graduated candidates for ministry. Seminaries are largely responsible, he said, for instilling in candidates an appropriate Reformed sacramental theology. As requested by the author of the letter, I shared its contents with our faculty.

Now, I’ve been mulling over both this conversation and this letter for the past few weeks. While I might wring my hands, as a former pastor, at a failure of the church to impart the essential distinctives of the Reformed tradition to a cradle Presbyterian who has been active in Sunday School and worship her whole life; and while, as a seminary dean, I can see the validity of the letter writer’s premise, that seminaries bear a particular responsibility for ensuring that future ministers are theologically competent, I also see a larger issue at stake here.

The issue at stake is illustrated by a remarkable, if idiosyncratic, fact: A generation ago Shirley Guthrie’s Christian Doctrine was considered appropriate Sunday school material for adult members of the Presbyterian church. Today it is not unusual to find this book among the texts for seminary classes in systematic theology. There was a time when, as a pastor, I used John Leith’s The Church: A Believing Fellowship with teenagers. Today Leith’s book, complete with discussion starters, would not be out-of-place on a reading list for seminarians prepping for their ordination exams.

It appears to me that we are dealing with an issue of Christian education and Christian formation, specifically education and formation in the distinctive patterns of faith and practice in the Reformed tradition, that goes to the heart of our life together as Presbyterians, and that underscores the importance of the special partnership between the church and the seminary. In other words, I think we (the big we, i.e., all of us) have taken the Reformed tradition for granted. We have forgotten just how wonderful, amazing and unique this tradition is. We have caricatured ourselves as “the frozen chosen” for so long we have forgotten that there’s something precious in our Reformed identity, something worth not losing.

Several years ago, while visiting in a Presbyterian congregation, I was reading through the church’s promotional material for prospective members. The church flyer provided a brief overview of some basic Reformed beliefs, including a statement on the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper – in other words, “Reformed sacramental theology.” The flyer told prospective members that Communion, or the Lord’s Supper, is a memorial, just a remembrance of Jesus’ saving death for us, and nothing more.

I don’t know if there was a conscious decision to opt for (at best) a Zwinglian doctrine of Communion, or if they just were trying hard not to sound too different from their Baptist neighbors. But there wasn’t a hint of John Calvin’s rich theology of the real presence of Jesus Christ at Table with us. No reflection on the Reformed concept of our “mystical” (Calvin’s word) participation in the life, death and resurrection of Christ in anticipation of his coming again. Not even a nod at our union with Christ effected once for all in the incarnation and celebrated in the Eucharistic feast. Nor even a glancing acquaintance with our spiritual nourishment by the power of the Holy Spirit on the Body and Blood of Christ. The hard won distinctive Reformed teachings on Communion were simply missing in action.

Now, the pastor of that congregation was a third generation Presbyterian minister whom I still admire and from whom I have learned a great deal over the years. I’m not sure I would be prepared to blame his seminary for not preparing him (I know who his professors were and he was taught better than that!), or his father and mother (ditto), or the churches in which he was formed (ditto, ditto). I think everybody just took for granted the distinctive, rich, deep teachings of the Reformed tradition (in this case related to Holy Communion) for so long that the teachings moved from assumed to tacit to forgotten. And what replaces remembered distinctives when ecclesial amnesia takes hold? Lowest common denominator Protestantism, that’s all!

I’d like to hold us all responsible. And I’d like to hold us all responsible for something I think we can do something about. Let’s resolve with this New Year (as we celebrate Calvin’s 500th!) not to take the Reformed tradition for granted. This is one resolution we can keep.

For too long we have acted as though to speak of the distinctive beliefs and practices of the Reformed tradition was somehow inconsistent with a commitment to working warmly and closely with other Christians. Some have even implied that to affirm the distinctives of one’s own faith tradition is somehow to be at odds with authentic Christianity. This is foolish. No one can be generically Christian! Authentic faith is always particular, peculiar, and concrete. I would encourage Methodists to recover Wesleyanism, Episcopalians to recover Anglicanism, Lutherans to recover their distinctively Lutheran voice, Baptists to rediscover what it means to be Baptists, and Roman Catholics to celebrate the uniqueness of their Catholicism.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from interfaith conversations over the years, it’s the wisdom of the great Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel who said: “The first and most important prerequisite of interfaith [dialogue] is faith.” The same is true of ecumenical relations. We can only speak to other Christian traditions with integrity when we speak from our own tradition knowingly.

There’s a very short distance from a lack of memory regarding one’s tradition to wholesale ignorance of a faith tradition. And when it comes to faith, it is not familiarity but ignorance that breeds contempt.

The people who taught me this, by the way, were members of the congregations with whom I have served. I remember, for example, as a young adult joining a Presbyterian Church in the Dallas suburb of Irving. An elder and member of the session (she would have been the first to remind you, incidentally, that in the Presbyterian Church “ruling elders” are ordained to ministry no less crucial and no less a ministry than “teaching elders”) asked me what the most important doctrine of the Reformed tradition was. She had good questions, and she had few doubts about the right answers. If you answered, “the sovereignty of God” (which, according to her, was the right answer), she wasn’t done with you. She next wanted to know what the relationship is between the Reformed doctrine of God’s sovereignty and our understanding of God’s grace and God’s providence. She wanted to know if I had thought about such things because a member of a Presbyterian church ought to give these matters some thought. Church members, she taught me, are not volunteers.

She wanted to know these things because she believed that something real is at stake in what we believe, and why we believe it, in what we do with our lives, and why we do it. She believed that something real is at stake when we belong to a church, and when we become part of a living tradition. She believed something real is at stake when we worship God in particular ways, when we pray using particular words, and when we try to serve God in a particular place.

We often act as though an appreciation for the Reformed tradition is somehow at odds with moving forward or doing new things. I would argue just the opposite. You don’t know where to go next if you don’t know who you are and where you’ve been. 

One of my favorite novels is Chaim Potok’s wonderful book My Name is Asher Lev. Asher, a promising young painter, is apprenticed to an experienced older artist. Asher is eager to break new ground, to make his own mark. He is frustrated with his mentor’s requirement that he endlessly practice the lines and strokes and styles of the great artists of the past. In response to Asher’s resistance to this discipline, his teacher tells him that art “is not a toy,” it is “not a child scrawling on a wall.” Art, his teacher explains, is “a tradition.” He says to Asher: “You are entering a religion called painting…. And I will force you to master it…. No one will listen to what you have to say unless they are convinced you have mastered it. Only one who has mastered a tradition has a right to attempt to add to it or to rebel against it” (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972, p. 213).

Amnesia with respect to the Reformed tradition (and, of course, this tradition is not singular; it proceeds in a variety of streams and branches of traditions) is often the product of an arrogant disregard for the saints who have preceded us. Such arrogance does not make us stronger or better or more viable as a church, and it certainly does not breed trust among those people who know that unless we have mastered – and remembered – a tradition we have no right to add to it or rebel against it.

I believe that if the Presbyterian Church does end up surrendering to the peculiar ecclesial amnesia that threatens us; if we do forget who we are and what we believe and what we do and why we do it, God will raise up another people to fulfill our role. “The life of the mind in the service of God” is just too good a distinctive mission to be neglected forever.

There are, of course, Presbyterian congregations and seminaries, pastors, church officials, elders, and professors, and many, many others who have not fallen victim to this amnesia, who still remember, who still live and practice, work to master, and attempt to critique, add to and build upon the Reformed tradition. May their tribe increase! And may all of us resolve anew not to take this tradition for granted.

 

Michael Jinkins, Dean and Professor of Pastoral Theology

Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary