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John Cobb

God is trouble for the status quo

Process theologies and Liberation theologies both provide a valuable resource – even for those who do not subscribe to them wholesale.small nyc logo

You don’t have to be an adherent of these approaches to hear the critique that they raise and allow those questions to interrogate the given order of things.

In the forward to their famous book Process Theology: an introductory exposition, Cobb and Griffin outline a number of conceptions of God that Process does not affirm. The fourth example they provide introduces the problem:

 God as Sanctioner of the Status Quo. This connotation characterizes a strong tendency in all religions. It is supported by the three previous notions. The notion of God as Cosmic Moralist has suggested that God is primarily interested in order. The notion of God as Unchangeable Absolute has suggested God’s establishment of an unchangeable order for the world. And the notion of God as Controlling Power has suggested that the present order exists be­ cause God wills its existence. In that case, to be obedient to God is to preserve the status quo. Process theology denies the existence of this God.

It is going to be important to hear the questions this raises: is God primarily concerned with order? Is God the source of that order? Or is God providing something else that challenges those established structures which limit and take away people’s ability to live fully and prosper?

They introduce the Process notion of God:

And, far from sanctioning the status quo, recognition of essential relatedness to this God implies a continual creative transformation of that which is received from the past, in the light of the divinely received call forward, to actualize novel possibilities. Although this divine power is persuasive rather than controlling, it is nevertheless finally the most effective power in reality. In Whitehead’s words: “The pure conservative is fighting against the essence of the universe.” (Adventures in Ideas 354.)

To classic virtues (properties of being) like truth, beauty and goodness, Process adds adventure and zest precisely because of who God is! The addition of adventure and zest speak to movement (change), progression and novelty. Process, if nothing else, fully recognizes the validity of time and change.

Hence, no type of social order is to be maintained if it no longer tends to maximize the enjoyment of the members of the society. Also, it is impossible for any form of social order to continue indefinitely to be instrumentally good. God, far from being the Sanctioner of the Status Quo, is the source of some of the chaos in the world. “If there is to be progress beyond limited ideals, the course of history by way of escape must venture along the borders of chaos in its substitution of higher for lower types of order.” (Process and Reality 169.) (God is said to be the source of only some of the chaos, since only some of it can in principle lead to a higher type of order and thereby a richer form of enjoyment.)

God, in a Process perspective, provides – indeed is the source of – some of the chaos that calls into question the status quo and challenges the established order that limits the prospering of creatures.

If you think that God likes the way things are and wants to keep them the same … you may not be worshiping the God of the Bible.

This was brought to my memory when I encoutered an interesting nugget at the back of another book that had nothing to do with Process thought. Terry Eagleton in After Theory illuminates an interesting Biblical concept.

In a revolutionary reversal, true power springs from powerlessness. As St Paul writes in Corinthians: `God chose what is weakest in the world to shame the strong … even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are.’ The whole of Judaeo-Christian thought is cast in this ironic, paradoxical, up-ending mould.

The wretched of the earth are known to the Old Testament as the anawim, those whose desperate plight embodies the failure of the political order. The only valid image of the future is the failure of the present. The anawim, who are the favoured children of Yahweh, have no stake in the current set-up, and so are an image of the future in their very destitution. The dispossessed are a living sign of the truth that the only enduring power is one anchored in an acknowledgement of failure. Any power which fails to recognize this fact will be enfeebled in a different sense, fearfully defending itself against the victims of its own arrogance. Here, as often, paranoia has much to recommend it. The exercise of power is child’s play compared to the confession of weakness.

Terry Eagleton. After Theory (Kindle Locations 1882-1892). Kindle Edition.

What do we do with those aspects of the established order which don’t fit – or even shame – the established order? Do we want to sweep the anawim off the streets and hide them from view in order conceal the fact that the current system does not work for everyone?

Do we put down the dissenters? Do we turn a blind eye to ‘the poor’ so as to not acknowledge that the bell-curve is inverted and seems to be more of a trough?

Before doing so, we may want to consider this:

The authors of the New Testament see Jesus as a type of the anawim. He is dangerous because he has no stake in the present set-up. Those who speak up for justice will be done away with by the state. Society will wreak its terrible vengeance on the vulnerable. (Kindle Locations 1893-1894).

This idea cast a strange light on the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ when it talks about God’s will being done on earth and forgiving debts …

Eagleton uses the Book of Isaiah to make his big point about the failures of the system:

The Book of Isaiah is strong stuff for these post-revolutionary days. It is only left in hotel rooms because nobody bothers to read it. If those who deposit it there had any idea what it contained, they would be well advised to treat it like pornography and burn it on the spot.

As far as revolution goes, the human species divides between those who see the world as containing pockets of misery in an ocean of increasing well-being, and those who see it as containing pockets of well-being in an ocean of increasing misery. It also divides between those who agree with Schopenhauer that it would probably have been better for a great many people in history if they had never been born, and those who regard this as lurid leftist hyperbole. This, in the end, is perhaps the only political division which really counts.

(Kindle Locations 1916-1920).

 In response, I would ask:

  • What if ‘the poor’ are not an exception to a good system but are actually an indictment of it exposing the flawed gears in the machine?
  • Is God interested in turning over the established order or in preserving it?
  • Is God there for those who are wounded and needy or is God ashamed of them?
  • Is our current system mostly good with some bad exceptions that we just need to work on and tweak? Or is the system itself flawed and in deep need of re-formation and renovation?
  • Is God interested in change or simply stasis? And if so, what does God provide for that work?

These are questions that both Process and Liberation theologies ask that need to be evaluated even if one does not subscribe to those schools of thought.

The answers will impact both how one views God and how one participates in the world.

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Jesus Isn’t Superman

As you may be aware, with the release of the Man of Steel movie earlier this year there was a major push by evangelical marketing types to get preachers to focus on the messianic imagery that had been intentionally spliced into the movie. Comic-Con- Superman A_Cala

This is not my concern (although insights about that whole phenomenon would not be discouraged).

My concern is with the real and inherited christologies that show up around both Christmas and Easter. I am content most of the year to naively pretend that we all are basically talking about the same thing when we use the name of Jesus. That fiction is often shattered in Advent and Lent as we build up to the high holidays holy days.

I have often been given opportunities in recent years to introduce lay people to the concepts of ‘christology from below’ (instead of the dreaded  ‘low christology’)  and to illuminate the dangers of starting – not with a cosmic christ – but with a pre-incarnate Jesus. [selah]

Most people have never thought about the difference and the importance that it might make in how they both believe and worship … let alone live their christianity.

What I am hoping to do here is to offer you a gift exchange:  you get something from Homebrewed and in exchange you help me out with something!

The offering: The current ‘Barrel Aged’ Homebrewed Podcast is a chat with John Cobb about Advent and Incarnation.  It is in my top 10 favorite episodes that we have ever done and I got Tripp to post it specifically for this conversation. It is a delicious audiological delight. 

The request: What I am asking in exchange is for ya’all to help me come up with and clarify a list I am working on for the conversation this week at my church.  We are starting a new series called ‘Jesus Isn’t Superman’ and I am coming up with tweets to get people thinking.

Here is what I have so far:

Jesus didn’t crash on earth sent from a distant planet – Jesus was born of a women. #JesusIsntSuperman

Jesus doesn’t get powers from the yellow sun – Jesus’ power is in his relatedness & availability to God’s spirit. #JesusIsntSuperman

Jesus isn’t Christ’s Clark Kent secret identity that can be taken off when its time to walk on water. #JesusIsntSuperman

Jesus wasn’t an alien pretending to be human & secretly had a fortress of solitude to retreat to. Jesus was fully human #JesusIsntSuperman

Post your thoughts here and thanks in advance, I look forward to hearing your contributions! 

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Process, Cicadas and Time

Three things have been rattling around in by cranium while I was away this Spring.

1. The cicada’s came back. Every 17 years the Periodical Cicada Brood II emerges to rollick in the Eastern half of the U.S. for a brief but frenzied round of sex and gluttony. We will not see them again for 17 years. It is a phenomenon that always garners it’s fair share of bewilderment and awe.

cicadas

It is appropriate that this baffles most of us. We are set to think in perennial terms and oddities like this don’t fit that narrative. Underneath the soil right now is a massive swarm that we will not hear a peep from until 2030.

2. I was listening to an episode of Smiley and West’s weekly radio show while I was fixing up my parent’s house. The guests were Maceo Parker and Bill Ayers (interesting mix eh?). It was pointed out that sometimes, things just take time. Ayers’ example: Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in 1955. It was not until 1963 that the march in Birmingham took place.

Ayers points out that not everything happens in quick succession. He said this in reference to the Occupy flare-up last year and why it appears that not much has come out of them.

3. Tony Jones had the response to Jack Caputo’s address at the Subverting the Norm conference. Point 2 of Tony’s 13 points was :

Process theology had its chance. If process theology couldn’t get traction in the American church under the auspices of John Cobb in the 1970s, I doubt that it will gain traction with his acolytes. Outside of Claremont (and Homebrewed Christianity), I hear little about process theology. I am not saying that popular theology = good theology; that would make Joel Osteen a theological genius. What I’m saying is that process theology did not capture the imagination of a critical mass of clergy and laypeople in its heyday, so I doubt that it will today. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Cobb was ahead of his time, and the church is only now ready for process.

I know that Process thought will always be on the periphery. It will never be mainstream… and I am o.k. with that. Some things just work better as ‘catchers’ on the outside of the whirlwind.

Here is the thing: many Mainline, progressive or emergent church expressions don’t make that many converts. Some may even think that evangelism is wrong/trite/passé/ or coercive.

You know who does make a lot of converts? The evangelical-charismatic branch of the family. They do.

But not all of their kids or converts find the theological answer persuasive or satisfying after a while. So there is always a large supply of folks cycling out of the evangelical spin-cycle looking for better frameworks and answers … and it just so happens that Process thought can provide that.

Process thought interacts with both Biblical Scholarship and Science with flying colors.

Process even has a built-in interface for engaging other religions. It’s perfect for the pluralism that our world and time are calling for.

Yes – you have to learn some new words and it is admittedly clumsy to transition into from a classical approach. We all acknowledge that. But … and I can not overstate this … if your unhappy with the frameworks that you inherited, what have you got to lose?   Your faith?

If the alternatives are to either:

A) close your eyes and choke-down the medicine

or

B) walk away from the faith altogether

Then what is the harm is picking up some new vocabulary and concepts that allows you to navigate the tricky waters of the 21st century?

I mean, what else are you going to do for the next 17 years while we wait for the cicada’s return?

___

I have been enjoying 2 big books while I was away:

Modern Christian Thought (the twentieth century) and Essentials of Christian Theology – both have significant sections of Process influence.

Cicada Picture: H. Scott Hoffman/News & Record, via Associated Press

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The Church’s Task

In the next 24 hours I will be putting up 4 blogs – taken together, you will be able to tell what I have been thinking about the past month.  I would love your feedback on any of them.

Last month David Fitch tweeted this:

“The biggest task of today’s church is to undermine in its members the blase unexamined acceptance of secular assumptions for everyday life.”

I thought about it all day and just couldn’t be sure he was right on this one.

Now just to let you know where I am coming from:

Put that all together, I have doubts about Fitch’s assertion. Here is why:

I am increasingly suspicious that secularism is both a consequence and a side effect of Christendom. It is the West’s Frankenstein if you will. We made it. Then it took on a life of its own – a life we don’t like very much and which damages our efforts and injures our cause.  I think we have to start there.

I agree with Fitch that there is a ‘unexamined acceptance” and would go even further and say that it results in an assumption that what we see is the way it is. That our current mechanisms of organization are final forms and that the ‘as-is’ structures come with a large measure of ‘giveness’.  Tripp often applies this capitalism, nation-states and democracy. I would tack on both denominations for the church and militarism for US America.

I am just not so sure that our main task is to undermine. Maybe that is where my hangup comes. I am leery of this approach because it seems like we are defaulting the ground rules in the initial move and framing the task in a conceding first move.

I might be naive here but I am just not sure that the church needs to
A) give that much ground initially
B) frame her task in the negative.
I know it’s just so much one can do with a tweet but … there is something there that gives me caution.

So what is my constructive proposal?  I’m working on it.

I would want to frame it more like Stuart Murray does in the book Post-Christendom  and acknowledge that initial concession was early on with Constantinian Christianity. Then Christendom. Then Modernity.  With those three concessions we admit that the as-is nature of existing frameworks for both church and culture are thoroughly compromised and corrupted.

BECAUSE of that. We abandon the recuperation, rehabilitation, reclamation , and renovation projects (and mentality) all together! (all 4 faces of it).

It’s over man.  Let it go.

THEN we start new and in the positive. The 21st century provides fresh possibilities and opportunities IF ONLY we will let go the idea of getting back to something or getting something back. I know we never start from scratch – we never get back to square one. But …

I don’t want to be the undermining parasite ON the big organism. That is too small a task.  I want to partner with God in the healing of world (Tikkun Olum in Hebrew).  I want to participate in the development cosmic good – until then at least the common good. 

 

PostScript: now that I started down this “re” line I can’t stop coming up with words I want to flesh out further!
Restore: no
Re-imagine: yes
Represent: yes
Re-member: sure
Resurrect: ummmm not really
Reflect: probably

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This is the best that God can do

It is fascinating what happens to conversations when you take away one word.  Words are like little suitcases – people put understandings or concepts in them and then carry them around as self contained units. Its so easy! They come with these convenient little handles and you can you pack so much meaning in and mean so much when you just use one little word.

This can be especially dangerous in theological conversations. That one word can take paragraphs and pages to unpack. Sometimes it can be a very liberating experience to take a word off the table. Just say ‘if you can’t use that word, how would you talk about this?’ It is an amazing exercise.

 A few weeks ago I had fun asking the question “what if you can’t use the word ‘demon’ – how would you talk about these same things?”  I am suspicious that we who read the Gospels and New Testament don’t mean the same thing when we say ‘demon’ or ‘devil’ as those in 1st century region of the Mediterranean did. 

 So it was with great interest that I had an amazing conversation this past weekend with a group of very intelligent, but non-theological folks. We were talking about God and the subject of evil came up. What was fascinating is that I did not place restrictions on the conversation, it happened organically – they just don’t use the usual words! Never once did I hear

  • Theodicy
  • Omnipotent
  • Kenosis

I started thinking “what if we had this conversation without those three words?” They are great words, and that is part of the problem! People assume that they know what is packed into the words and so they throw them around with ease (they come with convenient handles after all).

Here was my opening statement that sparked the debate:

God is doing all that God can do right now in the world. What you are looking at is the best that God can do. God is not holding back. God is doing God’s best to make the world a better place that more conforms to the divine will.

You can understand why that set off sparks. The questions, comments, and concerns started flowing.  Is God more powerful than God lets on? Has God restricted Godself? Has God willingly emptied Godself of some of God’s power?  Can God pick up that power anytime God will and God is just choosing not to? 

 There are specifically 3 groups that have shaped my thinking on this: 

  1. The Kenotic Crowd – Multmaniacs mostly, but more generally people who think that God is who we have always said God to be but that some ‘emptying’ (see Philippians 2) or self-limitation has happened. God is ‘all powerful’ or ‘all mighty’ but has just chosen to act this way (free-will, etc.)
  2. The Process Perspective – Between Marjorie Suchocki, John Cobb, Catherine Keller, and Philip Clayton they have this thing covered. I thank God for Process as a conversation partner.
  3. The Caputo Contingent – with his book ‘The Weakness of God’ John Caputo shook some of us to our core and rocked our ‘foundation’.  What if God’s strength was shown in weakness?

 I have become very comfortable with the possibility that world as it exists is the best that God can do. I’m not saying that I believe that – just that I am open to that possibility.

What if God is doing all that God can do in the world right now?

What if God isn’t all-powerful but only very powerful?

Or that God’s power is a different kind of power?

What if God isn’t pretending or self-limiting?

What if God is giving all that God has to the moment?

So we don’t have to ask ‘why isn’t God stopping the genocide in Africa’. God can’t. It’s just not how it works. God is doing what God can but we are not cooperating.

Now, some will say “No, God could do more but has chosen to limit God’s self” or “God has emptied some of God’s power and given it to us as co-creators and free agents – we are misusing our power. It’s not on God.”

 I just want to throw out the question “What if this is the best that God can do?” I am comfortable with that.  

Looking forward to your thoughts!  All I ask is that you try not to use ‘theodicy’, ‘kenosis’, or ‘omnipotent’ without unpacking them.  

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Explaining Evil: 3 Unique Takes

Earlier this week I wrote about Dealing with Demons – a progressive take, and in it I mentioned that the Devil was a personification of when evil is too big and too bad for us to comprehend as a human result … we outsource to an ancient, cosmic bad guy.  Many were able to track with the demon thing but some hit a snag with the Devil thing.

Then what is evil?  Where does it come from? Is it real? Is it ontological? 

Let me entertain the 3 suggestions that were brought up by responders to the blog: Augustine, Process and Relational Reality.

Augustine had a theory called “privatio boni”. Back in my apologist-evangelist days I would explain it like this:  Evil isn’t something, it is the absence of something. Like darkness is not a thing, it is simply the absence of a thing. Wherever you do not have the presence of light, you automatically have darkness – so where God’s will is not obeyed, you automatically have sin and evil.

Of course, the problem with this is that it predicated by God being “all powerful” or omnipotent. Augustine explains:

For the Almighty God, who, as even the heathen acknowledge, has supreme power over all things, being Himself supremely good, would never permit the existence of anything evil among His works, if He were not so omnipotent and good that He can bring good even out of evil. For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good? In the bodies of animals, disease and wounds mean nothing but the absence of health; for when a cure is effected, that does not mean that the evils which were present—namely, the diseases and wounds—go away from the body and dwell elsewhere: they altogether cease to exist; for the wound or disease is not a substance, but a defect in the fleshly substance,—the flesh itself being a substance, and therefore something good, of which those evils—that is, privations of the good which we call health—are accidents. Just in the same way, what are called vices in the soul are nothing but privations of natural good. And when they are cured, they are not transferred elsewhere: when they cease to exist in the healthy soul, they cannot exist anywhere else.

An alternative to that comes from Process thought – which does not see God’s power as coercive (able to unilaterally act however God wills) but persuasive, engaging the possibilities of each moment, complete the contingencies of the past, to bring forward the possibility of a preferable future. John Cobb explains in Process Perspectives II that there are many factors that create the multi-layered web of evil. Human sin is just one element. He also names

  • Chance and Purpose
  • Survival instinct
  • Communal Identity – and fear when it is threatened
  • Deep held but mistaken beliefs
  • Institutions
  • Obedience of authority

among others, as potential ingredients in the creation of evil.

 I want to make it clear that the systemic evil of degrading the Earth in our current situation is not primarily the result of individual sins of unnecessary wastefulness by those who know they are falling short of the ideal. The systemic evil results from our industrial-economic system. This system came into being out of a great mixture of motives. Some of them were narrowly selfish, and some of the decisions people made in the process were no doubt sinful. But not all. Some people rightly saw that the development of this system brought prosperity to nations and eventually to most of their people…

Since I believe that to some extent we all miss the mark or fail to fully actualize the initial aim, I do not exclude sin as a causal element in the establishment of this system. My point is only that to explain the rise to dominance of this system primarily in terms of sin is extremely misleading. The evil results from a mixture of good intentions, ignorance, and sin. It is also profoundly brought about by the power of the past in each moment of human experience. (p. 135)

 A third option for thinking about this is a Relational Approach. I first encountered this through reading Native American approaches to theology with my mentor Randy Woodley (who’s new book Shalom and the Community of Creation  just came out).

If you go back to the story of Eden and can resist the temptation to retroject a Greek understanding of ‘original sin’ and substance into the story, you will see that it is primarily about relationship. What happens in Eden is a fracturing and a resulting alienation in 3 directions:

  1. humans from God
  2. humans from each other
  3. and humans from the earth that sustains them.

As Genesis continues, the fractures stretch out and the impact of the alienation is greater and greater. Soon brother kills brother, generations are fractured … then tribes, peoples and societies.

I love this approach! Once you get away from the substance/material approach the whole Gospel reads differently!  God’s relational covenant with Israel and the resulting Law, Christ’s relationship to the God and ushering in a new covenant which radically altered (and began to repaired) our relationship to God – to each other – and to the earth which sustains us (where do you think bread and wine come from?)

The gift of Holy Spirit re-connects us in an inter-related family of God. The perichoretic reality of the Trinity is about the relatedness of the Godhead and not primarily about matters of substance and matter (ousia). Evil in this picture, is that which results from brokeness and fracturing, which leads to alienation, and is then complixified through  exponential increase of family systems, tribalism, social structures, societal realities and institutional frameworks … it becomes so big and so bad that it is nearly unimaginable to our mind. At this point we are tempted to outsource the badness to an ‘entity’ which is the personification of evil.

So those are three really good ways of beginning to address the problem of evil. They all have strengths and weakness – but in the end, they are better than saying ‘the Devil made me do it’.

I will end by quoting Cobb again:

 The ways in which even what is good in human nature and society can and does become destructive are so numerous and so effective that the mystery is how good sometimes triumphs over it. This is where I see the need to emphasize God’s directing and empowering call to novel forms of goodness.

John B. Cobb Jr.. The Process Perspective II (p. 137). Kindle Edition which sells for $7.63

originally posted at HBC with an amazing follow-up conversation

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Economy and Ecology: the future of the past (part 3 of 3)

I left off in part 2 by imagining what might be on the other side of the ‘bridge’ after we get past the two trolls of colonial christianity and environmental dualism. My hope is that there is a different way to be in the world.

I admit that we can’t go back. We can’t undo Colonization. We aren’t going back to family farms. We can’t refreeze the polar ice caps or re-create the Glaciers in Glacier National Park.  As they say ‘we shall not pass this way again’.

My hope is not to reclaim some previous ideal of human community. My desire is to explore a realistic assessment of what is possible (and preferable) given the past developments and as-is structures of existence.

Here are three groups/conversations that give me a little hope:

The Environmental-Philosophical crowd. People like Bill McKibben have been sounding the alarm for quite a while and have since moved to talking about a radically different planet termed “Eaarth” in which we will need to go small and local.

On a larger scale, our whole civilization stands on the edge of collapse because the data inputted into our risk management models come from the last couple of hundred years, a very atypical time. A giddy time, high on oil… Our time, on every front, has been marked by the dizzying Alice-on-her-first-pill explosion in the size of the human enterprise. For almost all of human history, our society was small and nature was large; in a few brief decades that key ratio has reversed. – p. 105

Native Communities: Three years ago I got to take part in two conferences that altered the way I see the world and think about the future. The first was the Theology of the Land conference at George Fox Seminary. The second was a NAIITS gathering at the George Fox undergrad campus. Randy Woodley continues to be a voice of reason and reconciliation in an increasingly complex environment. I am anxiously anticipating the release of his newest book this year that deals with the concept of Shalom and Creation.

Process and Eco-Feminist Theology: Last month I helped organize an event that brought together the Emergent church and Process theology.  One of the key folks in that conversation is John Cobb, author of Spiritual Bankruptcy. Cobb’s and others in the conversation are deeply involved in both ecology and economy from a theological perspective. I was greatly encouraged to hear about projects from around the country of communities taking seriously the reality we find ourselves in. From small neo-monastic communities to universities to political & civil engagements, there is a growing awareness that something has got to change.

  • The way that we have lived
  • the rate at which we have used resources
  • the expectations for perpetual growth
  • and economic prosperity

have exhausted creation and bankrupted modern human civilization.

This is not a ‘the sky is falling’ mentality. This is a ‘new reality’ perspective that the damage is done and we can not go back or turn back the clock. This just is the way it is now. But if global capitalism, and its mutant offspring – consumerism, continue to go unchecked … let me say it a different way: the church has a message and a historic practice that can engage voices of health and community. Unfortunately, the church herself has been seduced and gone into the business of supply and demand. Those days need to come to an end. It betrays her calling and compromises her message.

The first step is to repent of the Cartesian dualism and the second is to resign from the colonial impulse. After that we can embrace the truth that we are both a product of and a participant in nature and that mutually edifying, inter-connected, trans-national, multi-racial community is our hope for the future.

The expectation of one big global community is ruining us. The future is small, diverse, multiple, and interdependent.

originally posted at Ethnic Space

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John Cobb: what went wrong with the Mainline?

Last week I was editing the 101st episode of Homebrewed Christianity. It was a conversation primarily between Paul Capetz and John Cobb. It was a fantastic theological dialogue … and then then subject turned toward practical matters.

What happened to the Mainline church? Why is it in such decline?

It turns out the answer, according to Cobb, is both complex and not absent of theology.

He details three major shifts that were a recipe for disaster:

The first shift was an acculturation. In post World War 2 America, there was a boom in church attendance as it played a vital role both socially and in the family. In a twist of fate, the Mainline churches (and social gospel) were successful – maybe too successful. The church got comfortable. The church liked its forms – especially liturgy. The church was satisfied with the direction and changes of society. Cobb doesn’t use the word complacency but self-satisfaction about success can become paralyzing in future discussions.

The second shift was a diminishing of the importance of theology. It was the ecumenical  mentality and apathetic attitude toward theological difference  that somehow resulted in a mentality that it doesn’t really matter so much what you believe about this specific or that. At some point one has to think that this casualness about theology is not simply laziness but an abdication of core responsibilities.

The third shift came in the 70’s when the Liberation Theologies showed up and “they knew exactly what they believed and were not afraid to say so.” The Mainline was impotent and irrelevant by comparison. (my words, not Cobb’s)

When you put these three together, you see a perfect storm: loss of intensity due to acculturation, loss of identity due to theological abandonment, and loss of relevance (potency) due to shifting contexts. Continue reading “John Cobb: what went wrong with the Mainline?” →

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