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Evangelical and Liberal

I have stumbled into the most fascinating conversation.

Background: I work at an evangelical institution. I recently worked at a liberal mainline church while attending a liberal mainline school. I was raised evangelical and am ordained as an evangelical. It was interesting being in a mainline context for 7 years and it is equally as interesting to return to an evangelical context now.

I was talking about this with a colleague two weeks ago because a group that I am a part of is planning to simply its name but it will no longer contain with word ‘evangelical’. This decision was made before the recent US election in which 81% of white evangelicals voted for Trump. The group is afraid that this decision will now appear to be a reactive move.

I find three unspoken things going on in this discussion. Unspoken things are concerning because the assumed is unexamined and is often a source of operative power at a secondary register which hides behind the primary concerns.

Here are my 3 concerns:

  • ‘Evangelical’ has become a floating or migrating signifier. It does not mean what it used to mean and most people who use the term cannot tell you what it means. (Personally, I use an expanded version of Bebbington’s fourfold definition.)
  • The dominant boogeyman for evangelicals is being ‘liberal’ – another term which most cannot define, which has caused it to become a code-word and a boundary-marker. Liberal, to evangelicals, seems to be a place-holder and a sort of dog-whistle for being open and accepting. Using the label this way has resulted in the word operating as a master signifier.
  • Evangelicalism in the Pacific NW (where I recently returned to) is a unique type of evangelicalism which is highly visible and influential but which functions on a narrative whereby they are a minority who get the short end of the stick socially, politically, and culturally.

I find this stuff fascinating. As someone who has lived all over N. America, who has evangelical cred (I went to the Billy Graham school of evangelism for crying out loud), who has worked and studied with liberal mainline folks, and who is a committed social constructivist … I feel like I am in the vortex of a cultural and historic moment. I have friends in both camps and am comfortable in both conversations, but this is an eye-opening moment for both.

 

I was doing some research last week on a different issue and stumbled into a conversation from 2008 that is growing increasingly relevant. It centers around the work of University of Washington professor James K. Wellman in “Evangelical vs. Liberal: The Clash of Christian Cultures in the Pacific Northwest”.

A review in the Seattle Times by Bob Simmons starts this way:

“The “evangelicals” of James K. Wellman Jr.’s new book know there’s only one way to God, and it’s their way. The “liberals” know there’s more than one way and are still questioning theirs. By numerical and other earthly measures, the evangelicals are winning big in the Pacific Northwest. The only question is your definition of winning.”

The research is amazing. It shows that evangelical churches are larger by a 10-1 margin and are growing at an incredible rate. However … they often feel marginalized politically, oppressed culturally, and even victimized by public policy.

This is exactly what I had been telling my colleague! I have never lived in a place that felt more christian-y with so many Christian radio stations, Christian book stores, and large churches surrounded by asphalt lakes/moats (which I call a island/castle mentality) … all the while feeling that they are losing the culture war!

It is sad because the evangelicals are doing a tremendous job in so many ways. They really should be enjoying this kind of success. As Wellman writes:

“Evangelicals have an ideology that is centered on growth, and is in relation to the self, to God, to the family, the church, and the mission of the religion. Evangelicals have accommodated styles of group work that appeal to northwesterners because they activate a sense of belonging and moral accountability.”

A different article points out that, “while liberals sermonize about the importance of building a religious community, the evangelicals are living out community”, supporting financially, relationally, and spiritually.

What I am finding in these conversations has been complex and multi-layered. It turns out that when liberals talk about evangelicals, they are often commenting on two aspects: worship style (happy clappy) and politics (by which they mean women in ministry and LGBT support). Evangelicals in a similar way, use the moniker ‘liberal’ as a kind of a double-code. The first layer is supporting/accepting the LGBT community – and here is where it gets tricky – which is actually a metonym for “biblical authority”. In this sense, neither group is exactly representing the focus of the other group accurately.

I have so many thoughts that I am sure that this will be an ongoing theme for me in 2017.

One final note – you may be aware that I have developed an interpretive scheme for a potential book on the church that looks at how N. American churches relate to the ‘system’ or the ways things are. Churches fall into 3 primary categories: Prophetic, Therapeutic, or Messianic.

  • Prophetic churches critique the ‘as is’ structures to confront the system. Prophetic churches look toward the marginalized and those being run over by the machine.
  • Therapeutic churches help folks exist within the system. ‘Chaplains to the Empire’ as we say. Therapeutic churches work within the ‘ways things are’ to help make you a better version of yourself.
  • Messianic churches focus on helping one survive until God delivers us from the system. This can be rapture, evacuation, eschatological, etc.  Messianic churches often have animosity toward culture’s slippery slope ‘slouch toward Gomorrah’ and view change as resistance. Anything else is just ‘rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic’.

I reference that quickly (there is a whole book chapter that fleshes it out) in order to say that I found an amazing quote in another review.

For liberals and evangelicals, Jesus is the central focus, “but in the case of liberals, Jesus is the focus that offers compassion and hospitality to the world; in the case of evangelicals, Jesus is a source that saves them from the world by creating a new one to come” (p. 268).

I would love to hear your thoughts, concerns, or questions.

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Excited about Easter: resurrected faith

Across N. America, the two largest groups of people who are reclaiming their faith are traditionally parents of little ones who are settling down and putting down roots – and those who are finding a different version of faith in a new community or expression.

Various labels are often assigned to this second group: unchurched, post-christian, or the ‘nones’. However one classifies this trend, this category is often populated by those who were raised in a fundamentalist, evangelical or even mainline tradition and have walked away.

The faith of their upbringing either doesn’t fit, doesn’t make sense or just isn’t useful anymore.

But then something happens.

The trigger may be a crisis or an unsatisfied hunger or the birth of child. Whatever initiates the change of season is not predictable. What is predictable, however, is that in a search for a community or church there is a tangible desire to connect with a vibrant but thoughtful expression of ones faith.

In my dual-role at the church, I am in a unique position to see both groups

  • finding something lost
  • connecting with something deep
  • awakening to something new

There is something so refreshing and hopeful about finding a spiritual community where you can plug-in to ministries that are making the world a better place and you don’t have to check your brain at the door.

As the Minister of Children, Youth and Families I have seen dozens of young families tie into the life of the church community through the liturgical Sanctuary worship. It brings great joy to my heart to watch their little one get settled into the nursery, Pre-K or Sunday School routine and know that their child has a spiritual home that will nurture them and facilitate that child’s growth into a mature believer who can intelligently embrace a faith that will carry them for the rest of their life. Touch screen mobile phone, in hand

As the co-Pastor of the Loft I have heard dozens of stories from people who had walked away from faith and who have seen that faith resurrected in our unique environment filled with coffee, couches and conversation.

As someone raised evangelical, I confess that it makes my heart sing to hear stories of resurrected faith!

I don’t apologize for my inherited soft-spot toward stories of renewal and awakening.

Many people have stories of reclaiming their childhood faith but have no interest in continuing to hold onto childish ideas. Our faith is supposed to be child-like but the 21st century requires that it be thoughtful and vibrant.

Heading into Easter this year, I have been thinking about all of the young families who have dusted off their commitment to a faith community as well as those for whom faith had all but died, and how for both this Easter is going to seem especially meaningful.

It is an exciting time to be at a church that is committed to issues of justice, thoughtful in its approach and expanding its ability to connect with the community.

Whether it is an awakening of a dormant faith or the resurrection of something that had completely died, faith is being renewed in the life of the church.

We are an Easter people and that means we are always coming into new life.

I pray that you are as encouraged and excited as I am in the lead up to Easter. 

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Apple Updates & the Church

I have been thinking about the church and technology a lot lately. Part of it comes from planning to update a sanctuary constructed in 1951. Some of it has to do with recruiting a team to handle all the tech stuff at ‘church plant’. A bit of it came from the odd analogy that was used repeatedly about the ‘glitches’ related to the initial launch of the Affordable Health Care Act website and all of the sigh-up problems. People, including the President, said “yeah but even Apple has glitches when it first launches a product”.

An inexact comparison to be sure.

One of the questions that we are asking at the Loft LA, as we enter into our second year, is:

“What does it mean to use the Ancient-Future model of church in West LA?”17-85-BE3-134-08.0006-John Wesley

We come out of a United Methodist Church – which is a classic and beautiful expression of the Mainline tradition of Protestant Christianity.  The Loft is attempting to reclaim and hold onto the best of that inherited tradition … while at the same time engaging the culture around us in way that is contemporary and appropriate.
I’ll confess. It is a tricky section of water to navigate.

To use my favorite bowling analogy, there are gutters on each side that you want to avoid.
On the one side, you have a temptation to cater to the culture and concede so much of the Christian tradition that you have basically assimilated to the surrounding culture that you are nearly indistinguishable from it! This can happen in patterns of consumption, political views, sexuality, financial matters, or any other number of areas.

On the other side, you have the assumption that the inherited tradition, the given forms, are inherently relevant and effective in every place and in ever time since they were divinely delivered and historically proven. What this impulse to conserve leads to is reification of some previous era or expression of church that was culturally appropriate by which has since expired in its effectiveness in doing so. For a group whose gospel is, at its core, about incarnation … this is unacceptable.

This is why we think that the ‘Ancient-Future model’ of church is the best way forward for a young community.
Here is a short video about my recent experience with an old Apple TV that was given to me and why it triggered some thoughts about christian community for me.

Apple Updates and the Church from Bo Sanders on Vimeo.

In technology, when you fall enough behind on your updates, you can actually trap yourself with the inability to update. This is the definition of irrelevant. The christian spirituality that is employed in much of the North American church may be in this kind of danger. I am nervous that we are looking to get resources (updates) from sources (servers) that don’t exist anymore.

We are looking for solutions in things that don’t exist anymore.

The danger, for a religion that is at its core incarnation, is that the inability to be conversant with the surrounding culture in the epitome of irrelevance.

__________

Ancient-Future is a model that was popularized by Robert Webber before he changed his emphasis, focus and tone at the end of his life. His books on Faith, Worship, Evangelism and Time are supremely helpful and informative. 

My quoting him does not imply a wholesale endorsement of all of his works or thoughts. 

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Religion and Consumerism’s Bricolage: in conversation with Philip Clayton

A couple of weeks ago I had a very interesting conversation with Philip Clayton. Several of us went out for lunch after the High Gravity session on Religion & Science. We were at a restaurant where the walls were decorated with a busy collection of reclaimed signs, old pictures and re-purposed trinkets.

Dr. Clayton was across the table from me and at one point I look up to notice that above his head was a sign that read ‘Holy’ on one side and ‘Holy’ at the other end. The words ‘Holy – Holy’ were framing either side of his head. IMG_2884

I tried to come up with something clever to say, scouring my memory for some passage from the Hebrew Bible or the book of Revelation to tweak. The window of opportunity closed because the conversation was quite intense. That morning the topic had been ‘Science & Religion’ and now we had expanded it to ‘Religion & Society’ – or more specifically to ‘Church & Culture’.

The conversation intensified and it became clear that neither Dr. Clayton nor Tripp was too happy with my cynical take on consumer mentalities when it comes to consuming religious experiences within a capitalist framework.

At one point I said “it is like that sign behind you: it’s not like the holy is absent from the space and all the activity that happening here – it’s just that it blends in and goes unnoticed in the midst of all the bricolage that it melts into.”

Somebody had reclaimed that wooden sign. There is a story behind it – there might have even been more to it (I wondered if it used to have a 3rd ‘Holy’ further down the line that had been lost).

But that is my point! In any gathering there are going to be those (like us at that table) who think that what is happening is legitimate, sincere, authentic, important and worth organizing your life around. The congregation is also going to be largely made up of those who are consuming a religious experience – and it is financially worth about the same amount as a movie, a meal, a game or a show.*

I will go even further: this is my great hesitation with those who want to ‘go back’ or ‘conserve’ with their religious participation. This impulse was never more evident to me than when I began interacting with those were into Radical Orthodoxy or with evangelicals who had converted to Eastern Orthodoxy or Catholicism. The ‘zeal of the convert’ can be a telling element when it comes to the anti-modern or counter-modern impulse.

An incongruity is exposed in the counter-modern impulse of these conserving movements. Never mind for a moment that often what is being conserved is born out of a patriarchal model – set that aside for a second.

I will attempt to make this in 4 succinct points:

  1. You do not live in the 14th or 16th century.
  2. You do not think like someone in a previous century.
  3. You do not engage in the rest of your week as someone in a previous century.
  4. You chose, as a consumer within a capitalist framework, to participate.

Those four things signal to me that even the most sincere, authentic, devout, and thorough engagement – whether a Pentecostal, Evangelical, Orthodox, Anglican, RO, Catholic, Mainline or Congregational expression – must account for the ubiquitous consumerism within which we all are saturated.

Dr. Clayton rightly said that I while I had a good point I was proceeding in far too cynical a manner with it. He is correct of course.

My aggressiveness is born out of a deep concern. What we say the church is about – what we believe the very gospel to be – is so vital and so needed in the world today, that we can not afford to ‘play pretend’ about previous centuries and blindly participate in consumerism all the while trumpeting the virtue of our chosen ecclesiastic community.**

The danger, in my opinion, is that religious communities will become nothing more than decorations on the corner of a neighborhood or one more option at the mall food-court. 

For christian believers, the holy is all round us. We can not afford for it to disappear among the bricolage nature of our hyper-advertised media-saturated existence.

The gospel, at its core, is incarnational. Our central story as Christians is flesh and blood in a neighborhood. The whole project is contextual – it only happens in a time and a place. We can never escape that. That is why romantic notions of past centuries or early manifestations can be dangerous distractions and fantastical facades.

We can’t afford to fade into the bricolage. IMG_2886

 

* plus it usually comes with free babysitting. 

** Some might object that they have not chosen but rather have ‘stayed’. I would argue that they did within the consumer’s capacity to do so. 

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‘Who am I to judge?’ is an honest question

It is no secret that  I am a fan of many of the things (not all)  that the new Pope has been up to. So I was very intrigued when it came out that on his cross-Atlantic flight he took the airplane microphone and addressed reporters. RNS-Pope-Francis-flight-home-Catholic-News-Service

I was also surprised by the reports of the following sentence:

“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” — Pope Francis, July 2013

The running joke is of course that if you are the Pope … it’s kinda your job description! You might be the only person who is allowed to judge in some of your followers estimations.

These things have landed Francis on the cover of this month’s Sojourners magazine. They are advertising it this way:

Francis—refreshingly candid and seemingly repelled by the perks of the papacy—offers new hope for the Catholic Church and beyond. From the symbolism of him stooping to wash a Muslim woman’s feet to his harsh lambasts against a culture of greed and consumerism, this Jesuit from Argentina has captured the collective imagination of the world.

This has me thinking over the past week about the topic of judging. When I was an evangelical preacher we were very clear to distinguish between judging – which is defined by its connection to wrath – and evaluating ‘a tree by its fruit’  which christians are also commanded by Jesus to do.

Yes Jesus said ‘Do not judge’ but Jesus also said you can tell a tree by its fruit. The question “who am I to judge” seems to be a rhetorical one.

Even Miley Cyrus knows that Only God Can Judge, as she proclaims in her new video (for which I am sure that she should be judged harshly).

Now I am a pastor at a Mainline church in LA and I can honestly say that it is the least judgmental place I have ever been… but is that a good thing?  Don’t we need to make some moral evaluations?

I was getting ready to ask the HBC crowd how they have learned to navigate this cultural conundrum when my new favorite persons to quote – Brene Brown – came out with this tweet:

“When you judge yourself for asking for help, you are always judging when you give help.” – @BreneBrown

Judging is clearly on people’s minds these day. It is everywhere in our cultural conversation. As we transition out of post-Christendom and cultural revolutions of 1970’s into an information age where everything is available to everyone all of the time … and your mom is your friend of Facebook ….  here is an honest question:

How are your navigating the challenge of “Judge not lest you be judged” ?

one favor I ask: let me know if you are even trying to live up to Jesus’ commands or if you have left that behind. I have a feeling it might make a difference in this discussion.  

Photo: Pope Francis addresses journalists on his flight from Rio de Janeiro to Rome, July 29. (Paul Haring/Catholic News Service)

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the Death of the Liberals is killing us

In chapter 1 of his book Death of Liberal Class, Chris Hedges sketches both the height of the Liberal era in the 19th century and its cataclysmic implosion with the arrival of World War in the 20th. The disillusionment of human evil, aggression, and suffering deflated the optimism of innate human goodness and inevitable progress that Liberalism is founded upon.
To understand the profound impact of Liberalism’s demise, it helps to make sure one understands the difference between Classical Liberalism and it’s contemporary milquetoast descent that slinks around in straw-man form on our 24 hours news cycle.
Hedges explains (pp. 6-7) “Classical liberalism was formulated largely as a response to the dissolution of feudalism and church authoritarianism. … (It) has, the philosopher John Gray writes, four principle features, or perspectives, which give it a recognizable identity. It is :

  • individualist, in that it asserts the moral primacy of the person against any collectivity;
  • egalitarian, in that it confers on all human beings the same basic moral status;
  • universalist, affirming the moral unity of the species;
  • and meliorist, in that it asserts the openended improvability, by use of critical reason, of human life

Both John Cobb (Mainline)  and Clayton Crockett (Radical Political Theology) use very similar formulations in their recent Homebrewed  podcasts. Cobb, by focusing on the demise of the Mainline and Crockett, by focusing on the Evangelical and Religious Right, articulate the monumental shift in the religious-political landscape in the past century.
The Mainline denominations are in a collapse narrative and it makes perfect sense why when one examines both the way liberal thought partnered with power in the 20th Century and the way that conducted itself (largely) within the shifting landscape of post-war realities at home and globalization abroad.

“In a traditional democracy, the liberal class functions as a safety valve. It makes piecemeal and incremental reform possible. It offers hope for change and proposes gradual steps toward greater equality. It endows the state and the mechanisms of power with virtue. It also serves as an attack dog that discredits radical social movements, making the liberal class a useful component within the power elite. But the assault by the corporate state on the democratic state has claimed the liberal class as one of its victims…
The inability of the liberal class to acknowledge that corporations have wrested power from the hands of citizens, that the Constitution and its guarantees of personal liberty have become irrelevant, and that the phrase consent of the governed is meaningless, has left it speaking and acting in ways that no longer correspond to reality. It has lent its voice to hollow acts of political theater, and the pretense that democratic debate and choice continue to exist.”  (pp. 9-10)

We talked yesterday about the fictitious nature of the supposed Left-Right spectrum.  For those of us who participate in christ centered communities and organizations, what does this mean?  While incomplete, here is my little experiment to come up with a game-plan for a start.

  1. We stop using the label ‘Liberal’ generically for anything that is not Conservative… especially to be dismissive.  Liberal is a very specific ethical  framework and it takes quite a commitment to liberal. It is not a default position.
  2. We disavow the left-right , conservative-liberal split as farcical. It doesn’t exist. Obama is a Centrist Democrat. Romney is a Centrist Republican. Any idea that Obama is a radical is ridiculous.* We repent of lazy language & thought.
  3. We wake up as the church that the role the Liberals used to play in the system does not function. There is no moderating or buffering presence to bring a corrective to the system. Thus, participating in the system as-it-now-exists will not fix the system. The corporate hold over every aspect of our political system is pervasive.
  4. We step up as the church in the revelation that government is not going to fulfill the expectation to
  • bring good news to the poor (Economy)
  • restore sight to the blind (Medical)
  • release to the captive  (Legal)
  • lift up the broken hearted (Compassion)

The church can do these things! We have deferred to the political system for too long. We have outsourced our responsibility to society but now live with the remains of the bloated carcass Christendom. With the death of the liberal class resistance to corporate rule and unchecked consumerism is impotent. The Citizen’s United ruling is just one step on long trail … but we know where it leads.
There are churches in every community and there may be no greater existing potential than us! **  I know it sounds dreamy, but in the rest of this series I want to flesh it out. By the end, it might not seem as far-fetched as it does right now.
– Bo Sanders
 
*Wall Street campaign funding, legalizing assassination, and Guantanamo Bay are your first 3 hints.
**  The danger of course is that we keep voting based on two issues while turning a blind eye to  corporate rule, environmental deregulation, and perpetual war.

 

This post is the beginning of a new series and was co-posted on Homebrewed Christianity.

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