The American Heresy

From Jody Bottum's very fine essay on American Protestantism in the latest First Things, a brief analysis of the theology of Katherine Jefferts Schori, presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church:

To be saved, we need only to realize that God already loves us, just the way we are, Schori wrote in her 2006 book, A Wing and a Prayer. She’s not exactly wrong about God’s love, but, in Schori’s happy soteriology, such love demands from us no personal ­reformation, no individual guilt, no particular penance, and no precise dogma. All we have to do, to prove the redemption we already have, is support the political causes she approves. The mission of the church is to show forth God’s love by demanding inclusion and social justice. She often points to the United Nations as an example of God’s work in the world, and when she talks about the mission of the Episcopal Church, she typically identifies it with the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals ... Her Yahweh, in other words, is a blend of Norman Vincent Peale and Dag Hammarskjöld.

The Norman Vincent Peale bit, I think, is particularly telling, because it gets at something that I think is often missed about the current religious landscape: Namely, the extent to which Schori's theological premises are shared across the culture-war divide, by Christians who oppose gay marriage and abortion and voted eagerly for George W. Bush as well as by liberal Protestants who consider the contemporary GOP an abomination. Peale's heirs occupy the pulpits of what remains of the Protestant mainline, but they preach from the dais at numerous evangelical megachurches as well. The people who read Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer and The Prayer of Jabez may be more politically conservative then the people who read A Wing and a Prayer, and read certain passages of Genesis and Leviticus more literally, but the theology they're imbibing is roughly the same sort of therapeutic mush. Indeed, the big difference between the prosperity gospel that Osteen and his ilk are peddling and Schori's liberal Episcopalianism has less to do with any theological principle and more to do with what aspect of American life they want God to validate. And this difference, I suspect, has a great deal to do with social class. Osteen and Co.'s God wants us to pursue financial fulfillment because they're largely preaching to entrepreneurial, upwardly-mobile members of the middle class, whereas Schori's God wants us to pursue a more personal fulfillment - sexually, emotionally, philanthropically - because she's preaching to a demographic that, financially speaking, has already got it made. (Which, in turn, is why it isn't a surprise that as American evangelicals grow more prosperous, they're starting to discover their God's Dag Hammarskjöld side as well.)

Obviously the world of religious conservatism also includes lots of people who are invested in actual Christian orthodoxy, as opposed to the Osteen-Shori vision of God as a really powerful life coach. But the theological continuum that encompasses both Schori-style liberal Protestants and Oprah-watching, The Secret-reading spiritual seekers - call it moralistic therapeutic deism, call it gnosticism, call it the American heresy - extends way deeper into the "religious right" than a lot of people think.

Comments

I prefer the term American heresy. The prosperity gospel is something I've found to be popular in Americans because it fit into pre-existing philosophies that are popular in America; ie the mythology of the self-made millionaire. Sure you might quote the long history of Christianity's position against materialism, or many biblical quotes against materialism, but since materialism is part of American culture, American heresy embraces the prosperity gospel. I liken it to those ancient Celts who turned Samhain into Halloween, only Samhain is but one day, not a life philosophy.

Posted by freddiemac | July 24, 2008 4:27 PM

Orthodox Reform Christians and conservative Catholics pay scant attention to such trifles as Catherine Jefferts Schori. While the sclerotic mainline Protestant churches drift into obscurity, outfits like First Things and the Anscombe Society of Princeton are laying a foundation that in the long run will revive serious Christianity in America.

Jody Bottum is concerned that the Catholics and evangelicals won't have the strong moral influence of the mainline Protestant era; in my view both these groups on issues of abortion, marriage, and bio-ethics have a strong voice in the public square.

Posted by Peter Leavitt | July 24, 2008 4:41 PM

Many of us on the Protestant side of things have long noted the triumph of the therapeutic--though I frankly think one finds it more on the right than on the left. And while you're right about the relatively low position of "precise dogma" to the liberal Protestant world view, that low position has been implicit in American evangelicalism since at least the Second Great Awakening. If your theological emphasis is on the direct agency of God in providing Grace, the role of theological enforcers gets weakened, even among theologically serious folk such as the Puritans. Moreover, the scriptures themselves are replete with attacks on ritualistic and legalistic punctilio--both from the prophets and from Jesus Himself--and repeatedly declare that the Lord only requires that one do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with one's God. Come to think of it, Micah and Bishop Schori don't sound all that far apart.

Posted by David in Nashville | July 24, 2008 4:47 PM

Simply as an empirical matter, we devote far more energy to materialism than to religious matters. Instead of making great cathedrals, buildings dedicated to the glory of God, we make sky scrapers devoted to capitalism. Our society might then be considered fundamentally materialist rather than religious. As such, it sort of makes sense that religion would transform into apologetics that lend the credibility of the old way to the new. That seems to be what's happening here, and the result is either vulgar (the prosperity gospel) or disgustingly precious (the mainline's morally therapeutic deism). It's almost enough to make this atheist long for the syllabus of errors.

Posted by Robert | July 24, 2008 5:02 PM

The Presiding Bishop's name is Katharine Jefferts Schori, and in second reference it's Jefferts Schori, not Schori as is incorrect througout this opinion.

Posted by Neva Rae Fox | July 24, 2008 5:02 PM

I don't purport to be an expert in Christian history by any means, but isn't this simply the latest affect of an age-old divide between Christians who seek salvation by faith and Christians who seek salvation through works?

Joel Osteen and Katherine Jefferts Schori have this theological concept in common because they are protestants, i.e., doctrinal descendants of Luther, who declared that salvation was by faith alone.

Ross Douthat, on the other hand, rejects this theological concept because his doctrinal antecedent is Roman Catholicism, whose doctrines regarding salvation were among the things that the PROTESTants were protesting against.

I realize I am oversimplifying tremendously. But isn't this, at bottom, what the dispute is all about.

Posted by Dilan Esper | July 24, 2008 5:13 PM

I think the dispute is really about something quite different, Dilan. You'll notice that Bottum refers to support for specific causes as the requirement for salvation for Schori. That is a work, rather than faith. Furthermore, the lifecoach type philosophy is generally about promoting personal prosperity, which is also a work. The following passage from Benedict XVI, I think, adequately describes Schori's philosophy, while the Olsteenish self-help theology is distinct, but no less anthropocentric at bottom.

"Then there was a shift to Christocentrism, to the doctrine that Christ is the center of everything. But it is not only the Church that is divisive -- so the argument continues -- since Christ belongs exclusively to Christians. Hence the further step from Christocentrism to theocentrism. This has allegedly brought us closer to the community of religions, but our final goal continues to elude us, since even God can be a cause of division between religions and between people.

Therefore, it is claimed, we must now move toward "regnocentrism," that is, toward the centrality of the Kingdom. This at last, we are told, is the heart of Jesus' message, and it is also the right formula for finally harnessing mankind's positive energies and directing them toward the world's future. "Kingdom," on this interpretation, is simply the name for a world governed by peace, justice, and the conservation of creation. It means no more than this. This "Kingdom" is said to be the goal of history that has to be attained. This is supposedly the real task of religions: to work together for the coming of the "Kingdom." They are of course perfectly free to preserve their traditions and live according to their respective identities as well, but they must bring their different identities to bear on the common task of building the "Kingdom," a world, in other words, where peace, justice and respect for creation are dominant values.

This sounds good; it seems like a way of finally enabling the whole world to appropriate Jesus' message, but without requiring missionary evangelization of other religions. It looks as if now, at long last, Jesus' words have gained some practical content, because the establishment of the "Kingdom" has become a common task and is drawing nigh. On closer examination, though, it seems suspicious. Who is to say what justice is? What serves justice in particular situations? How do we create peace? On closer inspection, this whole project proves to be utopian dreaming without any real content, except insofar as its exponents tacitly presuppose some partisan doctrine as the content that all are required to accept.

But the main thing that leaps out is that God has disappeared; man is the only actor left on the stage. The respect for religious "traditions" claimed by this way of thinking is only apparent. The truth is that they are regarded as so many sets of customs, which people should be allowed to keep, even though they ultimately count for nothing. Only the organization of the world counts. Religion matters only insofar as it can serve the objective. This post-Christian vision of faith and religion is disturbingly close to Jesus' third temptation."
Jesus of Nazareth, 53-55

Posted by rab | July 24, 2008 5:37 PM

I agree with David in Nashville, the therapeutic Norman Vincent Peale element is actually more prominent among evangelicals than mainliners these days. Mostly because mainliners already feel pretty good about themselves . . . .

Posted by y81 | July 24, 2008 5:52 PM

The Anglican tradition is not Lutheran. There have been movements within the Church between a more Protestant understanding and a more Catholic understanding, but the Anglican Church considers itself both Catholic and reformed. As a cradle Episcopalian, it has always been my understanding that we are not saved by faith alone, although it would seem to me that there is no strict adherence to any theology in this regard. My own church tended to be more Anglo-Catholic, whereas some Episcopal churches tend to be much more Protestant and Evangelical. This, of course, is one of the underlying reasons why the Anglican communion is on the verge of schism. From what I've seen, the theology of the Episcopal Church is mainly to do what feels right. At this point, the Joel Osteens of the world meet the Jefferts Schoris and I seriously consider joining a church that believes in its doctrines (i.e. the Roman Catholic Church).

Posted by Stuart | July 24, 2008 5:53 PM

rab and Stuart:

Obviously, you have more understanding about this than I do, but I am not sure that the intellectual currents between the two positions are that different from the intellectual currents behind salvation by faith and salvation by works.

Salvation by faith, after all, emphasizes the idea that God loves everyone and that God has a plan for you and that God wants and expects everyone to follow that plan. Jefferts Schori and Osteen both seem to be following that same line of reasoning. Yes, technically, endorsing the prosperity gospel or the social causes that Jefferts Schori endorses is a "work", but it's not a work in the same sense that taking Communion or getting your child baptized is.

Salvation by works, in contrast, emphasizes that God, in human incarnation, taught a series of practices to the disciples that were then handed down by means of apostolic succession, and that the successors of those disciples hold the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, which they administer by imposing a set of rules, derived from the teachings of Jesus, for humanity to follow, and a series of rituals, also derived from the teachings of Jesus, that will open the doors of heaven for their adherents. Ross, we know, deeply believes in this tradition.

In other words, the specifics may be changed in terms of what is being argued, but at bottom, the debate is still what it always has been-- between people whose guiding principle is John 3:16 and people whose guiding principle is Matthew 16:18.

Posted by Dilan Esper | July 24, 2008 6:07 PM

I'm not sure Bottum examines the links between the Mainline churches and Mainstream Culture closely enough. It's obvious that the Bishop Robinson ruckus in the Episcopal Church is both forming the culture and formed by the culture. Would there still be a strong push for same-sex marriage if there weren't mainline clerics in major urban centers doing so much of the pushing? I don't think so.

While the mainline is in spiritual decline, its cultural influence is greater than Bottum lets on.

Bottum's point about the decline in the Mainline being linked to the decline in Protestant Europe is suggestive. There is a parallel in the decline of Mainline influence at the major American universities. God and Man at Yale, anyone?

Someone has suggested that blue-state America looks like secularized Europe because the university class in America so helped rebuild Europe after the war that many of the same cultural habits and trajectories became shared.

It is also useful to remember that secularist currents in the US are generally forms of secularized Protestantism and shouldn't be analyzed as total discontinuities. I wish Bottum had been more useful here.

There's a survey somewhere that claims the mainline churches are no longer attracting the discontented from more fundamentalist or evangelical strains of Christianity, which supposedly once greatly augmented their numbers. Instead, such prospective converts are now simply becoming secular. This, too, could use further examination.

Posted by Kevin J Jones | July 24, 2008 6:14 PM

"very fine essay"?!

This is just the same old decline of the Protestant mainline stuff that Catholic neoconservatives have recycling for years. It was interesting in the 1980s, but now it's yesterday's news.

Posted by Alex Bogel | July 24, 2008 7:28 PM

Our Host is inconsolable that 'Man and God at Yale' has already been copywrited. For 60yrs or thereabouts. Lacking anything to add to that he plays 'standard repertoir' until we leave the hall.

Posted by JohnMcC | July 24, 2008 7:42 PM

I thought that the American Heresy is that many Americans, especially well educated ones, want a not-overly-demanding country-club kind of god. For atheists like me, that's generally preferable to evangelicals and fundamentalists. But it does lead to the problem that you really don't do all that good of a job of reining in your wackier bretheren; you seem to treat them as the rowdy ill-mannered drunk of a brother whose rants are embarrassing and best ignored.

The problem with that approach, of course, is that your wackier bretheren have their hooks firmly planted in the Republican Party. Abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research really have no business being major federal issues, but somehow they are.

And when people threaten the life and livelihood of a college student who takes a Host and a professor who comments on the verbal and physical violence that followed, American Heretics naturally got tribal and protected their own. Not a pretty sight.

Posted by Francis | July 24, 2008 8:11 PM

Dilan -

Your instincts are good, but your admitted lack of background here betrays you. The clash between the freewheeling "American heresy" and orthodox Christianity *could* be described as a clash between faith and works - but only if you stripped the words "faith" and "works" of the meanings they had during the Reformation (so called).

Back then, the "faith alone" perspective shared by Luther, Calvin, Knox, etc. was by no means devoid of rules and regulations. Read up on life in Calvin's Geneva, or ask a modern-day Calvin College student what TULIP stands for, and you'll see that the "faith alone" position was very much rooted in specific beliefs about Christ, including a belief that only by knowing Him could one know God.

The position shared by modern "American heretics" like Jefferts Schori and Osteen is quite different: as the great BXVI quote posted by rab illustrates, their "faith" is not rooted in specific doctrines about Christ. To the contrary, their references to Christ lack any substance at all. Harold Bloom's "The American Religion" does a fine job of illustrating this, and I commend it to you.

The old faith v. works battle was a dispute about what believers had to do to follow Christ. This new dispute is about whether believers have to follow Christ at all.

Posted by Joe Magarac | July 24, 2008 9:06 PM

Dilan,

The problem with your understanding is that the Anglican Communion, of which the "Bishop" Schori claims to be a part, is an apostolic church, like the Catholics, Orthodox, Orientals, and others. It is supposed to believe that the evolution of Christian tradition was guided by the Spirit. It isn't supposed to believe in justification by "faith alone", at least not in the Lutheran sense. (Properly understood, yes presumably all Christians believe we are justified by faith, since St. Paul clearly says as much. This is a much broader meaning of "faith" than the narrow Protestant understanding though.)

So Bishop Schori's church is bound by its very nature to accept at least to some degree that more than simple personal faith is required. In this of course as in other things, Bishop Schori has fallen far short of her church and her faith. About the best thing that can be said about Bishop Schori is that unlike some of the medieval Popes, she hasn't poisoned any of her political enemies yet.

If Bishop Schori does not accept the principle of apostolic succession then I would like to know what business she has being a bishop.

Posted by Hector | July 24, 2008 10:17 PM

Hector:

Of course the Church of England is apostolic, but its modern form was produced because the English government rejected Rome (and specifically, Catholic doctrine regarding divorce).

Indeed, the Anglicans (and especially the Episcopals) could have never moved to the positions they have taken on social issues if it had not been for their schism with Rome, as well as the fact that it occurred over a social issue.

In that sense, the Anglicans are both apostolic and protestant, and the American branch of the church has been drifting towards mainline American protestantism for some time. I'd say "when in Rome do as the Romans do", but that might not work here.

Posted by Dilan Esper | July 24, 2008 11:49 PM

Dilan,

The Anglican church in America as elsewhere is characterized by a diversity of belief and practice. I happen to believe that those parishes which adopt a moderate (i.e. not flagrantly liberal) stance on social issues and a fairly traditionalist liturgy are correct, and the other parishes are wrong. I also think that the drift towards mainline American protestantism, and towards the "American heresy" (i.e. making its peace with materialist American culture) has been a disaster. If the Anglican church in America is to regenerate itself it needs to start by purging itself of men like "Bishop" Spong, "Bishop" Schori and other people who deny basic tenets like the existence of heaven and hell, the Resurrection, the Virgin Birth, and so forth.

Thankfully there are still Anglican parishes in the United States that do things the right way. I was at one in Boston a few weeks ago, which could fairly be called, at least in terms of liturgy, more traditionalist than most Catholic services I've been to.

As a point of correction, the break with Rome was most certainly _not_ about the legitimacy of divorce as a general principle. King Henry's divorce was legitimated on the specific grounds that the Levitical law forbidding marriage to one's brother's widow was unbreakable, and not even a Pope could dispense with it. Incidentally, the Papacy didn't deny the annulment on moral reasons either, but on political ones (though I suspect the Catholics here will disagree). The Pope had granted similar annulments in similar circumstances before, and denied the annulment in this case purely because of political pressure from the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V of Spain. The morality of divorce as a general matter was never the point at issue, rather it was whether the Bishop of Rome had ecclesiastical sovereignty in England.

Posted by Hector | July 25, 2008 1:00 AM

Re: Of course the Church of England is apostolic, but its modern form was produced because the English government rejected Rome (and specifically, Catholic doctrine regarding divorce).

This is technically incorrect. The Anglican Church did not reject the ban on divorce until fairly recent times*. Recall that Edward VII got into trouble because he was going to marry a divorcee in the 1930s, and even Charles and Camilla had a bit of awkwardness on this matter. Henry VIII never divorced any of his wives: he petitioned to have his marriage to Catherine of Aragon declared invalid (and there were a sizable number of canon lawyers outside his realm, even in Rome itself, who supported the petition). For political reasons, the Pope rejected the petition. Hnery VIII broke with the Pope, appointed himself Head of the Church of England, and declared his own marriage invalid. His later marriage to Anne of Cleves was also annuled (the two had never consummated their purely political bond).

* By way of an aside, my own church, the Orthodox, never accepted Rome's ban on divorce. Even in the early Middle Ages, before the Schism, canon law in the East permitted remarriage after divorce provided the local bishop approved it.

Posted by JonF | July 25, 2008 6:41 AM

JonF,

Thanks for the correction, it was indeed an annulment, not a divorce (and on the specific ground of the Levitical moral code). Indeed, it's worth noting that even within the Anglican church today it's not a matter of a uniform liberalism regarding divorce. For example Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester and one of England's most intelligent and most faithful Christian leaders today, will only allow (in his diocese) the remarriage of the innocent party in a divorce, and then only after intensive counseling.

Don't the Orthodox do something like this too (i.e. only allow remarriage for the innocent party)? I remember reading something like this regarding the church in pre-revolutionary Russia but confess I don't know what the Orthodox church do today.

Posted by Hector | July 25, 2008 7:30 AM

Ross, sounds like you were taking a page from Hauerwas's "Resident Aliens". Know the book? Regardless, this is a fine insight you've had: please turn it into a feature-length article for the magazine.

Posted by Matt Fish | July 25, 2008 7:38 AM

Thank you for this post. It's one of those things that has been right in front of my face for years, but I hadn't made the connection.

Posted by Michael B. | July 25, 2008 8:58 AM

The fundamental problem here is that Ross, and most of the commenters, are responding to Bottum's caricature of Schori -- "All we have to do, to prove the redemption we already have, is support the political causes she approves" -- as if this is her actual theological view of salvation.

Her real opinion is expressed in the first sentence of the block quote, and as Dilan noted it's pretty much just Martin Luther's dictum with a smiley face painted on it.

Anglican Churches incorporate both Catholic Protestant traditions, but Schori is very clearly part of a liberal strain of protestantism. Faith trumps ritual, God forgives and understands, Christ himself was unorthodox, thus we should emphasize the greater message (love, forgiveness, service) and not get hung up on Old Testament literalism or motes in eyes, etc., etc.

And yes, the Prayer of Jabez crowd, for all of its political differences and (what I would consider to be) a dumber and more self-serving hook, clearly shares the same lineage as Schori.

The arguments for and against Protestantism/Catholicism are well-rehearsed and not worth revisiting. Like many Episcopalians, I've lapsed from the faith entirely because you don't really need the church to arrive at the same worldview... and because incense gives me headaches.

But I still find it somewhat fascinating when someone from a tradition that involves 2000 years of politically-motivated shifts in orthodoxy, usurpers, inquisitions, confessions, children's crusades, and the like argues with a straight face that their tradition, orthodoxy, and guilt are somehow more honorable and dignified than cheerful people who try to love their neighbors as best they can and leave the judgments to God.

Catholic theology is certainly more intellectually robust than Schori's, but it's more than a little ironic for Christian gatekeepers to pat themselves on the back for their orthodox purity and sneer at the ones who'd rather talk about love and forgiveness.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | July 25, 2008 11:22 AM

LaFollette Progressive,

I'll try to avoid theological argumentation here, so I'll say this: perhaps your understand of Ross and other's arguments here is not so much about orthodox purity vs love and forgiveness. Rather, it is that the American heresey as Ross terms it is, to my understanding, not focused on either orthodoxy or forgiveness. Rather, it seems to be materialism and "life coaching". I've read most of the Bible (not 100% on some of the Old Testament) and to me these Jabez types remind me of the televangelists I watched on late night TV in the 80s. Or from the Jabez description:

"Readers who commit to offering the same prayer on a regular basis will find themselves extravagantly blessed by God, and agents of His miraculous power, in everyday life.

Do you want to be extravagantly blessed by God?"

Not blessed with salvation. Not blessed with forgiveness, grace, love, heavenly forture, etc. But rather, blessed with extravagence.

Posted by freddiemac | July 25, 2008 12:11 PM

cheerful people who try to love their neighbors as best they can and leave the judgments to God.

Schori seems to sometimes be pretty busy condemning the heck out of anyone who actually holds orthodox Christian beliefs on sexual morality or (to some extent) simple theology. I think she'd be quite happy to judge me as a bitter, uncharitable, reactionary jerk. Most of her type that I've met are very likely to love their neighbors (and live in a gated community where they can be assured their neighbors are so like themselves that's no problem) and very likely to abstractly hate the guts of anyone without the right politics, sexual and theological included especially. Perhaps I'm being unfair to her, but the quotes I've seen from her, when not simply vapid Peale-ism of an upscale liberal variety, seemed to be in this direction. She's friends with Spong, no -- and it's pretty clear that he would happily gut every orthodox Christian like a fish if he were magic dictator, so their life-hating belief in a personal God, or reluctance to make the joy of every single penis and vagina (or other orifice of choice) the motivating principle of all things, or whatever, couldn't spoil his utopia.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | July 25, 2008 12:25 PM

Thanks for the post.

I found myself in the somewhat odd position of a few years ago converting from Episcopalian to Catholic. As a feminist, I didn't do this particularly because of conservative views on women's ordination, homosexuality, outlawing abortion.

As an an adult, when I started looking at the Episcopal Church, I felt uncomfortable with the feel-good therapeutic attitude where so much of the mystery and exigency of Jesus' message was removed, the actual encounter with God as a demanding presence.

When I volunteered for a year through a Catholic service program, I had the opportunity to do a short Ignatian retreat. I found out ahead of time who my Jesuit spiritual director would be, found that he was quite well-known for his civil disobedience. I was excited to get to work with someone with this radical political stand in favor of the Kingdom. What was surprising and incredible was the way that he kept focusing my prayer on myself and my relationship with God, with the demands, with the challenges, that this commitment to being Christian meant. When I would push a little bit in the direction of more clearly political things, he would push me back to the experience of trying to understand myself in the context of the bibilical scene I was praying over. While the experience was exciting and "consoling" in the Ignatian sense, it certainly wasn't soothing or self-congratulatory

Another Jesuit--his background is in psychology--explained the difference between Ignatian spirituality and Freud. Extending it a bit further...

Freud--you analyze yourself, find your faults, then heal yourself for yourself so you're an integrated person, and then ignore everyone else

Peale/Jefferts Schori--you are a good, loving person who works for good things including the Millenium Goals

Ignatian--you analyze yourself, find your faults, find your relationship with God, and then, in community work for humanization, for dignity, and the Millenium Goals insofar as they're compatible with the Kingom.

(This is just my experience, and I know many people from other religions/denominations who reject the American feel-good approach.)

Posted by kmg | July 25, 2008 12:45 PM

Someone needs to point out that the "Anglican Church" is largely an invention of the nineteenth century. Anglicanism is what they came up with in trying to tell a whiggish history from the time of the Henrician split with Rome until the Glorious Revolution. In reality both practice and belief in England was very fractured from, say, 1540--1700. About 1/2 of the populace was still Catholic, and the other half fell somewhere between low church Calvinism--on one end--and--on the other end--an untenable hosh posh of bells and whistles Catholicism and ecclesiology combined with essentially reformed theological doctrines. This is why no one takes "Anglicans" very seriously. They don't exist.

Posted by wj | July 25, 2008 3:41 PM

After reading the previous post in regard to The American Heresy, I am reminded of the words of the Bard; "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Posted by JC in SLC | July 25, 2008 4:35 PM

"Kingdom," on this interpretation, is simply the name for a world governed by peace, justice, and the conservation of creation. It means no more than this.

Personally, I'd say a world governed by peace, justice, and the conservation of creation to be a pretty big win. "No more than this" is a hell of a lot.

If Christians (or anyone else) could achieve that within their own communities, I'm not sure evangelization of their non-Christian neighbors would be needed.

This new dispute is about whether believers have to follow Christ at all.

I'm curious to know what folks here think "following Christ" means.

I agree that material prosperity and a generally nice warm fuzzy feeling aren't really the point. I have a harder time seeing peace and justice as being small potatoes.

Thanks -

Posted by russell | July 25, 2008 5:41 PM

I've now had a chance to read Bottum's overlong essay, and I find it [and I say this advisedly] godawful tiresome. First, it recycles thirty-year old theories about the growth of conservative churches that have been debunked by more careful scholarship [It really did have something to do with family size], and ignores the fact that decline is becoming a concern even among Southern Baptists. But more importantly, it recycles stale cliches about mainline Protestantism that have some truth, to be sure, but are also in large part slanderous. Where I come from: I was raised Southern Baptist, but left the fold because I found it theologically flabby [surprised? Then you no more know the SBC than Bottum does] and became a Presbyterian; I'm now an ordained elder and active in regional bodies as well. And let me tell you, life inside a festering corpse is reasonably good. Not because I'm oblivious to decline; far from it. But in this community of faith I know scads of truly devout, religiously serious people, many of whom differ theologically from me [I'm more conservative than many of them] but who see their calling as doing all that philanthropic stuff Bottum sneers at [I just got back from Guatemala--my third trip, working in remote Mayan aldeas, tagging along with some wonderful folk]. The one major fly in the ointment? Contrary to polemicists like Bottum, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) is a diverse body that includes [believe it or not] a lot of people like Bottum. And they are an endless vexation, because they are less interested in doing the Lord's work than they are in attacking their fellow Christians and threatening to leave if they don't get their way [The big issue with us is gay ordination--puhleeze]. The big problem with my *former* faith, moreover, is that Bottum-like people gained control of its main institutions nearly thirty years ago and have spent much of the time since running people off who don't adhere to their increasingly rigid theology. Theologically, I suspect, I'm actually a lot like Bottum; but his priorities, and that of the theocon right generally, are hopelessly screwed up. If they spent one tenth as much time using their Bible [Matthew 25, anyone?] for a roadmap as they spend using it for a blackjack [sorry--an old bluegrass joke], they perhaps would be worth taking seriously.

To be sure, little of this matters to most people in the pews, who are scarcely aware that this infighting is going on. And this leads to the big problem with Mainline Protestantism, the general decline of American denominationalism. Fewer and fewer of the people in the pews care much about those denominational structures, which are shriveling; more and more, congregations and active laypeople are involved in parachurch organizations that perform many of the traditional functions of denominations without bothering with their boundaries--or else fighting each other for control within the boundaries. This is not true simply of "liberal" churches. The SBC, being congregational in polity and reliant on voluntary contributions from independent churches, has never really been a denomination in the more "churchly" sense of the Methodists, etc. Many congregations now fund "moderate" alternatives to the traditional SBC network; what used to be called the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board [headquartered here in Music City] now calls itself "Lifeway Christian Resources", because it found the denominational moniker an encumbrance, and its own member churches less willing to buy its stuff.

So Bottum is right that Mainline Protestantism is in trouble, but it's not because its brand of Christianity is in trouble, whatever it is. It's in trouble because the religious impulses of Americans break out of the boundaries of denominationalism, just as they break out of the theological chains the theocons would forge for them. In the meantime, good Mainliners like the people I go to Guatemala with continue to pray, read their Bibles, and wrestle with the implications of their divine calls. One thing they know, though; God has not called them to be cannibals.

Posted by David in Nashville | July 25, 2008 6:20 PM

Hector: the Orthodox permit up to three canonical marriages for lay persons (just one for clergy), with a bishop's permission needed after a divorce. In today's world bishops are fairly liberal about granting that permission. Sometimes even the "rule of three" will be set aside-- if perhaps the previous marriages ended with death and not divorce.
This is an ancient rule by the way. The Orthodox Church has always been more prone to judging individual situations on their own merits rather than in external legalism.

Posted by JonF | July 25, 2008 9:11 PM

David in Nashville,

I'm another seriously religious but politically progressive Christian in a mainline denomination (Anglican). I try to serve God through social service and serving other people as well as through prayer and worship. (Although I don't really consider myself 'mainline Protestant', rather I would say, as an Anglican, simultaneously catholic and reformed.) As you appear to as well. May God bless you and make your service as a Presbyterian elder both spiritually and emotionally rich. I agree with most of what you say in your post 100%.

Posted by Hector | July 25, 2008 10:51 PM

Check out http://www.justinpeters.org and be sure to watch "demo."

Mr. Peters speaks out on this so called "gospel" and presented his seminar at my church under Dr. John MacArthur.

Posted by cls | August 5, 2008 2:13 AM