the great western heresy

In the coming months, a few of my friends will be writing blog posts at Jesus Needs New PR. Today is that kind of day. The following post was written by my fellow fundamentalism survivor Stephen Lamb.

Her comments, as you might imagine, have set off a firestorm of feedback, though I’ve yet to see a rebuttal that has as its basis an intellectually honest reading of the sacred scriptures along with an acknowledgment of how the world works. If I’m allowed to say that I think she was overstating her case in order to make the point, then I would assert that I agree with her statement.

We all have certain lenses through which we “do theology.” They have to do with our familial upbringing, our religious experiences, our presuppositions, etc. While it can be difficult to identify all the things we bring to the table, I can pinpoint two people at least whose influence informs the way I think about religion and theology. The first is my Great Grandfather, John R. Rice, one of the biggest Fundamentalist leaders of the 20th century. (See here for more about him.) I tell people the second formative principle for me can best be summed up by this autobiographical statement: I don’t talk to my father much ever since God told him to kill me, my mother, and my siblings. It should come as no surprise, then, that I am a bit skeptical of any claims regarding the value and/or legitimacy of an individualist Christianity. Larry Crabb addresses this fallacy in much of his writing, summed up best here: “The greatest lie believed today is that one can know God without being known by someone else.”

I also find Reinhold Neibuhr’s writings in this regard to be particularly helpful. This short essay below is from his book Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic, written in 1924 during his first pastorate just out of Seminary. While he deals here specifically with revival meetings that press for “emotional commitments to Christ,” I would expand his category to encompass most of the preaching I hear, to say nothing of much of the “art” produced by the subculture responsible for those revival meetings.

A revival meeting seems never to get under my skin. Perhaps I am too fish-blooded to enjoy them. But I object not so much to the emotionalism as to the lack of intellectual honesty of the average revival preacher. I do not mean to imply that the evangelists are necessarily consciously dishonest. They just don’t know enough about life and history to present the problem of the Christian life in its full meaning. They are always assuming that nothing but an emotional commitment to Christ is needed to save the soul from its sin and chaos. They seem never to realize how many of the miseries of mankind are due not to malice but to misdirected zeal and unbalanced virtue. They never help the people who corrupt family love by making the family a selfish unit in society or those who brutalize industry by excessive devotion to the prudential virtues.

Of course that is all inevitable enough. If you don’t simplify issues you can’t arouse emotional crises. It’s the melodrama that captivates the crowd. Sober history is seldom melodramatic. God and the devil may be in conflict on the scene of life and history, but a victory follows every defeat and some kind of defeat every victory. The representatives of God are seldom divine and the minions of Satan are never quite diabolical.

I wonder whether there is any way of being potent oratorically without over-simplifying truth. Or must power always be bought at the expense of truth? Perhaps some simplification of life is justified. Every artist does, after all, obscure some details in order to present others in bolder relief. The religious rhetorician has a right to count himself among, and take his standards from, the artists rather than the scientists. The trouble is that he is usually no better than a cartoonist.

Speaking of cartoonists – the good kind, this time – check out this cartoon by David Hayward over at NakedPastor.com that provides a great visual accompaniment for the opening thoughts of this post.

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