Anthony Bradley may puzzle over her
popularity and I've barely heard of her, but there does seem to
be a group of people that identify with Rachel Held Evans and share some of her concerns as articulated in this article.
Ms. Evans seems nice. I say seems because, as
smiley as her picture appears, her patience and goodwill are selective. She and the generation she identifies with are
armed with data, studies, an appetite for the high church traditions,
a refined BS detector and an overwhelming desire to know Jesus
without compromising their intellects. The simple church leaders
respond with lattes, edgier music, hipper worship services, and a
distressing commercialized homophobic science hating lack of Jesus.
That's balanced.
Whether intentional or not, this
characterization is dishonest. Her own narrative betrays that
fact. Why exactly are all of these people inviting her to come
and talk? The same reason that so many books have been written about
this subject. The same reason that para-church ministries work hard to engage the younger generation while equipping youth
leaders to answer tough questions. The same reason that some of the
best minds in the Christian family devote themselves to giving
college students the intellectual grounding they need to grow in
their faith as opposed to away from it. All of these people
genuinely care about the needs of the Millennial generation. They
hardly resemble the shallow clueless buffoons she paints in her article
and certainly offer a good deal more than pathetic attempts at being
cool.
However earnest these efforts may be,
it is entirely possible that all of these people miss the point and that Ms.
Evans possesses insight that will help. Unfortunately, rather than an
informative article offering her vision to reach Millennials more
effectively, she chooses to offer a piece that morphs into an awkward
manifesto with Ms. Evans as the de facto head of the movement.
I'm not a huge fan of her pervasive use
of the pronoun “We.”. No single person speaks on behalf of all Christian Millennials. Given even the most cursory look at
possible motivations in my previous post, there are simply too many
reasons that one would leave the church for a single person to talk
like this. It is to her credit that she passionately identifies with
a group of people that she discusses quite a bit, but this style
gives the false impression of a unified movement with a clearly
stated set of goals. As if we could meet her demands and then she could deliver the Millennial Christians back to us like a modern day Pied Piper That's not what is happening. There is no
organized en masse walk out. It it looks more like a massive
disorganized wandering away.
Ms. Evans obviously strikes a chord
with a particular group of people, so she can't be dismissed because I'm not a fan of the way she expresses herself. A desire
for productive engagement demands that we give serious attention to
her list of concerns to see if the meat of her article can be found
in there. I am adding numbers and emphasis for my own clarity.
1 -We want an end to culture wars.
We want truce between science and faith. We want to be known for what
we stand for; not what we are against.
Let's say - for the sake of discussion
- that what you stand for is the value and dignity of all human life.
Wouldn't that then make you against actions that disregard or abuse
human life? Once you stake the position that you support (are for)
the dignity of human life you are going to naturally oppose (be
against) things like abortion, sex slavery, euthanasia, eugenics, and
perhaps capital punishment. They go hand and hand.
Frederick
Douglass wanted freedom and equal dignity for slaves (for) which made
him one of the greatest abolitionists the world has ever seen
(against). The distaste others felt for the bad feelings created by
his opposition to slavery led him to say the following:
Those
who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are people
who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without
thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its
many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical
one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes
nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.
Simply by virtue of being for
something; you are right smack dab in the middle of a culture war.
We are now at a crossroads. You can be for things and do nothing, or
you can be against things by virtue of your principles and contribute
to efforts to stop injustice in a respectful and impacting manner. Of
course tension always arises when one group tells another that they
are wrong. The greater the wrong, the more tension will be created
by confronting it. It must come. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said in
his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “I
must confess that I am not afraid of the word 'tension.' I have
earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of
constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.”
I am curious about one thing. Does Ms.
Evans not see her own criticisms of Evangelicalism as being against
those views? Aren't her highly public efforts to change things a part
of the culture war? Why are her own views and actions exempt from the
Millennial angst that drives her to demand others to stand down?
As for the desire for a truce between
science and faith, if she can get Dawkins and Dennett to dial it down
a bit then more power to her. If not, then it seems a bit odd to ask
others to not respond to attack pieces casting all those who believe
in a Creator as stupid. (e.g. Dawkins' The God Delusion or
Hitchens' god is not Great)
Has she considered that asking people
who respectfully contribute to the debate like Jay Wesley Richards,
Alvin Plantinga, or William Lane Craig to stop because of some desire
for a truce would diminish our public discourse? The conflict forces
us all to revisit our presuppositions and clear out any intellectual
garbage. Some of the best material to read was written by those who
disagree with us in response to theistic arguments. Forget the truce,
however she envisions that. We need to learn to expose the ad hominem
attacks and focus on the genuinely productive conversations.
2 – We want to ask questions that
don't have predetermined answers.
If this is a general complaint against
pat answers then I am in full agreement. I hate hearing someone ask an honest question and get in response what is affectionately referred to as a Sunday school answer. Ditto that on ramblings that fail to hide the fact that the person
talking hasn't the slightest clue what they are saying.
Here is the thing, though. Questions
either have answers or they don't, but sometimes people don't want
answers. They want to wallow in mystery or subjectivism. I encounter
this quite a bit with both young people and adults. They make a
statement that is factually wrong or ask a question that is easily
addressed. They are then offered the correct answer or an accurate
correction, and they respond with “We'll just have to agree to
disagree.” This happens all the time.
One guy kept insisting an
issue that was settled at the Council of Chalcedon was a matter of my
opinion. His reasoning was thus: (1) he had never heard of Chalcedon
and (2) he was allowed to let the Spirit communicate truth to him
directly from scripture without the traditions telling him what to
believe. This isn't wisdom. These kinds of people don't want answers
at all. They want the appearance of depth and introspection without
honesty.
As challenges
arise in my life, it is a comfort that great men and women offer their wisdom down
through the ages to anyone willing to do the work to find it. That
fact is encouraging; not distressing. Nothing under the sun is new to
man, so why should anyone expect the questions they wrestle with to
be unique to the human experience? Our doubts, fears, and struggles
have been addressed before. Refusing to avail ourselves of the wisdom
of our elders smacks of arrogance and conceit; not depth.
I agree that honesty is needed with regards to tough questions. It doesn't undermine the truth of
Christianity or the kingdom of God to answer, “I don't know.”
It's a good habit to develop. As G.K. Chesterton said in Eugenics
and Other Evils, we can't be a specialist on the universe. There are
always going to be things we simply don't know.
Conversely, we need to train young
people to abandon the internet fighting mindset that believes if the
guy in front of me can't answer right here and right now then there
is no rebuttal. That may be a good way to bicker, but it is not
arguing in good faith and does nothing to draw us closer to the
truth.
3 – We want churches that
emphasize an allegiance to the kingdom of God over an allegiance to a
single political party or a single nation.
OK. Then start one.
Not that I concede this point correctly
characterizes churches. It certainly misses the mark on my own church
and our pastor. My pastor, Bryant Wright, was the President of the
Southern Baptist Convention, so he is no minor figure in
Evangelicalism. Anyone who characterizes him as anything other than
fully committed to the kingdom of God over politics or nationalism is
a liar who doesn't know the man. Ms. Evans and her friends perhaps
disapprove of his stance on insisting that homosexual sex is a sin,
but you can't question his character or grace when he sits down with
representatives of Christian homosexual advocacy groups to emphasize
that he loves them.
It is wrong to conflate the fact that many Christians are vocal Republicans with a larger judgment that "the Church" is part of a political alliance. Bryant Wright will not let politicians address our congregation at all. Including Pastor Wright in this charge of
misplaced allegiance, or anyone else for that matter, without
substantive evidence to support the claim is nothing short of a
mawkish character attack.
David French wrote this piece on the
misperception that Christians are overly focused on abortion and
homosexuality. The evidence he supplies seriously undermines this
complaint. Christians, both church leadership and laity, give an
incredible amount of time and resources to the rest of the world.
Their generosity just doesn't get recognized for various reasons.
That said, new churches are planted all
of the time. If you have a vision for a new church go and do
likewise. Put some action to those complaints and show us all the
model you wish to see enacted more broadly. Otherwise this falls into
the category of empty whining.
4 – We want our LGBT friends to
feel truly welcome in our faith community.
As has already been pointed out
elsewhere in this piece by Anthony Bradley at Acton, the United Methodist
Church already does this. You will also find no shortage of churches in
the Atlanta area that are welcoming to homosexuals.
When asked by a
college student last weekend how I felt about denominations. I
quoted my pastor and told him that I'm fine with denominations but I
abhor denominationalism. I fully support people finding a body that
worships in the manner that makes them feel comfortable and helps
them connect to a community.
On the other hand, it is arrogant to
insist that all churches and church bodies adopt your view of
scripture. For those who believe that the biblical admonitions
against homosexuality are clear and applicable to our modern world,
you offer only a dictatorial command that they fully accept your view
against their conscience. I obviously believe that we must love our
homosexual brothers and sisters, but I am not convinced that loving
them means accepting either that (to borrow from Andrew Wilson in this great conversation with Rob Bell on “Unbelievable?”) Paul
and Jesus and the prophets were all fine with homosexual sex or that
Paul and Jesus and the prophets were wrong about homosexual sex. I
deeply love all sorts of sinners already, and as a sinner am deeply
loved by others including God. I can both (1) believe that homosexual
sex is condemned as sinful in the bible and (2) deeply love and
respect homosexuals.
If their LGBT friends feeling truly
welcome in our faith community is predicated on everyone endorsing a
specific view of homosexual sex then this demand isn't even
attainable. Not because Evangelicals are homophobic (a weak ad
hominem I detest) but because our tendency to disagree on important
issues is precisely the reason we have denominations. We can't agree
on Calvinism vs. Molinism vs. Arminian/Weslyanism, translations of
the bible, orders of worship, divorce, capital punishment, and infant
baptism, but you expect us to monolithically agree on homosexual sex
being OK? Good luck with that.
A final note on this. The rise of the
homosexual rights movement and the incredible speed by which it has
progressed is routinely recognized as unprecedented. We have never
seen anything like this. As a result, it should be expected that good
well meaning and loving Christians are searching for the proper response to a world that changed in the
blink of an eye. There is no doubt that bullying and hatred exist, as
there is no doubt those things are contrary to the teachings of
Christ. However, for all the talk of tolerance, it is the epitome of
ungraciousness to malign others for struggling to discern the
appropriate position to adopt in this new reality while balancing the
love of Christ with the what they see as clear biblical prohibition.
5 - We
want to be challenged to live lives of holiness, not only when it
comes to sex, but also when it comes to living simply, caring for the
poor and oppressed, pursuing reconciliation, engaging in creation
care and becoming peacemakers.
One of the most conservative and
financially successful families I know bought a home in the Dominican
Republic. They spend several weeks a year there providing surgical
assistance and dental care to the poor for free. Another friend
travels every year to Romania to help take care of children in
overcrowded orphanages. I know people who have spent time ministering
to and loving prisoners in some of the most horrifying prisons on the
planet. The list of my wealthy friends that give genuinely admirable
amounts of time and money to caring for the poor and oppressed is too
long to print and almost all of them did their work in response to a
challenge from the local church.
In my ministry career working at a
local 501.c.3 and consulting numerous other ministries on their
development, I saw firsthand how church giving impacts my home town.
There are two North Metro-Atlanta churches that pour millions upon
millions of dollars into our community to help the poor and
struggling through hundreds of local ministries. They are both
routinely criticized as obnoxious mega-churches by people who haven't
the slightest clue what they are talking about. These churches help
the poor, contribute to clean up efforts, counsel relationships,
restore families torn apart by sexual sin through loving care, and
support the efforts of thousands of individuals to better our world.
These massive organizations challenge their members to get active
while offering free classes on how to live more simple lives
emphasizing giving and avoiding needless debt.
All that to say, this particular
objection addresses a perception and not reality. Are too many
Christians materially obsessed and living in accordance with the
culture around them? Of course. But at my own church, they do so in
spite of the teachings of our pastor and not as a result of them.
Prosperity ministries may be easy to find on television, but they
aren't the embodiment of the word “church.”
As for the crack about the lattes, we
do have a coffee bar at our church. It isn't in place of the Gospel
or sound teaching, and if any church out there thinks they can
disciple through coffee they are off their rockers. This particular
jab does expose an underlying self-centeredness to this article. Why
is the church offering lattes? Because they think that will win me
over. Really? It couldn't just be that people like lattes and the
church thought they might enjoy them? It has to be some false gospel
of legal addictive stimulants?
If you think the accusation of self
centeredness is a bit overstated I counter that this line provides
evidence to support the charge:
“...we’re
leaving the church because we don’t find Jesus there.
Like
every generation before ours and every generation after, deep down,
we long for Jesus.”
We all want Jesus. Every generation
wants Jesus. The problem, as seen through the eyes of Ms. Evans, is
that however much the generation that preceded her wanted Jesus, they
just don't have him. He is not there in their worship and churches
and as a result her generation must go elsewhere. Poppycock.
In the interest of disclosure, I admit
that I once talked something like this. I
disliked and distrusted the church and getting me to go at all was a
feat. As critical as I am of her points, I absolutely agree with her that we need to sit down and
engage the members of our congregations to help them find their place
in the body of Christ.
Ms. Evans and her constituency might be
surprised at what cured me of my distrust. I got heavily involved in
the work of the church. Sundays may often be populated with
quasi-Christian tourists, but Monday through Saturday draws some of
the finest people of all ages you will ever be blessed to meet.
As I said in the previous post,
collaboration is messy. While participating in various projects I
have been drawn into silly quarrels, started fights, and been
insulted more times than I can remember. I also learned it is
difficult to see the person working side by side with you as some out
of touch relic of a previous generation. You learn that with age
often comes wisdom. People that you would never talk to and that you
have little in common with are suddenly revealed as genuine heroes of
the faith serving the church with anonymous dignity.
Of course there is a lot wrong in the
modern church. There is also a lot right. Despite what Ms. Evans
asserts, I see Jesus clearly present in churches all across this
nation. The challenge for us all is to roll up our sleeves, get past
ourselves, and get focused on the good work of the church. To be able
to do things we can't do alone, we need everyone's input on what that
good work is.
