Here’s to the Ordinary Christian

This post is about ordinary Christians.

Not that there is any sort of person who is ever really ordinary.

But there are ordinary Christians who simply want to follow Jesus.  They are people like so many folks at my church who simply want to faithfully follow Jesus.  They don’t know anything about blogging.  They aren’t riled up about questions of what Bible translation to use, or the proper English translation of some Greek phrase, or issues of “social justice” (whatever that means).

They go to church.  They pray.  They give. They sing in the choir. They try to honor God the best way they can.

So often as a “professional Christian worker” ministering in the university context and with access to all the latest and greatest theological, eschatological, and philosophical debates and questions, it becomes very easy to grow arrogant and dismissive of those who do not.  Why is this?  Quite honestly it is because we believe that greater knowledge equates to greater spiritual maturity or spirituality.  We believe this, despite all evidence to the contrary.   Yet, if this were true, one would find the most faithful, most mature, and most biblically literate Christians among those who have the most access.  The testimony of history and indeed of scripture tells us that this is not true.

Much is said about Jesus’ ministry to the poor.  I don’t know if it is so accurate to describe his ministry in that way.  There were, to be sure, poor among his followers.  But the bulk of his followers were what we might call working class or middle class (though such classes were functionally poor in Roman society, socially they fit the description).  They were people who were lectured to by the more learned among them about the hows and whys of following the covenant.  And they too were looking for the messiah to come.  It was among the most educated classes that the greatest disputes and arguments about theology broke out.

The arguments among the teachers of the Law are much like the arguments today among the blogosphere as people debate back and forth the fine points of the law.  We split hairs over exceedingly minor interpretive issues in the Greek text which make absolutely no difference to the maturity or discipleship of Christians for example.

I grew up in a church full of everyday, ordinary Christians.  I did not have the benefit of a seminary trained clerical staff, a full time paid youth minister, a library full of books on Christian doctrine.  I had rather, faithful Christians who loved the Lord, who cared deeply about seeing that we grew up in the fear of the Lord and had a reverence for scripture.  They wanted me to be filled with Holy Spirit and to live a life pleasing to God.  They laid the foundation for my faith.  They were serious believers.  They obeyed the Bible as best they could.

I tip my hat to them.  Ordinary spirit filled saints who prayed, preached, and taught me the way of salvation with little more than a KJV Bible, a United Gospel Press Sunday school book, and a decrepit totally useless blackboard.

Why the TNIV’s demise makes me happy…

Well, it doesn’t really; I mean, not in any “real” way.  As I said before, I never liked the TNIV and don’t care for the NIV either for that matter.    Part of this is frankly because I tend to prefer “word for word” translation over “dynamic equivalence” that the NIV and TNIV employs.  The other reason is because, as I said in my comments on the preceding post, I believe the publication of the TNIV as well as it’s withdrawal has more to do with profits than anything else.  But allow me to lay out a bit more my larger issue with English language Bible translation.

1) Arguments over Bible translations (whether NIV, RSV, NRSV, ESV, etc.) provide cover for Christian intellectual elitism

Christianity is a translated religion.  Unlike Islam, we do not hold to any particular language being the revealed language of God and scripture.  Therefore the words of Jesus (perhaps spoken in Aramaic) were translated into Greek without losing their potency.  Reading the Bible in French or English or Twi or Russian does not represent a deficiency, but the heart of the missionary impulse.  However the way debates over translation occurs communicates that unless one is fluent in the so-called “original languages” one cannot really know what God is saying. This is inherently elitist as the vast majority of Christians in the world who have ever lived and who currently do live may not even be literate, much less experts in ancient Greek.  Is their understanding of God, ethical practice, and Christian maturity therefore inevitably compromised?

This is not to say that translation with great care is unimportant.  It is very important, but if we communicate, however unintentionally, that you “really need to read it in the Greek to understand” we inevitably establish a hierarchy to which only an elite and privileged few have access.

2) The proliferation of English translations in the last 100 years has done NOTHING to advance Christian maturity or knowledge.

Faithful translation is important as I have said, and that has ostensibly been the motive for updating translations, in addition to keeping pace with new or better source documents that have come to light.  But is hardly evident that these multiple versions have done anything to increase the amount of scripture knowledge or biblical practice.  Indeed I would venture to guess (anecdotally to be sure) that those Christian “neanderthals” who hold onto the KJV probably have  more extensive Biblical knowledge than many others.

3) The proliferation of English translation is driven by profit and is evidence of an exceedingly materialistic self referential culture.

Many translations are copyrighted.  Book publishers make lots of money selling Bibles.  There is great incentive to come out with a “NEW & IMPROVED” version every few years.  We buy them because we can, and because we want a version that “fits” us.  This is related to my last point.

4) (Not the last point but related to the previous one) The English language has not changed so much in the last hundred years and certainly last fifty years to justify the new translations.

The 400 year dominance (and continued strength) of the KJV meant that much of the language was indeed very different than contemporary English and quite opaque to some (though not so much as to be unintelligible. After all it is still a leading version and in some ways superior; KJV English conveys continuing present tense better than contemporary English) and therefore made some sense to update.  Since then… not so much.

5) The proliferation of translations is in some ways a capitulation to the Christian disengagement with shaping culture.

The chief justification for many modern versions is to faithful translate the scripture into “today’s English.”  Well this is fine as far as it goes. BUT, none of these many translations, partially due to their abundance and partially due to their linguistic poverty, actually affect the culture into which they are cast.

The KJV, for all its flaws (and they are many) was written in a language that though long “obsolete” retains a poetry and magnificence that remains unsurpassed, much like the language of Shakespeare (written in the same era).  Many contemporary versions, though technically superior, frankly lack any beauty and therefore are less powerful in their effect in shaping culture, both within and outside of the church.

Now it can be argued that aesthetic value is less important than accuracy, but I disagree.  Aesthetics have a truth value all their own and while “though I walk through the darkest valley” may be a more technically accurate translation, it does not speak in the same way as “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” and is therefore lest likely to be memorized, or to shape our worldview.  Bad writing cannot be covered up by saying “the translation is technically accurate.”

Additionally the multitude of translations means that Christians have lost something very important: a common language, which is important in creating and reinforcing and yea verily, shaping our common dialogue and culture.

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead: TNIV is gone gone gone!

Is there any doubt from the title of this post that I don’t exactly have great feelings of sadness for the demise of the TNIV?  It is perhaps not so appropriate to call the TNIV “the witch” since it is a “faithful and scholarly translation” but there you have it.  There are others for whom the TNIV has been an important resource for their own lives and ministry and they are sad to see it go.  Daniel writes:

As someone who communicates from the Bible on a weekly basis, I have found the TNIV to be a faithful, accurate and scholarly update to the best-selling NIV translation many of us grew up with.

Well  God bless him.  Eugene Cho also is lamenting its demise. I personally have used the TNIV on occasion (usually because there was no other option available) but have never purchased one and wouldn’t unless I had no other option.  I was opposed to its publication for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the gender inclusive language.  From Christianity Today:

“Whatever its strengths were, the TNIV divided the evangelical Christian community,” said Zondervan president Moe Girkins. “So as we launch this new NIV, we will discontinue putting out new products with the TNIV.”

Girkins expects the TNIV and the existing edition of the NIV to phase out over two years or so as products are replaced. “It will be several years before you won’t be able to buy the TNIV off a bookshelf,” she said.

“We are correcting the mistakes in the past,” Girkins said. “Being as transparent as possible is part of that. This decision was made by the board in the last 10 days.” She said the transparency is part of an effort to overhaul the NIV “in a way that unifies Christian evangelicalism.”

“The first mistake was the NIVi,” Danby said. “The second was freezing the NIV. The third was the process of handling the TNIV.”

I have no quarrels with or suspicions about the motives of the scholars who did the work of translation for the TNIV.  I am certain (as certain as anyone can be about such things) that their motives were honorable and pure before God.  This is true even as it relates to the issue of gender inclusive language.

Doug Moo, chairman of the the Committee on Bible Translation (which is the body responsible for the translation) said the committee has not yet decided how much the 2011 edition will include the gender-inclusive language that riled critics of the TNIV.

“We felt certainly at the time it was the right thing to do, that the language was moving in that direction,” Moo said. “All that is back on the table as we reevaluate things this year. This has been a time over the last 15 to 20 years in which the issue of the way to handle gender in English has been very much in flux, in process, in development. And things are changing quickly and so we are going to look at all of that again as we produce the 2011 NIV.”

The “flux” to which Moo refers concerning the English language is actually overstated.  Neutered language is the norm in academic English usage and has moved  into common usage beyond the academy due mostly to rather aggressive efforts to mold popular use.  Unlike the evolution of the English language generally, the neutering of the language happened intentionally as a way to counter what were considered to be the oppressive patriarchal assumptions embedded in the language.

Why this gender thing matters, but not really

In so many ways, it honestly doesn’t. Though I am no Greek scholar, I am aware that in many places the language used is, in some ways, generic, that is, it does not specify gender, or more specifically, sex.  To neuter the original language in this way in order to conform to contemporary English usage norms makes a lot of good sense and doesn’t fundamentally challenge any doctrines of the church.

In other ways though, the neutering of language is quite significant as it says something powerful about how the church interacts with culture.   It is in fact only the newest manifestation of the church’s efforts to respond to and speak relevantly to a culture that is rapidly becoming post-Christan and into which the church’s voice as a culture shaping agent is less and less important.  The multiplication of English language translations in the last century is testimony of the increasing marginalization of the church in society and every attempt at relevance reinforces greater and greater alienation.  But more on that in a later post.  In the mean time:

Hate is NOT too strong a word

I HATE this regime:

Al Jazeera English – Asia-Pacific – N Korea ‘tests weapons on children’

Shared via AddThis

There are no words strong enough to adequately explain quite how horrendous the scope of this evil.  And make no mistake, this is indeed evil.  When I read or hear people describe our own nation’s flaws and faults, or critique  our government for invading Iraq (a choice I did NOT support) I wonder if they have any notion of how truly exceptional the United States is.

It is not that we don’t have flaws.

We do.

It is not we have always done the right thing.

We have not.

But anything we’ve done at Guantanamo pales in comparison to this.

Somebody ought to testify

“First giving honor to God, who is the head of my life.  To the pastor, first lady, all the ministers, deacons, mothers, missionaries, saints & friends…”

I’m sorry, you must have thought I was talking about this kind of testimony:

Testimony Before Congress

What I really mean is quite different, and its related to my post on Things I Miss About the Black Church.

Giving a testimony in church is one of the most amazing and wonderful expressions of participatory worship you might imagine.    Each person that stands to testify gives a song, an inspiring story, shares a prayer request, exhorts the congregation,  unburdens themselves from the struggles of the week and allows the whole community of God’s people to laugh with them, cry with them, rejoice with them and yes, sometimes even roll their eyes at them.

It was funny to see the concerns of one group of folks as they prepared for a testimony service that is upcoming.  Being reformed, there is of course a great deal of course about maintaining proper order in the midst of it all.  One quote:

one testimony service in the past had been billed, at least to the worship leaders, as a “Spirit-Filled Free-for-All.” A few songs were chosen to start things up, and then … whatever. There is something exciting and spontaneous and … all right, authentic about that. I get it. I even like it. But yikes! The Spirit leads us into freedom, but is it freedom for “all”? Freedom to do anything? Does the Spirit work only in the direction of liberation from perceived stricture and structure? Surely this is appealing—especially to young people. But doesn’t the Holy Spirit also work, as in Genesis 1, in the direction of creating order from chaos? Finding true freedom only in slavery to Christ? How do we balance these two?

I find their questions humorous, but understandable coming from their perspective.  What if the spirit gets out of control?  But it was the next section that made me laugh:

How do we, as a worship team, as musicians, prepare for such a service? Do we choose no songs at all ahead of time? Do we rehearse anything? Do we wait and hope for students to suggest songs that we know? Do we pray for the Spirit to move us in the moment, and move us to play the same song in the same key? What if the Spirit tells us, like that old joke has it, “Oops. You should done more planning.”

And what happens if someone’s testimony turns inappropriate? We can’t control what folks will and won’t say…

Well now that’s just part of the fun of a testimony service.  They could perhaps learn from these folks about how to manage a testimony service:

It may be perhaps difficult to understand what’s being said, but the scene in that church is pointedly NOT chaos, and there are rules of engagement that differ a bit from one church to another, but some which are commonly understood. Testimony service has a rhythm and flow all its own.  And musicians are just along for the ride.

Allow me to tell you some of these rules:

1) The testimony leader (usually an up and coming fiery preacher, or a missionary, or someone who can keep the crowd going) conducts the service.  If there aren’t a lot of people waiting to testify, you can just stand up and start, but if two or three stand up at a time, the testimony leader tells who can go first.

2) The testimony will also shut down the testimony if it goes too long or veers off into “crazy.”  They usually do this by at first saying things like, “Amen, Amen.  Praise God sister” in a calming voice.  They may also interrupt at what seems to be a pause in the testimony and make some remarks before moving on to the next person.  If its really bad they will collaborate with the organist to start a praise song to shut you down.

3) The testimony leader may take over your singing of a song if the singing is really bad

4) Your testimony should begin with giving honor to God in some way, acknowledging the leaders of the congregation and the pastor (whether present or absent) and should end with some sort of, “You all pray for me”

5) It is perfectable permissible to lead out in a song during testimony service, especially if you know the words and can sing.  but even if you don’t people will try to help you out.

6) Your testimony cannot take longer than about 3 minutes unless it is REALLY good and folks get to dancing and shouting from it.  If folks start doing this, then you are not permitted to come back at the end of the shouting session to resume your testimony unless YOU were the one dancing, and then only to give a closing.

I will close with a typical testimony that I might have heard growing up in the Universal Christian Holiness Church (yes, I know our church was the one holy catholic church)
“Praise the Lord saints! Praise the Lord saints!  To the pastor, pulpit guest, deacons, missionaries, saints and friends. Truly we give honor to God today for all that he has been to us.  Down through the years, God has been good to me.  Earlier this week I was thinking back on some times when I thought I wasn’t gonna make it.  Thought I was gonna lose my mind.  But God!  But God!  Even this week, he keeps on blessing me, in spite of all the things I’ve done.  And I thank him for it. He’s been better than good.  You know I’ve been so worried lately; so many people being laid off, and the economy is down.  But God continues to provide for me and my family.   I think about all the young people running the streets and getting into trouble, and then just this week some of my nephews stopped by the house, and they aren’t doing all that they should be doing, but God has kept them from dangers seen and unseen.  They could be out here in the streets, but God continues to have mercy.  He’s been so good, I just can’t tell it all.  Pray for me saints, as I’m traveling next week that God would give me traveling mercies.  And pray that the Lord would help me to hold on until the end.  Y’all pray my strength in the Lord.”

What happens to a dream deferred…?

Some of you who have followed this blog may remember a rather odd posting some time back wherein I recounted an even odder dream starring Eugene Cho and Wayne Park. Here’s the recap:

In the dream, I and Eugene are walking through what appears to be conference center of some kind, but which really looks like a student center on a college campus. As we walk I am explaining to him something about this “event” that we are apparently both a part of and which I am evidently in charge of coordinating. While walking through we pass by a number of rooms in which various student gospel choirs are preparing themselves for a concert. We also passed by one of my current student who I recognized only from the back of his head, as he was busy studying. Then (this is really weird) we passed by Wayne Park, who I have also never met, but who is sitting with his laptop typing something. Eugene greets him, and I am surprised they know each other, but say nothing as I remember that they do indeed know one another. All the time we’re walking, I keep thinking to myself, “Eugene is a lot shorter than I thought he would be,” and “wow, his hair is really interesting.”

We finally arrive at “the room” where Eugene’s presentation is to take place. It is a very nice room set up amphitheater style with large red very modern sofa type seating arranged in a semi-circle. Eugene comments that it is just like his church, but I am confused because I thought his church met in some other kind of space, but again I say nothing. Of course I’ve never seen his church either. He leaves the room to go get some “equipment,” and I again wonder why he isn’t taller than I thought he would be. My last thought before waking? I really like this room.

Well this dream is a dream deferred no longer as I had the opportunity (nay only a few short moments ago) to actually meet Eugene Cho while he was at a conference in Knoxville. Some of the interesting similarities:
– the conference he was attending was on a college campus
– the conference was in a city in my “territory” (i.e. I could be thought of as “hosting” him)
– Eugene is shorter than I thought he would be (which is weird because I had no idea of his height whatsoever)
– his hair is really interesting
– we ate a restaurant with red chairs

Perhaps I’m a prophet!!!

Anyway… it was great fun meeting Eugene in person. We had some good conversation simply getting to know one another in person as opposed to through the blogosphere and I left the conversation feeling a bit sharpened in my own journey. We discussed some people we know in common, and reflected a bit on the temptations of valuing the appearance of wisdom (or spirituality or depth) over actually being wise. I hope to soon travel to the west coast to take him up on his offer of coffee.

Does God like Girls better than Boys?

It seems perhaps an odd or needlessly provocative title with an exceedingly obvious answer. It is common knowledge after all that men are in better position overall than women in the world. Conventional wisdom in the enlightened evangelical circles in which I run likewise confirms that men have misinterpreted and misapplied scripture, supporting patriarchal narratives that deny women their god-given freedom. Secular sources tell us that women are subject to abuse at the hands of their “intimate partners” at shockingly high rates, that poverty afflicts women much more than men, and that educational systems discourage female educational achievement. The world is run by oppressive patriarchs and the church is its chief defender.

Maybe all this is true. It doesn’t change my question. And it doesn’t make this a cynical exercise or a step forward in reestablishing the rapidly collapsing patriarchal system.

Does God like Girls better than Boys?

It may surprise you, but this is not a new question for me. It is one I have pondered since I was a child growing up in church. Certainly I heard that the man was to be the head of the house, but that didn’t seem to hold any particular privilege to me. In fact it seemed rather punitive. When I grew up I could expect to have the responsibility of working hard to support my wife and children, make hard decisions, fix stuff when it broke, make sure no bad guys got in the house, beat them up if they did, make sure my wife had the clothes and miscellaneous fru fru that women always seemed interested in, and at some point die and leave an inheritance for her.

In exchange my wife would cook, clean, shop and watch soap operas unless something came up that prevented her from doing these things (like a sale) in which case she would just shop. I exaggerate of course, my mother did much more than that, and I was a kid so how accurate could my perspective be? In comparison to the lengthy command to husbands in Eph 3, the admonition to submit seemed like a really good deal.

More seriously though, I did wonder as a child if God liked girls better than boys. After all, there were more women than men in church. The main sins preached against seemed to be things that men do much more than women and the things that women struggled with seemed always to be related to something a man did to her. Being a good Christian seemed much more compatible with being a little girl than being a little boy. I was quite sure that Jesus wouldn’t run in church, or use chewing gum to glue the pages of the church bulletin together; things it seemed the boys wanted to do much more often than the girls. Jesus, as presented in the church, was the ideal man, which wasn’t a problem except following Jesus seemed the be the same as acting like the little white kids on tv at best, or acting like a girl at worst, either of which were pretty sure ways to have your masculinity called into question, or at least to get punched in lip and called a punk.

And you couldn’t retaliate. You were supposed to turn the other cheek.

Being a man seems to be fraught with the judgment of God. Am I being silly? Consider this:

▲On average, women outlive men in developed countries by five or more years;

▲Men have higher death rates for all fifteen of the leading causes of death (except Alzheimer’s);

▲Men are approximately 50% of the workforce but account for 93% of job related deaths;

▲Males between 20 and 24 have a seven times greater rate of suicide than their female counterparts, and overall, men commit suicide at rates three to four times greater than women;

▲Innocent males are between 1.5 to 2 times more likely than females to be assaulted;

▲Government funding for breast cancer research outpaces funding for prostate cancer research by nearly two to one even though prostate cancer and breast cancer have roughly the same caseload;

▲Death among young men due to testicular cancer in the 15-34 age group outpaces the number of deaths from breast cancer among women in the same age group, but good luck trying to remember the last time a commercial entity raised awareness about testicular cancer;

▲Victims of war — both combatants and, yes, non-combatants — are more likely to be male;

▲Responsible young men are charged considerably more for auto insurance than irresponsible young women, simply because they were born male;

▲A woman who commits the same crime as a man will receive, on average, only a fraction of the sentence; and

▲During FY 2007, 158,935 names and addresses of suspected violators of the duty to register with the Selective Service System were provided to the Department of Justice for possible investigation and prosecution for their failure to register, carrying a penalty up to five years in prison — every one of the violators was male — because young women are exempt from even registering.

As an adult and In the secular realm, men generally are held responsible for patriarchal oppression, and we all know that poverty will be eliminated by educating little girls and empowering women. Men on television are nearly always presented as buffoons needing to be taught their lesson by smart women and savvy children. Men die at younger ages than women, have generally poorer health, and are much more likely to be the victim of a violent crime or to go to prison. Boys are diagnosed much more frequently with learning disabilities, or punished for bad conduct in school and far less likely to graduate. Women are outpacing men in college graduation rates in nearly every field except science and mathematics, and that they do not excel there is likewise the fault of men. In fact men are pretty much responsible for everything bad in the world from nuclear proliferation to athletes’ foot, and women… well, women are rarely ever described as being responsible for anything bad in the world at all.

Maybe God likes girls better than boys.

The massive irresponsibility of my blogging absence explained

I don’t have very many readers to this blog, and likely have far fewer now that I’ve neglected to update in nearly 3 months (or is it 4?), but those few readers ought to know that I have not been entirely unaware or absent from blogdom.

Indeed, as St. Jude would say, I have had every intention of writing, but have often found myself at odds with myself over the content that I want to communicate. It is rather difficult at times for me to put into words the concerns that I have had and to clearly lay out some of the recent thoughts I have had about various topics political, theological, ecclesiological, and otherwise. So… just as a way of whetting (or perhaps dampening) the appetite, here are a few things I’m thinking of writing on:

Are ALL Asian American Christians sellouts
(a response to the post at nextegenerasianchurch)

Further thoughts on women in ministry leadership (an exploration of history, hermeneutics, and sociopolitical considerations)

Black Asian dialogue (just wanting to know if we have anything to teach each other)

Are there any other suggestions?? Asian Christians and homosexuality? Preaching in the Asian church? Am I a sellout for going to an Asian church?

Christ against the multiculturalists

Higher education in the United States and indeed throughout the so-called “West” is dominated by multiculturalism, with the “hard” sciences, professional schools, and business schools being somewhat the exception. It is an unquestioned assumption within the storied halls of our most elite and least elite colleges and universities that the dominant narrative of Western culture is insufficient to educate students. Their biases, assumptions, and worldviews must be challenged, deconstructed and hopefully re-assembled into something resembling coherence.

Concurrent with these assumptions has come a rejection of what had been the core content of a “liberal” education – namely becoming conversant with the thoughts, ideas, and stories of Western culture (i.e. dead White men) and a departure from what had been the intent of such an education (the discovery of ‘truth’). Heretofore marginalized voices (women, minorities) are given privileged status as a consequence of their having been deemed historically oppressed. In history especially (my field), the European explorers, philosophers and missionaries of old have been transformed into apostles of intolerance, genocide, and unremitting oppression. Simply put, dead White guys are out of fashion and truth as a governing or transcendent concept is not even really talked about.

Of course this shift represents a major challenge for Christians in the academy since we follow a religion that both makes transcendent governing truth claims and whose most significant theologians happen to have been mostly dead White guys. It doesn’t help that the “West” is popularly associated with Christianity, notwithstanding the fact that Christianity did indeed originate in the Near East, its most famous early theologians (Augustine and Tertullian) were Africans, and the Christian legacy of India, Ethiopia, and Iraq is far older than that of Ireland. It follows easily that the worst crimes of the western world are laid at the feet of the theology, practice, and indeed even the existence of the Christian faith.

Enter: multiculturalism and the gospel of relativism. According to an article in First Thingsthe task of

a student in the multicultural classroom is to grant unquestioned authority to those who come from underprivileged or marginalized backgrounds. You have to do this because, you will learn, because Western culture has exploited every other culture, and your experiences are so shaped by Western culture that you cannot question those who criticize you. And thus you will become a good cultural leftist (which is the shape liberalism takes in the academy), or, if you are not convinced by these arguments, you will learn how to fake it for the sake of getting a good grade

The article continues:

All of this is profoundly anti-Christian, which is why Christian students are typically the most radical questioners of higher education. Because Christians believe in a universal human nature, they also believe they can make universal truth claims about human nature. That does not mean that every statement about human nature is true.

And so it is that Christians hold as profoundly and universally true the very thing that sticks in the craw of post-modern cultural relativists. Thus Christian students, albeit thoroughly unversed and ill prepared to “give an answer for the hope that lies within them”, they are nonetheless adherents of a gospel that declares that truth does indeed exist; truth about God, the meaning of life, the condition of man, and man himself. Further, they hold to the notion that these truths are not culturally bound, nor limited by time, but are always and in every place profoundly and fundamentally true.

It is true though that the lens of multiculturalism has brought a needed corrective to the myopia of the Christian church in the United States. It is perhaps a function of our relative isolation from people of different languages and ethnicity that the universality and thus the infinite translatability of the Christian religion has been lost on us. It is a good thing that churches are wrestling with questions of multi-ethnicity and culture. We must be careful though as we wrestle not to adopt the singularly unChristian, dare I say anti-Christian academy that reflexively dismisses the achievements of Christian civilization while highlighting its sins and lionizing those presumed to be victims.

It is no small thing that it is only in the Christian west that human freedom as a concept rooted in the Biblical view of all people being made in God’s image bore the fruit of eliminating slavery, or that women have enjoyed the relative equality of status that they do. When the West failed, it is perhaps not the failure of Christianity, but only an indication that the Christianization of society did not go far enough.

The Collapse of Evangelicalism?

Perhaps you’ve already read this article about the coming collapse of evangelicalism in the Christian Science Monitor, or perhaps you’ve seen discussions around the blogosphere. My fellow blogger Eugene Cho is talking about it, and despite his posting before me, I’m not copying him.

The article combined the recent results of the American Religious Identification Survey conducted by Trinity College indicates what we have all long suspected: Americans are not as religious as they were previously and the most religious of them all, evangelicals, are losing dominance and influence in American life, so much so that it is being called a “collapse.”

There are many who are celebrating this collapse, both within and outside of evangelical circles. Some because they believe it will lead to a needed reformation, or because they are sick of the culture of evangelicalism. Others are glad because they believe that Christians are altogether wrong, that religion is unhelpful and the bane of civilization. Some share his concern about the dumbing down of Christianity in order to generate mass appeal.

The article makes several good points, but his second particularly is striking for someone who works with young adults. He asserts:

2. We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we’ve spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.

I can testify to the truth of this assertion. As I mentioned in an earlier post about Biblical illiteracy Christian students are woefully ignorant about their own faith. Combined with a thrust for activism, I foresee that evangelicalism will not so much collapse as cease to be orthodox. Of course orthodox (small o) Christian is thriving in America and around the world There is a subtle assumption in Spencer’s article that evangelical = white middle class American. It does not.

Though we may not care to remember it, and some now view evangelicals as out of touch, evangelicalism was (and is) the movement of the non-elites in American society. It thrived, in all its various forms, among those who were not especially well educated and certainly who viewed themselves as not being among the “in-crowd.” During the hey-day of mainline churches in America, evangelicals (then called fundamentalists) were definitely not the cool kids. They still aren’t. Despite their perceived political strength, they are, at best, the red-headed step child of the Republican party, which likes the evangelical vote, but is somewhat less enamored of actual evangelicals. The evangelical left, which has increasingly become associated with the Democratic Party treats run of the mill evangelicals like the crazy uncle that embarrasses you whenever you have friends over. You can’t really disown them, but if you could get away with you’d like to keep him lock in the attic. In fact I daresay that evangelicals probably get worse press than any other religious group in America, far out of proportion to their numbers or influence.