"Alternative oversight" Dioceses vital

This chart, from the Diocese of Forth Worth website, compares the growth and vitality of those Episcopal dioceses seeking alternative oversight to the ECUSA at large. No surprises here: Alternative oversight dioceses are much healthier in terms of growth and those with liberal bishops are least healthy. Now I understand and sympathize with those who say "numerical growth is not the only means of determining church health." But really, if the church is continuously shrinking and shrivelling it is hard to make the case that it is perfectly healthy, faithful, and under the blessing of Almighty God.

Women Shepherds?

(this article has been re-written because the original was unclear)

The Church of England (C of E) has decided to move forward toward offering the bishopric to women. The C of E currently ordains women as priests and deacons, but not as bishops. I have often thought that the C of E's position on women's ordination was a clever compromise position. After all they DO allow women to be clergy in charge of a local parish, on the other hand they don't allow women to be the bishop, the truly "senior pastor." But such a compromise is probably only acceptable for the undecided.

Rome (along with the Eastern Orthodox) has said that such a move toward female bishops will further separate Anglicans from the rest of the Historical church and make ecumenical diologue aimed at full communion much more difficult. Naturally, the inovative Episcopal Church in the US has been doing women bishops for a while now, been there, done that (except for a few dioceses that do not ordain women at all). My own United Methodist Church elevated our first woman to the episcopate in 1980 and there are a number of them now. And of course in 2006 we UMs are (most of us) celebrating 50 years of women's "clergy rights".

Now I dislike the language of "clergy rights" for men or for women since I believe that we have no "rights" over against God - only gifts to be recieved from him - among which ordination is a great one. Of course, though God certainly loves all people it does not follow that he gives the same gifts to all - he gives gifts as he pleases. And it is even possible that it may please God to give certain gifts to men and not to women or to women and not to men (consider the awesome gift of carrying children within the womb that God has given to women alone).

I have worked with a number of female clergy on a close basis. And I must report mixed impressions of their theological and pastoral giftedness. Some are very good. As someone who thinks of himself as moderately conservative and Evangelical in theological orientation (with a mean Catholic streak) I must confess that I prefer to see a man behind the chancel if given a choice (just in case the Catholics are right). But I do know of some very prominent Protestant and Non-denominational female-pastors who seem to be quite effective and well-respected - in addition to the women clergy that I have known to be quite gifted. I was pretty much in favor of female clergy when I arrived at my mainline Protestant seminary. On my first day I heard a statistic given by a liberal Episcopal Priest that caused me to quiestion that support. 85% of female clergy, he said, will experience a divorce while in ministry; their families will fall apart (compare this with 1 Tim. 3:4, in which a bishop must guide their family well). That is almost 9 out of 10! - much higher than rates among male clergy (which basically mirror the general population).

I have since heard that women also leave the ministry at a higher rate than men. It is also a fact that the vast majority of churches that are very successful (by any standard that can be measured) are pastored by men (though since the great vast majority of clergy are men, this may mean little). These "red flag" observations have caused me to rethink my support.

It may be that the Baptists and Catholics and Orthodox and many others are right - that God does not intend women to be pastors. Having learned more about the differences in men and women's brains, I wonder if leadership in ministry makes demands that (most) women are simply by design less able to meet (and presumably more than men able to meet other demands for other functions). If this were true it would come as no surprise if God did not call women into ordained ministry at all, or if he did it would be an exceptional case (all women Christians are called into ministry by virtue of their baptism, and many - such as nuns - are set apart to a special consecrated, but not ordained, ministry).

There is also the issue of lack of male church involvment - could it be exasperated by female leadership? If these things are so, I still wouldn't want to rule women out categorically, but maybe a woman who really is able and called to do ministry must be exceedingly rare.

As I was honestly thinking and struggling about this, I ran across articles from 2 of my top ten theologians, both members of the Church of England and both moderate & Evangelical intellectuals, who wrote on this subject (and they disagree with one another!). So if you really want to investigate it, I encourage you to take the time to read these.

C.S. Lewis thought "Priestesses in the Church" were a bad idea when it was first suggested. Yes, he says it seems to be perfectly rational and makes good sense considering the world we find ourselves in, but Christianity is often supra-rational and doesn't always conform to the thinking of our times - there are reasons to believe, he says, that God does not intend women for ordained leadership in the Church Catholic. He also thinks the ordination of women suggests by its symbolic value that we ought to change our metaphors for God as well: that they could just as well be feminine as masculine. But he (rightly) points out that a religion that worships a goddess is not the Christian faith. Presumably, he (following the Apostles, I think) does not have a problem with deaconesses. Lewis was certainly correct that people would leave the C of E if it ordained women, many "went to Rome" when it did in fact happen.

N.T. Wright, on the other hand, thinks much of our (male-only) tradition is simply a misunderstanding of the scriptures because we have lost touch of the context in which Paul was writing these letters that seem at first glance to exclude women for leadership. That is to say, the traditional view is, in his opinion, un-biblical. He examines the relevant Biblical texts in context and proposes that we mis-understand them because we don't know the context and that this mis-understanding has affected the translation history so that translators are now even more likely to choose English wordings that reflect the mis-understanding, whereas an alternative translation that is equally faithful to the Greek would be suggestive of his reading that actually encourages women leaders in the church. The article is quite challenging if you hold the traditional view because he makes some compelling arguements. Wright does not address the "qualifications for bishops" in 1 Tim. 3; but presumably he would argue that the use of masculine pronouns should be taken as generic.

So I honestly am torn and feeling a bit agnostic over the issue. I can see good arguments both ways. If I follow my "paleo-orthodox" theological method that reads Scripture through the lens of the ecumenical Church's living tradition, emphasizing that which is most commonly held (oftentimes, that which is earliest), then I am tempted to side with Rome on this issue. On the other hand, Tom Oden, the theologian from whom I learned my paleo-orthodoxy to begin with, makes an argument in favor of women's ordination in his excellent book Pastoral Theology - which I appreciate since so many of the arguments I hear in favor of women's ordination are simply some vague, thoughtless, and un-warranted jump from "since God loves everyone" or "since the new covenant of salvation is available to everyone" (often pointing to Galatians 3:28 as if Paul was speaking about ordination) it therefore follows women ought to be ordained. But this does not necessarily follow.

If our church wants to defend the practice and continue to hold that the Bible is indeed the final authority for our faith and practice (as The Book of Discipline repeatedly asserts), then sharper, deeper, and more thoughtful Biblical arguments need to be made (and N.T. Wright's article above may be a good place to start thinking through these things).

What do you informed readers think on this one?

World Methodist Council signs on to "Joint Declaration"

The World Methodist Council, representing over 70 million Wesleyan Christians world-wide, has officially "signed on" to the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, a document produced in 1999 by a team from the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation that claims to have reached agreement on the principle doctrinal controversy that sparked the Reformation in the 16th century.

When I discovered this document in seminary (we read it for our systematics class) I was amazed to have not heard of it sooner since it claims to have bridged the most important theological gulf that was thought to exist between the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutherans. If so, it is surely one of the most important theological documents of the last half millenium!

I have read the Joint Declaration a couple of times and really need to devote more study to it. It is extremely intricate and complicated (perhaps, at times convoluted). Various Roman Catholic thinkers as well as more strict confessional Lutherans are skeptical that we have really arrived at a doctrinally coherent agreement on the doctrine of justification. Conservatives on both sides feel that their own church conceded too much on the issue.

Wesley's own theology of salvation (or see also here) probably falls somewhere between what we ussually associate with Lutherans and with Roman Catholics. If we actually can come to consensus on Justification that would go a LONG way toward healing the fragmentation of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

I am still unsure what influence or authority this decision by the World Methodist Council even has for The United Methodist Church. We are a member of it, but according to the Book of Discipline, only the United Methodist General Conference (meeting again in 2008) can speak for our Church; so perhaps that gathering will endorse it. The Lutheran World Federation and the World Methodist Council account for about 140 million of the world's 600 million or so Protestant Christians.

The official theological statementof the World Methodist Council, should be read along with the actual Joint Declaration document (above) for a clearer picture of the theological consensus that has been reached.

Monastery: the new tool for spiritual formation?

Will monasteries, or monastic communities of some kind, be important tools for spiritual formation in the Post-modern Church? At least some Evangelicals think so. But what could be more "Romish" (in the bad sense)? Or not. Didn't the Reformation produce lots of little communes and Christian-communal living arrangements (think Amish)? Didn't the Charismatic movement do the same thing? Aren't some "emergent church" leaders advocating something similar: living together in groups for accountability and regular communal prayer and worship? For that matter, didn't Jesus and his disciples pretty much live together throughout his 3-year ministry as they walked, learned, and prayed together?
St. Basil the Great, when asked (see Ascetical works, "The Long Rules," question 7) if it was better to be a hermit or to live in a monastic community responded that it was better to be in community because only by living closely connected with others can we learn the Christian virtues of charity, forgiveness, and burden-bearing.

Richard Foster has this to say: "The feelings of alienation and loneliness, the concern over ecological responsibility, the desire for a just distribution of resources, and the joyful freedom to share resulting from the charismatic renewal are a few of the causes [for renewed interest in communal living]...Perhaps the greatest value of the Christian commune is its symbolic importance. Quietly, it questions society's affluence, and points toward another way." (see The Freedom of Simplicity, chapter 8).

I wonder if we American Christians would do well to radically re-think our ideas of individual freedom and consider some sort of more communal living (and not just while we are in college)? That is a scary thought for recovering hermits like me.

Tom Howard's "Recognizing Church"

I recently bought a new book for myself (which I have been doing a lot less of in the past 6 months) called Ancient and Postmodern Christianity: Paleo-Orthodoxy in the 21st Century, Essays in honor of Thomas Oden. The book is ecumenical with perhaps a slight Methodist leaning but contains essays from a number of scholars on various ways that we can learn from the early church and it has been quite enjoyable so far.
One chapter that both delighted and frustrated me was Thomas Howard's chapter on the marks of the church. Howard, during his Anglican phase, wrote the excellent introduction to Liturgical theology called Evangelical is not Enough: Worship of God in Liturgy and Sacrament.
This chapter is good, but clearly comes out of his final (or just current?), Roman Catholic phase, as the last few sections of the essay (the part that frustrated me) clearly demonstrate.

But here is an excerpt that really hit home with me as Howard describes his attitude towards the early fathers and their "catholic" theology in his Fundamentalist phase:

The Creed is not Scripture; that is true. But then all of us, whether we come from groups that repeat the Creed or not, would agree, "Oh yes, indeed; that is the Faith which we all profess." Some would add, "But of course, we get it straight out of the Bible. We don't need any creed." The great difficulty here is that Eutychius and Sabellius and Arius got their notions straight out of the Bible as well. Who will arbitrate these things for us? Who will speak with authority to us faithful, all of us rushing about flapping the pages of our well-thumbed New Testaments, locked in shrill contests over the two natures of Christ, or baptism, or the Lord's Supper, or the mystery of predestination?...

...the antiquity of the Church confronts me. As an Evangelical, I discovered while I was in college that it was possible to dismiss the entire Church as having gone off the rails by about A.D. 95. That is, we, with our open Bibles, knew better than old Ignatius or Polycarp or Clement, who had been taught by the apostles themselves-we knew better than they, just what the Church is, and what it should look like. Never mind that our worship services would have been unrecognizable to them, or that our church government would have been equally unrecognizable, or the vocabulary in which we spoke of the Christian life would have been equally unrecognizable. We were right, and the Fathers were wrong. That settled the matter.

The trouble here was that what these wrong-headed men wrote-about God, about our Lord Jesus Christ, about his Church, about the Christian's walk and warfare-was so titanic, and so rich, and so luminous, that their error seemed infinitely truer and more glorious than my truth. I gradually felt that it was I, not they, who was under surveillance.

There are 3 or 4 theologians who really pushed me to reconsider the authority of the Church, something the New Testament is very up-front about and which we contemporary evangelicals are almost afraid to speak of for fear of sounding "Romish." After all, how can the "invisible church" exercise the sort of authority that the New Testaments tells us is ours? What is all this about binding and loosing (Matt. 16), about forgiving and retaining the sins of others (John 20)? In a faith that is fundamentally based upon the miracle of Incarnation - what does it mean for the Church to be the Body of Christ in the world, for the Church to be "the pillar and foundation of the truth" (1 Tim. 3:16)? How can we possibly practice these things in our current way of being church?

Is the individual Christian the final authority in his own life, or can the Church interpret the meaning of God's revelation in Scripture with binding authority? Truly she can if the Church is actually filled with the same Spirit that inspired the Bible. The Apostolic Council at Jerusalem (Acts 15) gives us the model of how the Apostolic Church delt with doctrinal controversy (which always has practical implications). The "undivied Church" of the first 5 (if not the first 10) centuries of this New Age followed a similar pattern, and I believe has equal authority (many of the Protestant Reformers emphasized the authority of early teachings and councils, but that teaching has mostly become lost on Prostestants). What could such a conciliar consensus look like today, I wonder?

Returning to classics

A new thing, is afoot. It seems some contemporary mega-churches who long ago cast off the traditional worship, are now returning to the classics, buying hymnals, choir robes, and offering more traditional worship services because they percieved a need for it. Alot of older folks did not feel at home in the contemporary service, and there is the occasional young person who just prefers the traditional worship. I know a few of those myself.
Regardless of who "won the worship wars" I think most people are realizing that we don't need to "take sides" but really can benefit from various types and styles of worship, that emphasize different aspects of our relationship to God. The shift from smaller to medium and larger sized churches in our society could mean that there will be fewer churches in the future, but those that are around may be equipped to offer different styled services.

Natural Law and the US Supreme Court

I just read a fascinating article at Touchstone, "A journal of Mere Christianity," that asks why 5 of the 9 US Supreme Court Justices are Catholics, all appointed in the last 20 years, on a court that has been historically dominated by "Mainline" Protestants, including only 7 other Catholics in the last 200 years.
The reason for this that is offered: Catholic teachings on Natural Law are more acceptable to both "secularists" and "spiritualists," the two dominant schools of legal theory in our culture, than either group's ideology would be to the other. Catholic understandings of natural law are also consistent with American philosophical traditions: the Declaration of Indepence makes an argument based entirely upon natural law, "the laws of nature and nature's God," because this was the understanding shared by Deists and Calvinists the dominant schools of thought at that time. If the author (an Evangelical Protestant) is right (and I believe he may be), then this new trend toward a new emphasis upon natural law is a very good sign for our society.
Natural law assumes a theistic basis for national morality and principles of justice. The only basis available to a secular democracy is the fickle will of the majority. The majority-will defines what is right and wrong for such a nation. All laws would be "just" in a God-less democracy, so long as they were legitimately the will of the majority. But history demonstrates that the majority can be wrong, as in Nazi Germany for example. There must be a higher standard.

Grandad writes a book

Bennie McLain Hixon, longtime enthusiast of the history of Mangham, Louisiana, has written a book on the subject. Mr. Hixon is from Mangham and was once the principle of Mangham High School. He is now 83.

The Religion of the Future? Or not.

40 Years ago, and more, "Liberal Protestantism" was confident that its modernity-accomodating theological program was the future of American Christianity. But that's not the way it has turned out. It seems that God-fearing, Bible-believing, Gospel-spreading theologies are the future. Imagine that.

Ok, it is pretty easy to find critiques of Mainline Protestantism from conservatives, evangelicals, and traditionalists within those denominations and from other evangelical Protestants. But here is one from a Catholic perspective, and it is pretty funny, and pretty much on target too. Here is an exerpt:

It is not entirely coincidental that at about the same time that Episcopalians, at their general convention in Columbus, Ohio, were thumbing their noses at a directive from the worldwide Anglican Communion that they "repent" of confirming the openly gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire three years ago, the Presbyterian Church USA, at its general assembly in Birmingham, Ala., was turning itself into the laughingstock of the blogosphere by tacitly approving alternative designations for the supposedly sexist Christian Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Among the suggested names were "Mother, Child and Womb" and "Rock, Redeemer and Friend." Moved by the spirit of the Presbyterian revisionists, Beliefnet blogger Rod Dreher held a "Name That Trinity" contest. Entries included "Rock, Scissors and Paper" and "Larry, Curly and Moe."

Go Presbyterians! Way to be "relevant."
It should also be pointed out, as the brilliant Dr. Bruce Marshall (former Lutheran, now Roman Catholic scholar at Perkins School of Theology, SMU) has consistently argued, alternative names for the Trinity such as "Source, Spring, Stream" or "Mother, Child, Womb" do not actually convey the same relationshp-idea as the traditional understanding of Father, Son, and Spirit (especially as articulated by St. Augustine in "The Trinity").

Dallas becomes 7th Diocese seeking alternative oversight

The Diocese of Dallas is seeking direct oversight from the Archbishop of Canterbury, becoming the 7th Diocese to seek some sort of alternative oversight since the Episcopal Church's General Convention in late June. This move follows the announcement of Christ Church, Plano TX, the largest congregation in the Episcopal Church, that it would "disassociate" from the national church. The other six dioceses to take such a step are Central Florida; Fort Worth, Texas; Fresno; Pittsburgh; Springfield, Ill., and South Carolina, and it is likely that a couple more Dioceses and a number of individual congregations will follow suite in the coming months.

This appeal for alternative oversight is being seen as a step short of a true schism, since all of the churches involved are still (at this point) members of the worldwide Anglican Communion. In fact, depending on how this plays out, a network of dioceses and parishes that seek alternative oversight may end up functioning like a seperate American denomination from the ECUSA, much like the Anglican Mission in America does.

This whole Episcopal mess has been both fascinating and very sad to watch unfold. Certainly it shows that fundamental disagreements in worldview within a church, such as come to the surface quickly when we start talking about sexuality, have the power to break a church that stayed together even through the American Civil War when others did not.

Celtic Way of Evangelism

This post at "Evangelism Today" links to an interview with George Hunter III, author of The Celtic Way of Evangelism about the major themes of the book. I read it for a report in my Evangelism class last year, and I thought it a pretty good book. I thought his assertion that we live in a neo-barbarian age, with regards to the "personality type" of our society was especially insightful.

Canterbury calls for Christians to visit Holy Land

In response to a "deepening humanitarian crisis" in Bethlehem and other parts of the West Bank since the election of Hamas leadership, Rowan Williams the Archbishop of Canterbury has called for more Western Christians to visit the Holy Land:

'Pilgrimages are a practical way of showing solidarity and helping to sustain the livelihoods of vulnerable communities in the Holy Land,' he said. Dr Williams urged Christians to continue to 'support and pray for those working for peace and reconciliation in the region, including through the provision of humanitarian aid.' click for more

Indeed, the West Bank economy needs all the help you can get. I hope you'll go to Bethlehem, and when you do, I hope you'll stay at the Star Hotel or some other place INSIDE the West Bank. It will be quite safe for an American and you'll get to see first hand the kind of crap they have to put up with from the Israeli government on a daily basis, as we did in January. In addition to helping others economically and being energized to try to help them politically, you can also see the Holy Places for yourself and grow in your own faith. It's win-win.

And yes, I know I need to comment on the turmoil in the Anglican Communion, but right now there is too much to say.

Where are all the men at church?

I have a book on my shelf that I have not yet read with a very interesting title: The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity. Have you ever noticed that the overwhelming majority of the people doing the ministry of the churches are women? I have. And I suspect it wasn't always so.
I also suspect that Christian spirituality and practice was more "masculine" (though not necessarily always in a good way) in past ages than it is today.

Here is a very short and clear explanation of why there are so few men in our churches that I ran across at OrthodoxyToday (by way of the splendid Catholic blog Pontifications). Essentially, it says, the current way of talking about the Christian life is perfectly suited to attract 50-year-old women: "You can have a love relationship with a man who will love you unconditionally and even give up his life for you." I think this explanation must be at least partially true.

We have also "feminized" our message by always talking about how we feel connected to or accepted by Jesus and talking not enough about God's covenant and the logical coherence of the truth of our faith. For cultural reasons we have emphasized the emotional appeal (associated with femininity) of the Gospel often to the neglect of the rational or analytical appeal (associated with masculinity), when of course we should do the one without neglecting the other. Once again, we need to strive after wholeness.

I once went to a mosque for a school project. In my comments I noted that the room was filled with men and boys all standing shoulder to shoulder, facing east together, and reciting their prayers in unison and I thought there was something very masculine about it. They were all a band of brothers in a war against idolatry.

Maybe it is time that we Christians re-capture more of a "gender-balance" in the message we are putting out there (note I am not advocating replacing a feminine emphasis with a masculine one, but simply balancing the two). Let's talk more about Christ the conquering King who is fearsome yet good and loving. We could take a page from the Early Church, who called themselves "the Church militant" as long as they lived in this world. This might even mean putting "Onward Christian soldiers" back in the hymnals (or actually singing it when it is there) or, worse still, preaching (responsibly) about spiritual warfare!

Why I am Paleo-Orthodox

Colleen Carroll not so long ago wrote a book called The New Faithful: Why Young adults are embracing Christian Orthodoxy. In this book she chronicles what she sees as a movement among younger American Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, rejecting the feel-good, wishy-washy, liberal, up-to-date, trendy Christianity of the Boomer generation and grasping toward a more ancient faith. In this interview she explains the gist of her book.

This movement has manifested itself in several ways: some Evangelicals are leaving Protestant Churches for Orthodox or Catholic or Anglican Churches (see Robert Weber's excellent little autobiographical book Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail). Another way we see this movement is Protestants remaining within their own denominations or churches but attempting to integrate more ancient practices and theology into their spiritual life. We see this in renewed emphasis on Holy Communion in many quarters. We see it in certain strains of the "Emerging Church" movement that includes icons and communion and incense and other ancient elements in its practice. In a few cases we see it in conventional Protestant Churches offering liturgical/sacramental worship opportunities such as the overtly Anglican-styled Cox Chapel service offered every Sunday at the prominent Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas.

I have been greatly influenced by this movement and one of the most influencial books that I have read in seminary has been Tom Oden's The Rebirth of Orthodoxy. The buzz-word for this movement is "Paleo-orthodoxy," a re-appropriation of the ancient, classical Christianity of the undivided (First Millenium A.D.) Church for our Postmodern age.

I just read an interesting post at the blog Paradoxology that puts it well: Oden (and many others, actually) have pointed out the "hunger for roots" that exists in today's culture due to the incessant change and runaway individualism that is so commonplace. In such a world, opportunity to anchor one's faith to what "all Christians at all times in all places have always believed" is very appealing.

I came to appreciate the importance and authority of the Church and her ancient consensus precisely because I hold a very high veiw of Biblical authority. I began to ask questions like: "I believe that the canonical books, and not others (like the Gospel of Thomas) are the God-inspired Scriptures. Why these books, and not the others?" or "I find Christians in Protestant, Evangelical, and Pentecostal Churches all pointing to the Bible to defend very different and often contradictory doctrinal positions. At the end of the day, is my own opinion the most authoritative interpretation for doctrine, or are there wiser guides?"

At the same time, I became dis-satisfied with the individualism and rootlessness I felt characterized my faith. It was all about me. I wanted a faith that was bigger than my experience, bigger than my intelligence, bigger than my opinions, interpretations, and understanding. I wanted to be connected to the Church through the ages, the whole communion of saints through history. I wanted safe-guards against aimless pluralism and individualism in the interpretation of the Bible.

I have found all of these by allowing the consensus of the ancient faithful guide me. There ARE authorative standards of belief: they are called the canonical Creeds that were accepted by the seven truly Ecumenical Councils of the whole Church. The Concilliar model of Church decision making is first attested in the Scripture itself in Acts 15 and the early Ecumenical Councils simply followed this paradigm and were also guided by the Holy Spirit (Dan Brown's accusations notwithstanding).

Most thinking Evangelical Protestants must say sort of the same thing. We all know that the Early Church in its practices, traditions, and synods, eventually came to a consensus deciding which books constituted the canonical New Testament and which do not. And we simply must assume that this process was guided by the Holy Spirit. Then surely that same Holy Spirit also guided those same individuals and leaders and councils as they hammered out doctrines and formulated the creeds in the very same process. It is very logical to assume that the God who gave us the faith would take steps to preserve right doctrine and methods of interpretation in the life of the Church. And so he has in the ancient ecumenical consensus of the Early Church and the whole church throughout the ages in all places.

Let us all with great joy re-discover the treasures, old and new, that exist within the traditions and among the great Early Fathers and Teachers of the Christian Church.

Anti-intellectualism and church

I've heard it in a myriad of different ways: "Don't give me all that theology, just give me Jesus." Or something to that effect. Of course that statement itself has a number of implicit theological claims embedded within it that are either true or false, but that is beside my point. Is there a widespread attitude of anti-intellectualism in our local churches?

I've just read a blog called Anti-intellectualism goes to church that critiques the largest segment of American Protestantism, namely Evangelicalism, for often failing to love God with our minds and therefore sinning against him.

The early church had a rigorous catechesis program, sometimes lasting up to 3 years, before one could be baptized (usually at Easter vigil) in which the catechumen learned not only how to live as a Christian, but what it meant to believe as a Christian, that is, he learned theology.

Placing one's trust in Jesus, the incarnate Word of God, implies that we first believe certain things about him (i.e. that he is worthy of our trust, for one). And so theology is never superflous, a nice pursuit for those who have the time and the gifts and the inclination to pursue it, it is absolutely necessary to be a God-honoring Christian who worships God with his mind.

Coming up next (possibly tommorow): "Why I am paleo-orthodox (and what I mean by that)"