7/28/09

Christian comeback in Europe?

Is Europe hopelessly anti-Christian and must it's self-destructive secularism inevitably open the way for it to become the next Muslim continent? Some commentators have lamented this possibility. But Philip Jenkins disputes this analysis in an article (and in his new book, God's Continent ) in which he argues that Christianity is poised to make a comeback in secular Europe. I hope and pray that he is right - and am more than willing to take another mission trip to Europe, as the campus ministry I serve did last Summer.

Two paragraphs from the Jenkins article stuck out to me:

In fact, the rapid decline in the continent’s church attendance over the past 40 years may have done Europe a favor. It has freed churches of trying to operate as national entities that attempt to serve all members of society. Today, no church stands a realistic chance of incorporating everyone. Smaller, more focused bodies, however, can be more passionate, enthusiastic, and rigorously committed to personal holiness. To use a scientific analogy, when a star collapses, it becomes a white dwarf—smaller in size than it once was, but burning much more intensely. Across Europe, white-dwarf faith communities are growing within the remnants of the old mass church.

I have long wondered if this is basically what may happen to the "Mainline" or "historic Protestant" Churches of the United States, including The United Methodist Church. As the society moves away from a Christendom approach, fewer and fewer people will join our churches, fewer will come to us to baptize their children, fewer will come for church weddings, fewer will do any of these things "just because that is what one does." In other words there will be fewer nominal Christians (and fewer nominal United Methodists). Those who are left will be the truly committed: the disciples of Christ, not merely the cultural Christians, will populate our churches.

Of course, we will shed a great many more members (that is, our membership roles will shrink significantly, even if actual church attendance remains somewhat steady). We can only guess where our membership will "bottom out" - but when it does, we will have a wonderful opportunity to regroup and then grow.

The other thing that struck me was this:
Jürgen Habermas, a veteran leftist German philosopher stunned his admirers not long ago by proclaiming, “Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter.” Europe may be confronting the dilemmas of a truly multifaith society, but with Christianity poised for a comeback, it is hardly on the verge of becoming an Islamic colony.

Could it be that a growing number of European intellectuals will recognize how important the Christian notions of justice and love, of humans bearing the image of God, of faith and reason - how all of these Christian elements have made possible not only the birth, but also the continuation of Western Civilization? We'll see what happens.

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7/25/09

Wesley on Communion

"...if we consider the Lord's Supper as a command of Christ, no man can have any pretence to Christian piety, who does not recieve it (not once a month, but) as often as he can."

-John Wesley, The Duty of Constant Communion, (section 21)

I thought it was an ironic quote since many United Methodist Churches recieve Holy Communion precisely only once a month.

I suppose, in so far as many of us don't yet practice weekly Communion, we do have a wonderul opportunity then to conform ourselves closer to Wesleyan theology, closer to the larger Anglican Tradition that Wesleyanism flows from, and indeed, closer to the universal/catholic practice of the Early Church: by taking up a weekly celebration of Holy Communion.

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7/20/09

Metropolitan Jonah speech at ACNA

As you may have heard there were some high-profile guest speakers at the recent convention of the Anglican Church in North America. That convention ratified the canons and constitution of the new aspiring Anglican Province, elected former Episcopal bishop of Pittsburgh, Robert Duncan, as its first Archbishop, and set the direction for the new Church group.

One of the much talked-about features of the Convention was the speech delivered by Metropolitan Jonah, the leader of the Orthodox Church in America and a former Episcopalian, in which he signaled a new willingness - indeed an enthusiasm - among the Orthodox to begin ecumenical dialogue with the Anglicans, with full recognition of the new Anglican group as an authentic Orthodox Church as a realistic possibility.

Metropolitan Jonah named three major issues, on the Anglican side, that need to be resolved for such a union to occur: 1) the removal of the filioque clause from the Nicene Creed, which many Western Churches are beginning to consider anyways, 2) the rejection of Calvinism, which was condemned as a heresy by the Eastern Churches centuries ago, but is held by many evangelical Anglicans and 3) the rejection of the ordination of women as bishops or priests (he made no mention of deacons, and I assume this is considered negotiable).

The Anglican Church in North America has already declared that it will not ordain women as bishops, but left the issue of priests up to the individual dioceses and sub-divisions of the Church.
On the whole, this could represent a remarkable step forward in the cause of ecumenical reconciliation, and I'll be excited to see what happens in the coming years. As a side note, it seems evident to me that this new Anglican Church in North America will be much closer to United Methodist doctrine and discipline than the Episcopal Church is likely to be in the coming years. Perhaps we should shift some of our ecumenical energies to work with this new group.

The video below includes the whole address.

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7/17/09

NT Wright on TEC General Convention

The following is part of a statement by the Anglican Bishop of Durham, N.T. Wright, on the General Convention of the Episcopal Church's decision this week paving the way for more actively-practicing gay bishops and priests and deacons, over the explicit objections of the Anglican Communion and against the urging of the Archbishop of Canterbury who himself addressed the convention before the vote was taken asking them to show restraint. They did not:

Both the bishops and deputies (lay and clergy) of TEC knew exactly what they were doing. They were telling the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other “instruments of communion” that they were ignoring their plea for a moratorium on consecrating practising homosexuals as bishops. They were rejecting the two things the Archbishop of Canterbury has named as the pathway to the future — the Windsor Report (2004) and the proposed Covenant (whose aim is to provide a modus operandi for the Anglican Communion). They were formalising the schism they initiated six years ago when they consecrated as bishop a divorced man in an active same-sex relationship, against the Primates’ unanimous statement that this would “tear the fabric of the Communion at its deepest level”. In Windsor’s language, they have chosen to “walk apart”.
Granted, the TEC resolution indicates a strong willingness to remain within the Anglican Communion. But saying “we want to stay in, but we insist on rewriting the rules” is cynical double-think. We should not be fooled.

Of course, matters didn’t begin with the consecration of Gene Robinson. The floodgates opened several years before, particularly in 1996 when a church court acquitted a bishop who had ordained active homosexuals. Many in TEC have long embraced a theology in which chastity, as universally understood by the wider Christian tradition, has been optional.


That wider tradition always was counter-cultural as well as counter-intuitive. Our supposedly selfish genes crave a variety of sexual possibilities. But Jewish, Christian and Muslim teachers have always insisted that lifelong man-plus-woman marriage is the proper context for sexual intercourse. This is not (as is frequently suggested) an arbitrary rule, dualistic in overtone and killjoy in intention. It is a deep structural reflection of the belief in a creator God who has entered into covenant both with his creation and with his people (who carry forward his purposes for that creation).

Paganism ancient and modern has always found this ethic, and this belief, ridiculous and incredible. But the biblical witness is scarcely confined, as the shrill leader in yesterday’s Times suggests, to a few verses in St Paul. Jesus’s own stern denunciation of sexual immorality would certainly have carried, to his hearers, a clear implied rejection of all sexual behaviour outside heterosexual monogamy. This isn’t a matter of “private response to Scripture” but of the uniform teaching of the whole Bible, of Jesus himself, and of the entire Christian tradition.

The appeal to justice as a way of cutting the ethical knot in favour of including active homosexuals in Christian ministry simply begs the question. Nobody has a right to be ordained: it is always a gift of sheer and unmerited grace. The appeal also seriously misrepresents the notion of justice itself, not just in the Christian tradition of Augustine, Aquinas and others, but in the wider philosophical discussion from Aristotle to John Rawls. Justice never means “treating everybody the same way”, but “treating people appropriately”, which involves making distinctions between different people and situations. Justice has never meant “the right to give active expression to any and every sexual desire”.

Such a novel usage would also raise the further question of identity. It is a very recent innovation to consider sexual preferences as a marker of “identity” parallel to, say, being male or female, English or African, rich or poor. Within the “gay community” much postmodern reflection has turned away from “identity” as a modernist fiction. We simply “construct” ourselves from day to day.

We must insist, too, on the distinction between inclination and desire on the one hand and activity on the other — a distinction regularly obscured by references to “homosexual clergy” and so on. We all have all kinds of deep-rooted inclinations and desires. The question is, what shall we do with them? One of the great Prayer Book collects asks God that we may “love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise”. That is always tough, for all of us. Much easier to ask God to command what we already love, and promise what we already desire. But much less like the challenge of the Gospel.


Of course, the question is what will happen next. The campus ministry I serve, for example, is a shared ministry with the diocese of Western Louisiana, a relatively moderate-to-conservative diocese whose bishop was at GAFCON. Will groups like this try to sign onto the Windsor Covenant even if their denomination does not? Will they join ACNA? Will they seek some sort of 'alternative oversight' while staying in the Episcopal Church? I don't know, but they are in my prayers.

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7/11/09

Bishop Whitaker: Let us pray - with the Church

Here is an excellent post from Bishop Whitaker urging United Methodist pastors to use the Church's prayer of Great Thanksgiving when celebrating the sacrament of Holy Communion. The sacrament is a focal point of our worship, especially in the Wesleyan tradition as the bishop points out (sadly many of our churches seem ignorant of this, judging by their practice), and how we celebrate this sacrament is highly important:
In some congregations, it has become the custom of the pastor to offer his or her own prayer as a substitute for the Church's prayer. Sometimes the pastor includes the words of institution, and sometimes the pastor does not include these words. While it is essential to include the words of our Lord which were spoken at the Last Supper when he instituted the Lord's Supper, even this is not adequate.

The prayer of the Church should be used when celebrating the Eucharist because it is the prayer of the whole Church and not that of just the congregation or the pastor. It contains the whole drama of God's salvation from creation to the new creation. It is ordered around the Rule of Faith, namely the worship of one God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
He goes on to address other reasons for using the church's official liturgy and encouraging pastors to do so.
Some of the comments are illuminating as well. One comment notes the fact that some clergy who do indeed use the official liturgy do so in a hurried and thoughtless way that detracts from the sacramental moment rather than undergirding it. I have long maintained that a scripted prayer can be (and must be) read with real sincerity and conviction - but this is by no means automatic. The clergy must prepare themselves spiritually and indeed be mindful of exactly what it is they are doing in the moment of prayer itself. However, one advantage of using the church's liturgy over a sponteneous prayer is that it will be as theologically sound and as deeply true whether or not the pastor is spiritually prepared or actively mindful of the holy moment.
For those who are interested in going further, here is a relatively short article about the evolution of the liturgy in the United Methodist Church, from the Ancient Church, through the Medival and Anglican/Reformation periods, down to the present.

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7/4/09

Happy America Day!

Maybe today would be a nice time to re-read (some of) our founding document, The Declaration of Independence, and consider seriously its implications:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them
shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government...

"It may seem something less than a compliment to compare the American Constitution to the Spanish Inquisition. But oddly enough, it does involve a truth; and still more oddly perhaps, it does involve a compliment. The American Constitution does resemble the Spanish Inquisition in this: that it is founded on a creed. America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism, and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived. Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the matter of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things."

-G.K.Chesterton,"What I Saw in America"


It seems to me undeniable to the rational observer that G. K. Chesterton is quite correct. The system of government that we have is built upon certain philosophical or ideological (even 'religious') presuppositions. Those suppositions are clearly and plainly articulated by Mr. Jefferson and endorsed by all the signing Founding Fathers. That they are denied today as a matter of course in much of the intellectual and cultural elite may say something about the philosophical incoherence of our contemporary cultural and political situation.

There can, according to the Declaration of July 4 1776, be no 'human rights' without the Creator God to serve as their source. It is for this reason that I believe rational coherency demands that our public institutions remain nominally theistic/deistic in character (that is not necessarily to say "Christian" in character). But then, rational coherency is not so highly valued in a society that is perhaps more swayed by slogans oft-repeated than by clear reason.

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7/1/09

Good and Evil

I found this quote over at the Eastern Orthodox blog, Glory to God for all Things, (whose author was formerly a contributor of 'Pontifications'). I don't know the source, though it sounds very Lewis-esque to me...

Good and Evil
I think evil is always small, and that good is infinite. Evil closes itself to God and thus becomes even smaller; Good opens itself to God and thus becomes infinite. Evil cannot become so large as to fill even the universe. God became so small that He could fill Hell and then burst it asunder because it could not contain Him. Every good deed will have eternal remembrance, but even the largest deeds of the evil will be forgotten.

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