Formative influences #8: tell it like an evangelical

Happy New Year to all. Yes, both of you :)

Back in 2008, I had a series of blog posts on formative influences and formative moments. I think it's time to share some more, not least because they've been on my mind a lot lately.

This nugget comes from a meeting of the College Christian Union while I was a graduate student. The CU wasn't really set up for graduates, so I don't really recall whether I was there very much. It was a staunchly evangelical set-up, evangelistic, too. I remember well a particular evening when various people were sharing words of "testimony" or faith stories. Another couple of graduate students were there, one of them from an Eastern Orthodox tradition. He was going to speak, but perhaps reticent in getting going. I remember Ruth saying something along the lines of "go on, Tim, tell it like an evangelical".

That put into sharp relief something I knew subconsciously already: that we can tell our story in a number of different ways. Indeed, that even within the Christian sub-culture there are many very diverse strands that don't really communicate. But with exposure to the right groups, you can learn to tell a tale in a different genre: the Orthodox believer can tell it like an evangelical - and, I presume, vice versa.

Some who use the postmodern label would throw in the word metanarrative at this point: my point, though, is the rather simple one that there are many ways of seeing the same thing. We adapt our discourse to suit our surroundings, and that affects not just the vocabulary and syntax: it also means that different aspects get emphasised, different perspectives described, different conclusions reached.

Which of those stories is true? Well, that all depends on what truth is all about. And there lies deep water. What if those stories become mutually contradictory? Well, that depends on the framework of reasoning to which you expose them. And there lies some more deep water.

Too readily such discussions disappear into abstruse philosophy. But they matter very much, because I for one know that I inhabit several stories, and I doubt it's possible to reconcile them into a single coherent whole. I don't want to be a liar, a two (or multi)-faced individual who makes out he is one thing to one group, and something else to another, and yet I certainly don't know of a way to sum up all that I think/feel/believe in a single narrative any more.

Am I allowed to be plural?

provocative

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3168791/Church-courts-controversy-with-Christmas-billboard

(may offend)

more dissonance

I was a little taken aback to read that Peter Rollins was in Seattle visiting Mars Hill Graduate School. Pete Rollins and Mark Driscoll are both cool in their own way, but theologically they surely have as much in common as ... some very unlike things. I understand a lot more of Driscoll than I understand of Rollins. But I like much more of the latter than the former. Perhaps there's a reason for this.

But evidently Mars Hill Graduate School, despite being in Seattle, seems to have nothing to do with Seattle's Mars Hill Church. So that's all right then.

I'm not surprised Evangelical Christianity is on the rise

Ooh. Now, this is scary. But it doesn't seem to be backed by any hard facts. So perhaps we can ignore it.

I'm not surprised Evangelical Christianity is on the rise

Review: A History of Christianity

The BBC is running a series at the moment on the history of Christianity. It's got a very different approach from last year's Channel 4 series, which impressed me greatly although many critics slammed it.

I wish there were transcripts available online, because the script has lots of lines dripping with nuance, deserving to be discussed. But I cannot find any. So we must settle for a quote from the website describing this week's epsiode:

Diarmaid MacCulluch traces the growth of an exuberant expression of faith that has spread across the globe - Evangelical Protestantism.

Today, it is associated with conservative politics, but the whole story is distinctly more unexpected. It is easily forgotten that the Evangelical explosion has been driven by a concern for social justice and the claim that one could stand in a direct emotional relationship with God.

It allowed the Protestant faith to burst its boundaries from its homeland in Europe. In America, its preachers marketed Christianity with all the flair and swashbuckling enterprise of American commerce. In Africa, it converted much of the continent by adapting to local traditions, and now it is expanding into Asia. But is Korean Pentecostalism and its message of prosperity in the here and now an adaptation too far?

He introduced the segment about Pentecostalism (and the prosperity message) by asking if some forms of Evangelicalism have wandered too far from the message of Jesus. It's an interesting question - and are the prosperity gospel folks the right ones to pick on as outliers? As he toured one or two African indigenous churches, the thought occurred to me: just how wide is the Christian family?

It seems an unanswerable question. His recurring theme in the series is that the strength of Christianity has been its willingness to adapt to local circumstances. Doubtless, that's true. But where does truth end and heresy begin? Is that, indeed, a sensible question?

Everyone tends to describe the answer by looking at their neighbours, and those they come into contact with. Some are 'in' and some are 'out'. But of course, if you look at their opinions of their 'in' neigbours, and so on, you will eventually get to places where you wouldn't be so comfortable. (I think there's an analogy to be made with inter-breeding bird species around the North Pole, but I can't find a reference).

It's tempting to think that we know what the faith truly is. But perhaps it isn't so. We tend to construct it in terms of its unchanging truth: but maybe, just maybe, it is its adaptability which is a much better way to look at it. Somehow that feels really unsettling.

the summary

Having hashed out the argument of my previous post on my facebook status, I think I've come to a much more succinct statement of my point of view: the rich irony is that the British Humanist Society presumes itself able to set a privileged metanarrative for the whole of society. How absurd.

Christian Children

The British Humanist Association is running an advertising campaign "Please don't label me", inspired by a quote from Richard Dawkins:

There is no such thing as a Christian child: only a child of Christian parents. ... Catholic child? Flinch. Protestant child? Squirm. Muslim child? Shudder. Everybody's consciousness should be raised to this level.

[amusingly, the children featured in the pictures belong to a family of Evangelicals, and just happen to have found their way into a photo library]

Many Christians would agree that people have to find their own way, and come to their own "faith decision" at an appropriate time. Many would say that there are a whole series of faith decisions to be made, perhaps (why else did Christ talk of taking up one's cross daily?)

But it seems stunningly naive to suggest that we need our consciousness raised to the point where we realise that children are blank canvasses, and that "religion" is something which may or may not be foisted upon them. Never mind whether it's desirable, is it possible to step outside our own prejudices and give the next generation an unfettered, un-nuanced choice?

Of course not. The child raised by socialists will look at the world differently from the neighbour raised by aspiring middle-class entrepreneurs. The child raised by vegans will make different life choices from the one who starts boxing lessons at the age of four (ok; those are not quite mutually exclusive, but I'm thinking that the overlap is tiny). The child raised by atheists will view the world differently from the ones who are active, philosophically-inquisitive agnostics. These points of view do not necessarily give rise to a simple causation (vegan parents means life-long vegan child) but they are undoubtedly affecting.

There is no "neutral" position. There are many possible beliefs and practices. The stuff that society generally agrees on is pretty slender. "Stealing is bad, and violence is only possible as a last resort, and perhaps not even then" might seem a common credo, but I'd wager plenty of people would want to qualify that slightly before instilling it in their child. The assumption that "no religion" is a better default than this faith system or that seems equally arbitrary - especially when the majority of the population has an explicit faith of some kind (and a significant proportion of the rest will hold onto some intangible, unprovable mystic beliefs of some sort or another).

People have tried interfering with what may or may not be taught to the young before. It seldom ends well. There will always be extremes that society decides are too damaging - and I wouldn't rule out evangelicalism some day receiving that label -but the diversity of society arises precisely because families, extended families, and communities all have an influence on the way children grow up. And that, as far as I'm concerned, is not just a good thing, it's essential.