Tag: Evangelicalism


You Can Help Stop Evangelical Self-Hatred

3
January

Over the past decade I have noticed, and have at times participated in, the increasing evangelical ethos of self-hatred. This comes through many mediums: social networks, personal conversations, university lectures, blogs, et al. Through these mediums the term evangelical is often used by those still in the movement in a pejorative way to explain something bad/wrong/naïve. Socially we cannot move forward because evangelicals will not give up on their clearly outdated views. Politically evangelicals are often cited for the rise of the Tea Party and the extremist repositioning of the Republican Party. Theologically, it is those silly evangelicals who are keeping us from progress towards [fill in a theological position here].

All these claims are true in certain instances, and examples can be given to justify these and many other claims. However, this self-hatred (by which I mean hatred towards the movement and those in it from within) and the way that it continually perpetuates itself has become cliche and somewhat destructive in my opinion. So, I would like to offer these three responses to my evangelical brothers and sisters: 1) Everyone and everything has problems; 2) We need to properly differentiate between fundamentalism and evangelicalism; and 3) We need to love the Church despite itself (in the same way that we need other Christians to love us despite ourselves).

Park Street Church

First, everything and everyone has its warts. Name a tradition and I will tell you something bad about it. Name a person and I can do the same. This is the milieu of postmodernism. We tear things down with the same tools that modernism used to build them up. Now, heroes only exist in fantasies (Bilbo Baggins) and comic books (Spiderman) because one bad thing can be used by us to invalidate all of the good that they did. We love the cloudy complexity of protagonists in our television shows, the Don Drapers and Walter Whites, but we often do not allow for the same in our real life. Rather, we want everyone to be Jesus Christ and naively forget that the Son of God was the only person to live a perfect life. Sure, evangelicals have done some horrible things. Here is one example: some evangelicals supported slavery in the antebellum south. But did you know that the first anti-slavery sermon in the United States was delivered at Park Street Church, an evangelical Church on Boston Common? Yet it is the first narrative, and hardly ever the second, that I consistently hear about online. Let’s talk about both.

Second, in our effort to appear smart, both to each other and to those outside of the

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4 comments » | Evangelicalism, Fundamentalism

A Thought About Evangelicals and Online Anger

20
November

A quick thought for today:

Evangelicals seem to sit on the opposite end of a good deal of online anger (rather than fill this post up with examples I encourage you to use the power of Google to find some for yourself. Go ahead. Any number of search terms should bring up at least six good examples on the very first page of results). Sometimes evangelicals deserve it, sometimes they don’t. Most of the time no one knows what the term means, or how broadly to apply it. I don’t either, so we won’t solve that today.

I’m not concerned here with ascribing guilt. Rather, I’m curious why this group receives so much scrutiny from both within and without. The census and politics are certainly two reasons. If evangelicals numbered less than one million people and had no publicly expressed political interests they certainly would not receive as much attention as they have (For example, I don’t ever see people writing that they are upset with the Quakers).

However, I would like to offer a third explanation in addition to numbers and politics: Since evangelicalism is one of the most evangelism-driven wings of the worldwide Christian Church, it receives a greater deal of criticism because it is in contact with more people outside of the Christianity than other wings of the Church. Put differently, it is logical to think that if a greater number of outsiders come into contact with a branch of the Church, a greater number of people will be dissatisfied with that branch. Continue reading »

Comment » | Evangelicalism

A Partnership Between Biblical Studies and Theology? Responding to Daniel Kirk

12
August

This is Daniel Kirk squishing his own head. It was his profile photo when I first began following his blog. It is also awesome.

This weekend Daniel Kirk entered the conversation by answering Chris Spinks’ question “Why Biblical Studies?” (click here). I want to briefly write a few things in response to his apology for the field, realizing that he was engaging the question in general rather than writing a particular retort to any part of the conversation that has been moving forward for about a week now. I will only give a few thoughts that I believe help to move the conversation forward. (As with my last post, please forgive any lack of clarity. I am writing from a rather chaotic setting, but want to post this in order to keep the conversation moving).

First, Kirk and I are at an impasse in terms of our differing experiences. Experiences are often this way – arguments made upon them (as my original critique is) can be easily weakened by presenting a counter-experience. I will gladly defer to Kirk’s experience as more indicative of the field since he has spent his life training and working as a specialist there. However, I do want to push back a bit and say that my experience is not isolated and was not solely at the hands of scholars who had retired to the backwoods of biblical scholarship. Three of my professors were/are quite well-regarded and help to put students from their evangelical seminary into Ivy League and other top tier New Testament and Hebrew Bible programs yearly. Moreover, students who were not of an evangelical persuasion often traveled to our school in order to take courses from these specific professors. The viewpoints that they projected may be considered outdated by a majority within the field, but they are still alive, well, and being perpetuated by some well-regarded minds as representative of biblical studies. I am glad to hear that the field has moved beyond this, and accepting Kirk’s experience certainly softens my critique significantly. Thus, in deferring to Kirk’s experience over my own, I want to move beyond my negative critiques to my constructive idea – that biblical studies and theology should work together in partnership. Continue reading »

1 comment » | Academia, Biblical Studies, Philosophy, Theology

Responding to LePort’s Response to my Critique

8
August

Yesterday, Brian LePort was kind enough to take time to respond to my recent critique of the field of biblical studies (click here for my original piece; click here for LePort’s response – it will really help to read both in order to understand this response). Today, in order to help the conversation continue to move forward, I would like to respond to his response. My original post contained two critiques, and LePort responded to them in the order that I listed them. I will use a similar model to continue to engage him.

Biblical scholars, historians, theologians, and philosophers are not scientists.

Biblical Studies masquerading as science. LePort notes that there is a difference between an “overblown epistemological arrogance” and “really believing that one is correct.” He clarifies his second position by showing that it holds a level of uncertainty when he states that “I believe I can be wrong about what I think I know.” He continues to develop this line of thinking by suggesting that biblical studies is a “trade” rather than an art (my recommendation). I agree with his first sentiment – that there is a difference between total certainty and a high degree of certainty – but do not think that a science/trade paradigm is helpful. Here is why…

The terms science and trade represent two different types of categories in the common imagination. The term science represents a field, commonly contrasted with the liberal arts. Conversely, a trade is a job type – a craft (such as bricklayer, landscaper, plumber, et al) that must be learned through experience with someone more experienced. All of scholarship is a trade – methodology and survival skills in general are passed down from a senior scholar to a junior scholar. However, all of academia is not the field of science. I think that my use of the term art caused some confusion as it may lead one to think of artistic forms of expression – painting, sculpture, music – that are all considered to hold purely subjective value. So, I would like to clarify that by art I mean that biblical studies, as a field, is rightfully classified as a liberal art. This simple recognition allows those within the field to do exactly what LePort and I are asking – to recognize that the process of building a thesis involves considering all plausible explanations and choosing that which the scholar finds as the most compelling. A scholar within any liberal arts field must always recognize that, even though he/she thinks that he/she is correct (and must think this in order to maintain intellectual integrity), he/she must never claim full certainty in a position. Allow me to be clear: I am not asking for biblical studies to run out and declare itself to be a fully subjective field where all claims are given equal merit, regardless of their plausibility. I am simply asking for the field to maintain a self-awareness that it is not a science.

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9 comments » | Academia, Biblical Studies

Why I Remained within Christianity

6
July

This felt like my experience for five years.

Yesterday I wrote about how I left Christian fundamentalism. Often, when I am speaking with someone and they learn this fact about me, they assume that I also left Christianity. I realize that this is a very common narrative for those who break out of the fundy world, but my narrative is a bit different. So, today, I would like to write about why I remained within Christianity (full disclosure: I am currently a member of a fairly common denomination in the United States and also self-identify as evangelical, in the historical sense).

Immediately after my material separation from fundamentalism (church, job, a significant number of friends, etc), as my inner self began its process of dissociation, I did not think that I could remain a Christian. The fundamentalist experience, at least for me, taught me to differentiate everything within a black/white paradigm. Shades of gray were never considered (this led to great amount of self-hatred, but that is a topic for another post). Because I had absorbed this style of thinking, I was not able to differentiate the pain that had been caused in my life by fundamentalism from Christianity. If fundamentalism was wrong, how could God exist? I realize that this is a naïve thought, but it makes sense when you consider that fundamentalists see themselves as the purest Christians. It was about a five-year process for me before I was able to sufficiently discern and internalize an adequate fundamentalist/Christian distinction.

Blended in with this thought process was my desire to leave Christianity. What had previously been “good news” – that Jesus loved me, died for me, and wanted to give me life through himself – had turned into a suffocating list of directives. I wanted to throw off that heavy yoke and do two things: relax, and have some fun. My Christian life, through fundamentalism’s influence, was the antithesis of this, full of anxiety and guilt.

So, the question comes down to this. If I could only conceptualize Christianity as wrong and I desired to leave it, why did I stay? The answer is surprisingly simple. Every time during those five years – every single time – that I sat down to seriously consider the validity of Christianity, I came to the same conclusion. I could not, with intellectual or emotional integrity, say that I no longer believed. Although my faith had been decimated, it was still there. In the midst of all of the pain and turmoil in my life, I still believed. The first time I realized this, my response was quick: “Dammit.” Of course, I am thankful now, but at the time this was difficult to accept.

After realizing that my faith still remained, it slowly dawned on me that I needed a new way to think about everything. In my next post in this series, I will explore the new journey that my need caused me to take up.

1 comment » | Fundamentalism, Personal

     

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