My DMN colleague Bill McKenzie wrote his column today about Frank Schaeffer's "Crazy for God," a memoir about growing up as the son of celebrity Evangelicals Francis and Edith Schaeffer. Bill is a self-described moderate (I'd say liberal) Evangelical who spent time at L'Abri in the 1970s. Here's an excerpt of an extended interview he did with Schaeffer that's well worth a read:
McKenzie: You're pretty frank in your book about your family, including your rebellions and temper. Someone may look at this book and think, Look, he's still angry about the past. How would you respond?Schaeffer: Someone would have to be in the evangelical subculture looking for excuses to dismiss the book if they think it's "angry." Sad maybe in places, angry no.
But this brings up another point: Evangelicals just don't "get" what writing – or art for that matter – is.
The problem with the evangelical slant on writing (and all art) is that in itself it isn't worthwhile, it must serve some "higher purpose." In the evangelical's case, that's "bringing people to Christ."
This reduces human expression to propaganda. It also means that no artistic conversation is honest. There is always an ulterior motive. Religious fundamentalists always look for what is not there.
For instance when my memoir Crazy for God was published I got letters (and read dozens of blog reviews) from evangelicals wanting to know why I "really wrote the book." The idea that maybe I wrote because I'm a writer, and that since I grew up in an evangelical household I wrote about that, was just too simple for them.
These readers seemed to have missed the fact that I have a literary career that includes four books on being part of the military family, a novel about the Marines and three novels about growing up in Switzerland. "Why" had I written those?
Because I'm a writer. Simple. No agenda but to write the best book I can and tell the truth as best I can, not because I'm a good person but because it makes for a better book.
Bill goes on to ask how his father's personal psychology affected the content of his faith. Schaeffer responds:
But I do think that temperament molds our beliefs. And my father was someone who was prone to be stubborn and enthusiastic, take a stand, and revel in the battle.If he had converted to the far left of his era, say in the early '30s, he might have made a great union leader. If he had been Jewish, he would have been a fiery Zionist. One type of fundamentalism or another suited him. So even in his art history interests he went all the way: He became a real and dedicated expert on Italian Renaissance art.
Boy, can I see that in myself. I am prone to mysticism, ritual and aesthetics, as well as moral rigor. There's no doubt in my mind why Catholicism and Orthodoxy appeal to me.
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I know a little bit about music. I'm a bit of an amateur ethnomusicologist, being an accomplished international folk dancer, dance instructor and sometime musician. I know the music and dance of a variety of cultures, including where they interface (that being the Balkans, for European/Slavic with Arabic).
The common aspect I find (corroborated by my professional ethnomusicology sources) is that cultures use what is most embedded in their lives. Religion is a big one. So are nationalistic themes, like battles and such.
There are "little" things that point to larger ones. The Slavic word for "horse" is Arabic. The main action in the Ottoman conquests involved their cavalry, very advanced for the times.
I guess my main point is to be very careful when moving from a "local" observation to a more general one.
Shaeffer wrote:
Evangelicals just don't "get" what writing – or art for that matter – is. The problem with the evangelical slant on writing (and all art) is that in itself it isn't worthwhile, it must serve some "higher purpose." ...This reduces human expression to propaganda. It also means that no artistic conversation is honest.
I'll take his word for it. What I'm hearing here, though, is that for him writing is not a form of communication, it's an exercise in self-indulgence. Good for him. But oddly enough this doesn't motivate me to rush out and spend thirty bucks on his newest book.
- Silouan
Re: "When I lived in Japan, in its nightmarishly hideous townscapes, I found that Shinto shrines, and to a lesser extent Buddhist temples, were the only attractive places. Churches, on the other hand, looked like office blocks; I felt that Japanese Christianity had bought into the post-1868 Japanese hatred of beauty and rejection of tradition, with the traditional religions being the only hold-outs against that trend."
The most beautiful Church in Japan, completed in 1891, is also the largest in the country:
http://orthodoxwiki.org/Holy_Resurrection_Cathedral_(Tokyo,_Japan)
http://orthodoxwiki.org/Image:Nicolai-do_21Oct02.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/indrasarrow/2075661664/in/set-72157603333027498/
Actually, every Orthodox Church in Japan is beautiful in some way. Certainly they're nothing like "office blocks." or the "lecture halls or auditoriums" that Eric W. referred to above.
http://www.orthodoxjapan.jp/tokyo.html
The original quote about ugly Japanese Churches seems to have miraculously vanished here! but I suspect the original poster was only familiar with the Protestant Churches there, which are indeed quite sparse (to put it politely) and focused on the hereafter. The same utilitarian attitude towards architecture and aesthetics that Schaeffer was talking about when discussing literature.
Note that Frank Schaeffer, who came to speak at our Church one time, is himself an Orthodox Christian, to a large extent because of the beauty of the Orthodox liturgy, chants, and architecture, all reflective of the beauty of God's creation and the glory of the Incarnation.
I have been scandalized by Evangelical pastor-worship for many years. Our local Evangelical church splits into two or more factions every so often. Members of the congregation choose sides between their old pastor and a new visionary. When the dust settles a considerable part of the congregation has smugly migrated to another location, leaving their former church depopulated and dazed. No little animus characterizes these splits. Families, congregations and communities are often torn apart.
The squabble is always over the Bible, one interpretation vs. another. In fact the Bible has become a source of division within Evangelicalism. This is ironic when you consider that all Evangelicals maintain that the Bible is their authority.
It seems to me that it is not the Bible that is their real authority. Their real authority is each individual's interpretation of the Bible, guided by the minister they follow. This is perilously close to worshipping not God but oneself.
Is it reasonable to insist that every teaching I hear in church must conform in all respects to my own understanding? Is Jesus Christ so small that I can completely comprehend him? Can we not tolerate a little ambiguity in this life and allow time for our understanding to develop?
How does anyone have the nerve to put themselves forward in public as an authoritative interpreter of scripture and pastor of God's children? Christ had a plan to shepherd his flock (something about building his Church on Peter) and it wasn't the Corner Bible Church.
Catholics and Orthodox trace their bishops back in an unbroken line to the Apostles. They ordain men with the same spirit, obedience and understanding that Jesus Christ painstakingly formed in our very first pastors, the Apostles.
Evangelicals and other Christian groups that do not have continuity with the Apostles nevertheless presume to speak for God and teach His people. How can we accept this? God has not ordained them to do this. Nor have they been ordained by men who have been ordained by men who have been ordained by God. Actually they have not been ordained by anyone other than men (or women) like themselves who have also had the presumption to set up their own homemade churches.
What authorization do they have to do this? Yes, I realize that they will support their interpretations with passages from the Bible – a book that, whether or not they know it they got from the Catholic Church. What sense however does it make to defy the authority of the Catholic Church by appealing to the very book the Catholic Church wrote, compiled and published? What sense does it make to propose my own interpretations of Scripture against the interpretations of the thousands of scholars who have devoted their lives to preserving, explaining and spreading the teachings of Jesus Christ over the course of two millennia?
When a man or woman sets themselves up as a Christian teaching authority based simply on a subjective sense of being "called" they are actually setting up a business, not a church. They make their living by drawing God's children away from authoritative interpretation and feeding them instead on the notions they developed yesterday.
There is no evidence that Jesus Christ instructed his followers to do this. There is overwhelming evidence in Holy Scripture and early Church history however that Jesus Christ instructed his followers to choose and ordain men in the way that the Catholic and Orthodox Churches still do today.
Who in the world wants a self-appointed, charismatic businessman or businesswoman as a spiritual guide when he or she can have the Church that has faithfully and heroically preserved and reflected upon two-thousand years of consistent teaching, witness and belief beginning with Jesus Christ?
Are the self-appointed Evangelical minister and his homemade church the same body that Our Lord reproached Paul with persecuting, when he knocked Paul down on the road to Damascus? Evangelicalism was still eighteen hundred years from its establishment when this took place. Did the same Lord who promised to be with us and guide us into all truth abandon us to homemade Christianity?
If you are going to worship someone make sure it is Jesus Christ, not someone who tickles your ears, impresses you or warms the cockles of your heart.
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