Today's post wraps up our brief series on Harvey Cox's new book The Future of Faith. The last several chapters of the book, and in fact various passages throughout the book, present some of Cox's thoughts on the future of faith - and more specifically his hopes for the future of the Christian faith. Today I would like to focus our discussion on the future.
Cox notes - as have many others - that the future of the church is moving out of the western world, into Latin America, Africa, and the East. While churches stand empty in Europe, the faith is flourishing and growing elsewhere. Notably charismatic forms of the faith are growing fastest.
The bottom line seems to be that faith is relevant for life in many parts of the world and that the Christian faith in particular meets a very real need. Faith simply is not relevant in much of the secular west. But in the global South ... liberation theology and the power of people in small house church groups play an enormous role. Faith flourishes when it is not micromanaged from the top, but grows from the bottom through the power of the Spirit.
Lets look at a bit of what Cox has to say:
First, for centuries Christians have claimed that the Holy Spirit is just as divine as the other members of the Trinity. But in reality, the Spirit has most often been ignored or else feared as too unpredictable. It "blows where it will," as the Gospel of John (3:8) says, and is therefore too mercurial to contain. But some of the liveliest Christian movements in the world today are precisely the ones that celebrate this volatile expression of the divine. ... By far the fastest growth in Christianity, especially among the deprived and destitute, is occurring among people like the Pentecostals, who stress a direct experience of the Spirit. It is almost as though the Spirit, muted and muffled for centuries, is breaking its silence and staging a delayed "return of the repressed." (p. 9-10)
Are we entering an Age of the Spirit? And if so, is this a good thing?
Today I begin a series of posts looking at Harvey Cox's new book The Future of Faith. We'll see how long it goes - at least a couple of weeks. Cox is the Hollis Professor of Divinity emeritus at Harvard and is best known for his 1965 book The Secular City. I first became familiar with Cox and his work through his book When Jesus Came to Harvard: Making Moral Choices Today, a very thoughtful and thought provoking book. The new book explores the trends that Cox sees in the history of the church and his thoughts on the future of faith, including Christian faith.
In the first chapter of his book Cox describes a history of the church divided into three ages, the age of faith, the age of belief, and the age of the spirit (we will look at these in greater detail below). He then talks about his personal faith journey from a rather fundamentalist Baptist to the current day. He talks about his experiences at Penn as an undergraduate where his belief - but not his faith - was shaken. To understand this statement it is important to understand what Cox means by faith as he now uses the term.
As Cox describes it faith is the experience of the divine - not a set of theories about the divine, and Christianity is best understood as a way of life, not as a creed or set of proper beliefs. He notes that the confusion began to clear in his mind when an acquaintance described himself as "a practicing Christian, but not always a believing one"; when a bishop of the Catholic church welcomed an audience saying "The line between belief and unbelief ... runs through the middle of each one of us, including myself, a bishop of the church"; and as he pondered the doubts experienced by Mother Teresa. (p. 16-17)
Does Cox's idea that faith is experience and way of life hit a resonance? Is it possible to be a practicing Christian, but not always a believing one?
Yesterday I posted a recent interview with Rob Bell about what an "evangelical" is, and I said I'd weigh in today. I don't think Rob Bell has defined "evangelical" but given a set of statements that are true about the use of the term in the media (political conservatives, sometimes anti-intellectual) and that are reactive and corrective to that stereotype. We need to avoid falling for how the media define terms, and it is a constant temptation in sound byte format to make our point -- and that usually blocks perspective and dimension.
I'm dubious that Rob Bell is even attempting to define "evangelical" in its fullness. I would not equate this interview with what Rob Bell believes about "evangelicalism."
Furthermore, he defined "evangelical" by appealing to justifiably important elements of one part of the term "evangelical" -- its socially active pursuit of justice and compassion and the good.
But what he said about "evangelical" is not enough, and it fits in with a trend, a rather flippant one, of folks thinking they can determine what an evangelical is or not. Before I get to the trend, a good definition.
To define "evangelical" we need to pay attention to those who have made it their life study to come to terms with this movement, and two scholars have done just that: Mark Noll in the USA and David Bebbington (
The Dominance of Evangelicalism: The Age of Spurgeon And Moody (History of Evangelicalism)
) in the UK. They agree on this:
an evangelical is a Christian Protestant for whom the central ideas are the leading authority of Scripture, the necessity of personal conversion, the centrality of the death of Christ on the cross as a substitutionary atonement, and the importance of a life of active following Jesus, seen in such things as Bible reading, prayer, church attendance, and deeds of compassion and justice. That is the standard definition of evangelical. This definition summarizes those who care about getting this term accurate. It is not a definition designed to exclude some of whom they are worried. It's big tent definition, but it bears no ill-will toward others.
Now my observation today: I'm seeing a baffling desire by many who almost never talk about any of the above four ideas (as central to what they believe) but for some reason want to be called "evangelical." They make a point to say they are evangelical. To be committed to justice or compassion as the central pursuit in life does not make one an evangelical, though evangelicals should be committed to justice and to compassion -- and shame on those who aren't. But what makes an evangelical is a commitment to the above four ideas (Bible, conversion, cross, discipleship).
My question: Why do these folks want to be connected to the evangelicals?
Now let me back down just a tad: no one is the final judge on who is and who is not an evangelical, but that doesn't mean there isn't a general ballpark definition like that of Noll and Bebbington that deserves serious respect. I'd call on all those who say they are evangelical to measure themselves accurately. And I'd especially call on those being asked by the media to offer clear and accurate definitions because only such folks can correct -- over time -- the stereotypes.
Early in September
October I sat down with Bryan Chapell's new book,
Christ-Centered Worship: Letting the Gospel Shape Our Practice
, and studied his chart on the order of services in the Church, what he called the "Liturgy of the Word" which is to be distinguished from a eucharist service (Liturgy of the Upper Room). He compared the ancient Roman order with Luther's, with Calvin's, and with Westminster's (c. 1645). The witness to a common order was clear, and what each included - Catholic and Protestant - was a liturgy that involved the Psalms, an OT reading, a New Testament reading or two, a sermon, and some kind of ordered ending, involving either the Nicene Creed or a Psalm.
The first thought that came to my mind was this: where did low church evangelicalism drop its connection to this ordered liturgy, this ordered exposure of God's people to hearing the Word of God read, and to the connection to the Church of all ages?
Last week I took my eldest to Bethel University in St. Paul (well Arden Hills) where moving in was truly an experience. The President of the University and his wife, Jay and Barb Barnes, greeted each and every new student as they drove into the campus (the same conversation some 500-600 times or so). Cars were unloaded in less than 2 minutes each - as the students were checked into the dorms.
Bethel is a Christian college, loosely denominational - about 11% of the incoming class is from the denomination (BGC or Converge Worldwide), about 25% are Baptists of some sort, while the other 75% come from a whole range of other denominations. This is a beautiful campus and a thriving school. Under the leadership and vision of a number of individuals including the last three presidents (Carl Lundquist ('54-'82), George Brushaber ('82-'08), and now Jay Barnes) the school has expanded offerings and built an excellent academic reputation. Among the sciences, which of course peak my interest, the Chemistry department is ACS accredited and the Physics department was featured in Physics Today as a thriving program. Math and Biology are also doing well. These departments have sent students to medical school and to top graduate schools from coast to coast - UC Berkeley to MIT.
As I was sitting listening to speeches and experiencing the welcome I started to ponder a few questions I would like to pose today.
What important roles do Christian Colleges and Universities play in our church today? Does education in a Christian environment promote or inhibit the growth of a mature faith?
What makes a Christian college effective?
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