THE VOICE OF THE 21ST CENTURY CHURCH
THE PROPHET'S WORLDVIEW!!
The present evangelical crisis
the word in the world
david wells
The truth is that in garden-variety evangelicalism there is no sense of crisis at all. And why should there be? When one looks at the evangelical presses, they are all in high gear. They are not only churning out books, but some are also showering us with a rich profusion of religious paraphernalia. The devout of the Middle Ages would have turned green with envy had they been able to see what we now have. When one turns to television, new evangelists have taken the place of the old. However, the shadowy business of bringing blessing and cash into unseemly proximity with one another has gone on without skipping a beat. When one takes to the road, "new paradigm" churches are springing up like mushrooms everywhere. They do not always look like the old thing. Gone, very often, are the familiar church buildings, and in their place are those that look more like low-slung corporate headquarters or country clubs. Inside, a cyclone of change has ripped out the crosses, the pews, the eighteenth-century hymns, the organs, and the biblical discourses. In their place are contemporary songs, drums, cinema-grade seats, light discourses, professional singers, drama, and humor. But there is no sense of crisis about any of this. Quite the reverse. The appearance is that these churches have reality by the tail.
To speak of a crisis, then, is to take on some uphill work. It is akin, perhaps, to the difficulty of injecting a note of caution about the stock market at the very moment when corporate profits are spectacular and the Dow Jones Average has just climbed to new and unprecedented heights. Those in the throes of a rip-snorting party, be it economic or religious, usually find notes of caution a bit irritating and even offensive. I therefore wish to explore this difficulty a little, both with respect to the wider culture and to post-War evangelicalism, before taking up the main theme of this essay. I do so because it is important to establish the context within which any talk about a crisis must be understood.
the crisis in context
In America, in the twentieth century in particular, we have had to calculate anew the costs and benefits of being modern. There is something to be said on both sides of the equation. On the one side of the ledger have to be weighed the innumerable benefits. Since 1930, for example, our life span has increased by two decades, thanks to astonishing advances in medicine and technology ranging from vaccines for polio and measles, to the discovery of DNA, to the widespread use of antibiotics, to gene splicing and implanted cardiac defibrillators. We also have every effort and time-saving gadget imaginable, from dishwashers, to washing machines, to vacuum cleaners, to freezers. It now seems inconceivable that only half a century amenities — for example, refrigeration and central heat; 30 percent did not even have running water. In the 1950s, when Levitown was built, one of its most popular features was the unheard of benefit that each house came with its own washing machine. Since then assembly lines have poured a tidal wave of products into showrooms, malls, and catalogs. The result is that today, in some ways, we live a pampered life that has no precedent. We have more than any other generation — more money, more goods, more comforts, more choices, more protections, and more freedoms.
On the other hand, we also have to weigh the invisible costs that have to be paid for this abundance. We are consumer beings now, and our own internal rhythms are tied into the marketplace as never before. Market insecurity rattles our very being even as the constant trends, fashions, and tastes that this market generates become the unforgiving standards by which we feel compelled to live. If ours is a world constantly in change, so we as people are constantly in change too, moving from job to job, place to place, desire to desire, viewpoint to viewpoint, and perhaps from spouse to spouse. The quotient of what changes to what does not has been dramatically and painfully transformed in our time. And one of the consequences of this is that by every measure anxiety today is at unprecedented levels, as is depression.
The most telling metaphor for all of this may be the storage locker, which since the 1970s has become a major business. Easy to build and easy to maintain, storage bins provide rentable space that is more lucrative than that in apartment buildings. The storage locker, in fact, tells the story of America in a number of ways. America is about the gathering of stuff that, in time, overwhelms the owner. It is also about phases of life broken by dislocations between which we find the storage locker. It is there between broken marriages, moves, career changes, and children coming and going. The books, tables, clothes, and bicycles that are piled into these lockers are the residue that remains from many of life's changes, changes of all kinds — temporary and permanent, planned and unplanned, happy and sad.
The turbulence in our modern life, the bewildering sense of uprootedness that it leaves behind, is simply the most obvious of the costs of being modern, but there are others that are less tangible but no less debilitating. For while modern life fills us up with its goods and trinkets, it also empties us out. Ours is a generation adrift on the high seas of technological innovation but bereft of rudder or compass. The religious norms, the moral beliefs, the cultural expectations that once provided some sense of order and propriety in society have all but disappeared. We now have much, but we also have little. The problem is partly that we have wanted too much, for our appetites of consumption are unrestrained; but the larger problem is that we have also wanted too little — too little of what is true and right.
There are, then, two sides to being modern. There are enormous benefits that are matched by corresponding costs. Those who write of this cultural crisis are often misjudged. For them to say there is a cultural crisis is apparently belied by the remarkable transformation of our world wrought by our virile economy, our technological finesse, our inventiveness. Indeed, to speak of a crisis is to appear ungrateful for all of this, to be overly cynical and even downright pessimistic. It cuts against the grain of the American spirit, against its upbeat optimism, its perennially cheerful assessment of its own prospects, its can-do confidence, and its desire to be liked.
The same dynamic is present in the evangelical world too, and the same danger attends those who speak to it. There is no question that when we compare our situation today with what pertained in the early post-War years, we are in a vastly improved position. Then, evangelicalism was on the fringes, religiously and societally, but now it is in the center. Then, churches were small, for the most part, and comparatively few in number, but now they have benefited from the enormously successful evangelism that has occurred. This growth may have slowed more recently, but there can be no doubt that there has been an explosion of believing in recent decades. Christian schools and colleges have grown in number and quality, as have seminaries; and since the early 1970s there has been an explosion of voluntary associations, Christian organizations, and new ministries. For these and many other reasons, the appearance is of boom times religiously speaking. But if we have much, I believe that we now also have little-too little of what is true and right. Our appetite for truth, as well as for what is morally right, is being lost. Evangelical abundance on the surface, and boundless evangelical energy, conceals a spiritual emptiness beneath it. It is because of this emptiness that a major crisis is now in the making.
In one respect, there is nothing particularly novel about the decline of the evangelical church in our time. Spiritual life is always flowing and then ebbing. The tide comes in, and then it goes out. In the book of judges we see this unmistakable pattern. There are six cycles, and the rhythms are identical: each one is initiated by Israel's sin (3:7; 3:12; 4:1; 6:1; 8:3335; 10:6); each declension is attended by suffering under the hand of God (3:8; 3:12; 4:2; 6:1; 8:33-36; 10:7-8); this suffering softened the hearts of God's people so that they began to seek Him in prayer (3:9; 3:15; 4:3; 6:6; 10:15); God then raised up a deliverer to restore them (3:9; 3:15; 4:423; 6:11-16; 10:1-2). The tide went out each time because of sin, and God brought it back in again each time because of grace.
It is a basic and elementary lesson that the book of judges teaches, and yet one has to ask why the spiritual condition of God's people at that time, which was so clear to the author of the book, was lost on them. The answer, I believe, is that the sin that alienates God often disguises its nature and buys legitimacy off the surrounding culture. The worship of Baal began to seem natural and normal. What became odd was the refusal to embrace the pagan gods and goddesses. Indeed, in every age where a mass departure from God and His truth has happened, the reasons for it seem entirely normal and self-evident. That is why the ebbing of spiritual life appears to be so innocent. Indeed, it is hardly even noticed. And the telltale sign that it is happening is that the enemies of faith disappear from sight. People settle into doing what is culturally conventional at a spiritual level. This is why, in the Old Testament, the prophetic calling was such a painful and lonely thing. To those far from God, the prophet always seemed so wrongheaded, so lacking in grace, so pessimistic. Since then, nothing really has changed. In an age such as ours, when evangelicalism is mistaking its outward prosperity for inward riches and confusing truth with cultural habit and desire, even the most ordinary of people who know that something is amiss have to wonder how well their perceptions will be received.
Although the current moment is always extremely difficult to understand, I believe that the spiritual tide in the evangelical world has begun to go out. The causes for this are, no doubt, numerous. Some are internal, and some are external, and it is not easy to see their exact relationship. Does faith first decline internally, losing its doctrinal substance, its God-centered worship, its discipline, its serious preaching, and its faith to the external allurements in the culture? Is that how it happens? Or do the external allurements first intrude upon the faith? Does one small compromise follow another, so that doctrine first loses its importance and then its shape? Or do these processes happen simultaneously? However we choose to think about this matter, both poles — culture and doctrine — have to be considered in any explanation of the decline of the church's life. It is the external entanglements, however, that are the focus of this essay, and in those that follow it is the internal dynamic that is more in view.
This essay's thesis is very simple. It is that the character of contemporary evangelicalism is changing because of its unwitting entanglement with a culture that, in its postmodern configuration, has the power to eviscerate the doctrinal substance of that faith.
What explains this entanglement?
It is best explained by the fact that the cognitive location of evangelical faith in the culture has changed, resulting in a disposition to adapt to that culture rather than to sustain a moral and spiritual antagonism to it [an antithesis]. The consequence of this is that evangelicalism is being transformed into something that it should not be. In this change, we are, I believe, beginning to see the spiritual tide going out...
cognitive dissidents
The dynamic that explains this internal change is not hard to explain. It concerns the way in which any group preserves, or fails to preserve, its identity. In sociological language, it concerns the fate of the sect. A sect is any group of people whose view of the world is discernibly different from what pertains in the wider society. Sects in this sense can be of all kinds, ranging from the current militias to religious groups like the Branch Davidians. Regardless of the kind of group that it is, the internal dynamic is remarkably similar.
First, a distinctive language emerges within the group. This not only reflects the group's worldview, but it also serves as a badge of identification. Its use instantly marks those who are "in" and its absence those who are "out."
Second, rules about life emerge, often enforced by authoritarian leaders. These rules are important in preserving the group's cohesiveness and them not to enter questionable territory in terms of belief, associations, or behavior. Peter Berger notes that with respect to the ideology of groups like these, it is important that they set "the conditions within which the ideas in question have a chance of remaining plausible." It is the necessity of preserving what is distinctive to the group that also constitutes the members of such a sect as cognitive dissidents. They are at odds, cognitively speaking, with the society around them.
Third, all sects in this sociological sense quickly develop ways of providing mutual therapy, for doubt is often a besetting, if concealed, problem. Those whose way of looking at life is markedly different from what is taken to be "natural" and "normal" in society may have their moments when they wonder whether they are wrong. Why is it that the world can apparently get along quite well without the distinctive knowledge that they have and the meaningful associations within the group? Sects, because they are cognitive minorities, are prone to feeling threatened. They may experience loneliness. They also have to bear the opprobrium of knowing that they are considered odd. It is this inward unease, this doubt, this anxiety that constitutes the shadows that follow cognitive dissonance and for which the therapy of sympathy and association is needed (cf. Ps. 73).
It is not difficult to see that Protestant fundamentalism in the twentieth century has been, in these ways, a sect. Although its stridency in the first decades of this century came to be moderated later on, its view of the world has nevertheless always been distinctive and discernibly different from what has been considered norm
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Holy Tabernacle Of Faith
Crosswalk
Antithesis
Divorce and ReMarriage
Black Gospel
The last things