This is Part I of 3, an extended review of After Evangelicalism.
After Evangelicalism. The Path to a New Christianity, David P. Gushee. (Louisville: WJKP, 2020) 225pp.
This book is written under what the author sees as emergency conditions. Evangelicalism in its United States version is no longer a viable expression of morally responsible Christianity. White Evangelicalism has finally sold its soul by its uncritical support for all that the Trump administration and the Republican Party now stand for. What is more, the causes of Trumpism and evangelical collusion with its tactics, policies and goals, go back far and deep in American Christianity. In that sense this is a very American book, and some aspects of the arguments have less purchase in the British evangelical context. The history of American Evangelicalism, Gushee argues, holds within its DNA, certain attitudes, convictions, prejudices and social goals that are inimical to the teaching and person of Jesus of Nazareth.
For those reasons white Evangelicalism is on the decline. The last lines of any book are often worth pondering as possibly the most important final thoughts of an author:
“This I know: many millions of young people got lost in that evangelical maze. They couldn’t get past inerrancy, indifference to the environment, deterministic Calvinism, purity culture, divine violence, Hallmark-Christmas-Movie Jesus, rejection of gay people, male dominance, racism, God = GOP, or whatever else…I want to live for Jesus till I die. And I want to help other people find a way to do that too, if they are willing. (page 170)
David Gushee has spent 40 years teaching, preaching, and writing from within an American Evangelical context, much of that time within the orbit of the Southern Baptist Convention. He writes out of a personal journey in which his mind has changed on a number of the key doctrinal and ethical issues he exposes and explores. Now a Distinguished Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University, this book is a long reflection on his relationship with the evangelical culture within which he came to faith, at times in the form of personal testimony.
But the driving impetus comes from his search for faith and practice that is consistent with the Jesus of the Gospels and the Kingdom ethics presupposed in the life and teaching of Jesus. He seeks to offer those who count themselves as post-evangelicals, and who are looking for a new direction in which to follow Jesus,
"a manifesto, a love letter, and game plan for fellow exvangelicals."
The book has three main parts. Part I examines the origins and later developments of Evangelicalism in America culminating in its current alignment with Republican political agendas. One of the pillars of that alignment is an insistence on biblical inerrancy as fundamental to all else, and chapter 2 examines, deconstructs and critiques those claims, and the power games that underlie them. Chapter 3 is a reconstruction of authority, indeed authorities, in Christian faith and practice. What ‘the Bible says’ requires responsible interpretation, humble listening, communal discernment and an openness to the Holy Spirit leading into new or newly understood truth.
Gushee acknowledges he is virtually commending the Wesleyan Quadrilateral of Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience. But he is arguing for something even more nuanced, a Christian Humanism which has the qualities of Reason, Experience, Intuition, Relationships and Community. This is both a searching and a generous invitation to followers of Jesus to move beyond a narrow ‘sola scriptura’. “Given human limits – even as humans with Jesus in front of us, the Bible open before us, and the Spirit within us – I am rejecting any inerrant path to infallible doctrine.” (45)
To listen to God’s voice, and discern God’s will, requires the hard work of humble listening, open-ended risk taking in the presence of God, and communal responsibility in moral decision-making and lived by convictions. In that sense an inerrant text, infallibly interpreted by 'sound' or 'authoritative' teachers, is a short circuiting of a process that requires an interpreting community engaged in communal discernment, and open to the truth as it is in Jesus and as it is prompted by the Spirit of God moving once again on the waters to bring forth life.
Comments