Living Wittily

Evangelical Spirituality and Evidence of an Alarming Absence of Grace.

Grace is a hard word for Christians to take seriously. In the past couple of weeks I have heard that blessed word used and misused and even implied but absent. The problem seems to be the radical nature of grace, our too easily yielding to the temptation to put conditions on the unconditional, our inability to take a gift at its true value, let alone at its face value. Grace is a word that requires a humble heart to understand it. As soon as grace is critically analysed, coherently rationalised and carefully explained, we betray what P T Forsyth calls our 'lust for lucidity', and therefore give in to our all but irresistible attraction to name, control, comprehend and encircle mystery with our thoughts.

Grace isn't so easily domesticated. But in much that passes for evangelical spirituality there is an alarming absence of grace as the source and resource of all Christian living. Even the great slogan 'justification by faith' can be so triumphantly trumpeted that its champions forget it is condensed, compacted theological shorthand, which once it is allowed the expansiveness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, is found to contain realities of much greater dimensions than a polemical formula has any right to hold - to merely begin with, love, grace, reconciliation, that trinity of divine attributes gathered into the true shorthand of the Gospel of the love affair of the Triune God - "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the Communion of the Holy Spirit", and that rich eternal life of God, overflowing in creation, redemption and renewal of a fallen world.

What brought this on? I think it might be the incipient pelagianism of what is sometimes called challenging preaching, or my awareness several times recently of good Christian folk, struggling with their own views of their own inadequate Christian lives. Sometimes in a heartfelt determination to do better, they say something like, 'We need to strive harder to follow Jesus....". I know what they mean, I feel it myself. To try harder, to pray more, to feel more deeply the affections of the Christian soul - gratitude, praise, repentance, surrender, joy, peace - as if we ever really could command our emotional lives, or perfect our moral selves.

Which brings me back to grace. Paul often enough warned about abusing the grace of God. What he had in mind was the disastrous complacency that might ever think that since God is gracious, and I am forgiven, sin is no longer a problem in my life because it's forgiven anyway. That kind of spiritual chancer will get their come-uppance seems to be Paul's answer to anyone who thinks they can continue in sin that grace may abound. But on the other side Paul would still insist, and this is the astonishing truth that seems to have stopped astonishing us - "Where sin abounds, grace does much more abound". No, we don't 'need to strive harder to follow Jesus' - more important is a recovery of the affections of the soul, kindled by trusting again the grace that saves, that grace which is not of ourselves, it is the gift of God. That doesn't mean we don't strive - it means not in our own strength, not by ourselves. Ours is the call to faithfulness, God's grace is what enables, sustains, is sufficient.

I wonder if our difficulty is that we take our failures and inadequacies more seriously than God's sufficiency? That in a strange way we fail to trust the love of God to love us? Maybe that the inward curve of our self-importance acts like a concave mirror and makes our sins seem more prominent than the cross on which they are gathered, absorbed, redeemed and forgiven.

Old Samuel Rutherford, that Scottish pastor who was remorselessly critical of his own heart, nevertheless held to his own advice in a letter to someone making the mistake of thinking a Christian life is lived by trying harder. Speaking of taking up the cross he wrote: 

"Those who can take that crabbed tree handsomely upon their back, and fasten it on cannily, shall find it such a burden as wings unto a bird, or sails to a ship.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is as far removed Rutherford the cantankerous Scottish Puritan as to make a conversation between them all but inconceivable - or so you'd think. Here's Bonhoeffer's take on the mistake of substituting our own striving  for God's grace:

"To be conformed to the image of Christ is not an ideal to be striven after. It is not as though we had to imitate him as well as we could. We cannot transform ourselves into his image; it is rather the form of Christ which seeks to be formed in us (Gal 4.19) and to be manifested in us. Christ's work in us is not finished until he has perfected his own form in us. We must be assimilated to the form of Christ in its entirety, the form of Christ incarante, crucified and glorified." Testament of Freedom, page 321

So. To finish with Paul - "I am crucified with Christ. I live, yet not I. Christ lives within me, and the life I now live in my body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me, and gave himself for me".

Gave himself, made himself a gift, became what he ever is, Grace. 

"The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all"

One line (not online) Prayers II

Hope Rosemary and Stuart don't mind if I pick up their comments and respond in a full post.

Rosemary isn't too impressed with John Wesley's prayer, "Lord let me not live to be useless." But in Wesley's defence Rosemary - he was the catalyst for a movement that has activism as one of its defining characteristics. And though some might argue that his evangelistic and organisational activism was driven by a clamouring ego, there is also a weight of evidence of something in John Wesley that is much more spiritually substantial. One of the key texts of Scripture on which Wesley's theology of Christian perfection drew deeply, was 2 Peter 1.4 which speaks of believers as participants in the divine nature. And the chain of consequences ends in verse 8 of that chapter with the desire to be kept 'from being ineffective and unproductive in [our] knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.'

Assuming Rosemary, you are referring to Milton's moving poem about his blindness, then yes,  the observation he makes to God "They also serve who only stand and wait", has equal claim to being a one line prayer that has its moments of exact appropriateness in all our lives. Though Milton himself was no passive quietist - his writing, social engagement and energetic pursuit of religious liberty, political activism and public service enabled him to live a life as full as that of any Wesley, his personality just as complex, his popularity just as mixed.

But a comparison of prayers, their suitability or otherwise, invites some further reflection - on whether, or in what way someone, whether Wesley, Milton, Julian of Norwich or whoever can be "wrong" in content, intention or articulation of their prayer. Our personal circumstances, unique identity, our place in our family, neighbourhood or culture, the emotional and spiritual state we are in, our personal history - and much else, creates the person we are and out of whom come our prayers - praiseworthy and blameworthy, full formed and half formed, articulate and inarticulate, theologically correct and theologically dodgy, emotionally all over the place or emotionally integrated.

So we pray. We pray out of who we are. And we trust God who knows the heart, to see our intent. I think it's one of the mercies of God that love covers a multitude of sins, that God knows our frame and remembers we are dust, and that in prevenient grace God is there before we ever open our mouths, and long afterwards.

That said, some prayers are wrong. But what kind would they be?

.............................

Stuart asks in his comment about my own favourite one line prayer. I don't have one. There are a number I've used many times in those moments when they fit circumstance precisely, answer inner mood exactly, or say the truth as fully as I can bear it. Here's three of them:

For all that is past, thanks - for all that is to come YES

                                                                            (Dag Hammarskjold)

Thine eternity dost ever besiege us

                                                                               (Helen Waddell)

My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed Thee!

                                                                                (Charles Wesley)

Evangelical disenchantment and disenchanted evangelicals.

One school of thought suggests that conversion and subsequent religious activity under the Methodist and Finneyan revivals helped empower women in such areas as public speaking, fundraising, and organisational leadership. Hempton is sceptical. The claim that "evangelical religion through its disruptive piety opened a small but expandable crack in the wall of male power and control", is a tidy theory with too many untidy loose ends.

More liberal groups like the Quakers, Universalists and Unitarians produced many of the women leaders in various abolitionist and emancipationist movements. Hempton points out that relatively few American feminist leaders came from the Evangelical stable, and most of those who did, eventually distanced themselves from it. Early conversion experience, and revivalist affiliations, for some of these women raised as many questions as they answered. Two key areas of intellectual discontent quickly emerged; biblical hermeneutics and evangelical dogma. By 1836 Sarah Grimke was arguing forcefully that any plain reading of the Bible will convince any reasonable mind informed by Christian conviction, that slavery was an abomination to the God who is 'in a peculiar manner the God of the poor and the needy, the despised and the oppressed.'

The open letter Sarah wrote was overtly critical of clergy who condoned slavery either by exegetical underpinning or by expedient silence. This and further letters begin to show a loss of confidence in the Bible as the primary arsenal of male power, and consequently her loss of confidence in any mainline denomination, for none upheld " the Scripture doctrine of the perfect equality of man and woman, which is the fundamental principle of my argument in favour of the ministry of women". (page97) The result of such a theological position was alienation from groups that upheld traditional biblical views - prominent amongst them those sponsored by Evangelicalism. In the minds of feminist activists still prepared to found their views on the Bible, abolition of slavery and the emancipation of women were key areas requiring political activism, the social persuasion of protest and debate, and a much more rigorously critical biblical hermeneutic.

"Love to God manifested by love to his creatures." That was a fundamental and sufficient theology for Sarah Grimke. It wasn't long before opposition to oppression fused with concentration on love as theologically definitive, raised serious questions over key evangelical doctrines founded on penal substitution, human sinfulness and hell. In reaction to such theology, leading Christian feminists adopted an increasingly rationalist and universalist position. Elisabeth Cady Stanton was the philosopher and intellectual engine of much mid- 19th century American feminism. Weighed down by the whole panoply of evangelical dogma, "these gloomy superstitions", these "fears of the unknown and unknowable", she found her way to light and truth by "rational ideas based on scientific facts".

There is something deeply significant, which evangelicals today need to think through with some self-reflective and self-critical candour, that these women, protesting against social and institutional oppression, believed they could trace in evangelical dogma and in evangelical biblical interpretations, ideas on which such oppressive attitudes were uncritically founded. Though 20th Century South African Apartheid or Segregation in the American south may seem extreme cases, they do show that abuses of the biblical text to warrant oppression is too well documented in history to be seriously denied. Alongside that of course, goes the honourable record of people like Wesley, Newton, Wilberforce and a host of other evangelical abolitionists whose contribution was decisive and rooted in a securely biblical theology of humanity.

Another Christian feminist, Frances Willard, moved from evangelical Methodism, to collaborative evangelistic activity with D L Moody, and then disenchantment set in. Her interests were more in social reform, particularly temperance and women's suffrage, and her theology morphed into a faith more inclusively catholic, less biblicist and more speculative even at times dabbling in esoteric spirituality. But again what inexorably drew her away from more evangelical principles, what disenchanted her, was what she saw as the inherently patriarchal and hierarchical exclusiveness of evangelical male clergy. This was coupled with a perceived anti-intellectualism and cultural suspicion pervading and constraining evangelical thought and practice seeking to be "in the world but not of the world." Each of these women, in different degrees, saw such attitudes as both informing and distorting Evangelical hermeneutics, so that patriarchy and the suppression of women's leadership and ministry, were inextricably linked to biblical authority understood in male terms, implemented to male advantage, and based on an almost total monopoly of male biblical scholarship.  A closed shop of biblical knowledge, (and indeed of formal advanced education), they believed, secured male dominated control of ecclesial power

The importance of such research into the individual experiences and personal stories of those who, over two centuries, chose to make an exit from the evangelical big story is self-recommending. But after reading it I'm left with a hard to shake off depression, an inner repentance at the incapacity of many expressions of evangelicalism, historic and contemporary, to respond creatively and live adaptively with difference, able to welcome and learn from valid questions.

Failure to focus on the Gospel as the commanding invitation to follow Jesus in radical love, to join with Jesus in liberating protest, to be ministers of reconciliation through costly peacemaking, to live with open armed welcome that transcends our constructed divisions whether of gender, doctrine or view of the Bible; and instead to indulge in an eager pursuit of self-defeating and corrosive arguments over doctrine, or hard edged definitions of the Gospel whose goal is to claim exclusive possession of truth, while also disenfranchising those who dare to differ. These are amongst the failures that led to evangelical disenchantment, and therefore disenchanted evangelicals making their exit left.

And yes, there is another side to this story - but that gets told in plenty of other books, from responsible history and theological reflection all the way through to unabashed propaganda. For now, evangelicals who read this book with requisite humility, will hear important voices of protest and insider critique, that requires attention and honest self-appraisal - and the criterion of that critique in my view must be the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the extent of our faithfulness in following after Jesus.  

Evangelical Disenchantment, David Hempton.

David Hempton is one of the best writers on nonconformity and the impact of modernity on various religious traditions. His previous book Methodism. Empire of the Spirit is a superb distillation into one volume of the origins, impact and fortunes of a genuinely world class Christian tradition deep rooted in the Evangelical movement. It is written by a scholar steeped in the sources, critical in the best sense of being informed, and neither so sympathetic nor so antagonistic to those he critiques that he loses sight of their humanity. And Hempton can write - lucid prose, uncluttered by the overfussy ifs and buts of pedantic carefulness, and with the persuasive authority of someone whose attention to detail enriches the broader cultural context. You just know he knows what he's talking about!

So when his new book, Evangelical Disenchantment was announced it became an automatic buy and I'm waiting for that brown cardboard package from you know who. Below is the publisher's blurb. When it arrives it will be an immediate read - not least because I am teaching Evangelical History and Theology this semester. As you will see, this book offers an important and unusual perspective which needs to be heeded, and heard above the orchestrated triumphalism of much contemporary evangelical claims and counter claims.

Here's the blurb:
In this engaging and at times heartbreaking book, David Hempton looks at evangelicalism through the lens of well-known individuals who once embraced the evangelical tradition, but later repudiated it. The author recounts the faith journeys of nine creative artists, social reformers, and public intellectuals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including such diverse figures as George Eliot, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Vincent van Gogh, and James Baldwin. Within their highly individual stories, Hempton finds not only clues to the development of these particular creative men and women but also myriad insights into the strengths and weaknesses of one of the fastest growing religious traditions in the modern world.

Allowing his subjects to express themselves in their own voices - through letters, essays, speeches, novels, apologias, paintings - Hempton seeks to understand the factors at work in the shaping of their religious beliefs, and how their negotiations of faith informed their public and private lives. The nine were great public communicators, but in private often felt deep uncertainties. Hempton's moving portraits highlight common themes among the experiences of these disillusioned evangelicals while also revealing fresh insights into the evangelical movement and its relations to the wider culture. It features portraits of: George Eliot; Frances W. Newman; Theodore Dwight Weld; Sarah Grimke; Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Frances Willard; Vincent van Gogh; Edmund Gosse; and James Baldwin.