Getting Back To The Doctrine.

Collin Hansen writes at Christianity Today that "We are all Theologians" and examines the need for teaching doctrine to evangelical youths. Here's a clip from the article:

It might appear, then, that doctrine has no pull in this age that shuns indoctrination. Indeed, Smith and Snell find that young adults hold their religious beliefs in abstract, "mentally checked off and filed away." Doctrine does not determine their lives. Religion is about being good and living a good life, not believing the right things. But this approach draws a false dichotomy between belief and behavior. In fact, the idea that religion boils down to good works is itself doctrinal, if erroneous from an orthodox Christian perspective. It makes a doctrinal distinction by privileging Jesus' ethical teachings over his work on the Cross and in the Resurrection. It rejects Jesus' interpretation of his sacrifice as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). Young adults who buy into this view follow a well-worn path trod by liberal theologians in the last two centuries.

"The likes of Adolf von Harnack, Albrect Ritschl, Wilhelm Hermann, and Harry Emerson Fosdick would be proud," Smith and Snell write. "People, it is clear, need not study liberal Protestant theology to be well inducted into its worldview, since it has simply become part of the cultural air that many Americans now breathe."

No matter how hard we may try, no one can avoid doctrine. So no matter how bad its reputation, doctrine is a necessary component of Christian discipleship. The March Christianity Today cover story by Darren Meeks notes that Christians today prefer spiritual disciplines and works of mercy to discussing doctrine. Yet however valuable those acts may be, they cannot replace doctrine for spiritual formation.

Publishers have planned to release several resources that call Christians back to their doctrinal foundations. Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears wrote Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe, scheduled for an April release. J. I. Packer, a self-described catechist, has teamed with Gary Parrett to write Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old-Fashioned Way. Christians who ignore catechesis, or religious instruction, simply cede the task to teachers, professors, peers, and media. Kevin DeYoung tries to rehabilitate the Heidelberg Catechism as a teaching tool inThe Good News We Almost Forgot: Rediscovering the Gospel in a 16th Century Catechism.

Legal Right: "Separation of Church and State" Deniers.

We're all quite familiar with the term Religious Right, the name given to primarily Catholic, evangelical and fundamentalist organizations that work to legislate conservative, discriminatory "pro-life," and "traditional" (whatever that means) values in the US. Lately, Kathryn Tucker and others have identified what they term the Medical Right, conservative Christian medical organizations that work for the same purposes in the medical industry.

But in this assignation of influential powers the Right has built over the last 40 years, we would be remiss to not include the Legal Right, dedicated to working the courts to keep laws that ascribe to one particular interpretation of faith on the books.

Beliefnet has a fine little feature called "Lynn v. Sekulow," the principle characters, pitted against one another in e-dialogue, being Rev. Barry Lynn, Executive Director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel for the Pat Robertson-funded American Center for Law and Justice.

Here's the latest from Sekulow, who side-steps Lynn's calling for the Obama administration to reform Bush's faith-based initiatives (churches do good things!), and delves into a fine bit of disingenuous rationalizing (and ACLU bashing) on a lawsuit that would allow a court judge to continue to display the ten commandments in his courtroom:

For nearly a decade now, the ACLU has been trying to silence Judge DeWeese's expression of his legal philosophy. That philosophy, which holds that a society's legal system must rest on moral absolutes as opposed to moral relativism, and that abandonment of moral absolutes leads to societal breakdown and chaos, is the same philosophy that was held by the founders of this nation.

To say, as the ACLU does in this case, that a judge may not espouse such a view because it is 'religious' is to adopt an erroneous and timeworn interpretation of the First Amendment that is not based on the words, the history or the Founders' understanding of the Constitution.

At issue is a poster designed to illustrate Judge DeWeese's legal philosophy. The poster features two columns of principles or precepts intended to show the contrast between legal philosophies based on moral absolutes and moral relativism. The judge used a version of the Ten Commandments as symbolic of moral absolutes, and a set of statements from sources such as the Humanist Manifesto as symbolic of moral relativism.

In a our initial brief filed in December, we argue that the ACLU lacks legal standing in the case, that the lower court erred in determining that the display violates the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution and violates articles of the Ohio Constitution, and contends that the Judge's display is protected by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.

The brief contends that Judge DeWeese's display is constitutional: "Neither DeWeese's discussion of the contrast between legal philosophies based on moral absolutes as opposed to moral relativism, nor his use of the Decalogue as a means to illustrate that contrast bespeak a constitutionally problematic religious purpose," the brief argues. "Moreover, a reasonable observer of the poster would view the poster as a statement about legal philosophy, morality, and ethics, not theology or religion."

Emphasis above is mine. Sekulow is talking about a poster of the ten commandments! And he is hedging the obvious in a number of ways: Society (guided by the notoriously un-nuanced media) tends to view religion as a benign good or as an intrusive evil, either one but primarily the former. Sekulow is disingenuous in arguing that the judge's objective is not to impose religious laws (absolute, not relative) but to present a moral, ethical guide. He's posting the ten commandments! By appealing to our ideas of benign faith, Sekulow hopes to get God in the back door. It's like calling creationism "intelligent design" and convincing the school board that it's a theory just like evolution.

However obvious the objective of these misleadingly-named organizations (who could oppose law and justice? defending "life"? supporting families?), we fail to counter them appropriately, by smoking out their theocratic intentions.

But the real point Sekulow makes in the above post is that he is a "separation of church and state" denier, one of the many theocratically-inclined who base their need to enforce their version of God's laws on the country via an elaborately constructed but ahistorical version of American's founding, its Constitution and writers, and American "traditions". They have no room for other faiths, other lifestyles, other choices. That is, after all, what absolute means.

The great irony is that Sekulow and other Legal Right organizations don't acknowledge that their proclamation of faith is only protected by the separation of church and state. Undermining that separation is all well and good for them until a theocracy other than their own rises to power. How would they read the constitution then?

"The Latest Roadmap for the Culture Wars."

Don't miss Sarah Posner's review of Timothy Keller's new book, Counterfeit Gods at KillingtheBuddha. Here's an exerpt:

This assertion—that biblical orthodoxy is somehow apolitical—was put to the test recently when Keller became one of over 100 original signatories to the Manhattan Declarationunveiled on November 20th. Billed as a statement of “religious conscience,” the Manhattan Declaration is something more, something unmistakably fundamentalist and quintessentially political, a regurgitation of the religious right’s assertion that sexual and gender rights are somehow a threat to good Christians’ religious liberty. The signers of the Manhattan Declaration demand that those who disagree with them be reviled and silenced, yet claim they are the persecuted ones:

It is ironic that those who today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also a right to engage in immoral sexual practices, and even a right to have relationships integrated around those practices be recognized and blessed by law—such persons claiming these “rights” are very often in the vanguard of those who would trample upon the freedom of others to express their religious and moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife.

The Manhattan Declaration—and indeed Tim Keller’s vision for Manhattan—represents the latest roadmap for the culture wars. With a sleights of hand and clever marketing, this new fundamentalism is portrayed as unquestionable orthodoxy that will at once transform your life as well as that of the nation and the world. No doubt it will, as 21st century evangelists stealthily repackage fundamentalist politics as essential but harmless remedies for contemporary angst.

Looking At the Manhattan Declaration from Abroad.

From Thaindian News:

Washington, Nov. 22, (THAINDIAN NEWS) The “Manhattan Declaration: A Call To Christian Conscience” was publicly announced on Friday. The declaration has a set of appeals to a rapidly tolerant society that seems to agree to those that the Christian faith allegedly condemns. The declaration clearly states that the followers would even resort to a civil disobedience movement if required, in order to uphold the principles guide-lined in the declaration. Needless to say, the declaration came as a huge threat to the LGBT community as it denounced marriage between the same sex.

The declaration also denounced anything that hinders the normal process of life, will not be followed by the Christian institutions. By “anti-life”activities, the declaration stated euthanasia, that is touted as “assisted suicide”, abortion and “embryo destructive research.” Relationships between a man and a man or a woman and a woman or between transsexuals and bisexuals were tagged as immoral by the declaration. The declaration made it very clear that such relationships will in no way be treated as normal or as marriages. The declaration also made it pretty clear that the Catholics and the Evangelists would not refrain from preaching the ideals that they have taught so far, no matter what the state decides on such matters.

The Manhattan Declaration is a direct blow to the existing system of tolerance that seems to prevail in the atmosphere regarding same sex, transsexual and bisexual relationships. It also delivers a major punch to the fact that the states are already pushing for legal euthanasia. The leaders of the Catholic, Evangelist and the Orthodox groups supported their views by saying that these convictions are the basis of their religion and that its a necessity to follow them.

What Is an Evangelical?

Tony Jones discusses the shifting and contested definition of Evangelical at BeliefNet:

So I can see why Scot and others fight for the term "evangelical," against both the apathy towards that term of people like Rob and the popular use of the term in the media. Personally, I have never considered myself an evangelical, though many others do consider me one, but I can understand those who embrace that term and their loyalty to it.

Interestingly, Scot uses the following definition, taken from a book by evangelical scholars,

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.

I've added italics around what I consider the most curious phrase. I get every other point, but does one really need to submit to an Anselmic interpretation of the crucifixion event to be an evangelical? That seems odd to me, since I know lots of Weslyans and Anabaptists who are fiercely evangelical, but think of the atonement through other lenses.

Don't miss the comments!

Not As Easy As Evangelical = Conservative.

I'm as guilty as anyone of tossing around slippery terms to define religious groups that challenge, oppose or condone particular policies at issue in my discussions. Over at KillingtheBuddha, my other sometime home, a discussion, initiated by John D. Boy's Icons of the New Evangelicalism, has sprung up about the future power of American evangelicals. Responds Boy to a commenter who takes issue with his use of terms and analysis of the current vibrancy of evangelicalism:

When informed opinions about the future of evangelicalism in the United States so clearly diverge—with some arguing it is inevitably on the decline and others seeing it firmly established in the halls of power—that’s a pretty sure sign that change is underway somewhere beneath the surface, making itself felt through “a great variety of morbid symptoms.” The question is, what kinds of changes in the general orientation of evangelicalism can we expect? Against the general linear, left-right mappings of these changes, I wanted to give room in my thinking and writing on this issue to the unexpected: People like my friend, an evangelical minister and socialist, who preaches about Jesus, the Bible and Judith Butler, prays for the end of corporate domination, and risks imprisonment at antiwar marches. Or another friend who rejects secular music but speaks about blockbusters more than about being born again. Or the girl I know who is crazy about the Holy Spirit but still has time to worry about how her tattoos impact her sex life. We know anecdotally and from opinion polls that the story is not as easy as evangelical = conservative.

And in this vein, where we fail at our conversations about religion, amongst ourselves, in the media, and in politics, is often with the definitions. Because I am many times writing about the pro-choice issue of assisted suicide, it is assumed that I am an athiest or someone opposed to religion. Nothing of the sort. My grandparents were Mennonites; I went through catechism in college. I love faith and religion as much as I fear them.

Putting ideologies and loyalties into silos just isn't a viable approach to religion, particularly, as Frank Schaeffer notes in my prior post, we wish to understand the political climate enough to regulate how religion is used as a tool by those with nefarious motivations. If you agree with even a shred of this, spend some more time at KillingtheBuddha where their manifesto includes, “a religion magazine for people made anxious by churches, people embarrassed to be caught in the ’spirituality’ section of a bookstore, people both hostile and drawn to talk of God."

The New Evangelicalism.

Don't miss John D. Boy's Icons of the New Evangelicalism at KillingtheBuddha today. Boy takes a look at the next generation of evangelical leaders and asks:

All that sounds good, but the question remains: How sustainable can these changes really be? Among Catholics, Vatican II eventually led to a harsh backlash; why should we assume evangelicalism is on a sure track toward lasting change? Do the new icons represent a mere “shop-window of saintliness … substitut[ing] with impunity the signs of charity for the reality of justice,” as Barthes put it? The example of Rick Warren already suggests that a healthy dose of Barthesian skepticism is in order. His support of the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 in California—albeit rather muted—was highlighted by opponents of his involvement in Obama’s inauguration and suggests he hasn’t veered too far from the old evangelical path. Just because some evangelicals are comfortable with voting for Democrats, destabilizing epistemological boundaries and, yes, growing goatees, doesn’t necessarily mean they have become agents of progressive social transformation.

Same as the old evangelicalism? See the KillingtheBuddha blog for more.