Presbyterians Together, No. 1

[Note: in the light of comments I have received, I've edited one of the paragraphs to express more accurately and fairly what I was trying to say. So, some of the comments made before I edited may not make sense.]

There has been a statement circulating for several weeks now entitled, "Presbyterians and Presbyterians Together," which now has several signatures and which you can read here. There has also been at least one fairly frustrated response to this paper on the Ref21 blog, which you can read here.

I must say that I tend to agree with the substance of the response on the Ref21 blog--it does strike me that, for the peace, purity, and unity of the church, these issues should be settled in the courts of the church. After all, the resurrected Christ has granted his church authority to declare its doctrine. In the PCA, we have done that by claiming the Westminster Standards as our confession of faith and then by requiring our ministers and elders to subscribe to those standards in good faith. In addition, we require men to owe up to where they differ from the Standards and presbyteries are required to rule on whether those "scruples" strike at the essentials of the system of doctrine contained in the Standards. And, when we have challenges to our understanding of those Standards, as a church we have shown ourselves willing to examine those issues by way of a study committee and deliver the church's wisdom on those matters.

While this document doesn't appear to conflict with the idea that doctrinal issues should be dealt with in the courts of the church, it does feel as though there is an attempt to influence that future discussion through the invocation of a call to "charity." In times past, such appeals were very influential (note, for example, the 1923-4 Auburn Affirmation in the PCUSA). However, such extra-ecclesiastical appeals aren't the best or "Presbyterian" way of dealing with doctrinal issues--that way is to hear the voice of the whole church, guided by Word and Spirit, speaking to these issues.

At the same time, we must recognize that the issues at stake are important. Some of the issues under discussion concerning the nature of the covenant, election, justification, union with Christ, the nature of the church, and the sacraments. That is a pretty comprehensive list of "essential" doctrines and helps to explain why so many people are so worked up over these matters. There are two different "visions" (at least) at stake in these matters; we shouldn't pretend that the differences, at times, aren't substantial. And while I believe that the Missouri Presbytery committee report did a good job dealing with these matters, and should be received by the General Assembly as a definitive word on these issues, I also believe that it is the privilege of the church in its collective voice at the General Assembly to call for a committee to study these matters.

At the end of the day, what we really need are people who are committed to Presbyterianism--which means working issues through the church courts and its processes and expressing a deep commitment to remaining together in visible unity as we wrestle with difficult theological issues. Too many people these days jump ship to other churches, rather than listening to and heeding the church's voice (which they had promised to do in their ordination or membership vows). Only by honoring our own rhetoric about the centrality of the church in God's purposes will we truly be those who are Presbyterians together.

God's Gentle Patience

From Samuel McPheeters Glasgow, Daily Communion, 126:

"If we are actually so small and frail; if we are so impotent and helpless in the great eternalities, shall we not be humble in heart? Why do we ever strut about and vautn ourselves? Only in God's gentle patience can we ever come into any abiding greatness. All the strength we so painfully lack, he possesses. Yes, all this and infinitely more. And he is our Friend and our Father. He has wrought all the glories that we his children might enjoy them with him. Come up close to the great heart of God and rest on him every care and burden. Share with him every joy and blessing he so freely gives, and you shall walk in the light and not stumble."

"Pastoral" ministry

D. G. Hart has a wonderful set of observations here about pastoral ministry. His point, drawing from Wendell Berry, is that, biblically speaking, pastoral ministry owes more to agricultural imagery than to mechanical ones. Such an understanding shifts our approach to our care of souls--a longer term vision of nurture, cultivation, and care as opposed to a short-term, hit-and-run, impersonal approach.

What is so helpful here is the reminder that to be "pastoral" means we are related to shepherds, herders, and rural life. The rhythms are slower, the progress is measured differently, the need for long-term investment is greater, the work is physically harder, and the grace is more real because more directly experienced. The miracle of new birth, growth, and fruit is the miracle of God's grace--a miracle we are more prone to see when we think in agrarian, as opposed to mechnical, terms.

Post 100: Wendell Berry

It is fitting that the 100th post on my blog is about the Kentucky poet, author, and farmer, Wendell Berry.

I first starting reading Wendell while I was at Westminster Theological Seminary; and I became so convinced of his importance for Christians--both for how he challenges pietistic Christianity and for how theological his vision is--that I wrote an essay on him for Christian Scholars Review. That essay served as an introduction to Wendell and Tanya Berry and it was my great privilege to meet and spend time with them. The Lord even allowed me to preach a couple of times at Port Royal Baptist Church, Port Royal, Kentucky, where they worship.

The other day, I ran across this tremendous collection of links for Berry material on the internet. Sometimes people who are interested in reading Wendell feel intimated by his large and varied corpus of writings. I usually suggest a couple of starting places.

In order to orient to the Port William membership--the central characters in most of Wendell's fiction--I think the best starting point is his novel, Jayber Crow. Jayber is the town barber, and like most barbers, he learns the secrets and heartbreaks of the community as he tells its story from the 1930s to the 1960s. The other good starting point is Wendell's collection of short stories, That Distant Land, which places his short stories in chronological order.

In order to focus on Berry's non-fiction, and explore the key ideas that animate his fictive imagination, I think the best place to begin is Art of the Commonplace, which are a collection of essay by Berry edited by Norman Wrizba, who teaches at Georgetown College. There one would find essays on Wendell's diagnosis of our cultural crisis and how agrarianism can meet many of these issues.

Finally, the classic Berry manifesto is still his The Unsettling of America. Written in 1977, it remains a pentrating critique of America's industrial and post-industrial economic and political culture. He also traces the deep connections between culture and agriculture, suggesting that a society that fails to care for the land is a society that will fail to care for human beings and life itsself.

Augusta Conference

I got back last night from the first annual Augusta Conference, hosted by First Presbyterian Church, Augusta, Ga. It was an excellent time, with over 150 in attendance and with wonderful preaching and teaching by George Robertson, Harry Reeder, Bryan Chapell, Randy Pope and Ray Cortese. FPC will eventually be posting MP3s of the main speakers on their website. The fellowship was encouraging as well--a wonderful time of refreshment in God's grace.

El Hombre

We were at the St. Louis Cardnials game today, where Albert Puljos set the MLB mark for home runs in April with 14 (which also happened to be a game-winner, as the Cards beat the Nats, 2-1). When I moved to St. Louis, not having the opportunity to see Albert play every day, I frankly thought he was a little over-rated; my favorite players were the hard-working Scott Rolen and the star-crossed Ken Griffey, Jr.

But having the opportunity to watch or listen to the games nearly every day for two years now, I really do believe that we are getting a taste of what it was like to follow Stan Musial or Willie Mays, one of the truly special players of our generation. And though it is hard to know how sincere he truly is, the fact that Puljos has represented himself as a Christian, who walks to the plate with Christian music blaring and who thanked his faithful Lord and Savior, Jesus, today--all that makes him a truly special individual.

He truly is "El Hombre..."

Karl Barth, Evangelicals, and Dealing with Others

Last night, in my Reformation and Modern Church History class, I spent a good chunk of time on Karl Barth. In particular, I focused in on his doctrine of revelation (from Church Dogmatics 1/2), trying to help my students get beyond the cliched understandings of Barth's view (e.g. "The Bible contains the Word of God"; "The Bible is a record of revelation") and to engage him thoughtfully.

To be sure, there are some real areas of criticism to be made--for example, recourse to "the miracle of faith" to explain how God uses fallible and erroneous Scripture to bring people to encounter God's revelation in Jesus Christ seems just as "supernatural" as believing that God in his freedom could superintend the writing of Scripture so that it is written without errors in the first place. For me, the biblical witness supports this latter view (cf. 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet 1:21, etc.), whereas one would be hard pressed to find biblical support for the former. And there are other criticisms to be made as well (and I made those criticisms for my class).

But as I reflected on all of this, I also made mention of Cornelius Van Til's criticisms of Barth, published in three separate books over almost twenty years. And while Van Til was gifted and brilliant as a thinker, I've always felt that he never really engaged Barth--he kept looking for the "transcendental starting point" in Barth's theology (which he saw to be similiar to Protestant liberalism) and then constructing the logical conclusions from that starting point. Again, this is not to say that Van Til wasn't right in some respects: I, for one, don't think that Barth gets too far away epistemologically from Protestant liberalism (or from the challenges of "modernity" or from the basic correlative strategy of Schleiermacher; but then again, what mainstream "progressive" theologian did?). Yet by not engaging Barth within his own framework of thought, it strikes me that Van Til did Barth and himself a disservice.

Not only this, but Van Til's approach has been typical for most evangelicals in engaging the other. Rather than engaging in a thoughtful and critical dialogue, we all too often default to broadside claims of "heresy." Certainly, there may be errors (e.g. with Barth, his implicit univeralism in his doctrine of election, in CD 2/2, is a major biblical and theological error); but without the patient and graceful engagement of the other, our criticisms and disagreements will only be heard as clanging noise and banging cymbals.

In other words, even critical scholarship--times when we must say, "No, that is an error and I disagree with you"--must have as its goal "love which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith" (1 Timothy 1:5).

Why Christians should listen to the Boss

Not surprisingly, I once again find myself agreeing with Carl Trueman about the common ground between the Christian worldview and the music of Bruce Springsteen. Especially in the light of the Boss' new album, The Seeger Sessions (that's Pete, not Bob), and his stated desire for his verses to be the "blues" and his chorus to be "Gospel," we'd do well to listen to and learn from Springsteen.

Why bother with southern Presbyterianism? No. 3

I think another reason why "southern" Presbyterianism is worth time and study is because it focuses attention on regional difference and the power of nationalism, and so complicates our understanding of change over time. To focus on the American South and to note the differences in religious development in that particular region provides a wonderful laboratory for understanding these issues.

The American South's continued regional persistance has been a major theme of US historiography. As James Cobb's recent Away Down South demonstrates, the American South has typically defined itself against "the North" (or against "damn Yankees"), while northerners have viewed themselves as "Americans" and southerners as recalcitrant against assimilating into the triumph American (read "northern") story.

This process of identification was especially pointed in the two great attempts to "reconstruct" the South--the period from 1865-77 and from 1945-65. Ironically, these attempts to force southerners to a more just society ultimately reinforced the abiding alienation that southerners felt toward "Americans" and perpetuated issues related to continued regional identity.

The one sociologist who has spent the most time explaining the South's regional persistance is John Shelton Reed. He has argued that there are aspects of southern regionalism that have rightly died--especially, issues related to social justice for southern African Americans. But there are continued aspects of regional particularly that mark the American South as a different place--foodways, sports and hobbies, ideals of honor and masculinity, music.

And religion. That is where the entire conversation comes back around to southern Presbyterianism. This is the case because Presbyterianism does develop somewhat different in the American South than it does in other parts of the country--for one thing, it is smaller; it is restricted to the 11 original states of the Confederacy; it wrestles with issues related to one-party politics and Jim Crow; (ironically) it demonstrates great denominational loyalty than northern Presbyterianism; and it experiences greater interaction with religious "others" (esp. Pentecostalism and Disciples of Christ). I'm sure there are other things that will occur to me on this point; and I may come back to revise this list.

Viewing Presbyterianism within a self-contained region should assist in understanding the relationship among religion and other factors within a cultural system. In the end, it should assist believers in thinking through religious truth claims with greater self-criticsm and humility for the good of the Kingdom and the church.

Awakening

Over this past weekend, I read David Robertson's brief but winsome introduction to the life of Robert Murray McCheyne, Awakening. In the compass of twenty brief chapters, which run about 160 pages, Robertson does a wonderful job of setting the context for McCheyne's ministry, overviewing the key points in his thought and life, and communicating McCheyne's strengths and weaknesses. In addition, in the penultimate chapter, he offers trenchant observations on the decline of the Church of Scotland and shares hopes for the renewal of biblical Christianity in that land.

This book would be very useful for church reading groups--each chapter begins with a McCheyne epigram that sets the theme for what follows and ends with discussion questions and a prayer of meditation and reflection. As a result, my own piety was strengthened and encouraged in reading this book.

But the most attractive feature of the book was Robertson's stated desire to view McCheyne as a man--a man whom God used, to be sure, but ultimately a man who had flaws and sins, who made mistakes, and who was far less a Protestant saint and far more one who points us to his faithful savior, Jesus Christ. As such, the book is a model of biographical writing for the way it situates the individual's story in the larger redemptive story of Jesus Christ--in which our Lord takes flawed human beings and uses them in such a way that the glory is all his own.

Perhaps no higher praise can be offered a short introduction that to say that it has encouraged me both in the Gospel and in the desire to find out more--to return to Bonar's unwieldy Memior and Remains of M'Cheyne as well as read other background material to understand that time and place. As a result, Awakening is a highly successful and useful gift to the church of Christ.

No condemnation, no separation

In doing research for my summer writing projects, I ran across a devotional by Samuel McPheeters Glasgow, a PCUS (Presbyterian Church in the US, the old southern Presbyterian Church) minister who served churches in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Savannah, Georgia, in the 1930s and 1940s. His meditation for today on Romans 8: 1-2 was wonderful and appropriate for my soul:

"The resurrection of Christ says in the ear of every trusting child of God: 'There is therefore now no condemnation,' to them that are in this risen Christ. Since condemnation is lifted by his cross and empty tomb there is nothing left to separate us from Christ Jesus our Lord--'no condemnation,' therefore 'no separation.' All that would or could separate us has been nailed to the cross. What glorious peace is ours in the Beloved! What assurance and finality compass us about! In Christ, though foes may multiply and array themselves for our undoing and defeat, we are always 'more than conquerors'" (Glasgow, Daily Communion, 112).

Why Bother with Southern Presbyterianism? No. 2

Recently, I re-read a friend's overview of southern Presbyterianism in which he attempted to rehabilitate this tradition around three key ideas:

• The spirituality of the church
• The missionary enterprise
• The Old School doctrinal message

And while I would quibble with some of the details of how he fleshed out these three ideas, one can't help but believe that a church committed to these ideas would be greatly strengthened for ministry in the 21st century. A church that proclaims the spiritual nature and mission of the Church will not allow itself to be coopted by the cultural, political, or social principles of either the right- or left-wings of the contemporary generation. Instead, it seeks the spiritual good of all those whom it comes across, declaring to them the Gospel of Jesus, whether in the United States or around the world. And this Gospel which it declares is summarized in the grand truths of the Reformed faith as found in the Westminster Standards.

Further, studying southern Presbyterianism can give one a renewed appreciation for how some believers articulated these commitments in a rapidly changing world. Whether in its earliest days in the South, in the golden age of Presbyterian theology in the 19th century, or in the battle for the Reformed faith in the 20th century, we can gain great profit from studying Presbyterianism in the South.

It is important to say that this profit comes not by way of inspiration from "heroes" of the past. Rather, profit comes as one understands how theology operates within cultural systems, as prophetic words on the cultural captivity of the left or right. We learn, as we study this story, how difficult it is to hold on to the spiritual nature of the church when politics seems a better way; how challenging it is to continue to move forward in mission; and how easy it is to forsake Old School doctrinal commitments in order to be broad-minded or relevant.

But in thinking about these things, two things occured to me. First, these three commitments are not unique to southern Presbyterianism. For example, 19th century northern Presbyterians also represented these three commitments. In the vision of Charles Hodge, one can find these three principles well-articulated for nothern Presbyterians. Likewise, one could make the argument that these ideas were found in 16th century Geneva. Far from requiring some mythical "southern Zion," I'd suggest that these three commitments are at the heart of biblical Presbyterianism, regardless of generation or region.

Furthermore, I want to make the claim that the Presbyterian Church in America exemplifies these commitments to a high degree. Typically, these three principles are trotted out in order to judge how far Presbyterianism has fallen from a perceived golden age; usually there is a political claim being made (i.e., we [whoever we are] are the true exemplars of Presbyterianism). And while I recognize that a good part of the history of the PCA can be viewed as the struggle to understand what it means to be Presbyterian in a postmodern age, still it is the case, IMO, that the PCA stands well for the spiritual nature of the church, the missionary enterprise and Old School doctrinal integrity. In fact, compared with the 19th century "golden age," the PCA is the largest Presbyterian denomination in history holding to those three distinctives.

In fact, the way forward for the PCA is for us to continue to be reminded of these things as we seek to be "faithful to the Scriptures, true to the Reformed faith, and obedient to the Great Commission." By stressing our Presbyterian distinctives--in common with the best of Presbyterianism throughout space and time--we not only pay homage to southern Presbyterians of an age gone by; we also demonstrate biblical faithfulness in our generation and for generations yet unborn.

Civility

Maybe I'm too old-fashioned. Maybe it is because I enjoy Miss Manners' column. Maybe it is my Bob Jones University education (where guys held doors for ladies; there were often times where I'd be stuck holding the door for two minutes while dozens of girls came into Alumni Hall right before class). But it is startling the lack of basic civility that characterizes our public life and daily interactions.

Saturday, I was driving up our street behind a mid-90s Explorer. The driver didn't know where he was going, apparently, and so he decides simply to stop in the middle of the road, with no warning. I had to slam on my brakes to avoid smashing into the back of him. After I gave him an annoyed honk, as he slid into the middle turn lane, he gave me a hand gesture, as though I was the rude individual.

Later that same day, coming out of a restaurant at the Missouri Botantical Garden, with a stroller and four children in tow, a gentleman coming the other way pushed his way through the entrance area (his way in on the right was blocked), cutting me off and forcing me to come to a complete stop, and didn't even bother registering an "Oh, excuse me."

These are small things and it may seem as though I am just venting. But what it really points up is the failure of a common civility that enables human interactions to proceed. Stephen Carter, the Yale Law School professor, wrote about this in his book, Civility. He observed that civility is the oil that causes the machine of our public life to continue to operate without grinding people, without dehumanizing them.

As I think about how civility operates within our public life, I can't help but think about how civility ought to operate within our ecclesiastical life. In the same way that there are socially accepted rules for life together in society (please and thank you and holding doors and honoring older people by letting them preceed you and the rest) so there are basic rules for living life together as the body of Christ (assume the best about another; look out for their best interests; watch what you say about and to someone else).

But at the heart of all those rules is love: "The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith" (1 Timothy 1:5). In a letter where Paul is telling the church "how one ought to behave in the household of God," he claims that one ought to behave in a way consonant with love, which springs from pure motives, clear consciences, and sincere faith. To be sure, civility doesn't mean that important doctrinal or moral concerns should go unheeded. But it does mean that, in our interactions with others, we are called to demonstrate to them; it means that the Golden Rule always applies, that grace should characterize all our dealings, that disagreements ought not to be characterized by our being disagreeable. It does little good to bemoan the lack of charity in someone's life when our own actions are frequently so uncharitable.

In short, civility represents the most basic attitudes and actions that come from loving others well. And civility should apply both in the church and in the world, for we as Christians are called to love even our enemies for Christ's sake.

New Busch Stadium

Last night, I went to the first night game at the new Busch Stadium. As you may know, the Cards beat the Brewers, 8-4. My seats were in section 134, which was up the first base line, about even with the foul pole. I was in row 28, which put me two rows from the suites, which were directly behind me. From there, I had an excellent view of downtown and the new scoreboard, though I couldn't see the Arch, because of the over-hanging upper deck.

The way the seats were turned (toward the outfield, not home plate) and the over-haning deck reminded me very much of a sultry July evening in 1997 that Sara and I spent at Turner Field. It was 92 degrees that night at game time and no breeze; the air just sat still. Plus, we both kinks in our necks from the angle of the seats.

My wife, as it so happened, was at the game with a friend, sitting in the bleachers (section 509). By the fifth inning, a seat freed up over there, so I moved to sit next to her. I actually preferred those bleacher seats to the more expensive seat I had purchased. The bleacher seats were fairly comfortable and had a great look at the whole field. Plus, you could actually feel the breeze that was coming out of the northwest.

On the whole, I thought the new stadium was very nice--compared to the newer ball parks of the past couple of years, I felt that it was much superior to Cincinnati's Great American Ball Park, slightly superior to the Phillies' Citizen's Bank Park, slightly below Pittsburgh's PNC Bank Park (why is it that Pittsburgh feels like it is right next to the stadium, even though a river separates the city from the ballpark, while St. Louis' skyline feels comparatively distant).

The Church of Scotland and the Need for Church Discipline

Evangelicals in the Church of Scotland are circulating this statement to protest their upcoming General Assembly's desire to allow ministers to bless same-sex unions. A number of prominent ministers, both within and outside of the Church, have added their names to this statement in order to give greater weight to the protest. [It should be noted that this will be a major issue at the oldine Presbyterian Church (USA)'s General Assembly in Birmingham, Alabama, this summer as well.]

It is striking, though, to read Carl Trueman's comments about the failed strategy of older evangelicals in the Church of Scotland that paved the way for these events. According to Trueman, evangelical ministers essentially bargined with the liberal denomination leaders--we won't protest your moves ecclesiastically, if you will leave us alone in our congregations to preach the Gospel. But now, there is too much ground given away--the failure of the church's courts to bring discipline against those with aberrant theology and the failure of evangelicals to bring those courts to task, all in the name of peace, has led to this current crisis.

The reason this catches my attention is that I have an essay coming in this spring's Journal of Presbyterian History, entitled, "'Our Church Will Be On Trial': W. M. McPheeters and the Beginnings of Conservative Dissent in the PCUS." It focuses on the efforts of McPheeters, an elderly OT professor at Columbia Theological Seminary, to bring two progressive leaders to bar in the old Southern Presbyterian Church in the late 1920s. The failure of the church to heed McPheeters and discipline those two leaders allowed progressives to feel safe in their theological positions. It also proved to be the beginning point of a conservative coalition in the PCUS that would lead to the founding of the Southern Presbyterian Journal and eventually, in 1973, the Presbyterian Church in America.

All to say, there are hills on which it is worth dying. A church that refuses to discipline itself theologically is a church that will ultimately find itself in similar places to the Church of Scotland or the PC(USA)--a church without a biblical witness to the world.

You are what you read, No. 1

Phil Ryken makes this interesting observation at Reformation21. He suggests that those who interested in the Emerging Church movement tend to be quite "presentist" when it comes to their theological reading. He also notes that while that reading has a place, he is more drawn to the great works of theology that have stood the test of time.

Ryken's thought provoked two of my own. The first is that this is why church history/historical theology is so important. Last night, I lectured on the development of 19th century theology and the point that I kept making over and over was that if you don't understand this story, you won't understand modern theology. For example, Bart Ehrman and Elaine Pagels aren't saying anything that Schleiermacher, Baur, or Strauss (or a number of other 19th century Protestant liberals) didn't say and say better. Hence, our theological students might be better served wrestling critically with Schleiermacher's Christian Life or Strauss' Life of Jesus than Ehrman and Pagels.

But the second thought was on what should be considered "the great works of theology." What ten books, say, should be considered the canon of great works of theology? Here is the list with which I came up:

• Augustine, On the Trinity
• Anselm, Why God Became Man
• Aquinas, Summa Theologica
• Luther, Bondage of the Will
• Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
• Edwards, Religious Affections
• Schleiermacher, Christian Life
• Hodge, Systematic Theology
• Machen, Christianity and Liberalism
• Barth, Church Dogmatics

If I could somehow get students to understand the world-historical significance of these ten theologians and their best writings, then I think they would have a good sweep of the history of the Christian tradition. In addition, they would find things that would challenge their thinking, warm their hearts, or point them in new directions.

[Disclaimer: obviously I don't agree in every respect with these theologians. For example, I reject the sacredotalism of Aquinas, the liberalism of Schleiermacher, and the existential neo-orthodoxy of Barth. Still, they are worth Christian engagement, even when they move in erroneous directions, because they impact the Christian tradition in significant ways. In addition, reading Aquinas, Schleiermacher, and Barth would help us to understand what happens to Catholicism and mainstream Protestantism in various eras. Learning the tradition is as much discovering wisdom about the consequences of ideas as warming one's own heart.]

Defending Virginia, the South, and Mastery, part four

“If Thou Mayest Be Free”

Dabney, like other southern divines, were confident that a mere adducing of the biblical evidence would justify the central southern claim that the Bible did not condemn slavery as a social and economic relation. Yet, even using a similar “Reformed, literal hermeneutic” as Dabney, his defense of slavery was plagued by several problems.

First, Dabney conveniently ignored or explained away several scriptures that militated against slavery. For example, Deuteronomy 23:15 commands Israelites not to return slaves who run away from oppressive foreign masters; instead, these former slaves should be allowed to live among the Israelites in one of their towns as freedmen under their protection. Dabney approved of Andover Seminary Old Testament scholar Moses Stuart’s interpretation, holding that this text had nothing to do with Hebrew slaves, but only foreign slaves, and that the reasons for this law were obvious: “the bondage from which he escaped was inordinately cruel, including the power of murder for any caprice; and that to force him back was to remand him to the darkness of heathenism, and to rob him of the light of true religion, which shone in the land of the Hebrews alone.” Because this text dealt with “foreign” slaves, Dabney held that it apparently did not apply to the American South.

But, to read this text in a different way would lead one to a much different conclusion, one that was in line with northern opponents of the Fugitive Slave Law. For slaves that escaped north were escaping a bondage that was “inordinately cruel, including the power of murder for any caprice.” To return slaves to the South was to remand them to oppression and potential death. Further, it is not entirely clear that the South was the land of true religion for black slaves. As historians Erskine Clarke and Eugene Genovese have demonstrated, it was not until the 1840s and 1850s that some slaveowners took responsibility for evangelizing slaves and that missions to African Americans still received wide spread opposition until the Civil War. Hence, northern opponents of slavery could easily read this text and conclude that they were commanded by God not to return fugitive slaves, but to grant them a place in northern society.

Yet even if one granted that slaves in the American South were not “foreign” but similar to Hebrew slaves, then African American slaves should have been subject to the biblical law of Jubilee. Leviticus 25 specifically commanded that every fiftieth year should be consecrated in order to “proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.” Hebrew slaves would be freed, fields lay fallow, property returned to its original owners. Freedom was the ultimate goal of the year. And the reason for the Jubilee year was to remind God’s people that “it is to me that the people of Israel are servants. They are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” Likewise, those slaves who converted to the Hebrew faith were to be set free after seven years service. Yet when Dabney discussed the issue of the Jubilee, he focused on the fact that foreign slaves were not liberated. But Dabney contradicted himself here—either African American slaves were “foreign” or they were akin to “Hebrew” slaves, but they could not be both. Slaves either had the biblical right to escape from bondage, or they were to be set free from bondage every fifty years. God’s ultimate design was not slavery, but freedom.

Another text that Dabney performed hermeneutical gymnastics on was 1 Corinthians 7:20-21. There the Apostle Paul clearly stated that if the opportunity arose for the slave to gain his freedom, such was the preferable condition. Dabney initially admitted the force of the language in the text. He then mitigated the text’s import by claiming that “we must remember the circumstances of the age, in order to do justice to his meaning.” First, Dabney said that slavery was harsher in the first century. Second, first century masters “were accustomed to require of their slaves offices vile, and even guilty.” Third, first century society offered a way of social mobility for a “freedman” and his family. Fourth, the master and his slave were of the same color; after a few generations, no one could remember that the ancestor was a slave. These four conditions of first century slavery were markedly different from nineteenth-century Virginia, Dabney claimed. He held that slavery in his day was comparatively mild; slaves were overseen by Christian masters; there was no possibility for social mobility once the slave was “deprived from his master’s patronage”; and the slave, being black, would be “debarred as much as ever from social equality by his color and caste.” Thus, Dabney’s appraisal was that “freedom to the Christian slave here, may prove a loss.” This line of reasoning, however, failed to overturn the Apostle’s claim that freedom was preferable to slavery for the Christian slave. Even more, it signaled the difficulties to which Dabney’s argument for mastery led. When a theologian who upheld the clarity and sufficiency of Scripture is forced to evade the thrust of a biblical text, it signals a major failing.

In addition, one of the hermeneutic insights of the Reformed tradition has been its focus upon the redemptive-historical movement of Scripture. Unlike the “progressive revelation” theories of nineteenth century progressive biblical theologians, who argued that the movement in Scripture was from primitive to more mature forms of monotheism, Reformed theologians back to Calvin have recognized the movement from the old covenant’s tutorship under the law, which the Apostle Paul equates to slavery, to the new covenant’s freedom under grace, which he equates to sonship (Galatians 3:15-4:11). This movement radicalizes social and economic relations within the church as well as in broader society. Within the church, the New Testament appears to argue for an egalitarian and multiracial society, a body where there was “neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Ephesians 2 argues that the dividing wall of hostility between races—Jews and Gentiles—has been torn down by the power of the resurrected and exalted Christ. And Revelation 4-5 presents a powerful picture of the “ransomed people of God” who come “from every tribe and language and people and nation,” a glorious mosaic of every race under heaven worshipping God as God’s “kingdom and priests.” This movement from the Old Testament exclusivity of the chosen Hebrew people to the New Testament expansive vision of the people of God including every tribe, language, class, and social relation is part of the Reformed understanding of God’s covenant story. Dabney did not deal with this line of argument at all in Defence of Virginia, although he would deny it strenuously in the postbellum period as African Americans sought ordination within the southern Presbyterian church.

A major part of the failure of Dabney’s proslavery polemics, then, was an inability to be self-critical about his own commitment to mastery. As he lay on his sick bed in Southside Virginia in 1863, furiously writing his “little book,” Dabney’s vision was blurred by his captivity to what he wanted the Bible to say, how he wanted society to remain, and what he feared above all. For, like most southerners, Dabney was not hateful in his dealings with individual African Americans: one finds the typical notes of kindness to those who served him, particularly his trusted valet “Uncle Warner” Lipscomb. Yet he was deeply afraid about what the new social order would mean for him personally, for his family, and for his accustomed way of life; he could not bear to relinquish the power and authority that came with being a member of the master class. His fear enabled him to see clearly the follies and foolishness of the rising capitalistic order of the postbellum North, but it also inured him to huge blind spots and even to the misanthropic use of biblical texts to support his vision of the South. His failure should make us all mindful of the risks that we take when we try to claim God for our side.

Defending Virginia, the South, and Mastery, part three

The Rhetoric of Mastery

Most of these biblical arguments were actually old saws in the proslavery toolbox. However, what made Dabney’s approach distinctive was the way he married his straight biblical defense for slavery with rhetoric of mastery that put forward a white patriarchal vision for social relations. Hence, what made northern social relations “anti-biblical” was the growing egalitarian sentiment evidenced in abolitionist and women’s rights rhetoric. It was in contrast to this that Dabney set forward “Bible Republicanism” as a way of ordering social and economic relations.

Dabney argued that “the integers of which the commonwealth aggregate is made up, are not single human beings, but single families, authoritatively represented in the father and master.” While the father served as master over the household and the mother served in her sphere, children and slaves were minors under the master’s tutelage. In many ways, the household operated as a little commonwealth, for slaves, like women and children, were under the master’s control: “The family is his State. The master is his magistrate and legislator…He is a member of municipal society only through his master, who represents him. The commonwealth knows him only as a life-long minor under the master’s tutelage.”

As a result, hierarchy, patriarchy and inequality were necessary for a properly functioning society. While all human beings had a moral equality before God—although Dabney would later challenge even that proposition when he sought to deny ordination to free Presbyterian blacks after the war—there is a natural inequality between sexes, races, classes, and ages. “Equity, yea, a true equality itself,” Dabney argued, “demands a varied distribution of social privilege among the members, according to their different characters and relations.”

Because a “just” society would restrain social privilege when it contained “a class of adult members, so deficient in virtue and intelligence that they would only abuse the fuller privileges of other citizens to their own and others’ detriment,” it was imperative for southern society that white male masters maintain hegemony due to the “degradation” of their African slaves. According to Dabney, black slaves “were what God’s word declares human depravity to be under the degrading effects of paganism.” In Africa, blacks were “barbarians,” who lived “but one remove above the apes around them.” Even though some have been brought to America and placed under the influence of the Gospel, blacks still were prone to particular vices, such as “lying, theft, drunkenness, laziness, waste” due to the fact they had “the reason and morals of children, constitutionally prone to improvidence.” In short, African Americans were “morally inferior.”

In addition, while he was careful to affirm the biblical truth of monogenesis, the claim that all humankind sprang from one set of original parents, Dabney concluded that blacks had become “a different, fixed species” of the human race, “separated from the white man by traits bodily, mental and moral, almost as rigid and permanent as those of genus.” By separating the races, subordinating blacks, and keeping power in the hands of the master class, there would be no fear of a “hybrid race, stamped with all the feebleness of the hybrid, and incapable of the career of civilization and glory as an independent race.”

As a result, for Dabney and other southern white elites, white mastery and black slavery was necessary for the proper functioning of society. He actually claimed that slavery was necessary in order to restrain blacks from damaging themselves with freedom: “We certainly are not required by a benevolent God to ruin him in order to do him justice!” Dabney exclaimed. In fact, “Africans among us had a right to the protection of bondage.” If they were granted equality with white masters, including the rights to vote and to gain an education, they would become “a nuisance to society and early victims to their own degradation.” White mastery was necessary for the order of a society ordained by God.

Defending Virginia, the South, and Mastery, part two

Defending Virginia’s Slavery

Dabney had long been convinced that the strongest argument on behalf of southern slavery would be one drawn from Holy Scripture. As early as 1851, he had held that southern response to the 1850 Wilmont Proviso, which sought to provide a solution to the balance of slave and free states, should focus on the “fundamental ethical question of the justifiableness of slavery.” Recognizing that the nineteenth century American mind still bowed to biblical authority, he believed that in order to affect “the general current of national opinion on this subject, ‘Is slaveholding intrinsically immoral or unjust?’ we must go before the nation with the bible as the test, and the ‘thus saith the Lord,’ as the answer.” This strategy was the only wise one, Dabney held, because “on the bible argument, we are, logically, impregnable.”

It is for this reason that the central part of Dabney’s Defence of Virginia sought to “push the Bible argument continually.” Dabney’s thesis was that “the Bible teaches that the relation of master and slave is perfectly lawful and right, provided only its duties be lawfully fulfilled.” In order to demonstrate this, he ranged widely over Old and New Testament texts. Dabney began with Genesis 9, a key text in the apologetics for American slavery. There he observed that while the curse of Ham and his son, Canaan, did not justify African slavery, it did provide “the origin of domestic slavery.” God provided slavery, according to Dabney, to remedy “the peculiar moral degradation of a part of the race.” Because God sanctioned slavery for Ham and his posterity, slavery could not be sinful, he concluded. Dabney also considered Abraham and Isaac as a slaveholders. God clearly did not disapprove of Abraham’s slaveholding, Dabney argued, because God extended the sacrament of circumcision to include Abraham’s entire household—male sons and male slaves. Also, God told the runaway slave Hagar, who belonged to Abraham, to return to her master and submit herself to him when she had run away.

Another series of Old Testament texts that Dabney examined were the Mosaic laws. He tried to demonstrate that because God “expressly authorized” slavery in the Old Testament, it was “innocent” to hold slaves “unless it has been subsequently forbidden by God.” Finally, Dabney pointed out that slavery was mentioned twice in the Ten Commandments, “in modes which are a recognition of its lawfulness.” Both the Fourth and the Tenth Commandments explicitly mentioned slavery: the Fourth commanding masters to allow slaves to rest and worship on the Sabbath, the Tenth forbidding covetous attitudes toward another’s slaves.

The most incredible Old Testament argument that Dabney made, however, was that God himself was a slaveholder—in both Numbers 31:25-30 and Joshua 9:20-27, it appeared that God claimed a “tithe” of slaves akin to a tithe of grain or cattle. Hence, Dabney concluded, God could not have taught that slavery per se was sinful because God himself was a slaveholder.

While Dabney claimed that the inspired arguments of the Old Testament should be enough for Christians, still he believed that the New Testament also sanctified the master-slave relation. Though he held that the “mere absence of a condemnation of slaveholding in the New Testament is proof that it is not unlawful,” Dabney did not rest his case there. He pointed out that Christ applauded the faith of the slaveholding centurion in Matthew 8:5-13. Further, the Apostles failed to act against slaveholding as a moral evil. In fact, slaveholders were prominent members of the early church and the apostolic writers wrote specific instruction to them about how they were to treat their slaves (e.g. Ephesians 6:9, Colossians 4:1). Finally, Dabney pointed to the Apostle Paul’s letter to Philemon, claiming that not only did Paul not rebuke Philemon for slaveholding, but Paul also returned Philemon’s runaway slave Onesimus to him, apparently recognizing Philemon’s property rights in his slave. In defending slavery, Dabney believed that a common sense reading of Scripture’s apparent sanction of slavery should be enough.

"Split Ps": Lessons from Micro-Presbyterianism

It is striking how many Presbyterian micro-denominations there are. I noticed in the new Banner of Truth magazine that a new one formed in January 2006: the Westminster Presbyterian Church in the United States. But there are a number of others as well, for example:

• Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches;
• Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States;
• Reformed Presbyterian Church, General Assembly;
• Reformed Presbyterian Church, Hanover Presbytery;
• Covenant Reformed Presbyterian Church;
• American Reformation Presbyterian Church;
• Presbyterian Reformed Church;
• American Presbyterian Church;
• Free Presbyterian Church;
• Evangelical Reformed Presbyterian Church.

And of course, there are a number of others. The real question here is why? Why are there so many Presbyterian denominations?

Because on the surface, Presbyterianism should be against this sort of division. At the heart of Presbyterianism is the connectional principle--that the body of Christ is represented not just locally but regionally and nationally in connected, graduated church courts. To break that connection is a serious matter, because it militates against the larger unity of Christ's church that Presbyterianism seeks to represent.

Perhaps part of the answer here is in one of the ordination vows that PCA ministers are required to affirm: "Do you promise to be zealous and faithful in maintaining the truths of the Gospel and the purity and peace and unity of the Church, whatever persecution or opposition may arise unto you on that account?" (BCO 21-5). Part of the great challenge is to balance the purity and the unity of the church, while seeking its short-term and ultimate peace.

Reading some of the websites of these micro-denominations, it seems clear that they are seeking to be zealous and faithful in maintaining the purity of the Church as they see it. And for that, all Christians, regardless of denominational affiliation, should be grateful. We need watchmen on the walls of Zion to warn us of doctrinal error and to hold us all accountable to biblical truth. And if these brothers and sisters' consciences are bound to separate, then I wish them God's speed.

Yet in preserving pure truth, it strikes me that perhaps some of these brothers might have forgotten about the unity of the church. After all, Jesus wasn't kidding when he prayed, "I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me" (John 17:20-21). We must take the unity of Christ's church seriously, as seriously as the "truth" that we are trying to preserve. If we are required to separate, as Francis Schaeffer once observed, it is not with bands playing or flags flying, but with tears and weeping.

Likewise, the peace of the church must be maintained. Now, granted, some people hide under the church's peace as a means of advancing their own agenda. In a similar way, when Elijah confronted Ahab, the latter said, "Is it you, you troubler of Israel?" (1 Kings 18:17). We may need "Israel" to be "troubled" if there is doctrinal aberration in our midst. Still, the way we seek to address these matters is through the courts of the church and by submitting to the vows we made before God, as either church members or officers--we will submit to the government and discipline of the church.

That being said, the members and ministers of the church have the right to investigate issues, to raise questions about theological concerns, and to bring discipline to the church. That's why I would disagree somewhat with this outsider's perspective on the situation in the PCA. While no one wants a church that is constantly battling itself on side issues, I think some of the issues that are being discussed are worth thinking about. It is a good thing for presbyteries to study these issues, to affirm our common consensus around the Westminster Standards, and to discipline with those who have moved outside that consensus. That is not problematic or disasterous; rather, that is healthy church life.

However, what is problematic is when Presbyterians forget one of our most basic biblical insights--that each of our local churches are connected to other local churches in regional and national groupings and that this connectionalism pictures the unity of Christ's Body for all the world to see. It is only in this way that the purity and unity and peace of Christ's Church will be preserved until he returns.

Defending Virginia, the South, and Mastery, part one

Note: The earlier post on southern Presbyterianism brought this essay to mind. I presented it at the Pruitt Symposium hosted at Baylor University in October 2004. While it doesn't say anything that isn't in my Dabney book, it puts things more pointedly.

In the essay, I was trying to engage historian Gene Genovese on the one hand, by arguing that Dabney's presentation of proslavery was not a lead-pipe lock case, and historian Mark Noll on the other, by suggesting that a Reformed hermenuetic could have and should have led Dabney and other southern Presbyterians in different directions.

As Robert Lewis Dabney (1820-1898) lay in his recovery bed in the waning days of 1862, he despaired for the Confederate cause. To be sure, the Army of Northern Virginia had won a tremendous victory during the Seven Days Battles, forcing McClellan’s troops to retreat from Harrison’s Landing and defending Richmond successfully. Yet Dabney, whose bout with “camp fever” forced his resignation as Stonewall Jackson’s chief of staff in order to return to his civilian life as a professor of theology at the southern Presbyterian’s Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, worried that his fellow southerners were losing their grip on the reasons for the War.

Though Dabney opposed secession before the war because he was profoundly concerned that southerners were not adequately prepared militarily or politically for the resultant conflict, he generally agreed with fellow Presbyterians James Henley Thornwell and B. M. Palmer that southerners needed to defend their homeland, their liberties, and their institution of slavery. But now, in his own southern Presbyterian church, there were rumors abroad that James Lyon’s pastoral letter on slavery, to be presented to the following year’s General Assembly, was going to attack slavery and urge a number of reforms of the “peculiar institution.” In addition, northern newspapers continually hammered southern slavery, trying to shift the public purpose of the war from preserving the union to liberating the slaves. And even within southern circles, there were prominent border state leaders who questioned whether a war for southern liberties and southern slavery was worth it. For a southern Presbyterian “patriot,” there was plenty of cause for concern.

Even more, Dabney was extremely frustrated by his perceived failure as a staff officer in Jackson’s corps. Though Jackson had written a note of regret and thanks in accepting his resignation, his short-lived service and his lack of fitness for his military duties, as well as his peacetime calling as a Presbyterian minister, made him defensive about his manly honor. In order to meet this personal crisis of masculine confidence as well as to shore up possible southern retreat from a full-throat defense of slavery, Dabney took up his pen as he recovered from the illness that forced him from Lee’s army. Working over articles that he had first published in the Richmond Enqurier in 1851, Dabney crafted perhaps the last important defense of southern slavery based on political, economic, legal, and especially religious grounds. He defended the little book to Jackson, to whom he wished to dedicate the book, boasting that the “labors of the scholar, while more humble, are no less necessary to the welfare of our country, than those of the solider.”

Dabney’s book, A Defence of Virginia (and Through Her, of the South), was originally intended to serve as a piece of Confederate propaganda to convince potential British and French allies to aid the southern cause. He sent the manuscript to his friend, Moses Hoge, who was in London. Hoge apparently forwarded the manuscript to the Confederate authorities in England, but they did not publish his manuscript. Dabney was convinced that this publication failure was due to the influence of A. T. Bledsoe, whom he believed was jealous for the success of his own book on slavery. He did not give up on publishing the book; he even prepared an “Advertisement to the Reader” in 1864, explaining the circumstances of its creation and delay. However, Defence of Virginia did not appear until after the war through agency of the New York publisher, E. J. Hale, with the blessings of Robert E. Lee. While the book did not sell well, it was viewed as an able defense of southern slavery; the United Confederate Veterans eventually placed it among the first ten books that served as constitutional defenses of southern rights.

On the surface, Dabney’s proslavery polemics appears to be simply another racist and intransigent attempt to defend the indefensible system of race-based human bondage. And to be sure, one can find plenty of racism and intransigence within the pages of Defence of Virginia. But I would argue that Dabney’s work also represented one of the last gasps of a southern master class anxious to maintain their manhood and honor, their mastery, through the rhetorical assertion of patriarchal superiority. As such it not only charted the ideology of an elite group attempting to maintain hegemony, but it also served as a preview of the trajectory that at least some southern conservatives, such as Dabney, would take in the Reconstruction period in their intransigence against northern “usurpation” and eventually in their embrace of Jim Crow.

What makes Dabney’s defense of southern mastery particularly important for our purposes is the way he uses both the biblical materials and the realities of the southern slave system selectively in order to create the impression that he has successfully demonstrated that the Bible does not militate against slavery. On the contrary, I would suggest that even using the “Reformed literal” hermeneutic employed by Dabney himself, it can be demonstrated that his reading of the biblical material fails to reckon both with the entirety of the biblical materials as well as with the trajectory of redemptive history toward freedom, renewal, and multi-ethnic community. I would suggest that Dabney’s failure to recognize his own blindness signals the deep problems that arise when theologians seek to interpret texts for public order.

Out of Pocket

I'm out of pocket right now--sitting here at my in-laws house in Connersville, Indiana. I should be back to my regularly scheduled blogging next week.

One word, though, on Kelvin Sampson's hiring at IU--actually more than one word. 1) Oklahoma's men's basketball team is under investigation for recruiting voliations; why would you hire someone who may end up to be Jim O'Brien?

2) Oklahoma plays an ugly brand of basketball. If IU fans were frustrated with Mike Davis' offense, wait till they see what Sampson brings.

3) Does Greenspan really believe that Sampson is going to be able to recruit the state? That if Kelvin were our coach that Greg Oden would have come to IU? That he is somehow better than Alford, Wittman, or Keith Smart?

4) How many Final Fours did Sampson take Oklahoma to? One. Who did they lose to? That's right, Indiana in 2002.

This, in my opinion, was a bad hire. Even Calipari would have been better because at least he would have brought good talent with him. Greenspan will not survive the negative fall-out when the program goes south. Another prediction (since I'm on a roll)--Davis will have a better 3-year record at UAB (if he is hired there as rumored) than Sampson will have at IU.

See you next week!

Spirit and Flesh

[Note: I just received in the mail the March/April 2006 issue of Modern Reformation, where this review is published. I thought I would post it here to share with those who might not read MR]

In Spirit and Flesh, a brilliant and enlightening book, James M. Ault, Jr., initiates his readers into the world of a fundamentalist church. Ault, an independent Harvard-trained sociologist, spent three years immersed as a participant-observant with the Shawmut River Baptist Church (he changed the name to protect identities) in Massachusetts in an effort to understand New Right politics and the churches behind it. He first chronicled the congregation’s life in the public television documentary Born Again (1987); Spirit and Flesh serves as his “field notes,” filled with analysis and a narrative that often surprises and always engages.

Against typical secular assessments of fundamentalist Protestantism, which emphasize power and hierarchical gender relationships, Ault argued that churches like Shawmut River were built upon kin relationships that often empowered women even while engaging in “patriarchal” rhetoric; served to bring family members to faith, sustain them in that faith, and exercise discipline when they faltered; and provided for a type of ethical flexibility and adaptability even in the face of “absolutist” ethical claims.

In addition, by viewing fundamentalism as embedded in familial relationships, Ault enabled the reader understand why fundamentalists became politically involved in the 1970s and 1980s over the issues of abortion and public education and why they are heavily invested today in the fight over homosexuality: these political issues each strike at the essence of fundamentalist religion, namely, the tight family relationships that sustain churches like Shawmut River.

In addition, Ault claimed that fundamentalist “traditionalism” is rooted in a collective, oral discourse that “has a contingent, dynamic quality involving change, growth, adaptation, and invention” (208). The communicative event for this oral discourse is the Sunday sermon in which the community’s ideals, its traditions, are defended and reinforced. Not only doctrinal traditions, but especially cultural and social mores—such as teenage chastity, cultural separation, and abstinence from alcohol—are communicated to the younger generation through the community’s oral discourse.

In the book, one of the central and most disruptive events is the pastor’s daughter out-of-wedlock pregnancy. When the pastor, as keeper and transmitter of fundamentalist traditions, “fails” to pass them on adequately to the next generation, the church becomes a political battleground that eventually leads the larger church “family” to choose sides in order to preserve its peace and traditions.

In the end, Ault’s book is useful for helping those of us who minister in the Presbyterian and Reformed world to take stock. After all, to a secular world, conservative Presbyterians look very much like the fundamentalist Baptists whom Ault describes. And as we minister, it is useful to reckon with the reality that our congregations are often built upon kin relationships; what might be the effects of seeing the church as a collection of families shaped by traditions communicated orally? Above all, in a surprising twist at the end of the book, we can learn the importance of a loving community to bring someone, like Ault himself, back to the Christian faith in which he was raised.

The Colts will now win the Super Bowl...

...now that they've gotten rid of the "idiot kicker" and signed someone who can make clutch kicks.

[Note: sorry to all those who read this blog who aren't into Indiana-centric sports teams; a lot going on with the teams I follow. Now, back to your regularly scheduled blogging...]

The Next Indiana Coach

I can't believe that I am one of the few IU fans out there who desparately wants Steve Alford for our next coach.

I can't believe that the second best record in Iowa school history and Big Ten Tournament championship doesn't merit some sort of praise and interest.

I can't believe that I am one of the few IU fans who, when he hears Mark Few's name, thinks Dan Monson.

I can't believe that anyone thinks that John Calipari is a good coach.

I can't believe that Alford would coach Mizzou instead of IU.

I can't believe that Rick Greenspan will survive as AD if he picks a coach other than Alford who ends up being a failure.

I can't believe that, somewhere, Bob Knight isn't smiling...

Why Bother with Southern Presbyterianism? No. 1

This thoughtful post got me thinking once again about this question. After all, I've spent a good chunk of my academic writing time on Robert Lewis Dabney; and for the past several years, I've been working on a history of twentieth-century conservative dissent in the Presbyterian Church in the United States (the old southern Presbyterian church). Maybe I'm a little defensive, or feel the need to justify the time. But I ask the question: why bother with these southern Presbyterian stories?

Let me say to start that I don't write in order to repristinate the past or to write inspirational history. Anyone who has read my book on Dabney, for example, knows that I have deep ambivilances about him as a man, churchman, and theologian. I don't shy away from pointing out his sinful and tragic attitudes toward African Americans, his wrestling with his own masculinity and honor during the war, his ambitious manuevering to land his position at Union Seminary, or his tragic squandering of influence in the postbellum southern church. Anyone who has read my book should know that, in my mind, Dabney is not a hero and that I am not seeking to return to the "good ol' days."

Then again, that is not why I write history anyway. If we simply come to history for some sort of useable past that reifies the status quo or justifies deviation from that status quo, then we are doing historical work for lesser reasons. Hear me well: it is not wrong to make the past speak to the present; that is what the best historians do. Yet, as James Cobb put it well,

"When historians are drawn into the politics of identity [which is what I am really talking about--sml], they may unwittingly cease to be scholars who simply try to make the past speak to the present and become ventrioloquists who are intent on making it say what they think their audience wants to hear. In doing so, they run the risk both of misrepresenting the past and of confusing what their readers want to hear with what they may actually need to hear" (Cobb, Away Down South, 316).

All too often, people approach history seeking what they want to hear. In my mind, however, historians need to do their work in such a way that the message people need to hear, pleasant or unpleasant, reifying or justifying, is heard.

To come back to the basic question then--why bother studying southern Presbyterians?--I think the answer has to look something like this: I study southern Presbyterians in order to gain wisdom and insight into the way I am today and the way my church is. In a denomination where nearly 60% of his membership still resides in the eleven states of the old Confederacy, and in a denomination that has many who still view it as the continuation of the old PCUS, we need all the wisdom and insight we can get about the way we are (good and bad), the beliefs we hold dear, and the practices that continue to shape us.

But I also study southern Presbyterians because they remind me that theology never operates outside of cultural systems--whether you want to put that into terms of "cultural captivity" or "contextualization." And that means, I must come to all ideas and beliefs and practices with sharp questioning--how does this operate within the current cultural moment? What strengths does this present? What weaknesses does this offer? How will my future be affected by this? How does this reflect the longer-standing tradition of the church?

And so, our call in thinking historically about these things is not to rail against "southern Presbyterianism" as though it were some aberrant form of the Christian tradition (though, no doubt, there are aberrations, especially on racial issues, as this demonstrates). Nor is our call to defend "southern Presbyterianism" as though it embodied perfected Christianity handed down to us on golden plates (though, no doubt, there are numerous strengths, especially in its general faithfulness to the Westminster tradition).

Rather, the historical task is to study the past in order to uncover the stories--to discover the wisdom and receive the judgment--that we need to hear in this moment. And the stories we need to hear above all point us forward to the only real hero in the Big Story, Jesus himself, who takes our evil and works it together for our salvation.

Dirty Little Secrets

The other day, I was surfing the TV and landed on VH1, where they were actually doing a video countdown (I hadn't seen VH1 or MTV do videos in forever). The video was by The All-American Rejects for their song, "Dirty Little Secrets." The video showed post-cards that people had created, which disclosed various kinds of secrets, some profoundly broken, others awfully superficial.

When I got to the seminary today, a colleague was telling me about an article that he read on his way back from California about this website, PostSecret.com. When I went to the website, I found the same type of thing--and apparently, the song was inspired by this website. The simple premise of the website is this: people share their deep secrets by creating postcards as a type of art, but also as a means of finding healing and hope. The website is tied in with the Hope Line, a 800 number that helps people struggling with suicidal feelings. According to the count meter, over 25 million people have vist the PostSecret website.

I had several reactions to all this. First, I was so thankful that somewhere, in God's common grace, people are feeling free to reveal some of their brokenness so that they can finding help, hope, and healing.

Another thought I had was this: if you were to allow church members to do this, creating postcards about their "dirty little secrets" and sending them to a place where they can maintain their anonymity, what kinds of issues would be revealed? I suspect that the brokenness displayed on the website would not be that radically different from what one would discover in the church.

Which raises another question--how in the world do ministers and counselors surface these issues so that the healing of God's grace in the Gospel might come to bear on people's secrets? For all our talk about authenicity, I wonder if we could really handle some of these issues; it would simply be overwhelming for human beings. And yet, it would not be overwhelming for God--so how do we get people together with God in such a way that they might know God's grace?

This leads to another thought: why do most of our churches preach and minister in such a way that these issues are never surfaced? Why does most preaching fail to address our dark emotions, our dirty secrets? Why do our illustrations of "sin" and "brokenness" always seem so lame and unreal (cheating on income taxes; driving faster than speed limit; etc. Please. These are peccadillos, not the sins with which most people really wrestle). Why do most of our people feel utterly unsafe to bring these secrets to the light? How does that change?

Finally, how in the world has the church utterly missed this phenomenon? I read a number of blogs and websites, as well as regular news outlets, and I had never heard of this, until I saw the AAR video. What other major cultural phenomenons are we missing where people are expressing their deepest heart issues and the church is simply ignorant?

Death of Presbyterian Denominational History

I recently was invited to contribute to a collection of historiographical essays on denominational history, a book that will be published by the University of Alabama Press. Our assigned task was to survey the field in our respective denomination's historiography since the publication of William Warren Sweet's classic series on Religion in America (c. 1940). And as you would expect, my assignment was Presbyterian historiography.

In doing the very initial spade-work for this essay, one thing that is very striking is the paucity of those who could be considered "historians of Presbyterianism," since 1940. I'm sure that I am missing someone, but thus far my list includes: Leonard Trinterud, Lefferts Loetscher, E. T. Thompson, James Smylie, Louis Weeks, Thomas Currie, James Currie, James Moorhead, Beau Weston, Brad Longfield, Erskine Clarke, Robert Brackenridge, D. G. Hart, Mark Noll, David Calhoun, and me. Gonna be tough to pull 25-30 pages out of that group.

Of course, I know that the major source for Presbyterian historiography is the Journal of Presbyterian History (JPH) and I will mine that very well in my essay. But the fact that there are so few legitimate names (and a few of these are suspect: for example, Currie, Weston, Longfield and Lucas have only published one significant book; Noll has only published one book that is directly "Presbyterian") suggests a more disturbing trend.

That trend is the death of denominational history generally and especially the death of Presbyterian denominational history. There have been several books over the past 15 years that have highlighted the need to recover denominational stories: the best of these was Reimagining Denominationalism: Interpretive Essays, ed. R. B. Mullin and R. Richey. But with the slow death of mainline Protestantism--coupled together with the now-dominant model of "religious pluralism" in religious studies departments and "evangelicalism" within history departments that do religious history--has meant that doing histories about Episcopalians, Presbyterians, or other oldline denominations is simply not sexy.

There are two exceptions to this trend: Methodism and Baptists. For whatever reason, scholars have recently discovered Methodists in a huge way, producing several major books by Wigger, Andrews, and Hempton. Methdoists are now being explored for the way that they have shaped the egalitarian and enthusaistic world of the early American Republic as well as set the stage for Victorian moralism on both sides of the Atlantic. And Baptists have made a comeback for two reasons: first, as a result of the conservative take-back of the Southern Baptist Convention and second, as the result of the explosion of studies of the religion of the American South.

And yet, Presbyterians, who for so long were central to the WASP-elite story of America and its Christianity, have generally been shunted to the sidelines. Surely it is somewhat ironic that the most prolific Presbyterian historian (Hart) belongs to the 30,000-member Orthodox Presbyterian Church, which left the mainline PCUSA in 1936? And that JPH is publishing more and more articles from professors at the three conservative Presbyterian seminaries, presumably because mainline professors simply aren't doing this kind of historical work anymore?

The real question is how we got into this current state of affairs. And I think part of the answer is that historical writing can't help but fall into some sort of advocacy. And for mainline Presbyterians, historical writing served to buttress and justify larger themes--theological breadth in the 1950s and 60s, racial and gender inclusion in the 1960s and 70s, and denominational renewal and rescue in the 1980s and 90s. But by moving historical writing so fully into advocacy mode for a perspective on how the church should be, historians failed in their task of telling truth-full stories--stories that charted pitfalls and failures as well as progressive hopes and dreams. Mainline Presbyterian historical writing has often read like one long parade interrupted by boring speeches on the glories of the past and the programs for the future. Think Democratic National Convention in religious guise--that is what passed for mainline Presbyterian historical writing.

The historians who have chronciled the "offshoots"--the denominations that formed out of the mainline--haven't done much better. Too often our writing has felt like justifications and excuses and special pleading. It is fearful and temporizing, afraid of goring oxen and sacred cows. We haven't seemed to figure out a way to tell a truth-full story that helps readers (and Presbyterians) understand the larger sweep of what God is up to and what being Presbyterian in America has done both to Presbyterianism and America, for both good and ill.

And so, the next question is this: can Presbyterian denominational history be resurrected? I sure hope so, if for no other reason that the Presbyterian stories are so important for placing us in the grander narrative of what God is up to in this world, for shaping our sense of identity. If Presbyterianism is going to survive in America, then the next 50 years must be dedicated to reclaiming truth-filled (with the good, bad, ugly, and indifferent) Presbyterian stories.

Only then will we see the grandness of our faith and the glories of our God, who uses even flawed, crooked tools as instruments in his hand.

Jeopardy, No. 3

Answer:
James C. Cobb's Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity
Cobb's Redefining Southern Identity: Mind and Identity in the Modern South
Samuel Hill, ed., The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Vol. 1: Religion

Question:
What came in my box yesterday from amazon.com?

btw--I intend to post something in the next several days about the NEofSC volume on Religion, which is surprisingly poor.

Picking the Final Four

I filled out my first bracket for this year's tournament and some how came up with Duke, UConn, Kansas, and Boston College--two #1s and two #4s. I think I need to go back and try again...who do you have in your Final Four?

[btw, for those who know my rooting interests--right now, I have Indiana making the 16 before losing to UCLA. I'm not sure that's right either.]

D. G. Hart in Colorado

This website, from Calvary United Reformed Church in Loveland, Colo., is announcing a conference, "Deep Roots: Seeking Our Protestant Heritage." The main speaker is D. G. Hart, who was my main professor at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa., and one of the most thoughtful and provocative historians working today. What makes this website particularly useful is this page of links of online Hart essays.

Mainline Presbyterians and Same-Sex Marriage

This acquittal for Jane Spahr, PC(USA) minister and long-time activitist for gay causes in the church, is a sad day for the church as is this striking report about a long-distant relative of Jonathan Edwards who performs same-sex marriages.

Yet what is striking is how little most observers understand the way the mainline Presbyterian church has dealt with this issue. For example, as the official church report on Spahr indicates, since 2000 mainline Presbyterian ministers have been able to "bless" same-sex unions. Likewise, though a great deal of effort has been spent toward ordaining practicing homosexuals, the PC(USA) has long allowed the ordination of homosexuals who are non-practicing.

In the light of this, these recent reports are not surprising. However, these reports do represent a warning of sorts and raise other questions. What steps within mainline Presbyterian were necessary to make homosexuality acceptable as a lifestyle both for parishioners and for ministers? And how do conservative Presbyterians reach out in love, grace, and concern for those in homosexual lifestyles without affirming their practice?

Ministries such as First Light and Harvest USA are certainly helpful in enabling us to reach out in love and care. But surely the church can do more--what can we do? One thing we must do is tone down our rhetoric and demonstrate the kindness of God, which leads people to repentance (Romans 2:4). For far too long, conservative evangelicals have responded in fear and loathing rather than in the mercy of Christ, who saves all kinds of people. Only as we lower our voices and respond in concern will there be an avenue for Gospel word and deed in these lives.

Dabney Review: Measuring Days

This was a very thoughtful review of my Robert Lewis Dabney. Jared raises some good questions out of his reflection on Dabney's life and ministry. I'm thankful for such sympathetic and thoughtful readers!

Martyn Lloyd-Jones' Legacy

Carl Trueman, a friend and professor of church history and historical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, has posted some trenchent remarks on Martyn Lloyd-Jones' legacy. Whether you agree with Carl or not--and his criticisms of MLJ seem directed as much toward his admirers as Lloyd-Jones himself, save for the final point--they are worth considering.

In that context, I've continued to wrestle historically with how a place like Westminster Chapel could go from MLJ to R. T. Kendall to Greg Haslam (a leader among the Word and Spirit movement, a UK charismatic group). The received, conventional wisdom has generally seen Kendall as the one wearing the "black hat" in the story, corrupting the MLJ legacy and opening the door to the charismatic movement. But I wonder if there was some trajectory in MLJ's own ministry--whether explicit or implicit--that set the stage for this transition.

I guess you can say that historically it is all a question of Lloyd-Jones and the Lloyd-Jonesists!

Lucas (Oil) Stadium

I'm glad the good citizens of Indianapolis and my beloved Colts decided to honor me (and my kindred) by naming their new stadium after the Lucas clan.

Lucaspotting, No. 2

Some other places I will be over the next several months:

• March 2, pastor's fellowship, First Baptist Church, Roxanna, Ill.
• March 3-4, RUF Men's Retreat, University of Missouri, New Haven, Mo.
• July 19, RUF Training, Atlanta, Ga.

Generous Orthodoxy, part three

Identity
By the end McLaren’s book, I could not help but to think that fundamentally he wrote about identity—what is the nature of Christian identity? Who am I as a Christian? Who are we as the church? And what are we to be and to do in this world? In some ways, this was not a stretch to see—after all, every chapter in the second part started with “why I am…” Yet I wonder if McLaren, or emergent church folks, have genuinely wrestled with issues related to religious identity. If not, doing so would raise important questions for the entire project.

I would suggest that religious identity is forged through a matrix of beliefs, practices, and stories. Beliefs and practices are mutually reinforcing components of our identity—what we believe leads to certain practices; and our practices tend to reinforce our beliefs. These beliefs and practices gain legitimacy from the stories that we tell about ourselves or that others tell about us. While it might be possible to believe, practice, and story-tell as an isolated individual, it is much more likely that beliefs, practices, and stories will happen within a community and particularly within a community that has a long history or tradition. As a result, our traditioned communities both inculcate, form, and reform a particular religious identity that helps us to make sense of the world and to engage the world in our various callings. Or to state it in the opposite direction, our identities are embedded in particular communities; we take on the community’s beliefs, practices, and stories as our own and only forsake them with great mental, psychic, and physical energy.

With this understanding of religious identity as the background, I would like to raise questions about the entire emergent strategy of seeking “to find a way to embrace the good in many traditions and historic streams of Christian faith, and to integrate them, yielding a new, generous, emergent approach that is greater than the sum of its parts” (18). One question is whether such a strategy is even possible. After all, the beliefs or practices of certain religious traditions are part of a matrix (or cultural system, to use Clifford Geertz’s phrase) that are not easily transmuted or transformed without changing their meaning. In part, because our beliefs and practices are storied—there are reasons and stories behind why we do and believe the way we do. And so, is it actually possible to take a little bit from Anabaptists, merge it together with some things from the Anglicans, shake on top a little Catholicism and Presbyterianism, and emerge with something new, stronger, better?

As a matter of fact, it was at this very point that the criticisms raised by Michael Horton come home. While I think Horton failed to grapple fairly with the emergent movement on their own terms, his point that this presented a modernist form of consumerism was exactly right. For who gets to determine one’s religious identity? Does the community (or religious tradition) have the “right” to catechize or inculcate their beliefs, practices, and stories into their adherents? Or does the individual have the “right” to determine, shape, transmute, or transform that identity into something “new” and “postmodern”? Ultimately, at the point of who is the authority, McLaren’s propose shows itself to be “most-modernist” in terms of the self-made Christian and her smorgasbord identity.

And so, I would suggest that the hope for an emerging generation is not the same attempt, made by non-denominational churches for the past thirty years, to be a lowest common denominator collage for religious identity. Rather, it is “re-tribalization,” if you will; it is the self-conscious attempt by religious traditions to be most faithful to their own identities.

For Presbyterians, then, this means nothing less than thoroughly training our adherents—that is, our non-communicant and communicant church members—in the beliefs, practices, and stories that form and reform our identity. This Presbyterian identity will, of course, place us within the larger family of evangelical Protestants with whom we have so much in common; but it will also recognize that we approach the great Gospel truths that we have in common with other Protestant traditions with a particular accent or dialect.

In doing this, I think we will have a better opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue with other religious traditions—Christian and non-Christian—because we will be speaking out of our deep understanding of who we are, what we believe, what we do, and where we have been. It may not be the newest thing to emerge from within evangelicalism, but it might actually be the best way to preserve and promote that once and the same time ancient-future faith.

Generous Orthodoxy, part two

Orthodoxy
All of this being said, one of the immediate questions that might confront the reader of this book was this: why is a book dedicated to promoting “generous orthodoxy” so ungenerous about those who are orthodox? Perhaps McLaren or his editors noted the oddity, because he recognized that he was “far harder on conservative Protestant Christians who share that heritage than I am on anyone else” (35). Perhaps this was simply the function of the kind of book he was writing; or perhaps he is defensive because he makes several unusual theological moves in several areas that appear to challenge the “traditional” faith of conservative Protestants.

One such move was his discussion of the intention of Jesus to save the “whole world” (100). McLaren suggested that “Jesus did not come to create another exclusive religion.” Rather, he believed that Jesus came to proclaim news that was good for adherents and non-adherents alike. Indeed, the gospel is “universally efficacious for the whole earth before death in history” (108-114). Exactly what this means is unclear (does he mean to affirm universalism?); but it appeared that he suggested that exclusivist positions on the fate of the unevangelized should be significantly revised.

For McLaren, this connected to his thoughts on the biblical propriety of hell. He raised this very question on p. 112, but immediately dodged the issue; essentially, he believed that questions about whether people were going to heaven or hell were the wrong questions to ask. Still, I wondered whether he could have been more forthcoming on how his views on hell relate to the fate of those who never have heard the Gospel.

Also tied together with his commitment to Jesus’ cosmic and loving intentions toward the world are his beliefs about religious pluralism. While I could agree with him that Christ’s incarnation means that we were called to go out toward the world in Christ’s name in word and deed, McLaren was unclear when he claimed: “Ultimately, I hope that Jesus will save Buddhism, Islam, and every other religion, including the Christian religion, which often seems to need saving about as much as any other religion does” (264). What exactly does this mean? That Jesus will cause Buddhists or Muslims follow him (to save them) but remain Buddhists or Muslims and so “save” the world religions (as it appears on 264 and 282n141)? Does this veer close to syncretism? If not, how so? In addition, such language seemed to betray McLaren’s insights on the importance of community and common liturgy for the formation of Jesus’ followers. Do those in Muslim countries not need Christian community or Christian worship? All of these issues raised profound questions about the “orthodoxy” in A Generous Orthodoxy.

In addition, McLaren took a number of shots at Presbyterian theological shibboleths. For example, he expressed difficulty with issues related to divine sovereignty (81) and predestination (186-7). In particular, he provided some questionable historical observations on how (allegedly) Calvin’s thought merged with “mechanical determinism” and “rationalistic philosophy” to produce an intellectual commitment to an universe that is like “a movie that’s already ‘in the can,’ having been ‘produced and shot’ already in God’s mind, leaving us with the illusion that it’s all read and actually happening.” He then observed that “I find it hard to imagine worshiping or loving a deterministic, machine-operator God”; in this, most conservative Presbyterians would concur.

However, I had to wonder whether he actually has ever taken the time to read Reformed theology or history. Not only does he trot out the tired “Calvin versus the Calvinists” argument, but he repeated the old canard about “Calvin himself [overseeing] the execution of fellow Christians for disagreeing with his system, playing the same brutal power and coercion games that Protestants protested (and still protest) among Catholics” (194). He also chimed in with the shopworn shots at “Protestant scholasticism” (205) and the five solas of the Reformation (198). It caused me to wonder if he really was trying to be “generous” to those who are brothers and sisters in Christ.

He also provocatively questioned “the fall” and “original sin” (235) and characterized total depravity as a “depressing topic” with which conservative Protestants seem preoccupied (177). Not content to deal only with total depravity, McLaren also suggested a thorough revision of TULIP: his version was Triune love; Unselfish Election; Limitless Reconciliation; Inspiring Grace; Passionate, Persistent Saints (195-7).

In addition, many Presbyterians will wince as McLaren is repeatedly critical of “systematic theology,” which he characterizes as “conceptual cathedrals of proposition and argument” (151). Particularly guilty here, of course, were conservative (“modernist”) Presbyterians who stubbornly hold on to their “post-medieval formulations” (read here, the Westminster Standards; 189). While unclear on how he would replace current forms of systematic theology—he promoted the work of John Franke and the late Stan Grenz as the best current possibilities—he suggested that emerging theology will be coherent, contextual, conversational, and comprehensive (152-53).

Above all, McLaren believed that “a generous orthodoxy, in contrast to the tense, narrow, controlling, or critical orthodoxies of so much of Christian history, doesn’t take itself too seriously” (155). Indeed, the central principle for theology is semper reformanda, always reforming (189-194). How this principle related to the ancient creeds and the “tradition” that he claimed to be eager to champion was unclear (32); if theology is always reforming, will the future creeds for the postmodern age look anything like ancient or premodern creeds? If they are substantially the same, then why write new creeds? If they are substantially different, then how can one be sure that she is orthodox? Who or what group/authority adjudicates the differences?

All of these things raised profound questions in my mind, at least, about the direction of McLaren’s project. This is not to paint the entire emergent church movement with a broad brush, save as A Generous Orthodoxy is held up as one of the key books for the movement. Still, there are real questions here that McLaren and other emergent leaders need to answer if they will truly unite Christians together in a generous, orthodox movement of God’s Spirit (18).