Continued from part 1
And the United States
Back in 1994 Mark Noll wrote The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, mostly claiming it to be rather badly underdeveloped. Well, things have changed quite a bit on that front. There has been quite an intellectual renewal.
Professor Berger (like me actually) calls himself evangelisch but not really evangelical, not to mention incurably Lutheran, and he claims to be very comfortable with evangelicals. He comments that there is something of a movement of the evangelical intelligentsia into prestigious universities and such. He considers it somewhat like the influx of Jews in the 1930s. I find that comparison quite interesting.
The other day on Geoffrey’s post Local Churches, Dave Smith posted a video in comments from the Free Congress Foundation, documenting the origin of political correctness and locating its origin in the Frankfurt School of the early 1930s. this was part of the exodus mentioned above. It included many liberal (maybe licentious would be a better term) groups and people who suddenly realized they were not welcome in Hitler’s Reich. Weimar Germany had been an incredibly liberal, not to say immoral place, and Hitler was not amused, then or later. Many of these refugees ended up either in the United Kingdom or the United States and by the end of World War II, many had become respected figures in the educational system, as well as the other elites.
Max Weber said a while ago that Protestantism. was responsible “for the disenchantment of the world” because of the evident distaste for the three most ancient and powerful aspects of the sacred, Namely the mystery, the miracle, and magic. While there is obviously a fair amount truth in this, it can easily be overdone, especially before the 1950s, I think. One always has to remember that one cannot understand Protestantism unless one views it against the background of the Catholicism from which it sprang, any more than one can understand American history properly without understanding English history during the colonial period. That’ is the origin of them. Catholicism does feature that triad more, as we all know, but so does Pentecostalism. And Pentecostalism is the fastest growing part of Protestantism. And it isn’t even true of most Evangelicals, or even some mainline Protestants, say Anglo-Catholics or Confessional Lutherans. So one has to be very careful with this.
The main part of mainline Protestantism’s problem is the loss of the core of the Gospel: the cosmic redefinition of the structure of the universe centered about the birth and life, and death of Jesus. it has come to be some vague (mostly) left-of-center social program, which is a huge distortion. or it has come to be some sort of vague morality, such “as be nice to old ladies if they slip in the gutter”. Nothing really wrong with either, but they are not what Christianity is about. The Evangelicals seem to have not gotten this memo.
And what either secular or religious fundamentalism offers people is simply certainty. “We’ll tell you what is true, and if you do what we say, it’ll be all good for you”. While the relativists say, “Don’t worry about what is true and what isn’t, it’s all relative anyway, so it doesn’t matter. They are actually pretty much polar opposites, but nearly the entire world is in the middle. It makes little sense to go with either one, we don’t know everything, but we do have a reasonable idea of right and wrong, and it’s the correct solution. After all, God is indeed Love, He is also Reason.
But what you’ll find pretty much everywhere is pluralism, and it has its problems as well. Now you get to make choices, such as the example in the interviewer gave:
I recently had a conversation with a German Catholic theologian, who was shaking his head when I mentioned to him that the denominational boundaries are breaking down in the United States, that one could grow up Baptist, attend a Mennonite college, become a member of a Nazarene church, marry a Reformed person, and send their kids to an Episcopalian school.
That’s hard for theology to deal with isn’t it? and in truth, pretty much all of us here are lay theologians, we study (more or less) we read, we think. In other words, we’re not the average guy in the pews (or not in the pew, for that matter). We can see the similarities and yes the differences between our churches. But I wonder does the average parishioner, for most of us, things change in the liturgy, but they change mostly slowly, how many notice? This may have been where Vatican II messed up, they got in a hurry, if they had taken a few generations to make the changes, as happened in most Protestant churches, would the Catholics have noticed? Other than the change to the vernacular language, of course.
And for that matter, no matter how similar the theology, our individual churches have considerably different feel, the average parishioner isn’t likely to confuse them, not matter how much we try to convince them that it’s all the same thing. And that is good, I think.
Lots more in the links, and I’m very interested in what you all think. Personally, I think it a fairly viable thesis.
All Along the Watchtower 
An interesting couple of posts, Neo, and I have waited until this one was up before commenting, as I think they have to be taken as a pair.
Yesterday’s one gets much right. Essentially the west has assumed that the pattern it has seen is normative, and has only recently woken up (or parts of it have) to the possibility that it is not. There are still Catholic German Bishops who think that Africa is going to go the way they have gone, but they will be dead in a decade before it becomes clear they are wrong. This post offers, I thik, the reason they are wrong but think they are right. We have, indeed, lost the sense of the numinous, and I think Protestantism has had a lot to do with that. But Africa has not has Protestantism, it is much more like the early church, where societies which believe in the numinous come to see it through the eyes of Christianity and get a better understanding of what it is they already see that lies beyond the material.
The current Synod highlights that even within the Catholic Church, holding on to the idea of univeral belief is proving hard. The Anglicans have pioneered this route. Those who abandon orthodoxy end up in the religious equivalent of the Dignitas clinic. If you want ‘well-being’ you don’t need the mystical and other-worldly stuff – and if you don’t have that, you don’t have Christianity. Thise, here and elsewhere, who grasp that, will stay where they are – quite what denomination services them is an interesting question, which you rightly raise here.
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I agree, they really are one post, split merely for convenience. I don’t disagree with hardly anything you say here, although Protestantism has perhaps a bit more presence in Africa than you say, but I don’t know that. The mainstream of Protestantism, mostly Anglican and Lutheran (that I know of anyway) have made some efforts, and I presume that the Pentecostals have as well, they’ve had enormous success in Central and South America.
Yes, synodical structure has its problems, all one has to do is look and the Anglican Communion, or Lutheranism, to see them, but they also allow the orthodox (well, heterodox, as well) to move on with the mission, without simply screaming at each other, all the time. Sort of a kicking the can down the road.
But anomalies abound, there is a fairly large contingent in the Folke’s Kirche of Denmark, that is quite orthodox Lutheran, and doing well, as opposed to the state church which is quite moribund. Hard to see the right solution, I think.
And that was much of my point, to get people thinking, rather than just yelling at each other, which does little good, especially if we give them the honor of believing what they say they do.
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Yes a local synodal construct of authority is much like the way Obama pits one group against another and gathers all the angry mobs under one roof. It will eventually lead to a revolution to overthrow all that society has adhered to: in fact it has already occurred in that a society built upon Christian values and culture is dead in the West and must be built from the bottom up. It is like we are thrown back to the times of the Apostles and must evangelize door to door.
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Not necessarily, both Geoffrey’s church, and Lutheran ones coming out of Pietism (LCMS and others) came from that very thing, along with state interference.
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Doesn’t work for a global church, NEO, unless one thinks it fine for something to be sin in one part of the world and just fine in another.
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Really? It works for several, you just have to realize that Rome is not Manila. The church is going to look different in different places, all you can try to do is induce observance of the doctrine, and even in that you’ll fail often. People are simply people, and for many of them, eating this week is more important than the fine points. In many ways, this synod is dealing with first world problems, when (if) they join the first world, then it becomes of interest to them, not until.
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I speak of doctrine that is Divine Teaching not cultural expression or pastoral needs. Today we are not applying Divine Teaching to those who need it the most; how pastoral is that?
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That doesn’t make you even close to unique, in my view. But unless they truly believe what was written at Nicea, and I don’t really think they all do, it matters little
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I agree. I think that Christianity finds Africans where they are, which is, as with early Christians, closer to an understanding that this life is not all there is.
We surely need to move away from really very sterile denominational disputes!
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Absolutely. I find little credal in all this sound and fury, it’s actually more about the bureaucracy, it seems to me than even about the dogma and doctrine.
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It also seems to me to be between those who believe in what has been historically called Christianity, and those who wish to adapt that to modernism.
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It is that as well. And that is a battle that must be won. And not only in Catholicism. It seems to me that in many cases is simply warmed over utilitarianism, and that has very little to do Christianity. At least in any recognizable form.
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Very true, Neo. Geoffrey’s bishop was St John Chrysostom 🙂
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That’s always an excellent choice! 🙂
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Two interesting ones. It’ll occasion no surprise that I don’t think the State connection good for Christianity. The State is always powerful enough to ensure its agenda runs first. So, old Constantine wanted something to hold is crumbling empire together and thought he’d found it in Christianity. When he found what an argumentative lot Christian bishops were, he wanted to shut down the arguments and agree on an agenda; the State always does a version of that.
In the beginning, and the end, we’re either moved by the Spirit or we’re not, and it can be hard to tell. That’s where I’ve some sympathy for Bosco’s notion of knowing who is saved. That seems right, until you realise that you end up agreeing with those who agree with you and anathematising those who don’t. So we end up being like the State.
Is there an answer? Not in this world. I don’t, for a moment, believe that cardinals Kasper and Napier actually believe the same things. They can say they are Catholic, but that simply shows that, like the Anglicans, they can use language to cover a multitude of sins.
In the end, we believe or we don’t, and what we believe is what we’ve been given Grace to. As C is fond of saying, this is all great mystery – and it’s to high for an old Baptist to get to!
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And you’ll not be surprised that I agree with you. I’m pretty much OK with bishops, but my tolerance ends there, and having the state involved is a short straight road to heresy, of one kind or another.
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One of the Fathers, C will know who, said that the floor of hell was paved with the skulls of bishops – he was right. That said, I’ve known ‘elders’ whose skulls ought to have been there too 🙂
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“This may have been where Vatican II messed up, they got in a hurry, if they had taken a few generations to make the changes, as happened in most Protestant churches, would the Catholics have noticed?”
I guess the question needs to have another qualifying question added: “who got in a hurry?” Seems this is primarily the work of the Holy Father (under the auspices of doing it for the people) and not by the Bishops of the Council . . . though the people and many priests and nuns vacated the Church once it hit the local parishes. The committee that put this liturgy together was not held up to scrutiny by the bishops or anyone other than a small intervention from Ottaviani and friends that had Pope Paul VI make a few minor tweaks while not abbrogating the original faulty version. Latin was never supposed to be lost . . . and if said in Latin, yes, the people would have immediately understood that even the words of consecration had been changed.
As to receiving in the hand, it was dismissed by a vote in the council; as to the saying of Mass facing the people, it was never even imagined that such would be the case; as to the secularized, feel good music, Gregorian was to have pride of place. I could go on and on as to how things were changed up: and much of what changed did not happen overnight but was developed by the ‘experimenters’ who received a liturgy that was not a Rite (with inviolable rubrics) but a sketch that every priest and Bishop could play around with to make it their own statement. What has emerged in most parishes is what we have today: a mish mash of self-made, unwritten rubrics, that have slowly coalesced into a loosely conformance to a standard . . . never promulgated in its present form. In my mind it has lost its status of being called a Rite but is more protestant in character and might best be called a Service.
With the Catholic Church, the pluralism that has emerged seems rather contrived by a few of these same Frankfort School types in their hopes to gain within the Christian faiths an ally in their ideological breaking down of society to fit their agenda: from sexual deviancy to religion the job is nearly complete. We are no longer to be viewed as their nemesis but now join hands to slap the backs of the murderous Castro brothers, embrace the man-made global warming agenda and to redistribute wealth on a global scale. We have all, slowly, been made complicit . . . though the Catholic Church will remain at odds despite our clergy and our left leaning political turn during these past 50 years. It will not last however, or I would conclude that secularism will ultimately win whilst the promises of Christ of Christ were only an attempt to shovel sand against the tide.
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As I often say, we should give them the honor of thinking they were doing the right thing, the Roman church like Protestant one, was indeed experiencing a major fall off, in at least attendance, so the “wanted to do something”. Was much of it heterodox, and short sighted? Yeah, I think so, for many of the reason that Chalcedon enumerated above. I (and you) think it wrong for the church(es) to follow the fashion of the world, but the church has always appropriated much from the society, I think this was not thought through, and yes, some enthusiasts no doubt went far beyond what was written. Well, they always do. That’s what the hierarchy is for, and likely they failed, for whatever reason.
But now Rome, is somewhat fractured, and if it doesn’t figure it out, at some point there will be another schism, as has happened in most protestant congregations. An example is Lutheranism, we all work from the same text, and you get both the Confessional Church; and the Danish (and Swedish) churches..It’s not a very good road to follow.
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We’re already in schism, I’m afraid, though not an announce and pronounced one. It is a new tolerance of believers and non-believers utilizing the same name of Christ as though we adhered to the same truths. So stated or not, divided physically or not, it has occurred rapidly once we gave the freedom (licentiousness) of the priest to do his own thing and not adhere to a standard.
In the past, such problems, like the reformation, were met with Councils such as Trent to reiterate our teachings. Vatican II did not even attempt to write doctrine but is widely known that it set an overarching doctrine in place that seemed to color all teaching of the Church up and until its enlightened doctrines. It is more valued than the definitive teachings that were handed us from Holy Mother Church for our safe keeping.
Interesting to note that even though we were losing many souls to Protestantism, God refreshed the Church with the conversion of Mexico. Perhaps Africa is our modern Guadelupe . . .
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Well, you’ve always had a schism about every 500 years, so maybe it’s simply time for another. I’m far enough underwater now (with regard to Rome) that I can’t see the underside of the pool, so I’m not reliable on it.
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There is no need for anyone to stay away from the Catholic Church that we have today: Heretics are Welcomed. 🙂
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Keep saying that, it is the basis of evangelisation, for us all! 🙂
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Indeed it is. You may be a nun on the bus, dream of being the first female bishop, or first SSM priest . . . let your mind run wild. Because our love and mercy is so much more authentic and inclusive than Christ, no sin is really a sin anymore and no teaching is really a teaching that we must believe. Nobody believes this crap anymore.
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Who said that, but you can’t fix/convert them if you run them off!
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No, you can’t fix/convert them if you don’t tell them right from wrong.
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First things first, get ’em in the door, and convince them they want to be saved, then tell them right from wrong, after they have a reason for wanting to do the right thing.
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That would be useful if they all came in on the same day. But are you to wait until there is no more new folks in the church pews before speaking the plain truth? If they are merely present (even some born and raised Catholics) but are do not believe as the Church teaches then they are not really there anyway. Best that they convince themselves that they are Catholic before sitting in the pews or at least convince themselves that they want to find out what Catholics believe.
Nobody, to my mind has been run out of a pew but I know a lot of stories about liberal minded people trying to run their orthodox priest out of his parish.
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