Friday, October 22, 2010

Bridging the Divide?

A generation ago, Protestantism could be roughly divided into two groups, theologically speaking:
  • Evangelicals. For evangelicals (who would rarely self-identify as "Protestant"), Christianity can be boiled down to the Bible and the Spirit-filled individual.  Everyone who accepts Jesus as Savior is filled with the Holy Spirit and is empowered to interpret the Bible according to its plain meaning and their own conscience. (You begin to see why there are so many varieties of Baptists and Pentecostals...)
  • Historic Protestants.  For historic Protestants, Christianity can be boiled down to the Bible and Spirit-filled tradition.  Everyone who accepts Jesus as Savior is filled with the Holy Spirit and is empowered to interpret the Bible within the boundaries of historic Christianity as expressed in the great creeds and catechisms of the Church (though the specific catechisms may vary by denomination). 
Like any generalization - especially of a complex thing like religion - there are exceptions to this classification.  But for the most part, this division held true, with ecumenical dialogue and cooperation mainly occurring within each group's respective circle of like-minded Christians.

Historic Protestants were generally part of the World Council of Churches and also members of their own "confessional family" like the Anglican Communion, Lutheran World Federation, World Methodist Council, and World Communion of Reformed Churches.  While some visible church unions did occur, historic Protestants tended to cooperate on social justice issues.

Evangelicals, who had rejected membership in the World Council of Churches, organized their own ecumenical confederations like the World Evangelical Alliance and Pentecostal World Fellowship - aimed not at visible church unions or social justice, but cooperation in missions and evangelism.

Now, however, I believe we are witnessing the blurring of these former lines of ecumenical cooperation.  This is the "realignment" of American religion around human sexuality that is erasing the middle ground that historic Protestants used to occupy in the United States.  For example, you now have Lutherans and Anglicans who identify more with evangelicals and Catholics than with fellow historic Protestants who happen to support the ordination of LGBT persons.  This realignment threatens to dismember the former unity over what it means to be "Anglican" or "Lutheran" in favor of a more individualistic interpretation of what "I think" the Bible teaches about human sexuality.

Still, there are voices that are reaching across this new divide as well as the old one.  It just so happens that two of the most compelling ecumenical Protestant voices are Lutherans.

According to an article by the Christian Post, Bishop Mark S. Hanson, president of the Lutheran World Federation and presiding bishop of the ELCA, recently "encouraged Christians to begin the conversation by identifying what they have in common – such as 'we are all sexual beings' – rather than from a position of judgment.  He expressed concerns over emerging conversations in some Lutheran churches about what it means to be truly Lutheran.  'I sense that there is a growing desire on the part of some to look at our rich, shared confessions not as a reason for conversation about how we can live in that confessional tradition, but rather as a way of determining who is truly Lutheran and who is not,' he said, noting that he desires to see full unity among Lutherans themselves. 'That would be an unfortunate breakdown.'  Hanson called for not only affirming the theological and confessional foundations they share as Lutherans, but also for renewing a commitment 'that to be Lutheran is to be both evangelical and ecumenical.'"


Meanwhile, the Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, a Norwegian Lutheran and general secretary of the World Council of Churches, has concentrated much of his efforts on reaching out to evangelicals and Pentecostals.  Rev. Tveit gave the first ever addresses by a WCC general secretary at the assemblies of the World Pentecostal Alliance and the ongoing Lausanne Congress for World Evangelization in Cape Town, which, according to the Christian Century, originated as "an evangelical counterpart to the ecumenical WCC."
In his address on opening day, Rev. Tveit stressed the need for evangelicals and historic Protestants to learn from each other in order to participate together in God's mission.  "We are called to be one, to be reconciled, so that the world may believe that God reconciles the world to himself in Christ."  "Hinting at a history of wariness be­tween evangelicals, Pentecostals, and the World Council of Churches, he said that 'the distance between Lausanne and Geneva is not very far, and it should not be. Let us keep the road open and the dialogue going.'"  

What do you think?  Can the old divide between evangelicals and historic Protestants be bridged?  Can the unfolding divide over human sexuality be prevented?

6 comments:

  1. Great post.

    Your comments:

    "This realignment threatens to dismember the former unity over what it means to be "Anglican" or "Lutheran" in favor of a more individualistic interpretation of what "I think" the Bible teaches about human sexuality."

    along with

    "Everyone who accepts Jesus as Savior is filled with the Holy Spirit and is empowered to interpret the Bible within the boundaries of historic Christianity as expressed in the great creeds and catechisms of the Church (though the specific catechisms may vary by denomination)"

    made me think of the connections between issues of Church unity and authority within the Church. When it comes to the ordination of LGBT persons I know of some who say that the issue is primarily an issue of biblical authority, others a hermeneutical issues but I have never heard of the issue of Church authority in the issue.. very interesting.

    Also - It is unfortunate but it seems a good majority of the mainline denominations are finding unity not around a shared confession of Christ but of a shared understanding of human sexuality.

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  2. Thanks for the comment, Isaiah. And yes, for me, the ordination of LGBT persons comes down to questions of authority. For Protestants, the Bible has primary authority - but for mainliners in particular, that authority should also involve how the Bible has been read within the community of faith for two millenia.

    How interesting that it is the mainline Protestants, not the evangelicals, who have decided to abandon their confessions in favor of a newly defined understanding of human sexuality!

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  3. Whoa. Sibling blog. We both went to Duke too.

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  4. One of the struggles we in the Historic Protestant churches have is in submitting ourselves to the larger, historic, Christian community. As Western Individualists we tend to say "I want community" - but so often it seem I want it only "on my terms."

    I believe that the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox have a much stronger sense of respect for and obligation to those who came before - to living in community with all the saints, with the great cloud of witnesses who have come before. That is, they have a clearer vision of being part of, and responsible to, this great community that stretches through the ages.

    It is not enough simply to get enough votes at General Conference to change the position of the Church on any given theological or moral issue: we are a part of the Church catholic, and in so far as we are part of community we simply can't "go it on our own." Yet when the popular values of our culture and our age differ from those of the Church catholic through all ages and cultures, we historic Protestant churches seem to feel OK with assuming that our culture and our age must be truer and better. This is similar, I guess, to what Lewis called "chronological snobbery."

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  5. D.G. Hart might be an interesting sparring partner for you. He suggests in the book below and others--if I recall correctly--that we should think of early 20th century Protestantism as a kind of triangle, with confessional Protestantism, liberal Protestantism, and fundamentalist Protestantism. He says that both "liberal"/mainline Protestantism and more conservative evangelical or fundamentalist Protestantism, despite denominational alliances, are both rooted in Pietism:

    http://books.google.com/books?id=hqWXwTyuorAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Lost+Soul+of+American+Protestantism&source=bl&ots=0RJ-hVt3wo&sig=BLynLWpTfyNbbONLYRWHn4AXrng&hl=en&ei=pRvUTP32C4OglAfIncH2BA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

    The introduction covers a lot of ground.

    What do you think?

    Hope to see you soon, Pastor Paul!

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  6. Matt Archer - I know! I found your blog on Chad's site. Hope that we can be in conversation in the future. After all, I grew up a Baptist... :)

    Daniel - agreed. In fact, that may be the subject of my next post. In a way, it seems like more and more historic Protestants are really evangelicals when it comes to authority.

    Matt - thanks for the reading suggestion, really interesting stuff! Hart lumps mainline and evangelical Protestants together as pietists and pulls out "confessional" Protestants as outsiders in American religion. In some ways, his "confessional" category resembles aspects of what I labeled as "historic" Protestantism.

    In the end, though, I think that Hart's categories fall short. To be sure, there are plenty of hard-core "pietists" (including evangelicals and more & more mainline Protestants) who reject the importance and authority of creeds and community. And there are a few "confessional" types who draw a complete line between the religious and the secular.

    But at its best, I think historic/mainline Protestantism embraces a combination of the two - a communal, liturgical, creedal faith that expresses itself through a personal, practical piety. It is a faith that is not MERELY pietistic - it is a confessional pietism.

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