In my latest post I asserted the creative power of collision between Scripture and reader. What I said was that the act of reading involves ‘two worlds colliding’ with each other – the world of the text and the world of the reader – and my claim was that every act of reading Scripture therefore adds something new to the church’s collective understanding. Thus, I concluded that the message of the Scripture expands every time we read it and by reading it we make its message relevant in our contemporary world. The ‘crisis’ that arises from these thoughts is that it reveals the church’s obvious unwillingness to let all people add their understanding to the narrative of Christianity. Consequently we must acknowledge that there is an imbalance in our understanding of both the meaning of Scripture and our understanding of who we are as ‘the body of Christ’. Although we can state with certainty that things have changed during the course of history, this ‘crisis’ still remains strong. This is clearly seen in the structures of the historical churches with popes, cardinals, bishops, priests, and so on, but my claim is that this structure of power more or less is at work within most churches.
The so called ‘free church movement’ were a reaction to this overarching system of church governance but unfortunately I suspect that it is here, rather than in the historical churches, that the structures of power and exclusion is the strongest today. In many of these churches you will hear the pastors confess themselves to be ‘just ordinary people’ and not different to the avarage churchgoer in any particular way, and for some reason people seems to accept this idea, but there is at the same time a strong emphasis on not questioning these ordinary people that ‘God has placed in authority’. Hence, the self-proclamation of being ‘ordinary’ serves as a legitimation to rule the church in an authoritative manner (while also earning a quite substantial paycheck).
The picture I’m painting here is a general one, but I don’t think that it would be very hard to find a whole lot of people that can recognize churches that fits this description. The big problem I see is that the ideology at work in these churches divides people as ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ which amounts to that everyone who criticize how things functions per definition becomes ‘outsiders’, hence the ‘insiders’ will not contemplate the critique but rather see it as ‘a spiritual attack’ of some sort. There will of course be those who recognize the ‘fishiness’ of it all, but then they’re faced with the risk of loosing family and friends if they speak up so many will keep it to themselves, and if that’s not enough, maybe the psychological fear of ‘the burning lake’ will shut them up.
My thesis is that these churches are the same one’s that proclaims that there is one specific reading of the Bible, or to put it in another way, that the Bible speaks with one single voice. This voice, I claim, is the voice of an oppressive ideology that defines people according gender, ethnicity, social status, and so on. This is also the voice that keeps the ‘outsiders’ on the outside by preaching a clear and definitive message of ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘saved’ and ‘damned’, ‘virtues’ and ‘monstrous’…
I believe, as I have written before, that Jesus’ life, death and resurrection was a definite and final critique of this system of power and exclusion, hence it’s with a sad heart I conclude that both people and churches who claim to represent him in the world are working their asses off to protect the very same ideological structure the Christ-event unmasked and proclaimed defeated. This is why I’m so passionate for a Biblical hermeneutics that allows for Scripture to speak with more than one voice and I truly believe that such an approach can take the power away from these people and democratize the way we understand God’s revelation.
Another good, solid post. I will have to allow the contents to permeate my mind for awhile, but know that it did have an impact on my consciousness and I begin to think we are more alike than different.
Scott
Although you present your position in a more scholarly voice than I do mine, I must say that I wholeheartedly agree with you. I have been following your writing with interest and spending time contemplating the ideas you present, and am feeling grateful for your candor.
After spending several years studying the history of the New Testament Pharisees, I was blindsided by the revelation that I was a Pharisee. A modern, evangelical, American Pharisee. A product of the “free church movement” you speak of—someone fixated on the authority issue and the strictest literal interpretation of the Bible. There’s much I could say about that, but I don’t want to monopolize your space here.
My slow recovery from Pharisaism has been possible only by leaving a traditional evangelical church and taking refuge in a humble fellowship group comprised mostly of born-again Amish. These people have endured persecution and shunnings because, after encountering a relational Jesus, they dared to question their old order community leaders.
Our simple Sunday services are characterized by lay people taking turns preaching. There is no paid clergy, hence no one’s paycheck is influenced by the ideas they dare to bring forth. We are free to agree, disagree and discuss the scripture teachings each week. In fact, respectful debate is invited as we all want to learn from each other.
My husband and I are amazed at how similar our exodus from a modern church has been to our dear friends’ exodus from some of the strictest Anabaptist sects that exist. The modern church might look “enlightened” and “righteous” on the outside, but is proving to be no more free or Spirit-filled than the technologically-oppressed, rigid Amish orders.
The greatest gift our formerly-Amish friends have given us is the gift of allowing for many voices to speak for God. We feel respected and loved, and so we are becoming more respectful of others and more loving. We will never go back to a regular church—at least not one that doesn’t allow for multiple interpretations of scripture.
Thanks J.P for your accurate analysis of the contemporary crises in “the evangelical, free church movement”. I much agree with your assessment. It seems like some of the big “mega churches” are actually becoming the very thing they started out to “defeat”. There are great similarities between the “infallability of the pope” doctrine and the “infallability of the Scriptures” doctrine. There are great similarities of the Sunday liturgy of the RCC and “set order for praising God” in evangelical circles and on it goes. However, I would offer up the opinion that the crises within the “free church movement” is also a gnostic crises in the sense that it is ignoring the sacramental aspect of Church. The Incarnate One is “not allowed” to be incarnate so to speak. When this happens, it is very hard to understand the Word of God, because as you say, the Scriptures (The Word of God) is a living Word both within us and beyond us. The Word of God both expands to the fully Objective and retracts to the smallest subjective and right in the middle of this tension/journey/movement we find ourselves. I believe Scriptures only can be understood within the Church (Church proper that is) and that Church (proper) only can be defined by Scripture. However, this is a living relation. Once again they go together in a living eternal dance. I think the somewhat same “relation” is found between Law – Grace, Time – Eternity, East – West, Priest – Congregation and so forth. I realize Im expanding a bit here but it would be interesting to hear your thoughts. All grace and peace, in Christ – Fr. Jakob
I’m not really sure what you mean by ‘eternal dance’?
Hi there, I mean the same kind of “flowing back and forth in rythm between two entities” as in a dance. Two “by the appearance, opposites” making something beautiful becuase they adhere to a common task and remain in close proximity to the other. I find the word “dance” to be one of the better “pictures” to discribe this relation. St Augustine (of Hippo) used the word to somehow describe the mystery of the relation of the Trinity. Another word that I guess could be used is perichoresis (around – within) as done by St Gregory of Nazianzus and developed St John of Damascus. Does it make sense to you?
In Christ – Fr. Jakob
It does. Have you read Jürgen Moltmann or Miroslav Volf?
I know who they are so to speak but I have not read any works written by them. Do you have any recomendations that are worth while?
The book that got me hocked on Volf was ‘Exclusion and Embrace’ so that might be a good book to start out with. If you want to read Moltmann, I say start from the beginning with ‘Theology of Hope’.
Thanks for those titles. Keep the good work up!
No problems. And I’ll do my best.
I agree with your sentiment about organized Christianity as the vast majority of denominations have spiritual leaders who have agendas and allegiances to their institution and the government rather allegiance to their God and their congregation. These spiritual leaders foster a system where by the congregation develops a blind trust to them and their institution rather than having trust in God and His words that are found in the Bible. Christ warned us about such religious systems in Matthew 23: 2-4, 8-10 when he states, “The Scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; so practice and observe what ever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice. They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger… But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, you are all brethren. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called masters, for you have one master, the Christ.” There are more good quotes in this chapter and I suggest for you and everyone else to read it.
As for the biblical hermeneutics, The Bible is a book that leads you in the right direction when making interpretation of things, especially bible prophecies. When interpreting the Bible, sure there is a personal involvement and interaction with the words of the Bible and how you can draw on personal experiences in order to gain some meaning and fulfillment of those words such as reading the book of Psalms.
However, the danger with free range interpretation is that when it involves bible prophecies many people fail to consider context and history when they make their interpretations of the meaning of prophecy. They also fail to consider what other parts of the Bible have to say on the certain prophecies and therefore they make erroneous predictions that not only bring disbelief to many believers of Christ but also gives the wrong impression of Christianity to others who have not yet had the opportunity to have a relationship with Jesus Christ in their lives. A perfect example of this is Harold Camping who said the world was going to end in May 2011 and then later changed his prediction to Oct 2011 and then later apologized for putting the date on the end of the world. If he really took to the time to study the Bible as a whole and take into account that Jesus Christ said in Matthew 24: 36 when talking about the day of his 2nd Coming, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.”
Yes, and a similiar thing has happened in a lot of the so called “New Age” movement and communities. A lot of those people tried new ways of exploring faith, [because they did not like the control church leaders and accepted voice there had]-stating that exploration was good etc and that all faiths had equal validity, and that they were on a journey further into faith and belief, then gradually it solidified into a set of “acceptable rules and norms” within the group-then crystallised into us and them, inside and outside and a magnificent form of bullying named at Findhorn as “the tyranny of niceness”….
I agree, and as I have written several times the worst senario possible would be one were politicial leaders (such as Rick Santorum) are in the thrall of a one voice religious ideology.
Santorum for example seems to believe its his business to get involved in citizens bedrooms and personal lives because as he put it “individuals can’t go it alone” (the full quote is on my blog, politicalrecorder.com). His political views seem to be heavily influenced by a one voice religious ideology which translates to a one voice political ideology in which individuals will be told they can’t go it alone.
Having one voice in religious ideology is one thing but that voice must never be allowed to become a political voice which would result in some kind of nanny state where we are told we can’t go it alone.
Wow-you tell it like it is. This is exactly the kind of stuff I have to deal with within parts of my family. I really appreciate this post. Thanks!-Megan