A bunch of new stuff July 28, 2008
Posted by Zack in Missouri , trackbackI got to hang out with an amazing group of Christians for a few days this weekend. The small group included Christian rockers, publishers, preachers, youth workers, post-liberals (a new one for me!), post-evangelicals, recovering fundamentalists, recovering mainliners, reclaiming-it-mainliners, emergents, resurgent Catholics and all kinds of other chaos.
I am not going to tell you who all was there because, like I joked a couple posts ago, I am making people crazy jealous of all these famous Christians I’m getting to hang out with. It’s so unfair. They’re like, “You don’t even know who that is…I’ve dreamed about meeting him my whole life…” I feel so unworthy. So I’m going to keep a lid on it lest some jealous rank and file Emergent beat me up on the street one of these days.
Labels are a cruel thing when it comes to faith and spirituality. They’re necessary if we’re going to use language at all. But no label can do justice to even one person in this realm. Being around these folks was constantly unsettling because they kept blowing up all kinds of things I was hoping I understood.
And it was incredibly exciting. I feel like I just got to the top of another hill on this journey and can see miles of new territory to be explored:
- A whole new chunk of the Christian music scene I didn’t know existed. I think it is the Christian “indy” scene — and it is a true, gritty, complex indy thing. It’s so great. I thought there was only this “POSITIVE AND ENCOURAGING K-LOVE!” stuff, which, don’t get me wrong, I have been really enjoying! But check out this band called Waterdeep.
- Christian meditation. Like Monks! Yes, the Christians are meditating again. I was totally against it. They almost made me meditate for 20 minutes but I was saved by someone needing to catch a plane. But then, on the way to the airport, the meditator told me, “In meditation, you are letting God rewire you.” That made me really want to do it and I’ve already spent some time meditating because that image really works for me. I need rewiring!
- “Post-Liberal” mainliners: Christians in mainline churches who are getting back into…I don’t even know how to describe this…getting back into the Bible as a “true” story. No, not as “literal” or “inerrant” or even “inspired by God” but nevertheless as a truth to live communally in relation to. This seems to be a growing movement among some mainliners who grew up in churches that had kind of left the Bible behind.
- The Christian youth worker universe. I say universe because it’s just so huge. It grew up in the 70’s and 80’s and kept growing and I think is still growing. A whole generation of a broad segment of the Church (spanning from just left to just right of the evangelical base) grew up under the influence of some Christian youth group with a young, usually hip, youth worker as leader. These youth workers went to conferences and trainings to learn how to do their job, and kept going to learn how to do it better. One goal was to indoctrinate young people into whatever theology the church had, but the bigger priority in most cases was to raise healthy, confident, kind and loving people — and to keep kids out of trouble.
- The stories of conservative Episcopal churches who put themselves under the authority of African Anglican Bishops rather than belong to a church that ordained gay priests. Now, what fascinates me about this story is how, inside of this bitter act there might be a beautiful consequence. It’s like God is saying, “Oh, you don’t want to deal with this contradiction in your own heart and community? You want to get away from it, do you? No problem, just step right over here…” And they find themselves in a whole new cauldron of contradiction. But there are other, amazing, beautiful unforeseen results—as there always are. One of surely a thousand examples is this film, made by a young American Christian who wound up in Rwanda when her church re-affiliated with the Anglican church there. Watch the trailer below, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. How ironic that this beautiful film about radical reconciliation and acceptance would never have happened if her church had simply accepted gays?
Those were just of the few new spaces that opened up for me this weekend.
Comments»
When I saw “indy” and K-LOVE linked, I thought for a second that you were in Indianapolis!
Thanks for the recommendations! I’ve added you to my blogroll - I’ve been a semi-regular reader for some time, and don’t know how I left you off for this long!
Ah but K-Love is everywhere!
Thanks for the add!
Get Live at New Earth by Waterdeep (www.waterdeep.com/store). Then get everything else they’ve ever done. This band upheld my belief that Christians could make real, raw, true music. They’ve been a staple of my musical diet ever since I encountered Sink or Swim. And their live shows were phenomenal. Instrumentally, lyrically, everything…even writing this reply makes me nostalgic for the days when they were still together! Don Chaffer is the lead singer, and he’s still putting out some music and producing a lot. They were (are) a great band that should have always had a larger audience.
That Rwanda film appears to have a pretty powerful message! I hope more people see it.
Zack, Zack, Zack. “Post-liberal” is most certainly not a new one to you. You read my Hans Frei book, as well as Hauerwas and Yoder, who are all post-liberal. Plus you hung out with me, and I’m post-liberal too. But I’m glad you finally ran into the buzz-word!
Thom — What?? Nah - you weren’t liberal to begin with. So you’re not post-liberal, you’re post-evangelical…right?
The post-liberals are mainliners who moved more towards the Bible, right?
“…check out this band called Waterdeep.”
Zack, if Waterdeep is a discovery, there is indeed a whole world for you to explore. I need to make you a mix CD. Where do I send it?
Oh - that would be awesome! I’ll email you it. Anyone else want to send me music just let me know…
Post-liberalism is a school of pomo though that is critical of both theological and political liberalism. It names the liberal theology’s acceptance and appropriation of the dogmas of political liberalism as the former’s fundamental ailment.
And I was a political liberal, although unconsciously, but even if I wasn’t, I still consider myself postlib because I accept many of the constructive proposals postlibs make for how we can all move beyond liberalism.
One could sum up postlibs as mainliners who moved toward the Bible, but that’s certainly not in any fundamentalist respect. Wittgenstein is the key here. The Bible constitutes our linguistic universe.
As for being post-evangelical, I don’t even know what it means to be evangelical. I’ve never considered calling myself post-evangelical. I often call myself evangelical, but only rhetorically to buddy-up to self-professing evangelicals I’m trying to convert to this or that.
Hey Zack, you need to read “Body Piercing Saved My Life” — an outside journalist’s account of the Xian indie/fringe music scene. It has some surprising and fairly recent interviews and insights you’ll appreciate. Or I can give you my copy next time you come to NY.
http://www.amazon.com/Body-Piercing-Saved-Life-Phenomenon/dp/0306814579/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217522881&sr=8-1
Cheers, Tim
…and we would want to move beyond liberalism because…? as i understand it, which is a humble understanding, Jesus was for taking care of the poor, the children, the so-called dregs of society, the outcasts, the harlots…. to love everybody, no exceptions. Pretty liberal, that. He also preached some very unpopular stuff, such as giving away all of your possessions to follow Him. If I were to espouse that, I would be labeled socialist or communist or…..whatever, quite a bit further to the left and way out of the park than mere liberalism. Are we sure we’re talking about the same liberalism here?
Merriam Webster:
Main Entry:
lib·er·al·ism
Pronunciation:
\ˈli-b(ə-)rə-ˌli-zəm\
Function:
noun
Date: 1819
1: the quality or state of being liberal 2 often capitalized : a movement in modern Protestantism emphasizing intellectual liberty and the spiritual and ethical content of Christianity b: a theory in economics emphasizing individual freedom from restraint and usually based on free competition, the self-regulating market, and the gold standard c: a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties decapitalized : the principles and policies of a Liberal party
…Protestantism emphasizing intellectual liberty is a bad thing? I grew up as a baptist with a strong foundation in the priesthood of the believer, which simply meant we didn’t have to go through anybody to talk to God. Today I’m an Episcopalian. I believe Jesus came to show us how we are supposed to be holy in this world, which is totally contained–if one wants the pocket pack–in the Great Commandment.
Mostly, I think labels are nowhere preached in the Gospel, and they do a great disservice to all Christians and to those who would follow The Way. I’m hopeful that we can all drink deeply of the true Gospel which is to love each other, no matter what, no exceptions. I am grateful for this forum, and I gladly respect all of the views expressed here…even as they are presented under all kinds of labels.
Hi Terry,
Big misunderstanding of the world liberalism. Don’t think in terms of the conservative/liberal divide. You’re right. Those who often get labeled “liberals” have some things in common politically with Jesus. But Liberalism (capital L) is a technical political science term for the whole system of modern government underwriting the United States. Like, “liberal democracy” as opposed to socialism or other political architectonics. In the U.S., both “conservatism” AND “liberalism” come under the technical heading: Liberalism. In that sense, calling socialists “far left liberals” is a misnomer, because they don’t share the same basic assumptions (contractual government, individual autonomy, etc.) as Liberalism (capital L).
Using “liberal” in the sense of “give peace a chance,” etc. etc., I and most of the Post-Liberals are liberals too. The word has different uses, and is misused often because its precise use isn’t always articulated. My apologies.
Terry,
I just re-read your comment and realized I barely spoke to it in my response. My apologies again.
I wasn’t trying to label anyone “liberal.” I was giving Zack a definition of “Post-Liberalism” as an intellectual school. Labeling ourselves and others can often result in oversimplification, but it can be useful if it is done carefully.
Sometimes, Webster’s dictionary (or any dictionary) is helpful, but often it is not the best place to go to get the best definition of a word and its actual uses and connotations. The definition it gave of Protestant Liberalism is a good example, because while everything it said about it is theoretically accurate, in practice Protestant Liberalism quickly became synonymous with a very NON-liberal, closed-minded, dogmatic anti-supernaturalism, because of its non-rational prior commitment to a deistic portrait of a closed universe. Protestant Liberalism ended up denying things like the resurrection of Jesus as a real event, but tried to salvage it theologically by saying that it had metaphorical significance for the people who proclaimed it.
“Post-Liberalism” was not about denying FREE-thinking: it was about exposing the very NON-liberal thinking that had become integral to Protestant Liberalism, and reclaiming Christian orthodoxy from its “cultured despisers” while avoiding (with Wittgenstein’s help) the perilous path to fundamentalism. Post-Liberals affirm the resurrection, for instance. They recognize that Christianity doesn’t make any sense if it didn’t happen. But they don’t take the path of the fundamentalists and try to “prove” the resurrection happened to “defend” the truth of Christianity. Rather, the reality of the resurrection shapes the lives, ethics, politics of the Christian communities who affirm it.
In short, Post-Liberalism is about NOT taking intellectual short-cuts. It rejects the short-cuts Protestant Liberalism tended to take, as well as the shortcuts fundamentalism routinely takes.
That’s why dictionary definitions are sometimes helpful, but sometimes underinformative.
Grace and peace.
Also - ‘liberalism’ as a theological label is just a very different thing than ‘liberalism’ as a political label.
True, but Postliberals have pointed out the myriad ways Protestant Liberalism is an attempt to remake Christianity into the image of political Liberalism.