{"id":48128,"date":"2020-03-13T06:00:42","date_gmt":"2020-03-13T10:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=48128"},"modified":"2020-03-11T18:39:33","modified_gmt":"2020-03-11T22:39:33","slug":"from-shallow-evangelicalism-to-shallow-liberalism-to-deep-christianity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2020\/03\/from-shallow-evangelicalism-to-shallow-liberalism-to-deep-christianity\/","title":{"rendered":"From Shallow Evangelicalism to Shallow Liberalism to Deep Christianity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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Ian Harber grew up in an evangelical home, but as he grew into adulthood he found it increasingly shallow.\u00a0 So he lost his faith but then moved to liberal Christianity.\u00a0 He eventually found that even more shallow.\u00a0 Finally, he started studying theology and came back to faith, thanks to his discovery of a deep Christianity.<\/p>\n

He tells his story at The Gospel Coalition website in an essay entitled\u00a0\u2018Progressive\u2019 Christianity: Even Shallower Than the Evangelical Faith I Left.<\/a>\u00a0 I think his experience tracks what we will be seeing more and more, as I discuss in my new book Post-Christian.<\/a><\/p>\n

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He writes,<\/p>\n

The Christian tradition I grew up in\u2014for all the wonderful things it gave me\u2014was not prepared for a generation of kids with access to high-speed internet. Not that the critiques of the Bible we discovered online were new, but they were now at the fingertips of curious folks who grew up in evangelical bubbles. Like me. The answers given in church seemed shallow compared to the legitimate critiques that were a Google search or YouTube video away. . . .I couldn\u2019t help but think it had to be more complicated than the story I was being told. So eventually,\u00a0I left the faith completely. I wanted nothing to do with Jesus or the church.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The death of his mother somehow led him back to God.\u00a0 \u201cBut my evangelical environment lacked a substantial theology of suffering. Suffering was something to avoid or suppress, not a means of God\u2019s transforming grace in our lives.\u201d\u00a0 So he got involved with Progressive Christianity.\u00a0 He was exhilarated to learn that he could have both Christianity and science, mysticism without dogmas, social activism without right wing politics.<\/p>\n

But then he noticed that his new religious circle was as obsessed with politics as the church he grew up with, only for left wing politics.\u00a0 His old beliefs were being \u201cdeconstructed,\u201d but no one was giving him any guidance in \u201cconstructing\u201d anything better.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d heard about the dangers of\u00a0moralistic therapeutic deism<\/a>\u00a0(MTD), the default American religion where God simply wants you to live a decent life and not be sad, and doesn\u2019t intrude on your life. I originally ran to progressive Christianity to counter that kind of shallow belief. But what I found was just more of the same, only with new definitions.<\/p>\n

Wokeness was the new morality. Therapy was the new path to happiness. Cancel culture was the new church discipline. And like MTD, there was, conveniently, no personal God to place demands on your life in any meaningful way. In this \u201cprogressive\u201d MTD,\u00a0Elizabeth Gilbert\u2019s trope<\/a>\u00a0is the only thing left: \u201cGod dwells within you, as you.\u201d There\u2019s no way to distinguish between ourselves and God. In this paradigm, we\u00a0are<\/em>\u00a0God.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He decided he needed to rebuild his faith.\u00a0 He started studying theology, formally, at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.\u00a0 About the same time, he had to suffer through another death in his family, that of his grandfather who had raised him.\u00a0 \u201cThis death plunged me into another season of intense suffering, but this time in a theologically rigorous environment.<\/p>\n

One of my teachers said, \u201cWe do theology in the light so we can stand on it in the dark.\u201d I was doing theology\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0standing on it in the dark. For the first time I really learned the doctrines of the Trinity and of Scripture as a unified story, and\u00a0how to read it as inspired literature<\/a>. I was taught how doctrines that I assumed were contradictory\u2014like penal substitution and Christus Victor\u2014actually need each other to form the full, beautiful, biblical picture. I learned about union with Christ and all the blessings it brings. I learned about spiritual disciplines and the life-giving freedom that flows from a disciplined pursuit of God. From there, the wide and rich world of historic Christian orthodoxy swung open for me to explore.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Harber says that he is not alone in this kind of spiritual pilgrimage.\u00a0 It may become the norm for the growing number of\u00a0 people who are leaving the faith, though many might not ever encounter the deeper Christianity that he found.<\/p>\n

In my book Post-Christian<\/a>, I show how the church itself has been contributing to the secularization of the culture.\u00a0 This is certainly the case in Western Europe, where the dominant state churches embraced a theology so liberal that it was largely indistinguishable from unbelief.\u00a0 America\u2019s mainline churches have gone down that same road and have had their effect, though their vacuous theology has left them, as in Europe, increasingly empty on Sunday mornings.\u00a0 Liberal theology, by its nature, teaches that Christianity must be revised so as to conform to the current thought and culture.\u00a0 And yet, many conservative churches are also preoccupied with cultural conformity when it comes to worship, music, style, and also\u2013increasingly\u2013content.<\/p>\n

I argue that the recovery of Christianity will mean the \u201cde-secularization of the church.\u201d<\/p>\n

Very few of the \u201cNones\u201d are atheists or materialists.\u00a0 One study found that 78% of Nones believe in some tenets of New Age spirituality (reincarnation, astrology, sacred objects, etc.).\u00a0\u00a0Reaching those who are \u201cspiritual but not religious\u201d will require bringing back authentic\u00a0Christian spirituality\u00a0<\/em>(prayer, meditation, sacraments, worship, etc.), and a supernatural, deep theology that engages suffering, is rich and complex, and opens up\u2013rather than trying to explain them away\u2013the mysteries of life, existence, and God.<\/p>\n

This is not another advertisement for Lutheranism, in accord with my experience.\u00a0 Ian Harber shows that one can find that deeper Christianity in the Baptist tradition, as well.<\/p>\n

As he says, \u201cWe need\u00a0more\u00a0<\/em>theology, nuance, grace, compassion, and understanding in our churches, not less. But these things are made possible\u00a0by<\/em>\u00a0orthodox doctrine, not in spite of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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