Well, it’s raining and gray, very very gray. But at least I didn’t watch the Oscars, thank goodness. Especially having not seen even a single one of the movies. I’m always afraid I’m going to accidentally see the oscars, like it’s just going to happen to me, and then I will regret the lost hours. I do think it’s sort of funny that Hollywood still gets awards and to have someone be the best. Is that even a thing any more? They should only be allowed to have participation awards.
Anyway, because it’s raining, which is God’s way of saying that he doesn’t love me anymore, I decided to suck it up and read the Danvers Statement, something like 30 years after the fact, but better late than never. Someone, please give me a participation award.
First, let me just say, I only read it because a friend pestered me. And second, I know it’s been sticking in the craw of RHE, so there must be something good about it. And third, I’m finding it sort of interesting to go back and read old stuff in light of this strange and wondrous moment when we have, in a single month, the rise of Donald Trump and the unveiling of the NYS Gender Unicorn. I’m not saying they’re necessarily related. I’m saying, wow, look how weird our lives have become.
So, the Danvers Statement. Hmmmm. I’m going to quibble with the whole, how do you call it, premise of such a statement. Not because it’s untrue, but because of my perfect 20/20 hindsight.
It might be possible to say, in light of Trump polling so well among evangelicals, that “evangelicalism” is in real peril. And I think that it has been in real peril for a long time, but that we’re only seeing now how perilous it is now, because Trump. We could have seen the danger before, but didn’t. Which is fine, because we’re sinners. And sinners gotta sin. The exact same thing can be said of the main line churches that have fallen into ruin.
The moment the mainline churches got bored with the bible, and moved on to more interesting stuff, they signed their own death warrant. For the episcopal church I’m pretty sure it was sometime in the 1800s, although there have been some stubborn hold outs. Not being as familiar with the evangelical scene, I can’t say that the bible was moved away from–except certainly it has been thrown overboard in the mega church/seeker driven movement, just cause you say you’re bible believing doesn’t mean you are–I don’t think it was trusted to be enough. The Cultural evangelical fell into the way of believing that the bible was insufficient for every good work and that we needed something more. Nobody would have said this, because there are bible verses everywhere. And the bible is opened to be preached from. But it wasn’t preached from systematically, verse by verse, word by single word. It was handled topically, or by pulling out three points and an application. And slowly by slowly, right behavior was privileged over the working of the scripture into the heart of the believer by the power of the Holy Spirit.
I experienced this some myself. But I thought my experience was an anomaly, until I started trying to read people like RHE and discovered that it was happening everywhere. Certainly, everyone was supposed to get saved, but then how the saved person lives became the Main Thing, instead of just carrying on reading the bible.
So, in 1989, when the Danvers Statement was so presciently put together, many churches were filled with people who appeared very Christian, and maybe they were. But the culture around them was increasingly not so. And that non Christian culture was creepy crawling its way into the minds and hearts of the church. What was the church to do? How do you keep Christians Christian? And have an impact on the culture? I would say that at the moment that the Danvers Statement and Focus on the Family were the thing of the moment, everyone should have taken a giant step back and refocused attention back onto the bible. The problem, even then, wasn’t people not knowing how to be men and women, the problem was people not knowing Jesus. That first step was not nailed down.
And the only way that it could have been nailed down, truly and completely, would have been to trust the bible to be sufficient by preaching it–all of it, relentlessly. Not in three points. Not in topics. Not using it to fruit check. Just letting the guts of the text be splayed out like the body of Jesus himself, unto eternal life. Because as you go through the bible systematically, you have to deal with men and women, with behavior, with gender identity, with every single thing we moderns are facing, and did face, even thirty years ago. There isn’t anything that wouldn’t have come up in the out working of the text. Church by church, person by person, word by word. Instead, we didn’t trust it.
That’s my diagnosis. And, this is too long. So tomorrow I’ll probably say some stuff about the statement itself. And later in the week I’m going to review a book. And now I’m going to work on my own book, for which I hope to receive some kind of participation award. Or maybe a pat on the back? Or maybe just not being yelled at, maybe that will be good enough for me.
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