“Progressive Evangelicals”: Where Are They Now?

Recently I received two relatively new, very similar books (complimentary copies provided by publishers). Their similarity lies in the subject they both cover: “progressive evangelicals.” They focus on progressive (some would say “liberal”) evangelical social and political beliefs especially among younger evangelicals in the 1960s and 1970s (some before, some after).

The two books are: The Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism by David R. Swartz (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) and Progressive Evangelicals and the Pursuit of Social Justice by Brantley W. Gasaway (University of North Carolina Press, 2014). I would say there is an overlap of these books of about sixty percent. They are about the same length (300 plus pages). Swartz’s book is a bit more scholarly while Gasaway’s is a bit more popularly written. (By no means do I intend that as a value judgment on either book or either author! It is only meant to indicate ease of reading and depth and detail of treatment of the subject.)

Reading these two books is like reading about my own journey in evangelicalism. I grew up in an extremely conservative evangelical context where many people sympathized with the John Birch Society, despised John F. Kennedy and Humbert H. Humphrey, grieved over Barry Goldwater’s loss to Johnson (1964) and hailed Richard Nixon as a fellow evangelical and near political messiah. I will never forget the day Nixon’s motorcade drove from the airport to downtown in front of the fundamentalist Bible college I attended. Many of the students, faculty and staff (I among them) stood for about an hour next to the street with a huge banner that read “God Bless You, President Nixon!” We were “blessed” that he rolled down the window of his limousine and smiled and waved at us.

Then came Watergate, the disaster of America’s increasing involvement in Vietnam, “Kent State,” and revelations/dawning awareness (at least in my mind) of government corruption, enduring racism in America, atrocities committed by Americans in Vietnam. As I began to question the fundamentalism of my upbringing I began also to question the political and social views of my spiritual mentors. Sometime toward the end of my Bible college student career I learned about what has been called “The Great Reversal” of evangelical social activism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I stumbled on it on my own; it wasn’t taught by my college professors. “The Great Reversal” was, of course, the change from social progressivism among evangelicals to disengagement from political-social activism to conservatism. Both of the books mentioned above and under consideration here mention this as a factor in the rise of young evangelical progressivism in the 1960s and 1970s. Books by evangelical scholars such as Timothy Smith, David Moberg and Donald Dayton revealed that throughout much of the nineteenth century our own evangelical ancestors had been in the forefront of abolition of slavery, movements for equality of women with men, and even redistribution of wealth. I began to ask myself what happened to that evangelical heritage?

During seminary (mid-1970s) I began to read a magazine both books credit with being a major factor in the rise of “the evangelical left” in the 1970s: The Post-American (which eventually evolved into Sojourners). I remember that I somehow obtained and read every issue. At one time I owned every issue of The Post-American. I also came into contact, at a distance, with the World Christian Liberation Front—reading some of their literature which I found in the seminary’s library. Some of my seminary professors pointed me to Mark Hatfield as an example of a theologically conservative and evangelical politician who was also socially and politically progressive. I learned about Tom Skinner and Samuel Escobar, evangelicals critically sympathetic with Black Theology and Latin American Liberation Theology. I took a course on Liberation Theology at a Lutheran Seminary’s extension on the campus of a Lutheran College near my seminary. Gradually my mind began to change; I began to identify myself socially and politically with this “evangelical left” movement while maintaining my basically conservative and evangelical theological beliefs and spirituality.

Reading these two books is for me like the proverbial trip down memory lane. I learned some details from them, but for the most part they merely remind me of people, publications, events, organizations, ideas that I imbibed and mostly agreed with in the 1970s. Both books raise the fascinating question of how “evangelical” came to be a synonym for “political conservatism” in the 1980s and beyond and point to Jerry Falwell and other fundamentalists like him who hijacked the label “evangelical” and convinced the media to identify it with their hyper-conservative theologies and social-political views. Both books tend to “hype” Jim Wallis as the key figure in the evangelical left—especially over the “long haul.” He was, perhaps, the organizing genius of the movement, but I personally found Ron Sider to be the more attractive thinker within the movement. That’s not to pit them against each other; they were and always have been co-leaders in progressive evangelicalism. I think my favoritism toward Sider comes from my gradual turn toward an Anabaptist vision of prophetic Christian social concern for peace and justice.

I would say that one of the greatest disappointments in my life as an evangelical theologian has been the popular misconception of all evangelicals as socially and politically conservative. I have friends who simply cannot understand or accept that an evangelical Christian can be progressive. Even after I mention Mark Hatfield to them (and they are old enough to remember him or at least know about him) they turn right around and use “evangelical” as a label for “Religious Right” attitudes and activism in the public square.

My hope is that somehow these two books will begin a shift in public perception of evangelical Christianity that distinguishes it from any one particular political party or platform and that honors its rich diversity.

Some Thoughts about “Downton Abbey” as Guilty Pleasure and Propaganda

I confess it reluctantly: I am addicted to the British television series “Downton Abbey” which I watch weekly (Sunday evenings) on “Masterpiece Theatre” on “public television.” One thing I like about it is—no commercials interruptions of the program itself. I also enjoy the stunningly beautiful scenery—inside the castle and outside in the English countryside and villages. I also watch now to find out about more about the only character who really interests me: “Mr. Bates.” Did he murder his wife? We may never know (but I hope to find out through some hidden clue). Did he murder “Mr. Green” who raped his wife? I suspect he did, but will he be caught? Unlike many female addicts of Downton Abbey, I suspect anyway, I have no real interest in “Mary’s” affairs, but I do love “Grandmama” (The Dowager Countess played superbly by Maggie Smith. I have never seen her in any film where she didn’t shine!)

Why am I talking here about Downton Abbey? Well, because it’s a fine illustration of what’s wrong with television even when it’s rising above the ordinary “wasteland” that makes up most of its programing. Let’s face it. With a few rare exceptions most of what blares forth from television is junk. I have access to approximately three hundred television channels. Most of the time there is nothing worth watching on any of them. Recently I finally (at the urging of my precious and precocious daughters!) subscribed to an online “streaming” provider of films mainly because of the abundance of documentaries available. My first enjoyment of it was “The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology” created and narrated by European philosopher Slavoj Zizek. Zizek may be an atheist but his incisive insights into public culture and its hidden messages are, to say the least, stimulating and thought-provoking. But I digress…back to Downton Abbey.

What I fear is that other viewers of Downton Abbey (henceforth DA) may take it seriously—as a reliable depiction of English life a century ago. I once saw a documentary purporting to convince that DA is meticulously researched so as to reflect what life really was like “back then and there.” Well, frankly, I’m not particularly interested in whether and to what extent it reflects accurately the clothes and manners of an English aristocratic clan and their servants.

One absolutely glaring historical fault in DA is the almost complete absence of religion from the lives of everyone in the drama. To the best of my memory (and I have seen every episode), the only times religion has entered the story lines were at weddings and funerals. Even then, only the trappings of religion were displayed—a few scenes of churches and clergy. So far as anyone viewing DA can tell, all the characters are totally devoid of religious belief and practice. That would not have been the case in rural and village England (or perhaps anywhere in England) a century ago! By all accounts I have read of that time and place, almost everyone was at least interested in religion and most people practiced Christianity. To entirely exclude the Church of England and its bishops, priests and theologians, is to portray castle and village life in England around 1920 falsely. The only reason this is a valid criticism is because the show’s creators and promoters claim that it is a faithful depiction of life in that cultural setting. It isn’t. It projects today’s secularism back onto a time and place and way of life where it did not yet exist.

A second glaring fault of DA (excuse me while I grind an axe but I think you will have to agree if you watch the program) is its treatment of the male characters. The female characters have their quirks, to be sure, but they are all (now that one is off the show) admirable human beings: sensitive, compassionate, reasonable, progressive, wise, patient, funny, and strong. And they are all victims of a male-dominated culture struggling to liberate themselves and others from oppression. You might argue that “Violet,” the character played by Maggie Smith, is the exception, but I disagree. She is portrayed as haughty and traditional, but she also supports the other female characters’ challenges to the “standing order of things” even with great reluctance and irony. She absolutely shines as the crusty old dowager with a soft inside always seeking to help the more risk-taking other women—even when they act boldly and push the envelope of conventional norms.

The male characters are all profoundly flawed human beings; not one is a truly likeable, sympathetic character. There isn’t a single one I would want to know; I would cross the street if I saw any of them coming toward me. The only one that is even slightly interesting is “Mr. Bates” but that’s only because he’s sinister beneath an outwardly kind and respectable demeanor. But even his kind and respectable demeanor is shallow and strikes one as fake. But at least he’s an interesting character. The patriarch of the family, “Sir Robert,” Lord Grantham, has gradually become a genuinely unlikeable character: stubborn stick figure, backward, anti-womens’ rights, defender of hierarchy and even oppression, rude, lacking in all real social graces and compassion (except towards his daughter Edith who, one suspects, he would throw out of the manor with contempt if he knew her secret life!). The Irish son-in-law is a wall flower with no spine, completely ineffectual even though he harbors progressive beliefs. His new love interest, on the other hand, the teacher from the village, is emerging as the new hero of the program with her progressive political rhetoric. All the male characters that matter (there are some who occasionally appear briefly but are not central to the story) are either sinister, stupid or stodgy opponents of everything new and fun. “Mr. Carson,” once a relatively likeable character, has become practically medieval. This is all a change; earlier seasons and episodes did not portray the “men of Downton Abbey” so negatively; but somehow they have all become strikingly unlikeable.

I cannot believe this is accidental; the creators of the show must think women (who make up the vast majority of DA devotees) like to see men portrayed as weak, sinister, unlikeable. Do they? I would not like to think so, but I suppose the creators of DA know what they are doing and do it for a reason. But this is a trend in popular culture—portraying men as violent or ineffectual drones with nothing special to contribute as men whereas women are increasingly portrayed as strong (sometimes violent but always justifiably so), wise and capable.

Note: If you choose to respond, please avoid simplistic advice such as “Just stop watching Downton Abbey if you hate it so much.” I believe it is important for me to know about popular culture and DA is an influential part of popular culture that many people think is authentically historical and even “highbrow entertainment.” Agree with my interpretation nor disagree with it, but give reasons in a civil and respectful manner.

Capitalism: An Economic System that Requires Us to Think and Act As If God Does Not Exist

In my immediately preceding post I asked whether a Christian ought ever to think, decide and act as if God does not exist. Ever since Hugo Grotius, the great seventeenth century Dutch theologian, philosopher and statesmen, modern societies have increasingly asked people of faith to set aside their religious belief in God when they enter the public, pluralistic spaces of life and think and act in a secular way.

In that post I argued that a Christian ought not to do that but admitted that pressures of modernity make it nearly impossible to do otherwise. However, I argued, a Christian ought never to internalize the “as if God does not exist” method. The Christian, dedicated to God and regarding Jesus Christ as Lord of all, ought at least to feel such as a crisis. Too many, I fear, do not.

I have come to believe that American Christians especially have become comfortable with this inner pluralism, internalizing a kind of practical atheism, laying it alongside belief in God and acknowledgment of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. With the unintended but inevitable result that God gets pushed into smaller and smaller inner spaces.

Naturally, people want examples, so I’ll offer one here: capitalism.

When I say “capitalism” I do not mean merely the freedom to start one’s own business. I’ll call that “the free enterprise system.” That existed before modern capitalism. By “capitalism” here I mean the economic system we presently have in America which is the free market and market-driven economy. Theologian Emil Brunner rightly called it “economic anarchy.” Our government does sometimes and in some ways function as a kind of “umpire” in this economic game, but, for the most part, it is a kind of “everyone for himself and against others” economy that encourages greed, competition, unfettered consumerism, individualism, and a growing gap between rich and poor.

Adam Smith, an early philosopher of capitalism, argued that such an economic system is ethically justified because an “invisible hand” will regulate it to avoid its otherwise natural excesses. Many conservative Christians (and others) have appealed to Smith’s “invisible hand” as a reference to God so that participating in the rough-and-tumble of the free market in which there are many losers as well as winners does not require belief in Social Darwinism as ethical justification for cut-throat economic competitiveness.

Smith’s “invisible hand,” however turns out not to exist. Markets left to themselves tend to lead to monopolies crushing the weak under their power. God is nowhere in it. Capitalism is a thoroughly secular economic system where participation requires thinking, deciding, and acting as if God does not exist. Most American Christians have internalized that and do not feel it as a crisis.

In fact, much more than that, many, perhaps most, American Christians have enshrined free market capitalism as part of Christianity. Criticizing it is, in many Christian spaces, tantamount to heresy. Why that should be puzzles me greatly. The Bible delivers no “Christian economic system” and free market capitalism contains so many ungodly features that I am stunned that so many Christians regard it as the one and only Christian economic system.

Now, of course, there are many Christian capitalists who try to Christianize capitalism. I admire and applaud them. They do it by means of (for example) profit-sharing, paying a higher-than-necessary wage, looking out for the welfare of workers beyond what law requires, refusing to target weaker competitors for elimination by using mechanisms like “loss leaders.” But these individual efforts are like band aids on a cancer; capitalism is a system that naturally encourages the strong to oppress the weak. It’s only philosophical justification is Social Darwinism. As a system it requires participants, capitalists, to think, decide and act as if God does not exist. If they think Smith’s “invisible hand” exists and deify it they are deluding themselves and verging close to idolatry. I’m not sure that free market capitalism can be “fixed,” but steps can be taken to ameliorate its excesses. Steps such as government regulation that bans “loss leaders”—charging less for a product than it cost in order to drive competitors out of business.

I see great ironies in many Americans’ consciousnesses about economics. One is obvious every Christmas. A favorite movie that runs on television annually during the Christmas season (which is already beginning in “big box stores!”) is “It’s A Wonderful Life.” People don’t pay attention to the details. The movie is a critique of laissez-faire capitalism. The “bank” the Jimmy Stewart character began that is (in the movie) being crushed by the fat-cat banker is a cooperative bank, a credit union. Many people who regard any criticism of capitalism as heresy applaud the movie’s portrayal of the wicked banker, but he is just doing what any capitalist must do if he is to play the game rightly—drive the weaker competition out of business. What was he supposed to do? Be nicer about it? The same people applaud the Jimmy Stewart character even though he is trying to start a non-capitalist-based “bank” and calling the fat-cat banker greedy just for doing what any good capitalist would and should do (if playing the game rightly by its implicit rules).

So what am I arguing Christians should do in relation to capitalism? Well, that’s not my agenda here. I have ideas but expounding them would take another post. All I want to say here is that when Christians support and engage in modern, free market capitalism, as it exists in America, they ought to feel it as a crisis within themselves and not comfortably internalize its methodologically atheistic foundations and impulses. Beyond that, insofar as it’s possible, they ought to support cooperative businesses and government regulations that soften the “blows” to the weak built into capitalism.

What Will Those Who Come after Us Say about Us?

Today I had lunch with an esteemed colleague whose special area of scholarship is Karl Barth’s theology. We talked about how living and teaching in Germany when Hitler was coming to power and the “German Christian” movement was growing affected the Swiss theologian’s thinking. And we talked about how Bonhoeffer and other German theologians responded to the rise of Naziism and “German Christianity.” What explains why Barth and Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemoller saw through Nazi ideology and “German Christianity” and stood up against it when so many other genuinely good Christian leaders and theologians succumbed to it and either stood on the sidelines or capitulated to this great evil? Luther scholar Paul Althaus and dialectical theologian Friedrich Gogarten and even Hamburg pastor-theologian Helmut Thielicke—all lacked the courage of Bonhoeffer and Niemoller and Catholic priest Maximilian Kolbe. And some even joined the Nazi party or signed pledges of loyalty to Hitler. (One source about all of this is Christian Faith in Dark Times by Jack Forstman [Westminster John Knox Press, 1992].) Why the difference?

Here I’m not going to attempt to answer the “Why the difference?” question. Rather, I want to raise the (to me) obvious question for us, today: What is happening in our own socio-political situations that fifty to one hundred years from now will cause those who come after us to ask what we did and did not do and why?

For those of us who live in the United States of America—we can look back into our own history and see events we now call horrible, stains on our collective conscience, that cause us to ask “Why?” Why did our ancestors, our spiritual and theological forebears, not speak up against the forces and pressures bringing them about? I live in a city where, in 1916, less than a century ago, a mob of white citizens lynched a black teenage boy who, it turned out, was innocent. They not only lynched him but also tortured and mutilated him before he died. Descriptions of the incident are sickening. And yet the people who participated and supported it thought they were doing something righteous. The following Sunday only one pastor spoke out against the lynching from his pulpit; most were silent. Many pastors joined the Ku Klux Klan in those days. And this wasn’t only in the South. I once knew a pastor who found his Michigan church’s KKK charter hidden inside the walls of the church during renovations. Most of the members’ names (from that time in the past) were on it.

Our American treatment of Native Americans, “American Indians,” is still something we do not want fully to face up to. In the name of “Manifest Destiny” our ancestors and forebears literally committed genocide on entire tribes. We love to point the finger at other countries and what they did in the past. But we don’t like to hear that Hitler used America’s Indian reservations as justification for his own treatment of Jews and other “undesirables” (as he called them) in concentration camps. Our treatment of Japanese-Americans during WW2 is a scar on our national conscience and reputation and yet we have not fully come to terms with that yet.

I suspect that in every generation there is something happening that later generations will decry as immoral and even evil and wonder why good people did not speak up more forcefully against it and often even supported it.

Ever since living in Munich, Germany, in the early 1980s I have been fascinated with the Nazi era including what led up to it and what happened afterwards. I have read literally scores of books on the subject and, when in Germany, talked with Germans who lived through it. I toured Dachau and visited the sites of Hitler’s failed rebellion in 1923 and his Bavarian house outside Berchtesgaden. I have watched numerous documentaries about the subject. But what that study has done for (or to) me is make me reflect on what I would have done had I lived there then and what I should be doing here now.

One thing I have learned is not to trust governments. I believe power corrupts and unaccountable power corrupts fast. I love America and am patriotic, but unlike many of my fellow citizens I make a strong distinction between “America” and American governments (in the sense of the people who govern). Loyalty to America does not require loyalty to its governments. Criticism of government is one of the great things about America. But especially during wars (and we seem to be involved a war most of the time) many Americans claim any criticism of government is tantamount to disloyalty to America. (When America invade Iraq and Afghanistan I saw a television interview with the late Pastor Chuck Smith, founder of the Calvary Chapel movement, in which he told a reporter that anyone who criticized the wars was a traitor. He was not alone in that opinion.)

One reason Hitler came to power, in spite of being an obvious thug, was the then German tendency to trust national leadership. If President Hindenburg supported Hitler as Chancellor, then it’s not the average citizen’s place to question it. And then, when Hitler, as Chancellor, declared himself “Führer” with absolute power, most Germans believed it was their duty to support him.

I grew up in a home that supported Richard Nixon and refused to believe he was corrupt. Even when he resigned in disgrace my parents thought he was being persecuted and that it was some kind of liberal conspiracy. I was taught that it was wrong to criticize government leaders and if you thought they were doing wrong things it was best just to leave that to God and pray for them. We were taught that civil disobedience was always wrong no matter what the laws said or government did.

All that leads back to my question. What is happening now in America about which we are mostly silent that fifty or one hundred years hence will be thought to have been horrible? About what will our descendents and those who come after us ask why we were silent?

I will go out on thin ice and suggest some things.

First is “Gitmo”—our concentration camp in Cuba. Most of the people being held there indefinitely have not had trials. Many of them have been released after years of captivity because they were detained without good reason. One was only fourteen or fifteen when he was picked up in Afghanistan and transferred to Gitmo and held for a very long time without charges or a trial. Many Americans simply assume that if our government is holding people there it’s right. Why? Why trust our government? That’s not even American.

Second, our government’s use of “drones” to kill entire groups of people, often including innocent women and children, is a travesty. And especially our intention to use them to assassinate American citizens suspected of being involved in acts against American troops or conspiracies to harm America, is, in my opinion, unjust and morally disgusting. And the whole idea of “secret courts” is, in my opinion, unjust and un-American.

Third, our government’s support of abortion mills, “clinics” that exist primarily to provide abortions on demand and often only for convenience (not to save the mother’s life or preserve her health) even up to second and sometimes third trimesters, is morally sickening.

Fourth, the trend for states to put children on trial “as adults” is despicable. Recently one state has announced that it will try two twelve year old children as adults which means they will be subject to life sentences if convicted.

Fifth, and finally (for now), our prison system, especially in certain states, is morally sickening. Non-violent offenders are often locked up for life in hell holes where they are subject to violent abuse and degradation. (Yes, that happens. I was in a “jury pool” recently that was informed by the prosecutor that if the jury convicted the defendant, a black man, for the charged offense, possesssion of a controlled substance, he could be sentenced to life in prison. We were asked if that would affect our decision and I was not selected, partly, I’m sure, because I said yes.)

In one state, people are simply lost in the vast state prison system. I was informed by a former elected official who, in retirement, helped people look for their loved ones in the state prisons, that the state prison system includes lost people—people who have simply been swallowed up in the system and may never be released. Even the local press recently revealed that an inmate spent thirty years in prison after he should have been released simply because nobody informed him his conviction had been set aside and nobody was paying attention to him. We would like to think that’s a “one in a million” exception, but indications are it’s not. We have become so used to the idea that young men sent to prison will be raped by fellow inmates that we even joke about it or use it as a threat to get witnesses to testify against friends and loved ones. (Anyone who watches certain network television “crime dramas” has heard and seen this.)

One way to “get into” the question and possible answers is to consider how the rest of the world sees us. Many Americans don’t care and assume that if the rest of the world hates us it’s because we’re righteous and they’re not. That might be the case sometimes, but when I lived in Germany I became able to see our government and some aspects of our society through others’ eyes and they were not always wrong when they criticized. I remember one bus ride in which an outspoken German woman explained to me without apology how she and many Europeans “saw” America then (1980s). She said she and they saw us as warlike, as loving war, as overly militant, as bent on imperialism, on controlling the whole world. She pointed out that if a war between NATO, led by America, and the “Eastern Block” began, as many feared, where she lived was only one day’s tank drive away from a border along which thousands of Soviet troops and tanks were massed.

One incident stands out in my memory especially vividly. We were eating in a small restaurant in the center of a French village on the Rhine River—just across from Germany. Suddenly the building (a converted school house) began to shake. A loud rumbling sound grew outside. I thought it was an earthquake. But everyone rushed outside to watch a huge American tank rumble through the village tearing up the cobblestone streets as it went by. Afterwards, the villagers and visitors talked openly about the incident. They insisted that the tank had no military reason to drive through their village and that this sort of thing happened all the time. They told us that the U.S. military thought it could do anything and that the tank was simply on a “joy ride” through the villages and countryside—showing power and dominance. Well, I don’t know. Maybe they were wrong. But it was a worthwhile experience—to make me see America through others’ eyes. Poet Robert Burns put it well: “O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us. To see oursels as ithers see us!”

Theologians I Have Known: Reflections on Their Personalities Part 1

Over the approximately forty years since I entered seminary I have had the privilege of meeting and spending quality time with many professional theologians (by which I mean men and women who spend the bulk of their time teaching theology and/or conducting research and writing in the field of theology). Some of them were not famous when I met them, but they became famous (among people interested in theology) later. Their levels of fame and influence vary greatly. Here I’m going to mention and briefly describe those I had the privilege of getting to know on a personal level—beyond merely hearing them speak in a chapel or church or conference.

This is a walk down memory lane for me. It will not be interesting to most people, but perhaps a few others who come here will find my experiences of famous and influential theologians interesting. I’ll be mentioning the theologians and describing them (from my admittedly limited experiences with them) in roughly chronological order of when I met them.

I think the first famous and influential theologian I met and spent a considerable amount of time with was James Montgomery Boice, then publisher of Eternity magazine, radio Bible expositor and preacher, author of many books, and pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia (successor to Donald Grey Barnhouse). Boice was my homiletics professor in seminary. Before he came to teach a single course (while on sabbatical from his pulpit) I already knew of him through the magazine he published and a few articles he had written. Boice, of course, was a five point Calvinist, but he didn’t promote that in the class. It was an all afternoon class that met every day of the week for (as I recall) three weeks during the summer. This was around 1976. I don’t remember the exact year. During breaks I sat and chatted with him. I found him a bit aloof and distracted, but otherwise very gracious and eager to teach seminary students how to preach. One thing I remember about him was that he and I argued a bit about the biblical grounds for divorce. That was a hot issue then—among evangelicals. He insisted that when Jesus stated the famous “except for the cause of porneia” (usually translated “fornication”) he meant that if a person married someone whom he later found out was not a virgin he could divorce her. I argued that “porneia” had a broader meaning than that and included adultery. He strongly disagreed. I don’t remember how that subject came up, but even then I knew enough Greek to know he was wrong. Boice went on to become famous, at least among evangelicals, for his many books and for helping organize groups like Christians United for Reformation and the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. He was instrumental in organizing the conference that produced the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy. As I watched his fame and influence grow I was dismayed by what I thought I saw as a narrowing of his mind toward excluding people like me from evangelicalism. Through it all, both during my weeks as his student and my later observations of his career, I could not detect any influence of Karl Barth on Boice. He had studied with Barth in Basel.

During my doctoral studies I took a class in New Testament with French biblical scholar Etienne Trocmé who was then on sabbatical from the University of Strasbourg. He had served a term as president of that university and was then at the peak of his career as a noted New Testament scholar and theologian. He was an extremely gracious gentleman and welcomed students into his home (a rented “flat” across the street from the university). However, as a teacher he left much to be desired. He read papers to us—chapters he was writing toward a book he planned to publish. I don’t recall now whether it was ever published. It may have been published in France only. However, the theme was a familiar one to anyone who had read any of his books—the separation of Christians from Judaism and synagogues as the most important “Sitz im Leben” of the New Testament writings. The class met in a library parlor where the lights were dim and it was extremely difficult not to fall asleep while Trocmé droned on for two hours. I especially remember a funny thing that happened. The chair of the Religion Department, my mentor throughout my doctoral studies, visited the class one afternoon and fell asleep. There were only about ten of us in the seminar and we sat in a circle of very comfortable chairs and sofas. I hoped and prayed that Trocmé did not notice!

A parade of famous people came through the university during my doctoral studies there. One who was not a theologian per se but who was famous as a Christian writer was Malcolm Muggeridge. I spent an evening with him in a college master’s living room—with several other students and professors. He kept us spell bound with his amazing British accept and sparkling conversation. I wanted to talk with him about his book Third Testament which had then recently been turned into a television series and was showing on public television in Great Britain and the U.S. But the undergraduates present wanted to talk to him about sex. Muggeridge had converted to Roman Catholicism and was very strident in his opinion that sex was only for the purpose of procreation and therefore birth control was immoral. He held steady to his view under a barrage of critical questioning from especially undergraduate students and sprinkled his responses with many delightful phrases and anecdotes. Later I used some episodes of Third Testament (the video series) in classes on historical theology. I especially liked the episodes on Augustine and Bonhoeffer.

The main reason I attended the university where I earned my Ph.D. in Religious Studies was a Baptist theologian there named John Newport. John and I became friends even though he left the university one year after I arrived. I was privileged to take two seminars with him—both on philosophy of religion. At that time he was especially interested in and working on the issue of religious language. It was under him that I came, temporarily, under the spell of “Wittgensteinian fideism” (e.g., D. Z. Phillips). (I should note that Newport himself did not endorse that approach to religious epistemology and language.) John was a bit eccentric. He was very friendly and gracious toward students and everyone, but his “head” seemed always to be in a cloud of deep intellectual thought somewhere. He was a voracious reader and prolific writer. When I studied with him he had just published a very fine book on the theology of Paul Tillich. I knew John to be a very pious evangelical man so I wondered how he could appreciate the theology of Tillich. But he always found the good in everyone. I was taking a seminar with him when the Southern Baptist Convention met in Houston for its infamous 1979 annual meeting (at the Astrodome). John talked a great deal about the planned “fundamentalist take over” of the SBC and named names and talked about personalities. I remember him saying to us “They will never be able to take over the SBC.” Of course, they did. Years later I reminded him of what he said and he just shook his head sadly and admitted he was wrong. John opposed the doctrine of “biblical inerrancy” and was an “old fashioned Southern Baptist”—meaning moderate theologically and mainly interested in missions (as the purpose of the SBC). His own contribution to missions was attending and speaking at an annual gathering of students of many religions and worldviews and engaging with them in what Brunner called “eristics”—arguing gently for the intellectual and spiritual superiority of Christianity.

During my three years in residence at Rice University, working on my Ph.D. in Religious Studies (with special focus on Christian theology) I met many well-known and influential theologians, but I did not get to spend “quality time” with very many of them. I heard them speak and shook their hands and maybe asked a question or two. But most of them simply came into lecture and leave. One person I did get to spend quality time with, however, was not a theologian but religious scholar named J. Gordon Melton. I had an adventure with him you may find interesting. Melton was then little-known. He was starting up his career as a scholar and expert in “new religious movements.” Later he would become the “go to guy” on that subject for major news outlets. Melton came to Houston and Rice to speak on Wicca and Neo-Paganism—a subject of great interest then. The course was titled “Deity, Mysticism and the Occult” and I was assigned to be one of its graduate student teachers—under the department chair. The focus of the course was mysticism, but I invited representatives of many “new religious movements” to speak in the evening class. I’ll never forget the evening some Hare Krishnas came and danced and chanted for half the class time passed out “treats” to the students to eat. I knew they had devoted the food to “Lord Krishna” in a temple ceremony and so set mine aside—not because I was afraid of it but because I didn’t want them to see me eat it and think I was then somehow under the influence of Krishna (which was their whole purpose in passing out the food). What especially struck me was that they (about four of them) could not really answer students’ questions. I remember that in answer to one student’s question they simply started dancing and chanting again! Back to Melton (who, ironically, is now my colleague!). I was assigned to be his host during his three days in Houston. I picked him up at the airport and one of the first things he said to me was “Let’s find some witches.” To make a long story short, we did—within less than an hour! We drove to a tiny store called “The Occult Shoppe” near the airport. I had never been inside such a place in my life. At first we were clearly not welcome. The store was a place for Wiccans. Melton drew some information about the Houston neo-pagan scene out of the two ladies who ran the shop and then we left. I drove Melton around Houston for two and a half days and we had many fascinating conversations about new religious movements. I found him to be very friendly and eager to share his vast store of knowledge about a subject that was just coming to the forefront of public attention (this was around the time of Jim Jones and the People’s Temple).

Then I moved to Munich, Germany (then West Germany) to study with Wolfhart Pannenberg for a year. There I would write my dissertation entitled “Trinity and Eschatology: The Historical Being of God in the Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg.” I got to know Pannenberg (I could never call him “Wolfhart” even years later when I was his host in Minnesota when he came there to speak at several colleges, universities and seminaries and when he ate dinner in my home with several of my colleagues.) Pannenberg was at the pinnacle of his career when I studied with him at the University of Munich. He was in his mid-fifties and was just beginning work on his magnum opus, his three volume Systematic Theology. I heard the entire first volume in lecture form in German during that year. I recorded the lectures and then wrote them out in English in the evenings as I listened to the recording of the day’s lecture. Two other American students were studying under Pannenberg that year—George Garin and Philip Clayton. We became close friends and remain friends to this day. I had many opportunities to spend quality time with Pannenberg—usually with George and Philip and occasionally with German students as well. I ate dinner at his house twice and got to know his wife. They had no children. His wife was (and I assume still is) a unique person. She was, to put it mildly, forceful. There were many stories about her circulating among their acquaintances and students. I will tell one that happened to me and my wife. We were invited to the Pannenbergs’ home for dinner and, afterwards, to go with them to friends’ house for “Adventsingen.” This was just before Christmas, 1981. After dinner, they informed us we were walking together to the friends’ house. We walked together through the evening darkness and in the snow. Their friends had a pipe organ in their basement! About fifty people crowded into the basement to sing Christmas carols in German. (Their friend, the husband, was brother to one of my Rice University professors Werner Kelber.) The pipe organ sat in a depression at one end of the basement “family room.” The depression had been made especially in order to fit the pipe order. My wife and I attempted to sing the carols, but we didn’t know most of them. The people asked us to suggest an English Christmas carol, so we said “Silent Night” (“Stille Nacht”). A pall fell over the gathered group. Silence for several seconds. Then someone said “That’s a Catholic carol; we Bavarian Protestants don’t sing it.” But, then, they sang it anyway—just for us. We were chatting and drinking Gluhwein when suddenly I saw Frau Pannenberg grab Pannenberg by the arm and take him urgently upstairs. I looked at my wife and said “I hope they’re not leaving us here; we don’t know how to walk back to their house and the nearby train station to go home!” So we followed them up the stairs. They were putting on their rubber snow boots and coats. I said “Are you leaving? We don’t know where we are.” Frau Pannenberg said “I forgot we have to be at Cardinal Ratzinger’s house for his going away party! He’s moving to Rome.” So, they were going to leave us there! She invited us to follow them out and we had trouble keeping up with her as she marched Pannenberg down the street toward a highway. I wondered how we were going to get back into Munich. (The Pannenbergs live in the suburb of Grafelfing.) Frau Pannenberg walked out into the middle of the highway and stood in front of the next taxi that came along with her arms outstretched, forcing it to stop. She opened the doors and told us to get in. They would take us with them into Munich. I don’t know what that saved us from, perhaps a night of wandering around in the snow looking for the train station? Anyway, they dropped us off near Ratzinger’s apartment which was in the center of Munich near the famous Odeonsplatz (where Hitler’s attempted overthrow of the Bavarian government failed). My wife and I then attended a concert in the nearby Wittelsbach palace’s concert hall and took the “tram” home. One memory I have of the Pannenbergs is that whenever Frau Pannenberg was present Professor Pannenberg hardly spoke at all. If you asked him a question, more often than not, she would answer it. I found Professor Pannenberg himself very distant and aloof. He was not easy to talk to. And he had no qualms about chiding students publicly. He was formidable. One student told me he was the “typical Prussian professor.” He was extremely stiff and formal. One of my most interesting and vivid memories of him was the incident where Marxist students invade the lecture hall before he arrived (he always arrived ten minutes late and expected everyone to be seated and waiting for him) and began to harangue us, the gathered students, about the evils of America. I shrank down hoping they wouldn’t recognize me as American! They were very scary people. When Pannenberg arrived he entered into a debate with them and eventually ordered them to leave. They would not. Finally he threatened to call the “Hausmeister” (a kind of security person, I believe). The Marxist students slowly slunk out of the room shouting as they went. They obviously hated Pannenberg. I assume it was because of his known friendliness toward America. (Pannenberg was quite conservative socially and politically.) About a fourth of the students left with them. That was a time of great tension within the German universities. Some professors had to hold their classes in secret to avoid having to deal with such interruptions.

While in Munich I met several noted theologians, but the only one I remember taking to a meal was British Methodist theologian who later taught at Duke Divinity School in the U.S.—Geoffrey Wainwright. He has just published his Doxology systematic theology and was well-connected in ecumenical circles. Pannenberg invited him to speak in his class. George, Philip and I took Wainwright to breakfast one morning and spent a considerable amount of time talking with him. I made a point of reading his Doxology before we met and we had a very nice talk about it. Years later, recently, I had dinner with Wainwright. He is now retiring from Duke. We renewed our acquaintance. I don’t think he remembers me from Munich, though. Both times I met and talked with Wainwright I found him to be extremely personable and charming—almost the opposite of Pannenberg.

After my sojourn in Munich (die schönste Zeit!) I began my teaching career at Oral Roberts University. You might wonder about that transition. I still do! Moving from Munich, Germany to Tulsa, Oklahoma was a shock. And moving from Rice University to the University of Munich to Oral Roberts University was a shock. But kind of knew what to expect. Oral Roberts was a great hero to my birth family and most of the people I grew up with in church and in our denomination. Some of our little Pentecostal denomination’s people worked closely with Oral and some of them were very good friends of my parents’. To make a long story short, I simply didn’t have anywhere else to teach. Oh, well, I was offered an interim teaching position, as a sabbatical replacement, at a Methodist University but turned that down as I didn’t want to move my family three times in one year. ORU offered me a position and I reluctantly accepted it. I have never regretted that because of the excellent students and colleagues I had there, but my two years on the ORU faculty were, to say the least, dizzying. Events were swirling around me. Oral had a “vision” of a 900 foot Jesus and began to talk about God “taking his life” unless he raised eight million dollars to finish the City of Faith—which was draining money away from the university. I could write a book about those two years! But I never met Oral himself. And I’m glad. He was a very scary person—almost, so it seemed to me, unbalanced emotionally and mentally. When he came to faculty meetings he ranted and raved about “loyalty.” I had no idea what he was talking about, nor could anyone explain it to me. But this minor memoire isn’t about “evangelists I have known.” So back to theologians.

While at ORU I met and had lunch with Southern Baptist theologian Dale Moody. Moody had just been sacked as professor of systematic theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. His former student Larry Hart brought him to ORU to speak in chapel. I had read some of Moody’s books including Spirit of the Living God—a 1968 book about the Holy Spirit published by Westminster Press. Unfortunately, it’s now out of print. Moody was very angry and bitter about his treatment by SBTS. It was ostensibly about his public denial of the doctrine of “eternal security.” To him, it proved that tenure doesn’t matter and he warned me about that. But ORU didn’t have real tenure, so I was already warned! Once Moody stopped talking about the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC and the injustice of his treatment at SBTS he was extremely friendly, forthcoming (to answer questions) and outgoing. No hint that I could detect of self-importance or arrogance. I like him and felt something of a kindred spirit with him.

I almost literally fled from ORU as soon as I could even though I felt I was having a good ministry with students there. I have kept up a relationship with some of them over the years. Some of them have gone on to do great things in ministry and in business. I had always wanted to teach at Bethel College and Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. A visiting professor at my seminary was Al Glenn, a professor at Bethel, and he encouraged me to come there to teach and paved the way for that to happen. I will always be grateful because my fifteen years on that faculty were some of the best years of my life. Soon after arriving to teach at Bethel I discovered that one of my theological heroes was coming to teach a Doctor of Ministry seminar in the seminary. It was Bernard Ramm all of whose books I read and felt very much like he was my mentor from a distance even though we had not met. I much preferred his approach to evangelical theology to, for example, Carl Henry’s. (I met Henry very briefly once, but just long enough to shake his hand and say hell. He gave me his most recently published book. But Henry and I carried on a correspondence in later years.) So I registered to audit the seminar with Ramm. It was such a disappointment. But I enjoyed having lunch with Ramm some afternoons—between morning and afternoon sessions of the all day seminars.  Ramm was declining. He had Parkinson’s disease and we had to lead him from the seminar room to the dining center. He was very unsteady and his wife drove their car—to bring him to the seminary and take him back to their lodgings. One thing I remember was how he once went off on a diatribe against speaking in tongues. He called it “spiritual masturbation.” I was shocked. I sat next to an Assemblies of God pastor who was in the seminar and we agree that Ramm was wrong and that we would never follow his example in that way—”blaspheming a sacrament we don’t understand.” I asked Ramm over lunch one day how to break into book publishing. I had not yet written a book. He said “It’s a crap shoot.” He explained how he would never have gotten a book published without the help of Toronto People’s Church pastor Oswald J. Smith who connected him with a publisher and recommended they publish his first book (which I think was Biblical Hermeneutics). In other words, he told me, it’s not what you know or how well you write but who you know—that gets you published (at first). Of course, I would never have gotten my first book published were it not for Stan Grenz who invited me to co-author 20^th Century Theology with him.

Stay tuned for Part 2….

Review of Apostles of Reason by Molly Worthen: Part 3 (Final)

This review is primarily of Part III of Apostles of Reason—a recently published book by historian Molly Worthen published by Oxford University Press. (No thanks to OUP which declined to respond to my request for a review copy.) Part III is entitled “Let Them Have Dominion.”

This is, without doubt, one of the most challenging books about evangelicalism that I have read. It’s challenging for several reasons but two stand out at this moment: It is prophetic (to evangelicals) and confusing. Let me start with the second reason.

After bashing neo-evangelicalism (a label Worthen sometimes uses for the specific movement begun by evangelical intellectuals dissatisfied with the anti-intellectualism and isolation of fundamentalism and sometimes uses for the whole post-fundamentalist evangelical movement of the second half of the 20^th century into the 21^st century) for being endemically anti-intellectual at its core (noting some exceptions among its scholars) she concludes the book this way: “If the evangelical imagination harbors a potent anti-intellectual strain, it has proven, over time, to be a kind of genius.” (265) One could say exactly the same thing, of course, about American culture in general and the evangelicalism Worthen is examining here is distinctly American.

Here is just one example of Worthen’s seemingly devastating pronouncements on American evangelicalism that would seem to conflict with any talk of a “genius.” She writes (253) “Is anti-intellectualism, then, chiefly the sin of the Christian right? The answer is no: “The confusion of authority that best accounts for the culture described in these pages is not an exclusively conservative or liberal trait. For good or for ill, it has been the defining characteristic of evangelicalism as a whole since its origins in the aftermath of the Reformation.”

“The defining characteristic?” And yet “a kind of genius?” Nothing about her diatribe against American evangelicals’ anti-intellectualism would lead one to expect the final pronouncement at the very end of the book.

Sidebar: At the very end of the book Worthen comes close to recognizing my distinction between evangelicalism as a movement and evangelicalism as an ethos only she calls it the “evangelical imagination.” And I don’t think we are identifying it similarly. There may be some overlap, but hers is more focused on behavior (e.g., activism) and less spiritual and theological than mine. I still think scholars such as Worthen who attempt to examine evangelical culture need to distinguish strongly between the movement (which now is fading away if not already gone) and the ethos which will, hopefully, always be around (stripped of its anti-intellectualism).

Throughout the book Worthen is gradually, step-by-step building up an argument, mainly anecdotal but nevertheless strong, that since its beginning in the 1940s the neo-evangelical movement has been beset by a problem or set of problems having to do with authority. The founders and their would-be faithful followers wanted to break away from fundamentalism without becoming liberal. They did that by rejecting what was a veneer of fundamentalism while retaining its essence. Predictably (but largely unacknowledged) the neo-evangelical movement and its larger aftermath, “American evangelicalism,” has been torn between two competing impulses—what Worthen labels as “worldview presuppositionalism” (which she identifies as primarily Reformed) and a claimed desire to be worldly and modern in the best senses—open to free inquiry, scholarly, reasonable, intellectual, culturally alert and sensitive, ecumenical, etc. The central problematic pathos of evangelicalism in the second half of the 20^th century and into the 21^st century, Worthen makes clear in this third part, is an inability to reconcile these competing impulses that has led evangelicalism into a crisis of authority.

So what does that have to do with “anti-intellectualism?” I think her case study of Francis Schaeffer best illustrates her point. It appears in Part III but sheds light backwards on her main argument about the problematic of neo-evangelicalism from its beginning.

According to Worthen, Schaeffer styled himself as an intellectual and as culture-savvy and sensitive while all the time hiding a basically fundamentalist attitude toward inquiry and knowledge. Worthen’s portrayal of Schaeffer is so harsh as to border on being uncharitable. But charity isn’t her concern; she’s a historian. She honestly believes, apparently, that Schaeffer was a charlatan who convinced even himself, to say nothing of millions of readers and followers, that he was the epitome of a Christian intellectual. In fact, if Worthen is right (and others have said the same), Schaeffer was a fake. He was to evangelicalism what many gurus (and she uses that word for Schaeffer and many evangelical leaders) are to Hinduism—tricksters who cast a spell over their followers and have even come to believe their own press when, in fact, they are the proverbial Wizard of Oz—all bluster and show but no real depth.

You doubt me? Read her treatment of Schaeffer in the sections subtitled “A Thinking Christian” and “The Uses of History” (209-216). Here’s a sample: “[John Howard] Yoder was not the only one appalled by Schaeffer’s hamfisted caricature of history. For all of his emphasis on careful argument, Schaeffer was notoriously irresponsible as a scholar. ‘Schaeffer didn’t read books,’ said his son-in-law, John Sandri. ‘He got his material from magazines, Newsweek, Time—he’d take them to the beach. He did go to seminary, so he had that, but when he was here [at L’Abri], he went through the summarized version. He was out to give broad strokes. It was not necessary to give you the details of Kierkegaard.’ Schaeffer wowed audiences by explaining 500 years of intellectual history in paragraphs and a casual chalkboard diagram—but he did so with exaggerations, oversimplifications, and misinformation that would make a specialist cry.”

Why was Schaeffer so popular? Here’s Worthen’s harsh explanation of his and other “evangelical gurus'” popularity among evangelicals in spite of their obvious lack of expertise and scholarship: “Truth is no obstacle to a story that people want to believe.” (253) Ouch.

In Part III Worthen trots out a parade of such evangelical gurus evangelicals have followed en masse—gurus who appeared to have some semblance of intellectual depth and cultural savvy (per the neo-evangelical founders’ intentions) but were actually authoritarian anti-intellectuals who treated their own versions of “the Christian worldview” as a totalizing ideology impermeable to critique and incorrigible in comprehensive, coherent truth. Other case studies she offers include Bill Gothard of Basic Youth Conflicts fame and David Barton, founder of Wallbuilders and (according to her and many critics) reviser of American history.

Worthen’s point seems to be that neo-evangelicalism set up a religious culture that pretended to be intellectually respectable while constantly shutting doors to any real critical thinking and inquiring into truth. In spite of claims that the Bible is our supreme authority, evangelicals have by-and-large set up other authorities, claiming to be “the true interpretation of the Bible” (often labeled “the Christian worldview”), and shut the door to any challenges to it however faithful and reasonable they may be.

I have been making the same diagnosis of evangelical theology (its main movers and shakers) for a long time. They took Charles Hodge’s Systematic Theology, baptized it as the once and for all evangelical theology (“The Stout and Persistent Theology of Charles Hodge” as David Wells called it in an article in Christianity Today) and permitted only translations of it into contemporary language. That’s what most evangelical systematic theologies have been.

Then, according to Worthen, and I find this largely true, evangelicalism spawned large numbers of pseudo-intellectual gurus who claimed authority for their own versions of “the biblical worldview” or “the Christian worldview” and presented them as if they had the authority of the Bible itself. This is basically a move back to fundamentalism—often under the guise of modern, up-to-date language, technology and rhetorical devices. She labels these men (all so far have been men) “demagogues.” They have been Pied Pipers who have played on evangelicals’ cravings for authority, certainty, respectability and power.

As I look back over my lifetime in American evangelicalism this narrative rings true. There seems always to be one or two or three major seemingly infallible evangelical leaders, usually independent and self-appointed but often given credibility by other evangelical leaders, who pronounce “the truth” as yet unknown or forgotten that, when accepted uncritically, will dispel doubt, despair, confusion and deliver enlightenment, success (spiritual, material or whatever), closure, certainty.

I will never forget one pastor’s advice to our congregation that met in the downtown area of a major European city. It was a Southern Baptist Church (which wouldn’t let me become a member without being re-baptized because I wasn’t baptized in a Baptist church). The pastor was a Southern Baptist missionary. His sermon was about the Christian’s relationship with “secular culture.” His closing line was “The Christian’s attitude toward the world should be ‘Don’t confuse me with the facts; my mind is already made up’.” Immediately came to my mind a hymn from my childhood by evangelist Gypsy Smith written as a response to a skeptic who said he was dreaming that Christianity is true:”If I Am Dreaming, Let Me Dream On.”

So what does that have to do with evangelicalism? Well, there are more sophisticated versions of that anti-intellectualism and even obscurantism and they abound among evangelicals—even in places where they are adamantly denied. I served ten years on the editorial board of Christian Scholar’s Review including five years as its senior editor. The Review was truly open to critical inquiry and we published many articles that challenged evangelical assumptions while remaining basically evangelical. (I edited an entire theme volume on process theology including articles by leading process thinkers.) But we could not seem to draw submissions from evangelical scholars teaching in our constituent liberal arts colleges and universities (about 50 of them). One year we asked all our institutional representatives to ask their colleagues why they didn’t submit manuscripts to CSR. We knew many of them were submitting manuscripts to other, mostly non-evangelical publications. The answer came. “We know our administrators read CSR and we’re afraid of publishing our findings and thoughts because our institution does not have real tenure.” Digging a little deeper by asking many of these evangelical scholars why this is a problem came up with the following answer: “Our administrators have good intentions but they are beholden to constituents who will pressure them to fire us if they disagree with what we write.”

Returning to my two reasons Worthen’s book is challenging: I hope I have already made them clear. First, it is confusing because she never adequately explains why evangelicalism’s anti-intellectualism (or pseudo-intellectualism in some cases) is its “genius.” Second, it is prophetic because she dares to point out something few evangelical leaders are willing to admit—that a deep strain of anti-intellectualism runs through their movement and needs to be named and corrected. Of course, Mark Noll already pointed this out some years ago in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, but he laid the blame at the doorsteps of pietism, the holiness movement and experience-centered spirituality. Worthen turns the finger of accusation around and points it at Noll’s own Reformed neo-evangelicalism (which is not to say he is guilty).

So what are some solutions? That’s where Worthen is weakest—offering practical advice to evangelicals. But, then, she’s a historian; advice isn’t her job. So I’ll go out on a limb and offer some. First, evangelical institutions of higher education (at least) need to establish real tenure for trusted professors based on scholarly achievement and not primarily “institutional fit.” Second, evangelical organizations need to let it be known that conservative donors are not going to call all the shots. Third, evangelical publications need to establish a pattern of exposing pseudo-intellectualism and demagoguery among evangelicals. (Eternity magazine did some of this in the 1970s and 1980s. We need to return to that.) Fourth, evangelicals need to overcome their obsessive, reactionary fear of “modernism” and “liberal theology” and become sufficiently self-confident of the truth of evangelical faith to expose it to critical inquiry without running and hiding behind some new set of “fundamentals” under the guise of “worldview.”

Godless Capitalism?

When I was a kid growing up in the 1950s and 1960s American heartland and in an ultra-conservative church “godlesscommunism” was one word, not two. One of the worst things people in my religious context could say about someone was “communist” and that label covered a lot of territory.

I remember when Lyndon Johnson won his election over Barry Goldwater. I went to school the next day and very publicly proclaimed Johnson “a communist.” The teacher gave me a bemused look that communicated “What hole in the ground did you just crawl out of?” But I was only parroting what I heard at home.

During high school I worked part-time for a local home and office cleaning company owned by a leader of the state’s branch of the John Birch Society. He often lectured me as we worked about how President Eisenhower had been a “dupe of the communists” (if not one himself!).

Our home contained books such as None Dare Call It Treason and Masters of Deceit (by J. Edgar Hoover) and pamphlets by “The House Unamerican Activities Committee” (of Congress). Billy James Hargis was a popular radio preacher in our home and his books also appeared on our shelves. I read all of that stuff and lived in terror of a “communist takeover” of America. I remember church youth group events that featured pretend clandestine meetings of Christians with “communist agents” (other members of the youth group in disguise carrying toy guns) bursting in and arresting us. We were paranoid about communism.

To us, then, the only alternative to communism was laissez-faire capitalism. It was the Christian and American way.

Lately I’ve been reading a relatively new book by theologian Daniel M. Bell, Jr. entitled The Economy of Desire: Christianity and Capitalism in a Postmodern World (BakerAcademic, 2012). If the publisher wanted to mass market the book they should have titled it Godless Capitalism. (That might have contradicted the message of the book, though!)

Bell is professor of theological ethics at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary. He holds a Ph.D. from Duke University. I have never read anything by him before this, but I now have his earlier book Liberation Theology after the End of History and hope to read that soon.

The Economy of Desire is a provocative book. As I said, a more descriptive title for it might be Godless Capitalism. A, if not the, main thesis is that contemporary neo-liberal capitalism, which has become a global economy so powerful it controls governments, is completely contrary to the Christian gospel and discipleship. It is a ringing call for Christians to wake up and think harder and more clearly about economic discipleship and not just go along with the worldwide trend toward a totally free market economy (which turns out not to be so “free” for most people after all!).

Bell begins his Preface with “This is a difficult book to write, not because what it says is hard to grasp, but because the ‘old ideas’ it challenges are so deeply ingrained in my life, character and desire.” (p. 13) He knows he speaks for many, perhaps most, American Christians with those words because the “old ideas” he challenges are all wrapped up in one word—“capitalism.”

Bell is an excellent writer. Each chapter (at least of the first few which is all I’ve read so far) begins with a vivid anecdote that illustrates its main point. Chapter 1 is about postmodernity and “micropolitics.” There and in chapter 2, which deals with capitalism as an “economy of desire,” Bell provides a heady and sometimes mind-numbing summary of two postmodern thinkers’ ideas as they apply to economics (in the broad sense). They are Michael Foucault and Gilles Feleuze, two philosophers I have always hesitated to study because just listening to people talk about them makes my head hurt. However, I must say that Bell’s descriptions of their ideas is illuminating. I felt that these two chapters gave me a solid overview of their postmodern thoughts especially as they apply to economics.

Chapters 3 and 4 are “What Is Wrong with Capitalism?” and “Capitalist Theology: The Agony of Capitalist Desire” respectively. I recommend that you read these first and then back up and read the first two chapters. (Of course read the Preface and Introduction first of all.) These two chapters, 3 and 4, are stunningly clear, brilliant, challenging and upsetting (as in upsetting the apple cart of common American belief about capitalism).

But let’s stop just a moment and be clear about something. Unless I am mistaken (I may find myself corrected by the rest of the book), Bell is not criticizing “mom and pop store capitalism”—basic entrepreneurship to make a living. The capitalism he is attacking (ferociously, I must say) is “neo-liberal” capitalism. Some might call it “neo-conservative.” However, Bell is using “neo-liberal” in a very specific, technical, economics sense of economic activity unfettered by government regulation. Corporations are allowed, even encouraged to grow in power to the point that they are “too big to fail” and become the tail that wags the political dog of government.

But not to worry! This is not your garden variety, run of the mill diatribe against economic exploitation. Rather, Bell digs down much deeper than most (any?) books on the subject to critically examine the underlying impulses of neo-liberal capitalism theologically. As the title implies, the book is about desire and how capitalism manufactures and controls our very desires. And desires make us who we are (at least to a very large extent). We are what we desire. “Desire precedes being.”

Bell’s main complaint against neo-liberal capitalism is that it is totalizing. It is an ideology we’re not even aware of having. Consumerism is one of its effects. It creates unnatural (and often unchristian) desires in people and drives them, us, to be consumers of things we really have no need or even natural want for. And it is impossible to opt out of it. Even when you see it for what it is, contrary to the spirit of Christianity, idolatrous, there’s very little you can do about it. (Bell’s next chapter, chapter 5 “Is Another Economy Possible? The Church as an Economy of Desire” may point a way in another direction. I’ll blog about the second half of the book later.)

So let me bring this “home,” so to speak. I think it’s not hard to see the truth of what Bell is talking about. I sometimes have a little “disposable income.” What do I do with it? Too often I find myself buying something I really do not need and didn’t know I wanted until I saw it advertised. I work hard to resist advertising. (I’ve blogged about the manipulative methods of contemporary advertising here before.) But sometimes I “just have to have that.” These are things that cost quite a bit of money (or just a little) and are totally unnecessary except to make me feel better because I have them.

Have you ever noticed how stores, especially “big box” stores, lure you into buying things you had no intention of buying when you entered them? I often go to a store, neglecting to pick up a cart as I enter because I am only there to buy a couple “necessaries” and then, halfway through the store, realize I need to find a push cart for all the stuff I’m carrying. As I exit the store with my bags full of things I didn’t plan to buy, I feel manipulated. Sure, I could resist, but it would be an enormous, almost super-human effort always to resist that.

So why does that matter? What has that to do with discipleship? Bell’s main point is the way in which contemporary capitalism distorts our desires—away from God toward money, power and possessions. Capitalism is an economic system of disordered desire. Even if it “works,” Bell argues, it is contrary to the spirit of Christ. How so?

In chapter 4 Bell describes the “disordered desires” of capitalism. By means of it we gain “Insatiable Desire” and “Agony for Competition.” Oh, did I say we “gain?” No, according to Bell, those are what we become. Those are not distortions of capitalism, either; they are necessary for capitalism to work. So even governments devoted to capitalism have to join in their promotion.

Have you ever noticed how even “news programming” sneaks in what really amount to commercials for products? The other day I saw an article in a newspaper about a new line of canned cooking sauces that make home cooked meals seem like high-end restaurant cuisine. It was offered as a news article, but it read like a commercial. No drawbacks mentioned.

In a way, although it is much more, The Economy of Desire is a response to Michael Novak’s classic The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism which defends capitalism theologically. The two books really ought to be read together—Novak’s first and Bell’s second. If Bell is right, Novak is totally wrong about Christian theology supporting capitalism. According to Bell, if Novak is right (to defend capitalism because it works), then “God Is Not Redeeming” and “God Did Not Create Enough” and the contemporary multi-national corporation is “Savior and [Adam] Smith [is] Its Prophet” (titles of subsections of chapter 4).

One anecdote Bell offers sticks with me and continues to bother me. He points out how New Orleans’ annual “Mardi Gras” seems to its participants, revelers, a great liberation, when, in fact, it is totally dependent on a kind of human slavery in another country. The beads so cavalierly thrown around and exchanged during Mardi Gras are manufactured in a terrible sweat shop (according to Bell). He goes into great detail about both the “celebration” and the sweat shop that provides its accoutrements. The latter sounds like a concentration camp. The difference is the workers are there “voluntarily” and get paid. But probably no Mardi Gras reveler would want to work there. And if they knew the conditions under which their precious but inexpensive beads are made, they would (hopefully) discard them and never buy more.

I often wonder how some of the things I buy can be so inexpensive. I remember one of my seminary professors claiming that a good pair of shoes ought to cost about one day’s wage. That was his informal litmus test for whether the economy is healthy with wages where they should be. I can buy a relatively good pair of shoes for about fifty dollars. I see signs that say I can buy three pairs of cowboy boots for about one hundred and fifty dollars. Ah, you say, then all’s right with the world because then a person working for minimum wage can afford shoes. That’s not the point of my illustration. The vast majority of American workers can easily afford three pair of shoes for a day’s wage. Does that mean our wages are too high or does it mean the people who make the shoes are earning too little?

What I like about Bell’s book, however, is not revealed in anecdotes like the Mardi Gras-sweat shop connection. What I like is the questions it raises such as whether the fact that capitalism “works” (for a lot of people) is an important question compared with what work it does.

I have long thought that the capitalism I know in America and around the world today is not the capitalism I grew up with. That may have been on its way to this, but it was different—not only in degree but also in kind. Something intervened during the “Reagan Revolution” to turn capitalism in this totalizing direction. Sure, there were things about earlier capitalism challenged by Bell’s critique, but much of his critique aims at the totalizing effect of contemporary world capitalism and its ability to control governments.

For me, a major “waking up” moment was the U.S. government’s bailouts of major banks and financial corporations. They were, it is said, “too big to fail.” The tail wags the dog. Or, better put, the tail has become the dog and the dog the tail.

Often when I rent a DVD I see a statement at its beginning, before the movie begins, that condemns “video piracy” as not a “victimless crime” because it “harms the economy.” Really? But who harms the economy more than the financers who gamble against their own loans—betting they will default—and makes loans to people they know probably cannot repay them? So far, to the best of my knowledge, nobody has gone to prison for “harming the economy” in the recent disastrous financial “downturn” (the “Great Recession”). Numerous people lost their jobs, their homes and some even their lives as a result of it. Our country was seriously weakened by it. Why are the people who caused it by greed not punished? Instead, people who pirate DVDs go to prison. Which harms the economy more?

It is hard to resist the impression that the U.S. government (but not only it) is in the hip pockets of CEOs of major corporations. Oh, not through blatant graft but through unrestrained capitalism driven by greed. Theologian Emil Brunner, in The Divine Imperative, called capitalism “economic anarchy” and condemned it as incompatible with civilization and Christianity. And yet, in the face of evidence and argument most American Christians still defend laissez faire capitalism as part and parcel of Christianity so that to criticize it is literally tantamount to heresy in their eyes. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that for a Christian pastor to preach a sermon critical of capitalism along the lines of Bell’s book he or she would be in more danger of losing his or her job than if he or she preached against the Trinity.