Today is Good Friday and an appropriate time to return to a theme I\u2019ve dealt with before here\u2013the gradual disappearance of the cross in American Christianity (including among evangelicals).<\/p>\n
I can understand theologically liberal Protestants wanting to downplay the cross as it is offensive to modern sensibilities and liberal theology is \u201cmaximal acknowledgment of the claims of modernity.\u201d\u00a0 The cross, properly, biblically understood and not reduced to a martyrdom, is scandalous.\u00a0 But it is a scandal central to the gospel and therefore to Christianity.\u00a0 I am not sure one can find Christianity where the cross is absent or diminished in importance.<\/p>\n
Of course, I\u2019m not talking about the symbol of the cross even though I do think its disappearance in Christian worship spaces is a symptom of the gradual disappearance of the preaching of the cross.\u00a0 What I am talking about is the gradual disappearance of singing, preaching, talking about the atoning death of Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n
Many years ago fundamentalists criticized others, including many so-called \u201cneo-evangelicals,\u201d for downplaying the word \u201cblood\u201d in Christian language.\u00a0 In reaction, some fundamentalists went to extremes.\u00a0 I remember one book by a fundamentalist called \u201cThe Chemistry of the Blood.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s been years since I read it, but I recall even then, still in my fundamentalist mindest, I found its argument about the special nature of the physical blood of Jesus odd.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not calling for more of what Harry Emerson Fosdick called \u201cslaughterhouse religion\u201d\u2013with vivid and even gory talk and depictions of Jesus\u2019 torture and execution.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t even go see or later watch the movie; I think it\u2019s possible to get carried away with that.<\/p>\n
What I am decrying is the gradual tendency for even evangelicals to be forgetful of Jesus\u2019 death as\u00a0the atoning sacrifice for humanity\u2019s sinfulness and for our individual sins.\u00a0 I have attended numerous evangelical churches of different denominational persuasions and noticed this trend over the years.\u00a0 Many sermons center around problem solving in the Christian life, comfort of the afflicted, following Jesus\u2019 example of love (without reference to the cross!), etc.\u00a0 Few songs sung really focus on the death of Christ.<\/p>\n
Excuse me while I ride my hobby\u00a0 horse and grind my axe a little here.\u00a0 A major problem with so-called \u201cPraise and Worship\u201d music is a general lack of reference to the cross and the atonement.\u00a0 There are, of course, exceptions.<\/p>\n
Mark Noll and David Bebbington have rightly, I judge, identified four historical hallmarks of evangelical faith: biblicism, conversionism, crucicentrism, activism.\u00a0 I see three of those thriving among evangelicals, but where is crucicentrism?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m fully aware of how this is going to sound to my younger readers, but here goes anyway.\u00a0 When I was growing up in the thick of evanglicalism the cross played a very significant role in our worship and devotion.\u00a0 For example, it was common then (and before) for evanglical pastors to preach a sermon on the cross at every communion service (and those were once monthly).\u00a0 The communion ceremony was surrounded with and accompanied by singing of songs like \u201cOh, the blood of Jesus (It washes white as snow)\u201d and \u201cAt the cross (where I first saw the light),\u201d and \u201cIn the cross (be my glory ever)\u201d and \u201cAt calvary (mercy there was great and grace was free).\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not talking about a slight shift of emphasis.\u00a0 I\u2019m talking about what sometimes seems to me a wholly different evangelical Christianity.\u00a0 I hardly recognize today\u2019s evangelicalism as the evangelicalism I grew up in.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not a difference related to the inerrancy of the Bible or the metaphysical attributes of God or the possible salvation of the unevangelized.\u00a0 These are controversies that have captured the imaginations of evangelicals.\u00a0 In the meantime, as we argue and fight over those, the cross has slipped away into virtual obscurity in our singing, preaching and talking.<\/p>\n
I will take the risk of putting forth a theory here.\u00a0 It seems likely to me that whenever and wherever and to the extent that the objective view of the atonement (viz., that the death of Christ reconciled God to the world as much as the world to God) diminishes, the cross will diminish in importance for worship and piety.\u00a0 A subjective theory of the atonement will not do; it cannot sustain long term, profound commitment to the gospel of the death of Jesus Christ as our salvation.<\/p>\n
Some contemporary Christians, including some evangelicals, worry that the preaching of the cross in any traditional sense (viz., objective) risks sanctioning child abuse.\u00a0 That seems to me to be utter nonsense because it completely ignores the Trinity in the background of objective atonement.\u00a0 No theologian defending objective atonement\u00a0has ever regarded the atonement as anything other than God the Son\u2019s voluntary suffering and death.\u00a0 Even Anselm\u2019s Satisfaction Theory and the Puritans\u2019 Penal Substitution Theories pictured it that way and NOT as God simply taking out his anger on an innocent person against his will.<\/p>\n
On this Good Friday I call on evangelicals especially to return to their roots and rediscover the good news of the cross as God\u2019s way of reconciling himself to a sinful, rebellious world as well as God\u2019s way of drawing us to himself.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today is Good Friday and an appropriate time to return to a theme I\u2019ve dealt with before here\u2013the gradual disappearance of the cross in American Christianity (including among evangelicals). I can understand theologically liberal Protestants wanting to downplay the cross as it is offensive to modern sensibilities and liberal theology is \u201cmaximal acknowledgment of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n