Over recent weeks we have been peering into various crannies of American Christianity. While each little corner offers its own distinctive litter and unpleasant smells, it is not the distinctive parts that should concern us so much as the unsightly whole. Institutions come and—mercifully—go, but in all the coming and going we tend to overlook larger, unanticipated consequences.

We see in current fundamentalism a movement which flagrantly contradicts the sensibilities of earlier fundamentalism. It was bad enough the movement became unappealing to outsiders; it's worse that it became a contradiction of its own principles. It was not enough that its enemies hated it, the movement wanted to offer them a larger selection of things to despise. Imagine Machen attending a fundamentalist production of The Importance of Being Earnest or Francis and Edith Schaeffer showing up in a tux and opera glasses for a Steve Pettit "concert". The incongruity is lost on modern fundamentalists because they are preoccupied with The King James Problem or what is to be done about the effective ministries of conservative evangelicals. And the movement gives every promise of losing its institutions the way a leper drops off limbs in the last stages of his illness.

To hear the senior managing editor of "the magazine of evangelical conviction" tell it, the movement has become a "mood". That's right, a mood. As irritated as some of us are that guys like Harold Ockenga and Carl "Free Hand" Henry indulged in novelties which turned out worse than our fathers imagined, they would be frozen in horror to read that their movement was now a mood. It's just not polite to reject someone because she's in a mood, even if she's amusing herself with Sex And The City.

Seeker-sensitives are doing a new study to find out why their means and ends did not quite connect in the productive way their earlier studies claimed they would. And good luck to them with that.

Emergence promised all sorts of things like poetry and imagination, and in this climate of general hostility none was more attractive than "community". Ask an emergent what the general opinion is of Mark Driscoll to get a sense of a self-sacrificing fraternity and a taste of "a generous orthodoxy". Ask Dumb and Dumber what they think of "New Calvinism".

I recall the observation of one observer of American Christianity: "History should remind us that when a society begins to drift, doctrine is usually the last evidence of that drift. The churches must not suppose that professions of orthodoxy are proof against drift."

A drifting society is very much the problem, and to get another sense of that drift, you might want to read D. G. Hart:

By leaving the religious ghetto to right the mainstream society, the likes of a Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson undermined older taboos that had nurtured among evangelicals a sense of being resident aliens, pilgrims on a journey to a different homeland, enduring hardships now for untold future comforts. In effect, the politics of the Religious Right turned evangelicals from otherworldly saints into this-worldly citizens. The indication being, perhaps, that this transformation of born-again Protestants is no better for cultural life in North America than it is for the Christian religion.

Amidst all the innovations of our times it is good to think through this relevant point. And it isn't just Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. It's the Bakkers and Crouches and Siders and Campolos and Wallises and Halls & Slaters, Norths and Rushdoonys....

On Remonstrans we have spoken at some length about the abject philistinism of American Christianity. But beyond this cultural apostasy there has also been a failure to separate from the world along the lines addressed by D. G. Hart.

Despite what James 1:27 tells us, we have not kept ourselves unspotted from the world. In this regard we have been negligent and we are paying the price.

Professions of orthodoxy have not saved us.

What will?

Those famous couches were supposed to generate conversation, provoke a frank exchange of views and encourage the swapping of journey-tales. It was all about openness, diversity, acceptance, and "creative theological imaginations."

It was all going to be a kind of Woodstock without the keen intellects. It would be a place where you could say whatever you wanted, even if you were higher than a kite.

But some of you—and I won't name names—have been much too frank and liberal with your views, and some of you apparently tossed out way too many scriptural references for these freethinkers. They are slamming the door on your fingers over at queermergent dotcom; now there will be "other places for you to express these views".

Check out this incoherent announcement:

Commenting Policy

i have received a number of comments that have been inappropriate for this conversation. These comments will NOT be posted. If you do not have anything helpful to further the conversation along, the comments will NOT be posted and will be DELETED, as i have comment moderation enacted on this blog. Honest questions are welcome but preaching and spewing scripture in a an obnoxious way will not be tolerated. If you vehenmently disagree, fine, but there are other places for you to express these views. THIS space is a safe place for honest dialogue and conversation between those in the LGBTQ community, our allies, and those seeking to engage us in an honest manner.

And queermergence is building a kind of bunker/spider hole thingy. There will now be a secret place where planners and networkers can peep, mutter, and whisper in safety.

I gather it will be much like the forts I built as a child: a secluded place where I could plan my insurrections and eat all the candy I wanted. Not really a community kind of place.

We hope that this site develops as an ‘invite only' safe space for LGBTQ persons involved in the emerging church to network and plan for an international gathering. As some on this list work within traditional church structures, we do ask for confidentiality regarding this site and its content.

Obviously we will want to keep this just between us; confidentiality is essential.

My hidden ambition is to live outside under the stars, damp with dew, reading holy texts in forgotten alley ways, chalking my pithy sayings on the sidewalks and boulevards after hours. When I am not needed by my family and compatriots, I will steal away to that secret and abandon place to build my castle in the trash, cherishing every piece.

--- Mark Scandrette, March 2009

Some of you might remember Mark Scandrette from the Three Stooges tour called "The Church Basement Roadshow" which bombed everywhere a surprisingly small number of religious dropouts were desperate for a good time. Tony Jones has since high-tailed it for Beliefnet and Doug Pagitt is running for political office. (Whether the abuse of the trombone continues I cannot say.) Mark, on the other hand, continues his making of a life in the way of Jesus by writing numbered pieces of doggerel. The epigraph you just read is Saying of the Wanderer #21.

I gather Op. 21 might have been written at a time when his family did not need him, and for that reason I'm surprised it isn't a bit longer. I would have thought we'd get something roughly the length of War and Peace.

But why?—the sensitive reader is asking himself—why are we being reminded of this Dumpster Duke? What terrible crime did we commit? What orphanage did we burn down? What litter of shivering kittens did we throw down a well? What possible purpose could be served by reposting his drivel? Couldn't we be just as edified with a picture of an urban pigeon eating a wrinkly French fry?

Well, maybe, but our art department doesn't have such a picture on file.

Besides, I thought I would show you what passes for relevant these days. This is poetry for the postmodern Jesus follower. That's why I put the date underneath it. So you would know.

If I didn't tell you this was cutting edge poetry appropriate to the 21^st Century imagination, you might well guess that it was a cheap imitation of the beat poetry found in the middle of the previous century. Yah, the 40s and 50s: Harry S. Truman vs. Thomas E. Dewey! In nine years Spud Melin will manufacture and market the hula-hoop.

Incidentally, if you want to get a sense of real beat poetry, of passionate engagement with the grit of life, uninformed spiritual appetites and social insurrection, read William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac.

I say this to remind us of something very, very important. Not everyone who is hawking relevance can be trusted to know what is relevant. Reading Scandrette is as hip as listening to John Dowland's Seaven Teares for lute and viols.

And why is this important to us?

It is important because everywhere you turn these days someone is telling you that we need to speak to the postmodern seeker. We have to speak his language; even if that means profanity.

So why is this new church so ineloquent? And it's not just Scandrette. I cite Scandrette because he is so derivative and pathetic that even fundagelicals can spot the joke. We were promised "intentional communication with God through sacred acts of prayer, communion, worship, art, music, silence and meditation on Scripture". Sacred? What we got was goofy hand-me-downs which no one wants to wear because he will be laughed at on the school bus and he will probably lose his lunch money.

There is something very wrong here, whether it is Scandrette's fake beat poetry, fundamentalism's Lawrence Welk schlock or evangelicalism's boy bands. No one is seeking this stuff! This isn't a big secret anymore. This is not "a new song".

This is just playing in yesterday's garbage.

Remonstrans began four years ago tomorrow, and much has changed in that time.

In 2005 I had very little knowledge of blogging and I certainly had no inkling that this exchange would go on for 208 weeks, provoke 528 posts—and I have no idea how many comments. (That's not counting the contributions of my colleagues.)

Things progressed better than expected; our influence spread to parts of the world I didn't even know satellites flew over, and world leaders called incessantly to grill me for my secrets on winning friends and strengthening old political alliances. And the bags of money piled up to the barrel vaults. I was able to acquire a modest retirement fastness pictured below [photo snapped this year before the Christmas decorations were taken down], and many was the night I paced the western parapets trying to decide which fresh religious indecency illustrated most eloquently the faithlessness of this century.

(My wife had no idea she would have to dust so many balustrades and iron so many pajamas.)

On the other hand, much has stayed exactly the same.

It seems that the church has become quite accomplished at drifting through the Seven Seas, its scurvied shipmates brandishing nerf cutlasses and bragging about what effective seamen they'd become. The ship always comes to life when a new poll is released and everyone meets on the quarterdeck to decide who should wear the albatross.

High seas; good times.

And of course the completely indigestible devotional life of the believer continues: the booklets, the tapes, the vibes, the CDs, the soul patches, the skits, the ditties, the couches, the speculations about the eschaton, the conferences, the resolutions....

And the institutions keep grinding out new justifications for their existence and we, like devoted worshippers of Moloch, keep giving them our children.

Evangelicalism, I read recently, is more of a "religious mood". Can you believe that? A mood. It's a pessimism, a longing, some mystical moments, a conviction that things are redeemed through suffering and a passion to make a difference.

It is a spiritual sensibility that includes pessimism about human nature, a longing to be converted from the worst of our selves, mystical moments when Jesus Christ is experienced, a conviction that nothing can be redeemed without suffering and that resurrection is ultimate reality, and a passion to make a difference in the world.

So this is the faith of St. Paul, is it?

Anyway, I can't promise that Remontrans will be around four more years, but for however long it lasts I hope it will continue to reject the spirit of the age and oppose the philistines.

The Internet Monk recently wrote a piece predicting the collapse of evangelicalism. He gives it ten years. I honestly thought his post was intended as a kind of Monty Python's Flying Circus historical comedy; I didn't think it was very funny and it certainly was not properly documented, so I blew it off. The Christian Science Monitor and a few other internet swill shops picked it up, which I thought was cute.

One evangelical took exception to the notion and set himself the task of predicting evangelicalism's looming survival.

That's when it started to get a little funnier.

Mark Galli is one of the vacant drones over at Christianity Today. Senior managing editor, actually. He started out his piece by telling us that Michael Spencer [the Monk] sees the Roman and Orthodox communions benefiting from the exodus of evangelicals. Here's what Galli said:

Spencer might have added Anglicanism as a beneficiary. As an Anglican, I wish it were true. But in my experience, the number of evangelicals entering these communions is not as great as those leaving these communions for evangelical faith. I don't know of any studies that have, or even can, measure this phenomenon accurately. So we might have to simply debate our impressions.

Fascinating brainwork here. I wondered two things: 1) how much Mark Galli is pulling down per annum for his important work, and 2) how stupid does one have to be to get hired as a junior managing editor at CT?

Had Spencer said evangelicals were fleeing to Anglicanism, I could see why Galli might want to quarrel. But since Spencer said no such thing, one wonders how desperate (or lonely) a man Galli must be to make this response a matter for discussion. And on top of that, Galli concedes he doesn't know of any studies that support anyone's impressions about the number of evangelicals becoming Anglican, Roman or Orthodox. So Galli is taking issue with something Spencer never said and for which he has no evidence to support either side—assuming there were two sides.

I think I wasted part of my life reading that third paragraph.

From the fifth paragraph:

For all our cultural influence and religious impact, evangelicals are "like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales ... [they] are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness." This quotation, from Isaiah 40:15-17, refers to "the nations," but it applies just as well to the "evangelical nation."

While I am impressed that Mr. Galli could find this quotation in his Bible (or that he has a Bible to find stuff in), it hardly makes a relevant point. It seems to me that Spencer is not intending to show the significance (or lack of significance) of evangelicalism as compared to God, his piece has to do with the movement's significance in this historical moment. No movement when compared to God himself carries more weight than dust on the scales. All the movements throughout the whole of human history multiplied by ten thousand are still "as nothing before him".

And Galli goes on like this for 16 paragraphs!

Here's another one:

In this sense, the history of the Christian faith is littered with evangelicals, from the apostle Paul to Antony of the Desert, from Francis of Assisi to Teresa of Avila, from the monastic movement to camp meetings, from Beth Moore to Mimi Haddad, from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association to Evangelicals for Social Action.

Oy, vey!

I can assure both these chaps of one thing: evangelicalism is not going to collapse. It is not going to collapse for the same reason the Hindenburg is not going to burst into flames.

If anyone wants insight into the failure of evangelicalism, I could suggest nothing more informative than three easily-obtained documents:

No Place For Truth, by David Wells
Evangelical Affirmations, May 1989
An Evangelical Manifesto, May 2008

and for a brilliant exposé on the quality of thought amongst evangelical apologists:

http://www.markgalli.com/galliblog/?p=125

Another non-scholar, this one from the other end of the spectrum from Matt Olson (but a soulmate in intellectual exertions) steps forward with some insight into what God likes.

God likes movies. Loves, actually. He loves them.

Brian Godawa says "the dominant means through which God communicates His truth is visually dramatic stories". Brian surveyed the scriptures and calculated that thirty percent "of the Bible is expressed through rational propositional truth and laws". So he subtracted 30% from 100% and came up with 70% which was, "therefore" [his word] not "rational propositional truth and laws".

If you have a scientific calculator you can crunch the numbers for yourself.

Presumably there are only those two (mutually exclusive, hence the math) means of conveying truth:

       1) rational propositional truth and laws
       2) visually dramatic stories

and "modernist Christianity has neglected to understand how much more important visual imagery, drama and storytelling are to God". "More important". Some pretty close reasoning is going on here, and I wouldn't want you to miss it. I'm guessing maybe if God thought his Revelation was extremely important he would have used visually dramatic stories 100% of the time.

The next step in his reasoning is to equate movies with "visually dramatic stories". There are no movies in the Bible that textual scholars or archeologists have been able to identify; no scripts have been found and no directors are known to have worked either in Israel or Judah, so dreams, illustrations, visions, analogies, types, poems and parables will have to serve as a justification for "movies".

Godawa says that all those miracles God performed for his people were "sensate visual displays of God's glory". And by sensate I am reasonably sure he doesn't mean sensate; he means sensuous. No Evangelist tells us that "signs and wonders" were ever sensate.

I'm thinking that by Godawa's reasoning Oscar Wilde was a blockbuster in Heaven. I know he is a favorite among fundamentalists, and those people are pretty strict about what entertainments will "check".

So all you fundamentalists who love movies can ignore what you where told by St. Augustine, Tertullian, Pascal, and all the Puritans. You can follow this simpleton. What did those guys know? And men like Dante and Milton failed to appreciate visually dramatic stories.

Frank Peretti, Janette Oke, Thomas Kinkade and Brian Godawa: the winds of a true Renaissance are blowing.

Things are falling apart on this terrestrial ball; things that cannot be fixed.

I have been accused of being pessimistic. (I know, I know; where's that coming from?) And there is a class of people out there which will tolerate bad news only as prelude to a glib, uncomplicated solution. I myself have occasionally even been called a curmudgeon!

It's rare, but whenever it happens it hurts me deeply.

I blame television for this. I sometimes think that TV is not so bad for its gratuitous sex and violence—which by its very nature is compelled to shock us to continue achieving its end. With that shock might come recognition and repugnance. But where the idiot box really destroys the soul is in its facile description of a problem and its brainless promise of a solution.

Anyway, I recently chatted with someone who wondered what would have to take place before liturgical reform could take place. I told him I thought maybe a Vesuvian pyroclastic flow might do the trick. Obviously I'm way too much of a Pollyanna to qualify as a curmudgeon. Any qualified volcanologist will tell you there aren't enough volcanos in the world.

But I do think some preliminary tremors, some wisps of white smoke, might come as signs of hope.

When we begin to take note of our heritage and when we recognize our obligation to that heritage, perhaps then something useful can happen.

There is this old, creaky article on the web by Calvin Stapert which might help. This was posted over eight years ago, but most of you know by now that if you want some swank, cobbled nonsense, you need to click on Christianity Today dotcom. I think this remembrance of JSB's thought might help you sort through our mess.

And I will remind you of some truths voiced on these premises. A solution might emerge, d.v., when:

     a) we dedicate ourselves to art
     b) we elevate our theological knowledge, and
     c) we perceive that we are rooted in a tradition

We can repeat the twaddle about being relevant, but we know after 60 years of pursuing relevance that we haven't got the stamina. Relevance means nothing without a context in our tradition. Any change worthy of our attention will necessarily be a synthesis of what is fresh with what is permanent.

P.S. And lest bmp (or any of our readers) misapprehend the meaning of this poem, I can tell you it was written by George Herbert. George's mother was a patron of John Donne. This graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, and beloved rector at Bemerton also said, as Stapert reminds us: "With my utmost art I praise thee". The thee spoken of in that sentence is presumably the same one with whom Ron Hamilton and Clif Boyce claim some acquaintance.

Go figure.

We've been examining from several angles what art does in worship. Of the many failures of Novelty Christianity, I think the atrophy of art is probably the most significant; certainly the most conspicuous. There was a time when "the chief obstacle to the Christian religion [lay] in the sphere of the intellect", and I think in that day Machen spoke eloquently to the problem. Today our problem is somewhat different. It's not that we enjoy a purer stream intellectually, even in those back-eddies where comparatively more intellectual rigor exists—if only in the memory—there is a consequent problem.

It is not just that we no longer think about God as we ought: even false prophets blather on about "the normality of dysfunction" in American Christianity. Now it's worse, now even the orthodox cannot feel toward him as we once did. Thinking properly about God involves more than orthodoxy, and all those who spoke to us of orthopraxy and orthopathy certainly cannot lead us out of this desert. We hear people suggesting remedies in the form of "fellowship gathering power", "vision casting", "spiritual formation", or some cure for "hurry sickness". We listen to piffle about agendas and organizational solutions arising from "newly emerging forms of our life together". Imagine Dante or Bunyan or Milton talking like this.

Out went the poet and in came the scold. We sowed to the wind and we reaped a toxic cloud.

Monday I posted a hymn which I think vividly illustrates the problem. I appreciate the responses we've gotten and most of them are helpful. I think some of you offered more particular answers to a more general question.

Which is perfectly fine.

But let me point you toward the forest.

The point I wanted to illustrate was somewhat broader. I agree with someone who said that the ocean as a metaphor for God's love has become a bit stale. I can understand that, but only to a point. I don't think the metaphor is bad, just ineptly and thoughtlessly reproduced. Actually in this song, I think it is apt and powerful. And it only starts with the ocean.

The metaphors are the ocean, the flood, fountains, floodgates and mighty rivers. This is more epic than the Flood. What the writer helps us imagine is an effusive grace. Grace and love, like mighty rivers poured incessant from above. I love that line. Torrents of judgment have become cataracts of grace. But where has all that water gone in the last two stanzas? They are dry as a bone. They are plodding homilies compared to the first two stanzas.

I am not suggesting that this is the worst of all mistakes songwriters can make: this is a perfectly usable song. I have spoken freely and eagerly about some atrocities which are genuinely offensive and which consistently fail to reward reflection.

But what I think is interesting about Here Is Love is the stark abandonment of useful images in favor of a very mundane exhortation, especially the last stanza.

It's not that I am opposed to exhortation; certainly some hortatory stanzas might follow which preserve the imagery and strengthen the whole. But notice how at some level they fail so spectacularly.

It seems we cannot make people worship. The only thing we seem competent to do is to keep them from worshiping; all we can succeed at is blandness. If God is awesome, don't you think we could find a way to express that to one another?

Art is how this was accomplished in the past.

Some have been alarmed to read that there is art in our worship. They should not feel anxious: art is a good and natural thing. It is as natural to find art in man as it is to find a river in a valley, and art is an absolutely essential thing when it comes to talking about God. They would know this if they read their Bibles.

We think the Oxford English Dictionary stumbles across an important truth when it calls art a skill that results from knowledge and practice. David, Isaiah and Hannah had skills that resulted from knowledge and practice. We would know this if we'd read them. Religious philistines have learned nothing from them, from creation or from history. God made our lives to stand over us with a whip and a prod demanding our scrutiny. Some do not look because they do not care.

It is by nothing other than numbness of heart that we attempt to worship without art; without skill and without knowledge of expression.

There is no such thing as an anesthetized worshiper, and for those in danger of becoming anesthetized while at church, we have a question of art for you. What happened with this song? What broke? What went seriously wrong, and how might someone with skill repair it?

Here Is Love Vast As The Ocean

Here is love vast as the ocean,
Loving kindness as the flood;
When the Prince of life, our ransom
Shed for us His precious blood
Who His love will not remember?
Who can cease to sing His praise?
He can never be forgotten
Throughout Heaven's eternal days.

On the Mount of Crucifixion
Fountains opened deep and wide;
Through the floodgates of God's mercy
Flowed a vast and gracious tide.
Grace and love, like mighty rivers
Poured incessant from above.
And Heaven's peace and perfect justice
Kissed a guilty world in love.

Let us all His love accepting,
Love Him ever all our days.
Let us seek His Kingdom only,
And our lives be to His praise.
He alone shall be our glory,
Nothing in the world we see.
He has cleansed and sanctified us;
He Himself has set us free.

In His truth He does direct me,
By His Spirit through His Word.
And His grace my need is meeting
As I trust in Him, my Lord.
All His fullness He is pouring
In His love and power in me
Without measure
Full and boundless,
As I yield myself to Thee.