For those with an interest in the pig's breakfast that is American Evangelicalism, you might want to read a slice of its history (and politics) here.

It is a very small slice, and it's unfortunate that Dr. Mouw can't be a little less superficial about the issues in play, but I think we all know better than to expect more from Christianity Today.

Wouldn't it be fascinating to go through the correspondence of CT's editors and trace the movement's failures on this point right up to the Manhattan Declaration, which by the way, as of 5:54 this morning, had only 412,931 signatures in support. A pitiful number of signatures out of a desired million.

There is no published count of the number who signed and then withdrew their signatures, but you might want to follow that line of inquiry over at Pyro.

Once again Evangelicals stumble into the Public Square, stare into the bright lights, tap the microphone, take out their note cards and embarrass themselves.

So not like a mighty army...

  ...then let me be what I profess, do as well as teach, live as well as hear religion.

--- Puritan prayer

In our recent posts we have glanced around at the casual thoughts and verbal pranks of people who pretend to be voices in the emergent church. These people suppose they have probing minds capable of expressing deep thoughts which we are interested in hearing about. They fancy themselves great independent thinkers of such brutal honesty that they can tell us the virtues of doubt and the consolations of disbelief. They think they are our spiritual heroes.

And they talk like this in public:

The reason that I got involved with the Presence families of ministries is largely because I'm a student of Strategic Foresight; Transmillenial eschatology sees the future as an open book, in which we have the sacred privilege of co-creating with God, one moment at a time. While the foresight field is ‘faith neutral' (its actually historically a tad hostile to faith, though that is changing as more nuanced and integral views effect the discipline), its view of an open future is quite compatible with this "way of seeing."

I have no doubt these people will someday get honorable mention in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and I wish them well with that. I also hope that that transmillenial [sic] eschatology thingy works out for them.

I suspect we can already see the general shape of a strong delusion. This is a day made for the Dan Browns, Wayne Dyers, David Haywards, Spencer Burkes, Barack Obamas...and has there ever been an hour more suitable for nonsense about our shadow self, about the false self becoming attached to form, about hope and change, about biblical story?

Have people ever been so deluded about the essence of that thing Tozer called a Christianity of the pure New Testament kind?

St. Paul said the Gospel was the power of God unto salvation. We must wonder who still believes that.

According to Bertram Wilberforce Wooster, a diet heavy in fish will make a person more intelligent. Bertie was convinced that his valet's intellectual prowess was attributable to fish for breakfast, fish for lunch and fish for supper. If this theory is correct (and his Aunt Agatha didn't believe any of Bertie's theories were correct) then the only rational conclusion we can draw is that Doug Pagitt is not much of a fish-eater. Taking into account what Doug has written recently, he never ate so much as a single filet of minnow.

Someone took Doug Pagitt to task for being an apostate, and Doug responds here.

Take a look at his response.

I suggest this view is a distorted version of faith that does not reflect the Biblical story at all, but that argument is part of our ongoing conversation. What I am sure of is that their reactions are driven from fear. I am not sure where the fear come from, but, in my opinion, it causes them to look at people with suspicion and distrust which taints everything.

In the very act of whining about the accusation that he distorts the faith, Doug accuses a person of distorting the faith.

Hello.

Doug is "sure" this hostility toward apostasy is a) a distortion of the faith and b) is not reflective of the Biblical story at all. Doug doesn't know where the fear comes from, but it is his considered opinion that this fear induces suspicion and distrust in his critics.

Like Danielle Shroyer, Doug Pagitt isn't familiar with the real Biblical story. I have often heard him give his views of the Biblical story, and they are not worth your time. So Doug cannot deal with his critic's understanding of the Biblical story; what he does instead is convey the words of a song by Bruce Springsteen.

You know: Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Springsteen, Colossians...

If I were to tell you the words were comically irrelevant to the question of apostasy, you might think that was just a conclusion I drew for myself. So here are the words; you decide:

I got my finger on the trigger But I don't know who to trust
When I look into your eyes There's just devils and dust
We're a long, long way from home, Bobbie Home's a long, long way from us
I feel a dirty wind blowing Devils and dust
I got God on my side
  And I'm just trying to survive
What if what you do to survive
 Kills the things you love
Fear's a powerful thing, baby, 
It can turn your heart black you can trust
It'll take your God filled soul
 And fill it with devils and dust

Pagitt then misapplies Matthew 12:22-24; how it relates to this discussion he does not say, but he does noodle it out enough to anticipate objections. Then he cites I John 4:17-21, taking no notice of how that very same chapter begins. The man's skill in hermeneutics is heartbreaking.

Minnesota is sometimes called the "land of a 10,000 lakes". If there is anyone up there with a fishing pole and some time to spare, please send a fish to Doug at:

Solomon's Porch
100 W. 46th Street
Minneapolis MN 55419

Tell me what kind of fish you caught and I will send him a recipe.

Let's do what we can for Doug, people.

It's fair to say that we learned something about Evangelicals from the Manhattan Declaration, but we learned as much from its fallout. Likewise we learned something from the recent flurry of indignation from "emergents" following Andrew Jones's farewell. What began as a conversation and an ethos is now being defended as though it were a movement. Very few have been creative, radical, controversial, imaginative or progressive enough to engage in authentic conversation. Emergents are as open to dialogue as J. Frank Norris was with the Pope. It's all very amusing.

Everything must change...but only to a point, for Pete's sake! All points of view are valid except those that challenge our particular dualisms.

Of what I've read so far, many are nervously blogging and twittering their loyalties, but I've yet to read anyone prepared to discuss A. Jones's essential critique. Has the movement become sectarian or has it not? Has it taken on theological emphases inconsistent with its early claims or has it not? I see no intelligent discussion of these points. Just like everywhere else in the known world, they line up to deny or confirm and then to manage the impact of conspicuous defections.

Tony Jones is a modernist in postmodernist's clothing!

Get a rope.

And once again we are forced to consider the fragility of reform. It is sexy to have a revolution, everybody wants to throw Frisbees in the park, and the best lawns are littered with half-wit theologians. It will be useful to watch how this "conversation" weathers self-criticism.

Jonathan Stegall wants to continue to "flow within multiple streams" and he would prefer for us to blame the "heresy-hunters", but this sort of bafflegab isn't going to survive the criticisms Andrew Jones has made.

You might want to take notes.

If you've been following the Emerging Church at all, you'll have noticed that the word emergence was probably not the happiest choice to describe this religious innovation. It appears that sustainability was just not in the cards.

This whole gag began with an already outmoded idea and one which probably would not have been useful even in the hands of competent leaders. In the hands of McLaren, Jones, Pagitt, Trucker Frank, McKnight, and Burke, inter alios, it became a slow-motion calamity. Over in The Village the highest ranking stooges abandoned the movement to create their own little enterprises, and to this day their blogs are works of patent vanity and personal ambition.

Tony Jones vacated his position at EV and JoPaproductions made room for women—at least some women—to emerge. (And in that there is another irony that now threatens to come to light.)

EV is making Haiti look like an attractive vacation destination.

Tim Hartman and Danielle Shroyer tried to do their Weekend at Bernie's schtick: they promised that EV would sponsor theology in the grass and barbecues of people. They spoke of "things they hoped to plan".

The excitable Danielle was enthusiastic about the "energy" and "intentionality" as they all worked together for "God's Kingdom in our own context". She was eager to hear from many of you about your experiences and about your "places of emergence".

As it happens, tsk (tallskinnykiwi, A.K.A. Andrew Jones) has said his goodbyes.

I wasn't at Christianity21 but I have been watching as new theological emphases and sectarian attitudes towards church emerge and it is just not something that I can lend my name to or my time.

"Theological emphases" and "sectarian attitudes"?! At EV? So much for the vibe and the ethos. It's somehow become all theological and sectarian.

You just gotta laugh.

My favorite preacherette responded by asking what happened to their sexy revolution, and in the comments below you can read some desperate attempts at crisis management. Phyllis Tickle weighs in with a typically gaseous observation, and following that rumble A. Jones responds by saying:

It never ceases to amaze me how my poorly worded miscommunications can produce such clarity and depth of thought.

Yes, I'm sure that's what all that was: clarity and depth of thought. Perhaps that is just some antipodean humor there.

Over on tsk's blog, Dennis Coles wrote disparagingly of Tony Jones:

Note the binary: all/nothing. This kind of thinking pervades T. Jones' book, whereby he reveals himself a modern wolf in a postmodern wool vest.

So it is about personalities as well; personalities, theological emphases and sectarian attitudes.

It couldn't have happened to a more naïve bunch of platitudinarians.

And there go my hopes for the Kingdom, world peace, and a goat for every Burundi family.

I decided, after having directed your attention to the tormented language of men like Dave Hayward, Spencer Burke and Tim King, that we deserved something enjoyable by way of contrast.

I enjoyed this by Christina Rossetti and wanted to remind everyone what a blessing language can be and how pleasantly a thought can be expressed.

I will tell you that the title comes from Habakkuk 3:8, but I won't ruin it for you any further.

"Was Thy Wrath against the Sea?"

The sea laments with unappeasable
   Hankering wail of loss,
     Lifting its hands on high and passing by
       Out of the lovely light:
No foambow any more may crest that swell
  Of clamorous wave which toss;
    Lifting its hands on high it passes by
      From light into the night.
Peace, peace, thou sea! God's wisdom worketh well,
  Assigns it crown or cross:
    Lift we all hands on high, and passing by
      Attest: God doeth right.

The times are turbulent,
And the Holy Church is rent,
And who tremble or repent?

_{---Christina Rossetti}

I have said that religion has become a nest of private desires and political expectations; it fails as a consolation for our sorrows or an affirmation of our hopes.

I found someone else to help Dave Hayward explain this to you. You might remember the tender place Spencer Burke has in his heart for heretics. Here the simpleton host asks for help from his simpleton guest.

(And if you happen to be drinking a sticky beverage while viewing this, I strongly recommend you throw a towel over your keyboard.)

Burke:

Seems that all religions have these doomsday scenarios at the end, which seems kind of the antithesis to at least the Christian message of love, care, compassion, you know, versus fear, suspicion. Help me out. Why do you think many religions kind of fall into that angle?

King:

If we would take on a persona of saying, "Look, since our belief systems are merely pointers to that which is beyond and unnamable and unknowable, let's meet beyond our belief systems in this area of mystery and humility. And I think if the world started coming together and the world religions started coming together to celebrate the dignities of each sacred narrative, all meeting beyond our belief systems at the feet of mystery, then I think you've got phenomenal potential to really begin to create this tipping point toward celebration instead of doomsday."

"If we would take on a persona of saying..."?

I really can't tell you if Tim is using persona in its literary or Jungian sense. I can't even tell you if he knows the difference. I cannot explain in any way the appalling Babel of his brain.

Sorry.

Either way, this reminded me of a helpful editorial written long ago and far away by A. W. Tozer. When he wrote it he was talking about evangelism. I'll suggest that today it takes on ominous significance. I don't know who was responsible for little Timmy's religious instruction, but I think he should be fitted with a millstone and taken for a boat ride.

The task of the church is twofold: to spread Christianity throughout the world and to make sure that the Christianity she spreads is the pure New Testament kind.

Theoretically the seed, being the Word of God, should produce the same kind of fruit regardless of the spiritual condition of those who scatter it; but it does not work that way. The identical message preached to the heathen by men of differing degrees of godliness will produce different kinds of converts and result in a quality of Christianity varying according to the purity and power of those who preach it.

Christianity will always reproduce itself after its kind. A worldly-minded, unspiritual church, when she crosses the ocean to give her witness to peoples of other tongues and other cultures, is sure to bring forth on other shores a Christianity much like her own.

Not the naked Word only but the character of the witness determines the quality of the convert. The church can do no more than transplant herself. What she is in one land she will be in another. A crab apple does not become a Grimes Golden by being carried from one country to another. God has written His law deep into all life; everything must bring forth after its kind.

Tozer ended the same column with:

Evangelical Christianity...is now tragically below the New Testament standard. Worldliness is now an accepted part of our way of life. Our religious mood is social rather than spiritual.  We have lost the art of worship. We are not producing saints. Our models are successful businessmen, celebrated athletes and theatrical personalities. We carry on our religious activities after the methods of the modern advertiser. Our homes have been turned into theaters. Our literature is shallow and our hymnody borders on sacrilege. And scarcely anyone seems to care.

We must have a better kind of Christian soon or within another half century we may have no true Christianity at all.

 

Fundamentalism is not a movement towards orthodoxy but a movement away from orthodoxy.

Reading people like David Hayward is always helpful. You should read more of David Hayward. In fact, I don't believe you can really understand Western Christianity if you don't consider the consequences of its ideas, and Dave is a result of some very stupid ideas which Christians now embrace.

If you don't read about Billy Sunday or Bob Jones or Lonnie Frisbee or Ted Haggard or Bill Hybels or Kent Hovind, you might think these are occasional exceptions to the rule, and the rule is men like Polycarp, Augustine, Aquinas, Ambrose, Calvin and Merton. My own theory is that one of the purposes of Christian academia is to foster that misapprehension. When you bring home your diploma and show it to your wife as some feeble explanation for why you spent all that time in your study away from her, you'd like for her to come away with the belief that you are prepared to discuss the men on the second list. If you tell her you were something of a classroom authority on Jimmy Swaggart, you will soon be talking to the hand.

Christians really don't believe ideas have consequences any longer. They have some vague notion that there are bad ideas out there and that they won't sleep peacefully until they are squelched with extreme prejudice, but unless the ideas come from other academics they are not really dangerous, and to treat them as lethal is a little unbalanced.

The truth is, every error is fatal—eventually. All errors aren't immediately fatal, and we lose track of the small errors in our battles over the big errors, and I'm sure that can't always be helped. But one result of this misperception is that we organize our objections according to the size of the errors and the threat we perceive in them. And what literate person is going to read David Hayward and perceive any real threat? A guy still struggling with his adverbs can't really grasp our reasons for studying systematic theology.

Clearly we need more perceptive people.

We used to have some perceptive people, but unless their ideas dovetailed nicely with pressing agendas, they didn't really require us to change anything. So that when men like Machen and Tulga and Tozer pointed out the bizarre and caustic aftereffects of fundamentalism, no blustering fundamentalist needed to reconsider his tangents. Even after the publication of Majesty Hymns! How much of church liturgy and history has been savaged and abandoned to bring fundamentalists to the point where they could fracture over which Bible translation was inspired?

Similarly with Neo-evangelicalism: so long as there was sufficient bowing and scraping toward evangelism and relevance and "reaching the world in our generation", it didn't really matter what differences it entertained about what the Gospel included or excluded. And this confusion was recently documented for us in the Manhattan Declaration. What began as a pious pose on "seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering" ended up dividing the evangelical world over a definition of the Gospel.

Excellent work, gentlemen!

Having resolved all the disgraces addressed in the Evangelical Manifesto of May 7, 2008, we move on to the grand imperatives of the Manhattan Declaration of October 20, 2009.

I'm going to suggest that we are not being led by thoughtful men who understand ideas at all; we are led by hysterical men gripped by obsessions and personal needs. Whether it is a fracas over what homosexual actor played in what religious movie or whether it is about how many goats we can buy for the people in Burundi, we are adrift in the worst possible way. The center has not held. In fact we have forgotten what a center does.

So we have made a home for people like David Hayward and Doug Pagitt, and these latter-day divines are not just comical, they have become typical. The faith they seek to share, or the faith they are losing and then finding and then losing and then finding is not really a faith by any classical definition. Religion today is not a culture of ideas; it is a battleground of obsessions. It is a nest of private desires and political expectations. It is not a consolation for our sorrows or an affirmation of our hopes.

David Hayward helps us see that.

When we last looked in on our free agent heretic it was just before St. Rudolph took to the holiday skies. You may recall his thoughts about how his morphing god found accommodations "within the affairs of people".

Luke the Evangelist tells us that "in Him we live, and move, and have our being". Dave tells us that God "lives, moves, and has his being" in time and space of the cosmos, history, our human interaction.

Which is nice, I guess, for him, but it is in no conceivable way orthodox Christian teaching. I suspect you could probably select at random any decade from church history to find a condemnation of that heresy.

I told myself we were rid of this nonsense for the year of our Lord 2009; he might resume his god-fantasies in the new year, but if I wanted more religious poppycock before the stores closed, I would have to rifle McLaren's or Jones's dumpsters.

Clearly that was the eggnog talking.

On the 18^th he issued an apology to his critics wherever they were vacationing. He made ten points. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say he made a list containing ten items.

Six are interesting to me because of they tell us about Dave Hayward and his peers (if we can abuse the language enough to say that Dave has peers).

1.  I'm accused of inconsistency. I am not trying to be consistent. I'm trying to be honest. I question the assumption that we can even have a systematic theological comprehension of everything.

Just for the record, I haven't read a single theologian, pastor or theological writer who ever assumed that he had a "systematic theological comprehension of everything". (If any of our readers know of such a theologian, pastor or theological writer, please drop us a note containing bibliographical particulars: I've been given gift cards to several large bookstore chains. I have a long list of books I want, but I'm prepared to drop the last one on the list for a book by—or about—anyone who thinks he has a systematic theological comprehension of everything.)

That is just silliness, and probably a lie as well. What men have assumed—or reasoned—is that whatever little they might know could be put into a system. Those are two very different things. Owning all the diamonds in the world is not the same as taking the diamonds you do own and organizing them according to carat, clarity, color and cut.

Mathematics deals with numbers which, like concepts about God, extend into infinity. Only fools pretend that balancing your checkbook is a waste of time and brain cells because we cannot comprehend the infinite. And only fools say that systematizing our knowledge of God constitutes a claim of comprehensive theological knowledge of everything.

2. I'm accused of not telling people what to believe. I'm not trying to tell people what to believe. I am trying to respect each person's responsibility for their [sic] own faith.

This also misrepresents the facts. When we tell our children not to reach up and grab the stovetop, we are not telling them what to believe, we are telling them the truth about stoves, and we too are respecting each person's responsibility for his own actions. Indeed we are expanding this child's sphere of responsibility by introducing him to a distinction he has not yet appreciated. Hot stovetops will burn little fingers no matter what children believe.

3. I'm accused of being a universalist. I know we are all connected. That we are all one. I'm trying to understand this and articulate it theologically.

Given that non sequitur, I can only assume Dave doesn't know what the word universalist means. Everyone is connected in some way, of course: we are all sons of Adam, we are all heirs to his estate, we are all immoral creatures, we all have a Judge at the door.... What we want to know is if we are connected in any particular way that will survive the Judgment of the Living and the Dead.

4. I'm accused of being unorthodox. I'm not trying to be orthodox. I want to know the truth for myself for which I can live and die.

I think the question that leaps to every rational mind is: Are you willing to live and die for a falsehood? That is what is at issue. No one is saying that Dave shouldn't look; what many are telling him is that he won't find truth where he is looking.

5. I'm accused of not being missional. In fact, I think I am more missional! Believing we are all one, I am trying to find an articulation of this unity that bridges the illusory gaps between me and everyone else, including non-believers.

Just because a person thinks he is missional does not make him missional any more than my thinking I live in Buck House makes me the King of England. An impressive host of people are telling Dave that the gaps that exist between people are not at all illusory. I think maybe he should look up the word illusory on the way to checking out the word universalist.

8. I'm accused of being confused. I admit I don't understand. Yet. But I'm desperately trying. I am seeking, and in seeking I will find.

We did actually pick up on the "desperately trying" part, and that is the relevant point. Many people are "desperately trying" and abysmally failing. If they are confused and if they lack understanding, they should be told. And not just because we want to. This is what Jesus did, this is what Jesus told his Apostles to do, it is what the Apostles did, and it is what the Apostles to us to do.

We could even call this "making a life in the way of Jesus".

_______________

Dave Hayward is not just a lonely crackpot. He may well be—and we could certainly wish he were—a lonely crackpot, but you must consider that he is not alone. Dave is groping in a dark place, but he has plenty of company.

If you want to understand your hour in history, you must understand, at some basic level, where the David Haywards and Brian McLarens and Doug Pagitts came from. These fruits don't just fall from trees no one planted.

How did we ever get to the point that simpleminded people would glibly dismiss what no one ever assumed to be the case [that theological systems represent a comprehensive knowledge of everything] and take as a virtue this blind groping for a theology to accommodate the bag of grubworms they call their minds? I mean, who does this?! Who confuses speaking the truth with "telling people what to believe"?

Who tries to extrude a soteriology from this pre-adolescent wish that "we are all connected"? Who thinks wheat and tares are "all one"? Did Jesus ever believe or teach this? In what sense exactly are the children of light connected to the children of disobedience? Where do we find this indifference toward orthodoxy? Where does this denial of truth come from and what makes this search for "truth" outside orthodoxy plausible and realistic to them? Who even wants to build a bridge to span a gap which is merely illusory? These aren't snarkisms, they are serious questions. What set of ideas or what historical moment produces this sort of person?

We will all recognize that there is a disordered mind at work here. We might suggest to Dave some lifestyle changes or treatment options, but Dave is one of millions who has turned his back on reason and feels most comfortable trying to build a faith out of platitudes and mood swings.

Where does this view of reality come from?

Monday I should like to give a partial answer.