The End of Empires, A Similar Perspective

Tying together the economic crisis, imperial presidency, fiscal insanity in our government, and far-flung military commitments, Andrew Bacevich makes a compelling case that our system is worn out.  If you’ve talked with me at any point since late September, I’ve probably mentioned something about this interview to you.  Check it out and see if you found it as perceptive as I did.  The added bonus is that if I bother you about watching it, you’ll be able to hush me up.

A true story to echo his dismissal of the modern Congress as an independent institution: A friend of my mom’s knows Steve Sauerberg, who ran for the Senate against Dick Durbin in Illinois in 2008.  When Sauerberg asked a current Senator about the position, he was told that if he won he should expect a 6-year vacation because Senators don’t do anything.

The End of Empires: Rome and America

Joel Wilhelm has a provocative comparison of the late Roman Empire and the contemporary United States.  Surveying the landscape, he finds much to be concerned about:

When day to day life involves trips to the grocery store, watching TV and living in ever-expanding suburbs, you don’t see it ending. Perhaps we will have another century of more of this, but it seems to me that the end of our order is in sight. The old agrarian republic is long since dead, the Constitution is a meaningless document and we live in a centralized empire that bears only skin-deep resemblance to the Republic or the Colonies. But what does it look like when an empire really dies?

I think that Joel is on to something very important here.  Bill Maher once asked on Real Time, “Why can’t we [America] get anything done anymore?” (or something to that effect).  If I may echo Joel’s observation that we are “a balkanized and incoherent nation which is living on the fumes of past glory,” the culture wars of the 1960s really fractured national culture and I think that it results in an inability to have a common narrative and therefore a common purpose.  I love Ross Douthat’s comment on cultural fragmentation in his review of a book on conservative media.  The breakdown of the single, liberal narrative of the “mainstream media,” he says,

ha[s] less to do with the Right’s advance than with larger, post-1960s trends toward cultural fragmentation. This breakdown has been good for conservatives in certain ways: the genteel and biased liberalism of, say, Walter Cronkite or Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., no longer infuses every nook and cranny of the public sphere. But it’s worth wondering whether trading in a Cronkite for a Paris Hilton—that is, stultifying old-guard liberalism for vulgar libertinism—really represents such a great victory for the Right.

And so we find ourselves, a society divided and often unable to talk across the divide.  All the while, meaninglessness fills so much of our public culture.  To confront the economic, military, political, and diplomatic challenges facing us, we will need an infusion of seriousness and common purpose, but it is hard to see these developing from our current cultural trends.

As Joel notes, the church will go on, preserved by God.  We can certainly place our hope and our ultimate loyalty in Him even as we pray and work for the improvement of the United States.

You can also find Joel’s post on his blog, A Living Text.

James MacDonald on the Emerging Church

OK, so it’s not new, but back in 2005 James MacDonald had some interesting things to say about the emerging movement here and here.  I like how he acknowledges the strengths of the movement before explaining his criticisms.

Well, I’ll try to end my brief foray into theological/ecclesiological issues and go on back to history in future posts.

A Good Resource on the Emerging Church

Scot McKnight is a professor at North Park University in Chicago who is part of the Emerging movement.  In the Russell Moore interview that I referred to in my earlier post, he was referred to as a “moderate” in the movement.  He wrote this Christianity Today article to provide a guide to the currents in the movement.  He provides a good distinction between the terms Emerging and Emergent:

Emerging is the wider, informal, global, ecclesial (church-centered) focus of the movement, while Emergent is an official organization in the U.S. and the U.K. Emergent Village, the organization, is directed by Tony Jones, a Ph.D. student at Princeton Theological Seminary and a world traveler on behalf of all things both Emergent and emerging.

I referred to the Emerging church in my post yesterday as I knew more about the general movement than the specific Emergent branch.

McKnight’s article is definitely worth a read for those who want to learn more about this movement, and he discusses the criticisms of Emerging ideas as well.

John Piper on Lincoln’s Birthday

A wonderful, gospel-centered reflection on Lincoln.

Thoughts on the Emerging Church

Well, this started out as a comment on my friend Rick’s post, but then it was getting too long to really be a comment.  Also, I haven’t posted for a while.

I went to a service that was Emerging-influenced for about 6 months and really liked it before I had to move.  It was theologically orthodox as far as I could tell.  But the video in Rick’s post raised some good points about McLaren’s beliefs about salvation that I didn’t know about.  I read McLaren’s The Secret Message of Jesus, but that focuses less on McLaren’s views on Christ as Savior than on the Christian life and the meaning of the kingdom of God.  It was helpful to see his views on salvation explored by the video (a bit snarky for my taste, but helpful nonetheless).

I think that the strength of the Emerging movement is in its concept of Christian living.  It challenges the American-evangelical synthesis that tends to equate the Christian life with American middle-class existence and also tends to automatically approve of (and sometimes give biblical warrant to) American capitalism and foreign policy.  Yes, there are exceptions, and it seems that these exceptions are increasing.  But the American-evangelical synthesis still seems to be a pretty powerful cultural current in the church today.

What the Emerging view of the Christian life does admirably, in my opinion, is challenge us to look anew at the kind of life that Christ wants us to live.  Whatever its other faults, The Secret Message of Jesus explores Jesus’ kingdom ethics in a serious way, trying to take the Sermon on the Mount at face value rather than making it safer and easier as Christians sometimes have.  The Emerging movement seems to call people away from hyper-individualism into a more community-oriented way of thinking and calls people’s attention to the message of social justice in the Bible that the American-evangelical synthesis tends to minimize, in my opinion.

But there are a couple problems that have probably struck you already.  First, the truly Christian life is inseparable from saving faith in Christ.  What I am suggesting is that the Emerging perspective may have some insights that we don’t see, just as a follower of liberal theology or even a non-Christian like Gandhi sometimes perceive things that believers miss.  In other words, as Russell Moore says in this discussion of the Emergent church, we can learn from the critique.

Second, there seems to be in some Emerging circles (and definitely McLaren’s writings) the belief in a heaven on earth.  There are definitely different perspectives on the end times and what “the kingdom” means, but there’s really a this-worldly emphasis in what this means for some Emerging writers, it seems.  In one way, this is a good reminder that we are called to make a difference for Christ in this world.  In a sense, it doesn’t seem all that different than the evangelical post-millenial views that produced reform movements, including abolitionism, in the 19th century.  We need people who dare to say that things can be different or perhaps even that, as McLaren called his recent book (which I haven’t read), Everything Must Change.

But this poses two dangers.  First, the Emerging approach can de-emphasize eternity to a pretty radical degree, which I don’t think that 19th-century evangelicals did.  Secondly, the kingdom-on-earth movements seem like they’re ripe for disappointment.  I live in Illinois, which has become famous as the most corrupt state in the Union.  There may be a drive to clean up state politics, and it may even succeed.  But will this really solve all future problems?  Or will the sinful nature of future generations of humans find new ways to be corrupt?  The latter seems to be the only plausible answer.  It’s my understanding that even the optimistic evangelicalism of the 19th century died as it ran up against the horrors of the Civil War.

In conclusion, we may be able to find the cure for both the American-evangelical synthesis and the missteps of people in the Emerging movement in the early church.  The apostles and the Christians that followed them in the early centuries did indeed set up a community that radically challenged the culture surrounding them, including rich and poor, men and women, Jew and Gentile, (repentant) homosexuals and (repentant) Pharisees.  They shared with each other and often refused to participate in the Roman army (some for pacifist reasons).  But they also preached the gospel: Christ as the only way to the Father.

If God’s people live on earth with these principles, the American-evangelical synthesis and kingdom-on-earth ideas can be overwhelmed by a greater reality.  We don’t have to bring about God’s kingdom here and now or carry water for “the American way of life.”  We can by used by God to carry out his purposes here on earth, which we often aren’t fully aware of.  If he gives us great victories or causes/allows us to be frustrated, so be it.  To quote from the notes on a recent presentation by Mark Dever (which helped me form my thoughts for this paragraph):

We cannot finally judge the correctness of what we do by the immediate response that we get. The need for numbers puts an unnecessary stress on pastors and misunderstands the way that God saves.

We must practice our ministries realizing that some of us will be like Adoniram Judson or William Carey, who had no converts until after seven years of faithful gospel ministry. It’s a fact that most people don’t believe the gospel the first time they hear it.

In the same way, we can ask God to help us combine a full commitment to preaching the gospel with living transformed lives in a fallen world.

I’d greatly value any responses to the ideas in this post.  There are a lot of general statements that I hope to explore in future posts.

Looking for Something to Read or Watch?

I’ve posted some book recommendations and some links to compelling interviews.  These will have permanent pages so that I can update them as I encounter new things to share.

The Poetry of Langston Hughes

John Piper has posted some wonderful poems from the great African-American poet Langston Hughes here.  I love that Piper has made racial reconciliation such a high priority.  May God bless him and others as they work toward this goal.