A Little History

I come from the Wesleyan denomination. I am actually a card-carrying member of the church. This church is a holiness denomination, meaning that we have continued to stress the importance of entire sanctification or Christian perfection as one of the tenets of our theology.

A little history is in order though. My denomination was started as a holiness denomination. The Wesleyan Church (actually, then, it was the Wesleyan-Methodist Connection) was the first denomination to be founded with the idea of entire sanctification in our doctrine. This made us quite distinct. We officially espoused the belief that a believer could move through the Christian life and could be given the grace to have perfect love of God and perfect love of neighbor.

However, there is another quite unique thing about our denomination's founding that does not merit much attention - and really should. We were started as an anti-slavery denomination. My denomination broke off of the Methodist Church because the big church would not take a stance against slavery (because they did not want to lose their Southern members). So, a group of clergy left the Methodist Church and founded a denomination that would not put up with the sin of slavery. This is the founding of the Wesleyan Church.

My church then, was founded on a "social justice" issue. It was also the first denomination founded on a social justice issue. So, my denomination was the first one founded on these two principles. However, our tradition goes further. It was one of our pastors - Luther Lee - that preached the first sermon for the ordination of a women. This was about 1845 (curiously enough, I just saw a book that stated that traced the evangelical struggle for women's suffrage - it stated the struggle started in 1970).

I am a little angry because this whole tradition has been lost. Our founders intimately connected the concepts of social holiness and personal holiness. They thought enough about each too include both - a first for any denomination. And yet, my denomination has now missed the boat on both of these.

Why? Well, it was for two reasons I believe. The first is that the denomination associated itself with fundamentalism, not wanting to be theologically liberal. The problem in doing this is that they lost the social teaching that was so integral to our denomination. This also led to an overstress on personal holiness. With this, the stress on being socially holy was all but lost. Individuals could be holy, not social institutions.

Now, I think that with my generation coming to lead churches and be active, social holiness (or some brand of being socially active) will become more important. At Asbury Seminary, we Wesleyans really wrestled with how we were going to do this (all of us wrestled with this as well, not just the "crazy liberals" like myself). However, with the denomination's new penchant for wanting to have huge churches, we have lost the call to personal holiness. We do this because we would not want anyone to feel left out or out of place or uncomfortable. We would not want to call people to live a holy life because this might ultimately cost us some people in our pews. I think that this is a problem.

Overall, I think it's about time that we Wesleyans deal with our history. In fact, it is about time that the entire holiness movement deal with its history (many holiness denominations' stories are very similar to ours). It is time to reappropriate what our history taught us. This begins by calling people to begin to pursue the grace of God so that God may teach us and give us perfect love for Him and for our neighbors - essentially, so that we can fulfill the Sermon on the Mount. Second, we need to begin to believe in the power of God to not only change individuals, but to change the world. As a popular song goes (as well as the Apostle Paul), "we are His hands, we are His feet." It's time that we start acting like it, using the grace that God has given us to work for the betterment of society.

Church Thoughts on Black Friday

I’m sitting in a Caribou Coffee on the North Shore of Chicago on the Friday after Thanksgiving – the busiest shopping day of the year – known to some as Black Friday.

The people that use this moniker – Black Friday – are a group of people that are anti-consumeristic, protesting the complete consumerism of this day. I, at times, can be lumped into this category. I believe I have good theological reasons to be lumped into this category (more on that in a later post). However, today I want to talk about what I see as a continual place of “Black Sunday” in the church. It seems as though every Sunday is a “Black Sunday.”

My thoughts on this subject come from thinking about a paper I am planning on submitting to a consumerism and Christianity conference. I have begun to think about consumerism in Christianity in light of St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s treatise On Loving God. I believe that the present-day church has lost sight of the ideas in this treatise in its move towards becoming quite consumeristic.

A quick overview of Bernard’s treatise is in order. Bernard’s treatise is basically a treatise meant to move people toward a purer love of God. Bernard has a few different things going on in the treatise – what I am interested in is his section on the four loves. The first love is love of one’s self for the self’s sake. This is basically the idea that I love me for my own sake. What I do, I do for my own sake. I eat so that I may live. This is a concern for me and is necessary to be able to live. The second love is the love of God for the sake of one’s self. Basically, Bernard is talking about how people move from a love of their selves to a love of God because people figure out that loving God is good for them; that loving God will get them stuff, i.e. eternal life, joy, love, etc. The third love is that where a person learns to love God for the sake of God. Here, the person after learning what God can do for oneself learns to love God simply because God is God. It is a pure love, one in which the self begins to disappear and God is all that has one’s focus and adoration. The fourth love is the love of self for the sake of God. This is the seeking of God in oneself because oneself has the image of God impressed upon oneself. It is a mystical union that fleetingly may happen in this life but which is being moved toward in this life for full fulfillment in the next life.

I believe that the present-day church has stopped preaching this idea of four loves. Instead, we preach an idea of two loves. We preach the idea that we should stop loving ourselves and that we should begin to love God. The reasons that we give though for loving God is because of what God can do for us. I am just sitting here thinking about how many times I have heard that I should “give my life to Jesus” because then I will get eternal life. Or because then I will experience true love. Or because I will get joy. Or because I may get a “blessing”. The list really goes on and on. What is continually reinforced though is that I get something for loving God; that God, in return for loving Him, will give me some sort of reward.

I am going to use an example of this and one which may not be popular. However, The Purpose Driven Life is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Despite Rick Warren’s first few words (“It’s not about you…”), the book goes onto talk of how a relationship with God is beneficial for me. The book begins with a call to give one’s life to Jesus. So, it begins with a call for a love of God. Then it goes on to talk of how doing these five things and participating in them will help give one’s life purpose. Getting a purpose driven life is the goal. Finding a meaning for one’s life is the goal. The goal is not a love of God for the sake of God. What the book says is “love God and get purpose.”

Now, I am not blaming Warren. His book is just a good example of a culture within the church which breeds a consumeristic Christianity. What we have done is to base our efforts on getting people to “buy” the message and to get them to be “repeat customers”, which means that we do whatever we can to get them in the door and then keep them in. This even includes making the message a little less than the actual call of God on us – to actually love Him because He is Him.

I want to end by asking a question – When was the last time you heard, or even asked, would you love God even if He said you would go to Hell? I believe that true Christianity must look disciple believers to be able to say, “Yes, I would love God even if I went to Hell because He is God.” This is a hard question and an even harder answer. But then again, no one ever said that Christianity was easy.

Liberating Theology

In my last post, I made an allusion that maybe I would talk about why I embrace a lot of liberation theology. So, here goes why. Part of this is academic, part of it is reflective on the world in which I live and I see others living.

First off, part of me wants to say that I do not really "do" liberation theology because I am no need of liberation. Essentially, as I enter the debate, I am a white-middle class male who has essentially all that I need - I am not oppressed or disenfranchised. So, why do I even talk of liberation theology.

Well, I talk of, embrace, and even do liberation theology because I am a holiness person. I come from a holiness denomination. For a quick recap, holiness people believe that one can become perfect in love, thus attaining what could be called a sinless life. (The word sinless needs a lot of nuance here, but I don't have the time). Now, I believe that the Scriptures call for the same perfection in love leading to sinlessness from not only individuals, but from society as a whole. I believe that societal sin, like oppression of the poor and marginalized, the underpayment of women, the destruction of the environment, and so on and so on are the results of societal sin and must be remedied.

Now, I believe that Scripture does call for this. It seems that the prophets (esp. Amos) talk more against the societal sin and the destruction that has come because Israel has fallen away from God, more than against individual people. Individual people are not the problem - the problem is that Israel has forgotten the Torah that structures their holy society and have fallen into states of sin.

The New Testament I also think calls for social holiness and liberation theology. The epistles of Paul are a great example. Here, he writes to churches, sometimes through the address of one person, but they are to churches. In writing to churches, he admonishes these churches to be holy and to have a renewing of its mind, not that just all the individuals should do this. Collectively, as a church, Paul is admonishing the people to become socially holy.

It must be admitted that, as is lying below the suface above, that I associate liberation theology with social holiness. I do this because no one in my tradition wants to touch the issue of social holiness with a ten foot pole. Actually, no one would pick up the pole to touch it (I am going to, but it may take a little time). I think that liberation theology fills the void, calling people/Christians to a place where they remember that social sin exists and that we must fight against that as much as against the sin in our own lives. I mean, we must remember that God is the God of the whole world, not just individual people.

Really though, I think the main reason that I do this is because it offers hope. Often, especially in evangelicalism, we here about how awful and sinful the world is. I agree. However, do we not believe in a God that can overcome that sin? Are we not the agents of God in the world that God has chosen to work through to overcome that sin? It seems that we are the hope that God has for the world and liberation theology tells us that, along with telling the oppressed and disenfranchised that there are people who are fighting for them, so they should also have hope. Hope is central to liberation theology, as it is central to who Jesus Christ is and what Jesus Christ offers.

I'm really stinking bad at this. I've actually tried a couple of times to post on here, but I never do it right, so things get all messed up. Anyway, I'm giving it a shot.One of the great things, for me, about doing a doctorate at a Jesuit (Catholic) University is that I get to meet and encounter people that I would not normally encounter. I have had two such encounters in the last few weeks.

The first such encounter was with Gustavo Gutierrez. It could be said that Gutierrez helped to start the Liberation Theology movement. While many people, especially Evangelical Christians, frown on this movement, I support and embrace this movement. I think it represents the heart of the Gospel in many ways. Maybe I'll write about why that is next time. However, in talking with Gutierrez (I got to have lunch with some of my classmates), he continually brought the conversation back again and again to being Christian. He talked many times of be a theologian of the Church (not just Catholic, but Universal). He talked about Jesus going on after Liberation Theology and that Jesus would always impact the world because He offers hope. There was incredible hope in the message of Father Gutierrez. It was encouraging and I really loved listening to him talk about theology and living and that both are so integrated, as it was for Christ.

The second such person was Daniel Berrigan. Berrigan is a Jesuit who was instrumental in the anti-war movement of the last few decades and the civil rights movement. Overall, he is a person that challenges me in my faith because he does not believe that one can sit still in their faith. Faith in Jesus means change in one's life and movement towards being like Jesus, which means perfect love of neighbor coming through a perfect love of God. Berrigan seemed to stress this, talking about living it, and talking about not being afraid of it. It amazed me how I reacted when told of how he had been thrown in jail multiple times for his beliefs and actions - something I rejoice that happens to the persecuted church, but not to the peace church. Maybe something else I will write about soon. Anyway, it was an incredible experience to listen to him talk about embracing life and faith together.

Overall, I would say that these two men pushed me further, not only in my theology, but in my personal faith and in my walk with God. It's pretty incredible that theologians can do that. Who would've thought it?