Evangelical Christian publishers admit Christianity's “image problem,” “postmodern turn,“ differing rival “views” within the Evangelical fold, and speak about “hopeful skepticism” and “questions” rather than dogmatic truths:
Baker Academic
Outsider Interviews, The: A New Generation Speaks Out on Christianity
Statistics tell us that Christianity has an image problem. The authors of this book hosted a national interview tour with young non-Christians and Christians to hear why. Also see Christianity and the Postmodern Turn: Six Views
Zondervan
Perform a search at Zondervan's site for all their books with the word, “views” in their Title, and you will discover a host of Christians arguing for differing views and debating each other inside the same book, check out the list of titles!
Intervarsity Press
Click here to see Intervarsity's books with views& in their title and you will discover (just as in the case above) a host of Christians arguing for differing views and debating each other inside the same book! One new book includes the views of two secular biblical scholars pitted against moderate Evangelical and conservative Evangelical scholars, who critique each other's articles, The Historical Jesus: Five Views. Also see Intervarsity Press's The Hopeful Skeptic, the story of a Christian who heard a little voice telling him to set aside the faith of his childhood. So he changed his Facebook religion status from Christian to “Hopeful Skeptic” and set out to see where God would take him.
Also see the Questioning Faith blog on Intervarsity's site, that recently featured this candid admission:
“Eric: I have been deeply involved in church for most of my life, but over the past few years I have become very unsure of anything. I have read a great deal of history and anthropology and have found so many different societies and cultures have developed religions that claim to be the One. I have found early religions that seem to presage the stories of the Bible, often telling the same stories in different settings or earlier times. It makes me wonder if the Bible is simply carrying on the oral tradition that other, earlier societies had developed. I have tried to discuss my doubts with pastors and with priests and have generally been told to just accept God's Word. “Take it on faith.” When I try to get my head around prayer, I run into too many questions- why have prayer circles, with many people praying for the same thing, when God is supposed to hear even the lowliest of us in our silent prayer? Does God hear a loud chorus more clearly? I wonder if creating a God is just a way to give us something bigger than ourselves to lean on, to ask for help, to rely on. I felt safer when I just didn't allow my questions to come to the surface, but I have had so many uncertainties that they just won't go away. I have read all of the Scriptures and know many of them by heart, but it seems like a sham - at least my belief in them now does. I wish I could just “believe,” but it isn't there for me. How do I stop wondering if God is really there? In addition to all of this, I have lost a daughter, who was so young and innocent and who clearly did nothing to deserve to die. My little sister was born with a serious developmental disability. My mom died very young of a brain tumour. Saying God works in mysterious ways or that He has a plan for us or that they are in His hands is not an answer. At least it seems like a glossing over to try to make me stop asking. What do I do to find my faith, again? I am aching for answers.”
Recent books not published by Christian presses but which demonstrate that people, including former Christians are growing less interested in doctrinal dogmatic replies to their many questions:
Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism) by Frank Schaeffer (Hardcover - Oct 27, 2009)
The Case for God by Karen Armstrong (Hardcover - September 22, 2009) Armstrong's “God” is not exactly the “God” of doctrinal dogmatic religion but a “God” of universal mystery and hiddeness, and she advocates one stream of spirituality in particular, the via negativa, the apophatic stream.
Roll Around Heaven: An All-True Accidental Spiritual Adventure by Jessica Maxwell (Hardcover - Oct 6, 2009)
A Spiritual Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe: Travel Tips for the Spiritually Perplexed by Paul Rademacher (Hardcover - May 22, 2009)
Lastly, see Christine Wicker's website in which she's keeping up with the latest statistics concerning The Fall of the Evangelical Nation.
There are a few things here to be addressed:
ReplyDelete1. Christianity has an "image problem" because too many people and ministers are concerned with "image".
The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (to which I belong) preaches faith based on the content of God's Word alone--nothing added or taken away.
Despite outside criticisms, the LCMS (and the confessional Lutheran Church international) will not change this focus no matter what outsiders or numbers say. If there were only two Lutherans in all the world, we would hold to the principles of faith by Scripture alone.
2. Although the number of denominations is unfortunate, it is far from new. During the Reformation era, Christianity hadLutherans, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans Pietists, Anabaptists, New Arians, Anti-Trinitarians, and others; during the period of the early church had coptics, gnostics, docetists, Ebionites, arianism, and others.
Point is, this is not a new problem nor is it unique to Christianity; people will find factions in all faiths and politics. This is why a living faith plays a vital role in determining right teaching from the wrong (see John 10:1-7).
These issues are also why Luther was adamant that Scripture alone be used when determining all matters of faith. Our human desire for recognition and value causes too many people to put their own marketable view on God's Word--you've got the Joel Olsteen version, and the Rick Warren version, and the TD Jakes version, and the Joyce Meyer version...--because they have something to personally gain OR because they are shooting for a higher position in heaven.
Everyone teaching God's Word--especially those set up as authorities--must be vetted and then rejected if they subvert Scripture to their own message or identity. (And I'll make it easy--all of the above figures do NOT preach CHRISTian faith.)
Two easily identifiable and telling symptoms of false doctrine: 1) if someone teaches a faith that glosses over (or does not identify at all) the problem of sin, and 2) if their work does not focus on Christ and His work.
A third would be if they are using any "dynamic" translation of the Bible (e.g. NLT, RSV, Good News Bible, The Message, et al.) or refer to several versions in one work or message.
This spiritual vetting process is the real work of The Holy Spirit. (John 16:4-15).
And to Eric I would say this:
3. Prayer is terribly exploited by many Christian communities today. It has been the catalysts for political activism and a method for seeking riches or health.
These are corruptions of prayer. There is nothing wrong with public praying (whether in a public place or in a church setting) but God does not hear us more or less based on group size or personal earnestness. And it does not matter to our spiritual lives if the state bans prayer in schools.
Christians must remember Jesus words in Matthew 6:5-8 (God prefers private prayer), and later that of his brother in James 4:3 (unfruitful prayer based on sinful motives), when it comes to prayer.
4. Eric's questions concerning God's goodness based on all the sickness and death in the world is one that burns in all our hearts. There is no easy answer, but the right answer is that God is good and faithful; I dare say that what our limited, sin-cursed human comprehension deems a tragedy, God perhaps deems otherwise. And that is why it is our responsibility to keep our souls prepared for what are those unknown last five minutes of our journey on this earth. (see Luke 13:1-5)
I would beg to differ with JKRadke as to why Christianity is suffering from an "image problem" at the start of the 21st century.
ReplyDeleteThe problem, put most succinctly by "Eric" and "glossed over" nearly completely by both "Ruth" and JKRadke, was that as he became more informed about Christianity he began to doubt. He stepped outside of the dogmatic, traditional, "Let's Not Address This Issue Directly" cage and took a good look at what he had been believing, (much like JKRadke's hero, Luther, had done at one time) and found it wanting. Additionally, when he went to those who were supposed to be experts, or at least knowledgeable about such matters, what he was handed was sorely lacking in any form of substance. Compound that with trying to search for his answers in the Bible itself and further not finding them - he turned to outside sources. Most likely the internet.
There - of course - he finally found some answers: his faith was based on inconsistencies, myth, plagiarism, historical inaccuracies and in some instances, outright lies. How could he not doubt?
If JKRadke or "Ruth" want to answer him, they would do well to stick with addressing "Eric's" specific problems as opposed to beating the "Here's How I Deal With Stupid Questions" bush. I would submit to JKRadke that there is a third criteria as a "easily identifiable and telling symptoms of false doctrine": that of obfuscation in answering the intellectual and emotional needs of the fold.
The first problem of doubt stems from the human condition of selfishness, as articulated with "the doubter finds the Christian faith wanting", "the doubter finds God lacking", and "the doubter finds himself need or requiring to know X or Y".
ReplyDeleteWe are an egocentric lot that will forever clash against a God who asks for trust and faith.
God or Intelligence: one has to give. One will quench the soul's thirst and the other will be like drinking salt water in the desert.
Hmm... Allow me to relieve you of some predispositions:
ReplyDelete"The first problem of doubt stems from the human condition of selfishness... &tc, &tc."
No, I would posit that doubt is a state of mind requiring reinforcement of it's opposite: certainty. Certainty is a quality of knowing, understanding or comprehension. Now to a certain way of thinking (mystical) doubt might be answered by faith - although faith alone cannot create certainty because faith is a by-product of a belief in something which cannot be verified by sensory data (as opposed to the other way around, ie, that faith leads to belief).
For instance: I might be somehow enhanced through drugs, psychosis, neurosis, pathology, environmental consequences, the printed word or what-have-you to come to "believe" that I am being followed by a Herd of Invisible Pink Polka-Dotted Bunnies (HIPPDB's). My belief could lead me to conclude that things around me were the direct consequences of the actions of the HIPPDB's and I might start pointing out things that appear, sound, feel and smell to me like the workings of the HIPPDB's. If somehow I could convince you - or anyone else, really - that the HIPPDB's were, for instance, responsible for all of the coffee beans turning red or clouds to appear flying-saucer shaped, then unless there really were HIPPDB's, one would have to take the evidence on faith. Belief leads to Faith. Not the other way around. Perhaps eventually even they would start seeing HIPPDB's!
Now - would you call yourself "selfish" for not believing in my Herds of Pink Polka-Dotted Bunnies?
Probably not.
Likewise, Christians on the whole seem to somehow expect others to take what they have only experienced within the confines of their belief system on faith, for, whether you want to "believe" it or not, there is absolutely no proof that anyone named "Jesus" ever lived. None. Not one shred of evidence - even in the Bible itself - that anyone alive at the time that "Jesus" was supposedly living even ever knew the guy. No scrap of paper, no golden tablet, no stone inscriptions, no burial chamber, no cross, no first-source material (and there certainly seems to be a lot of copies of copies of copies, but not one original torn corner of a papyrus that even indicates that anyone ever knew him), not even any relatives left to give any account of him a generation after the fact! Nothing. Nada. Zip.
Pilate: silent. The Sanhedrin: silent. The Romans: silent. On and on and on and on - you'd think that a guy who apparently raised somebody from the dead, fed a multitude on a couple of haddock and shards of bread, turned H20 into Pinot Griggio, got nailed to a cross, died and then came back might have made some form of impression on people. Nope. No one even noticed him apparently amongst the multitudes of other "prophets" of that time.
Not until 70 years later did he even actually start to appear in any meaningful manner, and even then, it doesn't appear that that guy even ever might have known him - just "of him", as it were.
No, there's nothing "selfish" about questioning the veracity of Christianity. If anything, I'd say that was a noble endeavor. It is not "egocentric" to want to know - it is the mark of a "God-like" human to seek this so-called "God" out wherever "He" may be, wherever it may lead. It is not selfish or egocentric to admit you don't know something and wish to - it is selfish and egocentric to believe you have the answers when in fact, you don't.
"God or Intelligence: one has to give. One will quench the soul's thirst and the other will be like drinking salt water in the desert."
When Intelligence gives, Ignorance takes over. One could probably bank on that.
Hi guys, In my post I was simply focusing on books and topics from Evangelical Christian sites, and sharing what I found there.
ReplyDeleteEvangelical diversity continues to increase, and also more Evangelicals seem less interested in inerrancy and creationism these days. There's also less agreement concerning abortion and homosexuality. There's a diversity of views arising. Like herding cats?
Progressives and moderates seem to have gained some ground over the more conservative Evangelical leaders from the past.