First, it would have to be political without being partisan. That is, it would have to equip all its members to be culturally engaged through vocation and civic involvement without identifying corporately with one political party. Second, it would have to be confessional yet ecumenical. That is, the church would have to be fully orthodox within its theological and ecclesiastical tradition yet not narrow and harsh toward other kinds of Christians. It should be especially desirous of cooperation with non-Western Christian leaders and churches. Third, the church would not only have to preach the Word faithfully, but also be committed to beauty and sanctity, the arts, and human rights for all. In this brief section he sounds a lot like Lesslie Newbigin and James Hunter, who have described a church that can have a "missionary encounter with Western culture."
It is a fine description of how the Church should undertake the new evangelisation and the fact that this summary comes from a renowned Reformed source is evidence of the extent to which creedal orthodoxy empowers differing confessional traditions to cohere around the Christological centre in mission.
The second vision comes from a recent sermon by a United Church of Christ pastor, carried by both Episcopal Cafe and the Huffington Post:
The divisions that we face within our denominations, the decline of the mainline church over the last generation, and the changing realities we face in a society more pluralistic than ever beg the question of whether or not we are -- any of us, regardless of denomination -- doing church in the right way ...
Within the mainline tradition there is a growing consensus moving our churches in a progressive theological direction. We read the Hebrew Scripture and the stories of the Prophets, and their battles for economic justice resonate with our own times. As we reflect on the life and ministry of Jesus as shared with us in the Christian New Testament we hear God calling us further to be a people of justice concerned with the "least of these" and with those on the margins. Jesus' own teachings have called many of us to embrace movements of liberation for Africans, Latin Americans, women, and gays and lesbians. We believe that those who use the Bible to justify discrimination or who wield Holy Scripture as a partisan political weapon to divide are the heirs of those who just a generation ago used the Bible to justify Jim Crow laws and worse. Those of us who still hear God speaking -- a slogan of the United Church of Christ that can also be explained as feeling the Holy Spirit opening up our hearts in new and exciting ways just as Jesus did for his community and time -- need to band together and live out the unity that we are called to live in Christ in new and more substantial ways.
The contrast is indeed stark and, to some extent, embodies the current debate over Anglican futures: creedal catholicity oriented towards the new evangelisation or liberal protestant community of inclusion?
3 comments:
This is the money quote from the second article:
"So today, I come with a proposal. Let's throw out the rule book, break with tradition..."
Quite telling.
I see the second path as the only rational one to follow - if we want to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. However, there will be a cost. The 'comfortable' will leave the Church to those of us who are prepared to live with the poor and the marginalised.
These were the people whom Jesus befriended, and for whose sake he was crucified and forsaken - and for whom the Church exists.
Jason - indeed, very telling. The irony, of course, is that it proposes replacing one tradition with another tradition, that of liberal protestantism.
Fr. Ron - I am not sure how to respond! I find it strange that an Anglo-Catholic would propose following a liberal protestant path. The outline given by Tim Keller of the new evangelisation quite explicitly referred to recognising and protecting the human dignity of all (the unborn child and the gay person, the prisoner and the terminally ill) - this is indeed part of the Church's mission.
To turn this round, however, and make inclusion *the* defining feature of the Church's mission rather than an aspect of it, oriented towards transformation in the Kingdom, is perhaps *the* liberal protestant credo.
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