Bonhoeffer's Religionless Christianity: Part 3, A World Come of Age

To understand Bonhoeffer's "religionless Christianity" we need to come to grips with Bonhoeffer's understanding of a "world come of age." Specifically, if a "nonreligious interpretation" is a part of the "solution" we need to understand what the "problem" or "diagnosis" might be.

In his theological letters, which began on April 30, 1944, Bonhoeffer's first mention of the "world come of age" appears in a letter dated June 8 (LPP pp. 324-329):
June 8, 1944

To Eberhard Bethge:

...I'll try to define my position from the historical angle.

The movement that began about the thirteenth century (I'm not going to get involved in any argument about the exact date) towards the autonomy of man (in which I should include the discovery of laws by which the world lives and deals with itself in science, social and political matters, art, ethics, and religion) has in our time reached an undoubted completion. Man has learnt to deal with himself in all questions of importance without recourse to the "working hypothesis" called "God." In questions of science, art, and ethics this has become an understood thing at which one now hardly dares to tilt. But for the last hundred years or so it has also become increasingly true of religious questions; it is becoming evident that everything gets along without "God"--and, in fact, just as well as before. As in the scientific field, so in human affairs generally, "God" is being pushed more and more out of life, losing more and more ground.

...Christian apologetics has taken the most varied forms of opposition to this self-assurance. Efforts are made to prove to a world thus come of age that it cannot live without the tutelage of "God." Even though there has been surrender of all secular problems, there still remain the so-called "ultimate questions"--death, guilt--to which only "God" can give an answer, and because of which we need God and the church and the pastor. So we live, in some degree, on these so-called ultimate question of humanity. But what if one day they no longer exist as such, if they too can be answered "without God"?...The attack by Christian apologetic on the adulthood of the world I consider to be in the first place pointless, in the second place ignoble, and in the third place unchristian. Pointless, because it seems to me like an attempt to put a grown-up man back into adolescence, i.e. to make him dependent on things on which he is, in fact, on longer dependent, and thrusting him into problems that are, in fact, no longer problems for him. Ignoble, because it amounts to an attempt to exploit man's weakness for purposes that are alien to him and to which he has not freely assented. Unchristian, because it confuses Christ with one particular stage in man's religiousness, i.e. with a human law. More about this later.

But first, a little more about the historical position. The question is: Christ and the world that has come of age...
Again, here in the June 8 letter we find the first wrestling with the "world come of age." According to Bonhoeffer the world come of age has achieved "autonomy" from God because, on a day to day basis, the "working hypothesis of God" is no longer needed. Humanity is, pragmatically speaking, on its own. God is "pushed more and more out of life." Bonhoeffer also describes this as leaving the "tutelage" or "guardianship" of God to enter the "adulthood of the world."

In all this, Bonhoeffer seems to be articulating a version of the "secularization hypothesis" as articulated by thinkers like Freud, Marx, Feuerbach, and Nietzsche. According to the secularization hypothesis, as humanity "matures" it will become increasingly non-religious and secular. Bonhoeffer seems to be making a similar argument. That said, while we are moving into an increasingly post-Christian culture in the West faith and spirituality remain pervasive. As I describe in Hunting Magic Eels, some call this the "myth of disenchantment." 

All that to say, standing here in 2024 it's unclear how much Bonhoeffer would want to revisit his analysis about the "world come of age." He might want to take back some of his diagnosis, or at least give it some critical nuance, which would have some downstream impact upon his vision of a "religionless Christianity." As we ponder Bonhoeffer's enigmatic letters from prison, we need to keep this issue in mind: Bonhoeffer's sociological assessment of a "world come of age" might have been mistaken, or at least too narrow.

Having offered these caveats and pushing on, Bonhoeffer makes a really surprising move at this point. For Bonhoeffer, the "world come of age" is actually a really good thing. More, Christianity, to be Christian, needs the world to come of age. For only in the world come of age can Christians fully understand both God and the gospel.

We get a hint of this move in the June 8 letter. Bethge has us note how Bonhoeffer keeps placing "God" in parentheses. That is, what is being "pushed out of the world" is a false view of God. A religious (i.e., human) view of God. This is why Bonhoeffer is so frustrated in the June 8 letter (and elsewhere) with Christian apologetics. Such an apologetics is trying to protect and prop up a misconception about who God really is in the world today. In resisting the secularization of the world Christianity has clung to a heretical notion of God. Thus, it is only in embracing the world come of age where Christianity can fully discover the true nature God. In all this, the world come of age becomes a sort of midwife to the gospel.

So, how are we to embrace the world come of age? Bonhoeffer describes what this looks like in one of his most famous (and controversial) letters:
July 16, 1944

To Eberhard Bethge:

...And we cannot be honest unless we recognize that we have to live in the world etsi deus non daretur [translation: "as if there were no God"]. And this is just what we do recognize--before God! God himself compels us to recognize it. So our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God. God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34). The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God. God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. Matt. 8:17 makes it quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering.
The phrase etsi deus non daretur, living as if there were no God, is startling. More, Bonhoeffer asks for something rather strange: Before God and with God we live without God. What could this possibly mean?

What we are encountering here is the theologia crucis of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Theologia crucis is a term coined by Martin Luther to suggest that the true nature of God can only be ascertained in the crucifixion of Jesus. That is, if you ask the questions "Who is God?" or "Where is God?" or "What is God like?" the theologia crucis answers: "Look at Jesus on the cross." The cross is who God is, where God is found, and what God like

Recall the main question of the theological letters: Who is Christ for us today? Bonhoeffer answers with the theologia crucis. We see this very clearly in the July 16th letter. Right after the shocking "Before God and with God we live without God" the very next sentence picks up the theme of theologia crucis:
God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. Matt. 8:17 makes it quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering.
God is "weak" and "powerless." God "lets himself be pushed out of the world" and "on to the cross." God helps us in the world not through power ("omnipotence") but by "his weakness and suffering." In this we see how the world come of age is functioning as a midwife to the gospel. By pushing the false "Powerful God" out of the world the way becomes clear for the God revealed in the cross of Jesus. Thus, the July 16 letter continues:
...Man's religiosity makes him look in his distress to the power of God in the world: God is the deus ex machina. The Bible directs man to God's powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help. To that extent we may say that the development towards the world's coming of age outlined above, which has done away with a false conception of God, opens up a way to seeing the God of the Bible, who wins power and space in the world by his weakness.
The world come of age kills off a "false conception of God" and this allows us to see the "God of the Bible, who wins power and space in the world by his weakness." This is how the world come of age acts as a midwife to the gospel. The "adulthood" of humanity has allowed us to dispose of a false conception of God, the Big Guy in the Sky, the deus ex machina, who swoops down to solve our problems or answer all mystery. This God has been kicked to the margins in the world come of age. And, for Bonhoeffer, this is a good thing for it allows us to see the God of the cross, the weak and powerless God here in the midst of us.

Key for Bonhoeffer is combatting the "other-worldliness" that a religious/false conception of God produces. Before the "world came of age," humanity looked to the sky and away from this world in seeking petitions and favors from a distant deity. Religion becomes other-worldly and Gnostic. God is found "outside of" or "beyond" this world. It's this other-worldliness that Bonhoeffer's religionless Christianity is trying to combat.

The world come of age helps here by denying other-worldliness, increasingly directing our attention toward "the secular," toward human life. And if you understand the incarnation and cross of Jesus, argues Bonhoeffer, this attention to human life is exactly where our attention should have been the entire time. We replace other-worldliness with the secular "this-worldliness" that Bonhoeffer speaks of over and over again in his letters. We find Christ in the "midst of life." In this secular world, we, as Christians, come to live before God and with God etsi deus non daretur.

What might that look like? As Bonhoeffer writes on July 18, Christians follow God into the world where we are "summoned to share in God's sufferings at the hands of the world." As God became radically available to the world and suffered for it, so the church becomes radically available to the world and suffers for it. And that's the crucial point. The dynamic we see in the world come of age is the same movement of the theologia crucis, a "this-worldly" focus that creates a radical availability to the world. 

The point in all this is that, yes, there is a "death of God" being spoken of in Bonhoeffer's theological letters. And there is a sense in which the secular world has marginalized God and made God irrelevant. But all this is, Bonhoeffer contends, some very good news, as it begins to clear the ground and position us to envision the true shape of the answer to the question: "Who is Christ for us today?"

Bonhoeffer's Religionless Christianity: Part 2, Who Is Christ for Us Today?

So, what does Bonhoeffer mean by "religionless Christianity"?

As noted in Part 1, there has been a great deal of speculation about Bonhoeffer's theological letters from prison. For example, many of the "death of God" theologians in the 1960s saw Bonhoeffer as their patron theologian. According to Eberhard Bethge, however, the man to whom the letters were addressed, the key to unlocking the enigmatic letters from prison is to focus on the central question Bonhoeffer raises in the very first letter from April 30:
What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today.

In short, the central issue behind the letters is Christology, the question "Who is Christ for us today?"

More specifically, Bonhoeffer is wrestling with how Christ can be Lord in a religionless world. Later in the April 30 letter Bonhoeffer raises this question of Lordship:
If our final judgment must be that the Western form of Christianity, too, was only a preliminary stage to a complete absence of religion, what kind of situation emerges for us, for the church? How can Christ become the Lord of the religionless as well?...How do we speak of God--without religion, i.e., without the temporally conditioned presuppositions of metaphysics, inwardness, and so on? How do we speak (or perhaps we cannot now even "speak" as we used to) in a "secular" way about God? In what way are we "religionless-secular" Christians, in what way are we those who are called forth, not regarding ourselves from a religious point of view as specially favored, but rather as belonging wholly to the world? In that case Christ is no longer an object of religion, but something quite different, really the Lord of the world. But what does that mean? What does it mean for Christ to be Lord of a "religionless" world, a world "come of age"?
For Bethge, these questions are critical to understanding what Bonhoeffer was wrestling with. Bonhoeffer wasn't, as some have mistakenly assumed, trying to figure out a way to translate religious categories into a secular ("religionless") language to make faith palatable to modern persons. Rather, Bonhoeffer was trying to understand how Christ could be "Lord of the world" in a world that didn't recognize Christ's existence or seem to need him. In that kind of world, who is Christ for us? In his letters Bonhoeffer tries to crawl toward an answer.

Around the central Christological question--Who is Christ for us today?--there are three recurring themes in the theological letters. The first two themes we've already mentioned. The three themes are:

  1. The "world come of age"
  2. A "nonreligious interpretation" of Christianity (a "religionless Christianity")
  3. The "arcane discipline"
Most interpreters of the letters have tended to focus on Bonhoeffer's comments about a "religionless Christianity." This is only natural as these passages are the most shocking and explosive, theologically speaking. But according to Bethge, if we place "religionless Christianity" at the theological center of the letters we'll misunderstand Bonhoeffer's project. Again, for Bethge, to understand Bonhoeffer correctly we have to place the Christological question at the center of Bonhoeffer's concerns. "Who is Christ for us today?" is the center of gravity. Consequently, any discussion of a "religionless Christianity" has to orbit that central question.

Bethege places the Christological question at the center of the letters by mapping Bonhoeffer's themes --the "world come of age," a "nonreligious interpretation," and the "arcane discipline"--onto the three chapters Bonhoeffer sketched out for the book he was working on. Recall from the last post that the three chapters were "A Stocktaking of Christianity," "The Real Meaning of the Christian Faith," and "Conclusions." Bethge maps the three themes onto the chapters in the following way:

  1. A Stocktaking of Christianity: What is Christianity in a "world come of age"?
  2. The Real Meaning of the Christian Faith: The "nonreligious interpretation"
  3. Consequences: The practice of the "arcane discipline"
In the posts to follow we'll walk through each "chapter" to try to come to understand what Bonhoeffer meant by "world come of age," "religionless Christianity," or the "arcane discipline" in his quest to answer the question "Who is Christ for us today?" 

The important thing to do going forward is to keep the Christological question at the center of our investigations, returning to it over and over. Here is Bethge making this point: 
Bonhoeffer's theme entails setting out in order to discover the presence of Christ in the world of today: it is not a discovery of the modern world, nor a discovery of Christ from this modern world, but discovering him in this world...Hence this question governs Bonhoeffer's dialogue and must preserve, in the correct relation and proportion, the explosive formulas of the world come of age, nonreligious interpretation, and arcane discipline. Without the overriding theme of this question these concepts would fall apart and become stunted or superficial. As isolated intellectual phenomena, they have little to do with Bonhoeffer's thought; but within the christological perspective of his central theme they achieve their full and independent justification.
So, that's the question going forward: Who is Christ for us today?

Bonhoeffer's Religionless Christianity: Part 1, A New Theology

In 2010--yes, fourteen years ago--I did a series entitled "Letters from Cell 92" about Dietrich Bonhoeffer's provocative and enigmatic discussion about "religionless Christianity" in his Letters and Papers from Prison

As I engage with people on journeys of "deconstruction" and work alongside churches in an increasingly post-Christian culture, Bonhoeffer's "religionless Christianity" continues to come up a lot. But most of the time, in my opinion, Bonhoeffer's treatment of "religionless Christianity" is being misunderstood. Consequently, I'd like to reshare "Letters from Cell 92" to explain again what I believe to be the proper interpretations of Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison. If you want to understand what Bonhoeffer meant by "religionless Christianity" this series shares what I think is the best answer. I also want to add to and change some things from that 2010 series in light of how my own thinking about faith has changed, pretty dramatically, over the last fourteen years.

To start, it's safe to say that Bonhoeffer has become a Rorschach blot. Evangelicals tend to gravitate to the "orthodox" Bonhoeffer they find in The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together. Liberals and progressives, by contrast, gravitate toward the Bonhoeffer we find on the pages of Letters and Papers from Prison, where his discussions of "a world come of age," "living without God," and "religionless Christianity" make him sound like Tillich and Bultmann. Even Karl Barth was perplexed by what he perceived to a change in Bonhoeffer's thought after he had read Letters and Papers from Prison upon their publication in 1951-1952. 

In short, a debate rages between how much continuity versus discontinuity we find in Bonhoeffer's thought, between The Cost of Discipleship and the "religionless Christianity" we find in Letters and Papers from Prison.

Eberhard Bethge, the man who knew Bonhoeffer better than anyone and wrote the seminal biography of Bonhoeffer, argues that that there is a great deal continuity between the early and late Bonhoeffer. Bethge makes this argument in Chapter 13--Tegel: 1943-1944--of his biography under the heading "The New Theology." For the rest of this post, let me simply share the relevant passages and context of Bonhoeffer's discussion of "a world come of age" and "religionless Christianity." If you've never read Bonhoeffer or about his "religionless Christianity" this post will get you caught up.

The theological letters were written by Bonhoeffer to Bethge during the last year of Bonhoeffer's life, 1944, while Bonhoeffer was in Tegel Prison in Berlin. The letters spanned four months, from late April (the first theological letter is dated April 30) to the end of August. These letters can be found from pp. 278-394 in Letters and Papers from Prison (henceforth LPP). Toward the end of this time, in August, Bonhoeffer outlined a book planned for about 100 pages and divided into three chapters:
1. A Stocktaking of Christianity
2. The Real Meaning of the Christian Faith
3. Conclusions
This outline and some notes for each chapter are found in LPP pp. 380-383. The theological letters were covering the material intended for these chapters. After writing letters and jotting notes on these topics for three months, it appears that Bonhoeffer began writing the book in August. In one of his last letters, dated August 23 (LPP 392-394), Bonhoeffer writes:
I'm now working at the chapter on 'A Stocktaking of Christianity'. Unfortunately my output of work has come to depend increasingly on smoking, but I'm lucky enough to have a good supply from the most varied sources, so that I'm getting on more or less. Sometimes I'm quite shocked at what I say, especially in the first part, which is mainly critical; and so I'm looking forward to getting to the more constructive part. But the whole thing has been so little discussed that it often sounds too clumsy. In any case, it can't be printed yet, and it will have to go through the 'purifier' later on. I find it hard work to have to write everything by hand, and it seems hardly legible. (Amusingly enough, I have to use German script, and then there are the corrections!) We shall see; perhaps I shall write out a fair copy.
On September 22 the Gestapo discovered the file collected by Bonhoeffer's brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi documenting Nazi crimes. The discovery of the file effectively sealed the fate of Bonhoeffer, Dohannyi, and their fellow conspirators. In light of this, in early October the Bonhoeffer family made escape plans for Dietrich (there was a guard in Tegel willing to help) but these plans were called off for fear of Nazi reprisals against the Bonhoeffer family. Bonhoeffer was moved from Tegel and, on February 7, taken to Buchenwald concentration camp. From Buchenwald Bonhoeffer was eventually taken to FlossenbĆ¼rg concentration camp. The execution orders were given on April 5. Bonhoeffer was executed, by hanging, four days later on April 9.

Twenty-one days later Hitler committed suicide and Germany surrendered.

It appears that Bonhoeffer took the book he was working on with him when he was moved from Tegel. Somewhere between Tegel and FlossenbĆ¼rg the manuscript was lost. All we have are the letters, the outline, and some notes for the three chapters.

So what was the book to be about? We can begin to answer this question by looking at the first two theological letters on April 30 and May 5:
April 30, 1944

To Eberhard Bethage:

What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today. The time when people could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or pious, is over, and so is the time of inwardness and conscience--and that means the time of religion in general. We are moving toward a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious anymore. Even those who honestly describe themselves as "religious" do not in the least act up to it, and so they presumably mean something quite different by "religious."

Our whole nineteen-hundred-year-old Christian preaching and theology rest on the "religious a priori" of mankind. "Christianity" has always been a form--perhaps the true form--of "religion." But if one day it becomes clear that this a priori does not exist at all, but was a historically conditioned and transient form of human self-expression, and if therefore man becomes radically religionless--and I think that that is already more or less the case (else how is it, for example, that this war, in contrast to all previous ones, is not calling forth any "religious" reaction?)--what does that mean for "Christianity"? It means that the foundation is taken away from the whole of what has up to now been our "Christianity," and that there remain only a few "last survivors of the age of chivalry," or a few intellectually dishonest people that we are to pounce in fervor, pique, or indignation, in order to sell them goods? Are we to fall upon a few unfortunate people in their hour of need and exercise a sort of religious compulsion on them? If we don't want to do all that, if our final judgment must be that the Western form of Christianity, too, was only a preliminary stage to a complete absence of religion, what kind of situation emerges for us, for the church? How can Christ become the Lord of the religionless as well? Are there religionless Christians? If religion is only a garment of Christianity--and even this garment has looked very different at different times--then what is a religionless Christianity?

...The questions to be answered would surely be: What do a church, a community, a sermon, a liturgy, a Christian life mean in a religionless world? How do we speak of God--without religion, i.e., without the temporally conditioned presuppositions of metaphysics, inwardness, and so on? How do we speak (or perhaps we cannot now even "speak" as we used to) in a "secular" way about God? In what way are we "religionless-secular" Christians, in what way are we those who are called forth, not regarding ourselves from a religious point of view as specially favored, but rather as belonging wholly to the world? In that case Christ is no longer an object of religion, but something quite different, really the Lord of the world. But what does that mean? What is the place of worship and prayer in a religionless situation?

...The Pauline question of whether [circumcision] is a condition of justification seems to me in present-day terms to be whether religion is a condition of salvation. Freedom from [circumcision] is also freedom from religion. I often ask myself why a "Christian instinct" often draws me more to the religionless people than to the religious, but which I don't in the least mean with any evangelizing intention, but, I might almost say, "in brotherhood." While I'm often reluctant to mention God by name to religious people--because that name somehow seems to me here not to ring true, and I feel myself to be slightly dishonest (it's particularly bad when others start to talk in religious jargon; I then dry up almost completely and feel awkward and uncomfortable)--to people with no religion I can on occasion mention him by name quite calmly and as a matter of course.

The transcendence of epistemological theory has nothing to do with the transcendence of God. God is beyond in the midst of our life. The church stands, not at the boundaries where human powers give out, but in the middle of the village...How this religionless Christianity looks, what form it takes, is something that I'm thinking about a great deal, and I shall be writing to you again about it soon. It may be that on us in particular, midway between East and West, there will fall a heavy responsibility.

 

May 5, 1944

To Eberhard Bethge:

A few more words about "religionless." I expect you remember Bultmann's essay on the "demythologizing" of the New Testament? My view of it today would be, not that he went "too far," as most people thought, but that he didn't go far enough. It's not only the "mythological" concepts, such as miracle, ascension, and so on (which are not in principle separable from the concepts of God, faith, etc.), but "religious" concepts generally, which are problematic. You can't, as Bultmann supposes, separate God and miracle, but you must be able to interpret and proclaim both in a "non-religions" sense. Bultmann's approach is fundamentally still a liberal one (i.e., abridging the gospel), whereas I'm trying to think theologically.

What does it mean to "interpret in a religious sense"? I think it means to speak on the one hand metaphysically, and on the other hand individualistically. Neither of these is relevant to the biblical message or to the man of today. Hasn't the individualistic question about personal salvation almost completely left us all? Aren't we really under the impression that there are more important things than that question (perhaps not more important than the matter itself, but more important than the question!)? I know it sounds pretty monstrous to say that. But, fundamentally, isn't this in fact biblical? Does the question about saving one's soul appear in the Old Testament at all? Aren't righteousness and the Kingdom of God on earth the focus of everything, and isn't it true that Rom. 3.24ff. is not an individualistic doctrine of salvation, but the culmination of the view that God alone is righteous? It is not with the beyond that we are concerned, but with this world as created and preserved, subjected to laws, reconciled, and restored. What is above this world is, in the gospel, intended to exist for this world; I mean that, not in the anthropocentric sense of liberal, mystic pietistic, ethical theology, but in the biblical sense of the creation and of the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Barth was the first theologian to begin the criticism of religion, and that remains his really great merit; but he put in its place a positivist doctrine of revelation which says, in effect, "Like it or lump it": virgin birth, Trinity, or anything else; each is an equally significant and necessary part of the whole, which must simply be swallowed as a whole or not at all. That isn't biblical. There are degrees of knowledge and degrees of significance; that means that a secret discipline must be restored whereby the mysteries of the Christian faith are protected against profanation. The positivism of revelation makes it too easy for itself, by setting up, as it does in the last analysis, a law of faith, and so mutilates what is--by Christ's incarnation!--a gift for us. In the place of religion there now stands the church--that is in itself biblical--but the world is in some degree made to depend on itself and left to its own devices, and that's the mistake.

I'm thinking about how we can reinterpret in a "worldly" sense--in the sense of the Old Testament and of John 1.14--the concepts of repentance, faith, justification, rebirth, and sanctification.

The Faith of Demons

Out at the prison, we were discussing the famous passage in James about faith and works. During that conversation, I made an observation that I shared here many years ago. 

Here's the familiar text:
So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!

For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. (James 2.17-19, 26)
The point I made was that, when we have the debate about "faith versus works," the "works" we discuss tend to vague and abstract. However, the works being discussed in James 2 are very specific. Faith without this specific work is dead. So, what is that specific work?

Here's the full context of the "faith versus works" text in James 2. It's long but worth reading to see the point being made. To help, I've underlined some critical lines: 
My brothers and sisters, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court? Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called?

If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! (James 2.1-19)
The context is clear. The works being discussed in James 2 concern the treatment of the poor. And the point of the passage is also very clear: Can a faith which ignores the plight of the poor save us? The answer is, "No." A faith that ignores the poor is a dead faith. 

More, a faith that ignores the poor is a faith that is akin to the faith of demons.

Psalm 42

"I long for you"

I think this is what Scripture means when it describes David as a "man after God's own heart." As we know, David was no saint. It's pretty hard to admire David for his moral rectitude. 

No, what made David unique among Israel's kings was his passion for God, his longing for God. In Psalm 42 that longing is described as a thirst:

As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so I long for you, God.
I thirst for God...
Such descriptions of the life of faith--longing, panting, thirsting--can seem overwrought. And I think a lot of us shy away from people in the grip of religious fervor. God-infatuated people can be hard to get along with. But in my own life, there have been moments where I have glimpsed God, where my encounter with God wasn't intellectual or moral or emotional but more direct and perceptual. A beholding. A seeing. 

In these moments there was rest and peace and joy. 

And I've never stopped longing for them.

Our Skittishness with the Gospel's Truth Claims

I recently stumbled back upon this lovely quote from the theologian Robert Jensen, a quote I shared a few years ago:
Yet I think there is another reason for our skittishness with the gospel's truth claims, that is probably more important and is moreover perennial. So soon as we pose the question, "What indeed if it were true?" about an ordinary proposition of the faith, consequences begin to show themselves that go beyond anything we dare to believe, that upset our whole basket of assured convictions, and we are frightened of that. The most Sunday-school-platitudinous of Christian claims--say, "Jesus loves me"--contains cognitive explosives we fear will indeed blow our minds; it commits us to what have been called revisionary metaphysics, and on a massive scale. That, I think, is the main reason we prefer not to start [with the question "What indeed if it were true?"] and have preferred it especially in the period of modernity. For Western modernity's defining passion has been for the use of knowledge to control, and that is the very point where the knowledge of faith threatens us.  
Simply put, the truth claims made by the gospel are not mere "facts." The simplest truth claims of the gospel, claims as rudimentary as "Jesus loves me," have revolutionary import. The gospel is a "cognitive explosion." 

More, this knowledge isn't something that we can put to use. For that is how science has trained us to view knowledge, as a tool, a commodity, as a lever of power. The truths of the gospel, by contrast, cannot be so easily manipulated or made amenable to our desires. Quite the opposite. The gospel makes demands of us. And those demands create, quite understandably, resistance. What is being rejected in the gospel isn't simply "the truth," but the explosive and revolutionary implications of this truth. 

BTW, Jesus loves you.

Unspoken Cosmological Assumptions: On Enchantment, the Double Fall, and Theodicy

When we reflect upon the problem of evil, the problem of pain and suffering in the world, there is a metaphysical disjoint between us and our forebears.

A lot of people I've talked with about the problem of evil have expressed to me how they don't have too much of a problem with what is called "moral evil," the suffering in the world caused by human agents. That is to say, they don't blame God for something like the Holocaust or slavery. Humans are responsible for those evils. To be sure, not everyone feels that way, but some people let God off the hook, at least a little bit, for the evil things we humans do.

But things are different when it comes to "natural evil," the sufferings associated with death, disease, accident, and natural catastrophes. These traumas are more directly related to "how the world works" and cannot be blamed on humans. So, blame is directed at God the Creator.

For much of church history, both natural and moral evil was explained by an appeal to a "double fall," the fall of the angels and the fall of humanity in the Garden of Eden. Natural evil, in this view, is attributable to a rebellion among the angelic "rulers" of the cosmos. Moral evil is also linked to this angelic rebellion, given traditional readings of Genesis 3 where the serpent is identified with Satan. You also see the moral evils of oppression and injustice associated with the misrule of the angelic "sons of God" in Psalm 82. In the New Testament, Satan is described as the "god of this world" and we wrestle against the rebellious angelic "principalities and powers" in the heavenly realm.

In short, for most of church history, the angelic rebellion did a lot of the heavy lifting in theodicy. But not so much today. Today, when we debate the problem of evil, you rarely hear anyone point a finger at Satan or rebellious cosmic archons. We'd find such an appeal to the double fall very implausible. 

This change is due, I believe, to a loss of enchantment and the rise of a more deistic vision of the cosmos. For us, the cosmos isn't stuffed with spiritual agents. Rather, the cosmos is a machine. Thus, we don't experience the cosmos as in a state of "rebellion," for that would imply agency. Rather, the machine is "broken." And we trace that brokenness back to some "design flaw." Basically, our imagination of the cosmos has shifted from agency (human and angelic) toward mindless, mechanistic causality. Mind, human and angelic, is no longer a part of our conversations about theodicy. We only see dumb chains of causes and effects, the "laws of physics." And so, we blame the designer of those laws.

To be clear, I'm merely being descriptive with all this. I'm not suggesting we have to convince ourselves of the angelic rebellion as the first in a double fall. I think the modern Christian imagination has become too disenchanted for that to be a live and widespread possibility. My point in all this is simply to draw attention to how largely unspoken and implicit cosmological assumptions impact our conversations about theodicy. As I pointed out, most of us approach theodicy with a deistic imagination, tacitly assuming that the world is a machine, a clockwork operating deterministically. And that working assumption pinches and constricts conversations about pain and suffering. Frankly, I think the implicit deism operating behind most conversations about theodicy is the main reason we find theodicy so unsatisfactory. Certain predictable frustrations are baked in right at the start. 

But again, my point here isn't to convert you to the cosmology of the first centuries of the church. Though that wouldn't be a horrible thing. My goal in pointing out that lost and ancient cosmology is to simply draw attention to your own cosmological assumptions, how you imagine the world when you enter a debate about theodicy. My guess is that what you find helpful or frustrating, satisfying or unsatisfying, about those conversations has little to do with the arguments themselves. Rather, the entire conversation is being carried by your unspoken cosmological assumptions, assumptions that rarely, if ever, come under scrutiny and reflection. 

The Incoherence of Post-Christian Morality

I was having a chat with a colleague recently, reflecting upon the moral sensibilities of our college students. Specifically, we dissected what we felt to be an incoherence in the moral sensibilities of post-Christian culture that our students have internalized.

On the one hand, there is the post-modern impact upon morality. There are no "meta-narratives," no real or final "Right versus Wrong." Values are personally curated and cultivated. We have to accept that our moral worldviews are pluralistic. In such a world, the moral imperatives are acceptance and tolerance. You need to step back, without judgment, and allow people to live their own lives however they see fit.

But on the other hand, post-Christian morality is very moralistic and judgmental. This is most clearly seen in social justice rhetoric, progressive activism/protest, online shaming, and cancel culture. As I shared years ago (see also this post), there is a puritanical aspect to post-Christian morality, a social justice inflected "purity culture."

As I reflected with my colleague, there is an profound incoherence here. There are no moral meta-narratives, until there are. There is no ultimate right versus wrong, until you do something wrong. We are to be tolerant and non-judgmental, until you need to be canceled. The post-Christian culture swings back and forth between moral relativism and moral absolutism. A non-judgmental moral libertinism is fused with an unbending and puritanical moral ferocity.

In his book After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre aptly described this incoherence as a wreckage. With the shipwreck of Christianity in the West, what we find floating in the water of post-Christian culture are random bits and pieces of moral thinking. Tolerance is a moral good, but it's just floating around aimlessly on the waters of our culture. Moral absolutes are also a moral good, but these imperatives are also just floating around without direction or purpose. Post-Christian morality just lurches from flotsam to jetsam, grabbing and cobbling together random bits of morality to stay afloat. That post-Christian morality makes no sense, is characterized by nonsensical randomness, is, according to MacIntyre, evidence that some sort of moral shipwreck has occurred.    

To be clear, I'm not one of those Christian intellectuals who pine nostalgically for a long lost Christendom. My interest, if you've followed me closely over the last few years, has been, rather, to remind my progressive, liberal, and humanistic brothers and sisters that their moral worldview makes no sense. As I described it in a post a few months ago, they are wannabe prophets who no longer believe in the Lord. That is to say, my progressive, liberal, and humanistic brothers and sisters are very moralistic--just listen to them declaim about climate care or oppression--but they are trying to erect these moral absolutes upon a foundation of post-modern sand where no meta-narratives can securely stand.  

Ultimate and Penultimate: The Day of the Lord and the Greater Hope

Back in December I was asked to teach a class at a local Church of Christ about the Greater Hope, the belief that all of humanity will, ultimately, be reconciled to God. 

At the start of the class I shared a bit of my story in regards to the Greater Hope. Like a lot of people, I was introduced to the Scottish author and pastor George MacDonald (1824-1905) through a deep dive into C.S. Lewis. MacDonald's Unspoken Sermons was my first exposure to the Greater Hope, and it proved decisive for me.

After my class a few attendees remained behind for some continued conversation. One of the issues we discussed, which was also raised in the class itself, was the motivational impact of the Greater Hope. This is a common concern. Specifically, if everyone, eventually, is reconciled to God doesn't that demotivate our evangelistic and missionary efforts? If everyone will be saved in the end, why express any concern about or devote any energy into reaching the lost? 

Also, doesn't the Greater Hope deflate our moral urgency? Might I, for example, choose to live a dissolute life in this world, banking on the knowledge that it'll all get sorted out after I die? Seems like a great bargain! I can have my cake and eat it to. 

Finally, what about justice for victims? Doesn't the Greater Hope diminish the tears of the oppressed by asserting that the perpetrators get blessed in the end? 

In response, one of the things to observe here is that, when we remove behavioral consequences from the Christian imagination, damnation for the lost and blessed reward for the saved, a lot of Christians struggle to make sense of things like gospel proclamation, mission, and righteousness. Crudely put, if no one is going to get punished then what's the point? 

As should be obvious, this is a very immature way to view the motivations that should be at work in mature Christian living. Sure, when we're children extrinsic consequences are necessary for moral development. But as we get older, our behavioral controls should become internalized as our motivations become less extrinsic (sticks and carrots) and more intrinsic, reflective of my values and identity. I don't avoid X because I fear getting caught and spanked (i.e., extrinsic motivation). I avoid X because X is incompatible with the person I want to become (i.e., intrinsic motivation). But here's the thing I want to point out: For some peculiar reason, Christians struggle to envision the spiritual life as being driven by intrinsic motivations. Once you remove the sticks and carrots many Christians become wholly confused. They cannot imagine life with God without a extrinsic reward/punishment system, and remain stuck with a Kindergarten vision of Christian formation and mission. 

That said, a legitimate point remains about motivation. If there truly were no consequences that would create a motivational vacuum. But a consequenceless future is not what the Greater Hope envisions, at least not as I envision it. The Bible is clear that all of humanity will be judged on the Day of the Lord. Our lives will be weighed in the balance. We all will face the Great Accounting. Judgment Day. The Great Assize. In the language of 1 Corinthians 3, on that Day "the fire will test the quality of each person’s work." Everyone faces the music.

In short, there will be consequences. 

Given this, here's how I sort out the relationship between Day of the Lord and the Greater Hope in light of human motivation. 

Our most pressing concern is God's eschatological judgment upon humanity. The Day of the Lord is our most proximate concern. This judgment is impinging upon our lives, hangs over us. In the language of John the Baptist, the axe is at the root. 

Because of this, the Day of the Lord--as our impinging, pressing, and most proximate concern--should dominate our consciousness and conversation. How we stand in relation to God's judgment is really the only thing we should be talking about. Right now, it's the thing that matters. Phrased differently, this is the season for prophetic speech: "Repent! Weep and wail! Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord!"

Now, what happens after the Day of the Lord? If the Day of the Lord is our proximate concern, what about our ultimate destiny? Looking past judgment, to the far horizon, that is the concern of the Greater Hope. Consequences are coming, but can wrath and rejection be God's final words to his beloved creation? The Greater Hope dares to declare that, ultimately, God will be Alpha and Omega for all of humanity. God is both our Origin and our Destiny.  

In short, the Greater Hope and the Day of the Lord relate to each other as ultimate (the last thing) to penultimate (the next to last thing). Knowing this, I think we can all agree that skipping to the end, jumping over the penultimate to get to the ultimate, can create some confusions and distortions. If you hop over the Day of the Lord to the Greater Hope this is sure going to sound like a Get Out of Jail Free card in the Monopoly game of life. However, you can't get to the ultimate without going through the penultimate. You can't skip a step. 

This is why some of the church fathers expressed concern about speaking too often and openly about the Greater Hope. Too much talk about the Happy Ending skips our most pressing, proximate concern, God's eschatological judgment upon my life and yours. Evil is at large in the world, and I contribute my share, and the wrath of God waxes hot. The tears of the oppressed have not gone unnoticed. This issue, the moral status of the world, is our most pressing concern. So, let's keep our eye on the ball.

Still, the human mind is inquisitive! Today has its demands, yes, but we wonder about tomorrow. Some of us look to the far horizon to ask question about our ultimate destiny, about what it means in the end that God will be "all in all" (1 Cor. 15.28), or about what it will look like when Christ "reconciles all things to himself" (Col. 1.20).  What ray of hope is shining through here? And for many of us, these sorts of questions about our ultimate destiny are critical and urgent inquiries. Faith seeks understanding! Consequently, there are times and places when we should discuss the Greater Hope. True, we're skipping an eschatological step here, and a legitimate worry can be expressed that we're ignoring some pressing moral and social issues to speculate about last things. I hear that concern, that too much focus upon the ultimate can diminish the urgency of the penultimate. Still, there is a time and a place for a discussion about the Greater Hope.

That said, are there many Christians who can handle this eschatological balancing in how they talk and think about last things? Probably not. But it is possible to keep the penultimate and the ultimate in their proper order and perspective while being contextually alert to when it is productive to talk about one or the other.   

Psalm 41

"Blessed is the one who is considerate of the poor"

The preferential option for the poor. If you've never heard of it, this is the central tenet of liberation theology from the Catholic tradition. The preferential option for the poor is the contention that God takes the side of the poor against the rich.

If you read the Bible cover to cover, the evidence for the preferential option is, in my estimation, overwhelming. And we find an example of it here in Psalm 41: "Blessed is the one who is considerate of the poor; the Lord will save him in a day of adversity." Our treatment of the poor determines the degree to which we can count upon the Lord's aid and favor. Our treatment of the poor determines our eschatological destiny. 


Jesus couldn't be any clearer.

On Curses and Condemnation: The Narrative Resolution of the Deuteronomic Plotline

A couple of months ago, in the comments to my series on Paul's gospel, I made a point about how to think about Paul's language concerning how we, in relation to the Law, come under curse and condemnation. I'd like to spotlight that point in this post.

A lot of us, especially progressive Christians, struggle with the language of curse, condemnation, and God's judgment/wrath in discussing salvation. All those negative words stack up and bring into view a retributive God. Resisting that vision, we ignore all this language in Scripture. In psychology there's something called "motivating forgetting." Seen among trauma victims, motivated forgetting involves blocking out and suppressing unwanted memories. A lot of progressive Christians display a type of motivated forgetting when it comes to the Bible, actively suppressing from consciousness that the Bible actually does speak of God's wrath, and that Jesus saved us from the curse with its associated condemnation. 

So, how are we think about all this?

The key is to pay attention to the story Paul is telling in his letters. When Paul describes the curse of the law he's calling attention to the covenant Israel made with God at Mount Sinai. In making that covenant with God, Israel agreed to suffer the consequences of disobedience. Here are those curses from Deuteronomy 28:
However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you:

You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.

Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed.

The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.

You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out....
It only gets worse from there if you want to read the rest of that chapter. 

As you know, Israel and Judah do fall into disobedience and the curses are enacted, culminating in the curse of exile:
Then the Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods—gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known. Among those nations you will find no repose, no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the Lord will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart. You will live in constant suspense, filled with dread both night and day, never sure of your life. (Deut. 28.64-66)
We see all this play out 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles. And while the exiles return home in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, I believe N.T. Wright is correct that, when the New Testament opens, there remained the pervasive sense in Second Temple Judaism, in light of Roman occupation, that the exile still continued. 

In short, the Deuteronomic Curses remained in effect and unresolved. Israel's story was stuck.

Now, it is true that both Jesus and Paul shifted the conversation about the exile away from immanent political concerns, the Roman occupation specifically. Both Jesus and Paul spiritualize the Kingdom of God and envision emancipation as more eschatological than political. Not that Jesus and Paul evacuate the gospel of social and political import. This is simply the observation that, for both Jesus and Paul, the Roman occupation wasn't the pressing spiritual predicament. 

Still, from a narrative standpoint, the story of Israel, given her exilic predicament, needed to be resolved and carried forward. The Deuteronomic plotline demanded a resolution. And according to Paul, Jesus brings the Deuteronomic story to its climax and fulfillment. Jesus, as Israel's representative, assumes upon himself the Deuteronomic Curse. More, where Israel had failed, Jesus fulfills the righteous requirements of the Law thereby bringing into the story of Israel the Deuteronomic Blessings:
If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. All these blessings will come on you and accompany you if you obey the Lord your God:

You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.

The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.

Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed.

You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out... (Deut. 28.1-6)
Again, both Jesus and Paul shift these blessings into a spiritual and eschatological register. And yet, the point to be observed here is that, by bringing the Deuteronomic story to its conclusion, blessings now enter the story of Israel. We call these blessings "salvation."

In short, when we read the Bible we tend to read it narcissistically, believing that my particular sins bring me under my particular curse and that God is particularly sending me to hell. Me, me, me! Everything is about me! But this self-obsessed reading misunderstands Paul. Paul is telling a story. More specifically, he's trying to finish a story, to get a story unstuck. Paul's concerns about wrath, curse, judgment, and condemnation aren't about you. His concerns are covenantal and narrative. His concerns are about the story of Israel being stuck in the mud. Given this, read Paul narratively rather than narcissistically

To be sure, our particular story is caught up in the Greater Story, but the point of Paul declaring "there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" is that he's talking about a Story where condemnation and curse have been removed and replaced with blessings. In the end, it's the Story that is rescued. And we, for our particular part, get to join that Story and enjoy its benefits.

Why the Emerging Church Movement Failed: Part 5, Going Woke

This is my last post in this series. Again, do check out the Emerged podcast hosted by Tony Jones and Tripp Fuller, their oral history of the emerging church movement (webpage here, Apple podcast here, and Spotify here).

As the emerging church movement grew, many within the movement began to gravitate toward social justice concerns and activism. Issues of "justice" and "oppression" began to dominate. Liberationist readings of the Bible, taking a cue from Catholic liberation theology, were increasingly common, using Scripture to call out oppression and center the voices of victims.

As time went on, Twitter became more and more of a force. At the peak of emerging church conversation, in the mid-2000s, blogging was starting to take off, and while blog comment sections were fractious and unruly, they could be monitored and controlled by their hosts. After 2006, Twitter de-centralized the emerging church conversation. The discourse could no longer be controlled by the leaders of the movement. 

Trouble was brewing on this front. The leaders of the emerging church movement were largely white males. So when Twitter unleashed the social justice impulses that were beginning to dominate the movement, something predictable, in retrospect, happened: the emerging church began getting called out and canceled. 

From a social justice perspective, exemplified by the work of Rachel Held Evans (as a Millennial "second generation" member of the emerging church conversation), the movement in the mid-2000s was focused on gender justice in the church. Younger than the leaders of the original emerging church network, Rachel quickly became a social media phenomenon among those interested in reforming evangelicalism. Rachel began to demonstrate the power of Twitter in calling out and taking on leading evangelicals. Rachel's fights with Al Mohler, John Piper, Mark Driscoll, and Doug Wilson became legendary.  

Soon, however, emerging church voices began to be called out by people of color, even Rachel's as a white woman. And then, soon after that, by queer folks. Events in the culture pushed the conversation deeper into the social justice movement. Trayvon Martin was killed in 2012. The Obergefell ruling came down in 2015. #MeToo happened in 2017. The word "intersectionality" started showing up. Talk of "centering" POC voices and calls for white people to "check your privilege" became ubiquitous. Allies were told to stop talking, asked to listen, and to hand their platforms over to women of color and queer folk. Emerging church leaders began to describe themselves as "activists" in their bios. (They still do.) Largely white and male conference lineups were called out and cancelled. To this day, conferences hosted by voices once associated with the emerging church conversation reflect the impact of these years, when deconstruction fused with social media activism, featuring largely female, queer, and "spiritual but not religious" speaking lineups.

Basically, though we didn't have the word for it then, one of the reasons the emerging church movement failed is because it went woke.

In this, I'm merely being descriptive. Depending upon how you viewed the emerging church, then and now, going woke might be exactly what needed to happen. Certain voices needed to get marginalized and others centered. Conversely, you might read what happened as another sad example of social justice warriors turning the knives on their own. For example, in 2015 I described what I called the "purity culture" of progressive Christianity, observations later echoed about the "new puritanism" exemplified in callout and cancel culture. During this season, white emerging church voices were increasingly tagged as "problematic." For example, I was a progressive ally and was called "satan" on Twitter. Not from my right, but from my left

It was a disorienting time. After my progressive purity culture post, Rachel and I had some conversations about water she was taking on from her left. Rachel was deeply embroiled in her fight with the evangelical establishment over patriarchal gender roles. She was surprised to suddenly find herself being criticized from her left for being a white women and for ignoring the LGBTQ community. Rachel quickly found her footing in this rapidly shifting landscape to became a better ally in the estimation of many of her POC and queer critics.

But how did going woke contribute to the failure of the emerging church? In three ways.

First, when the issues switched from gender roles to sexuality a split emerged within the emerging church. Many of the churches sympathetic to the emerging church were willing to make moves toward egalitarianism, but were not quite ready to jump to the full inclusion of LGBTQ folks. Pastors who had successfully led their evangelical churches into more inclusive views concerning gender roles discovered that their churches weren't quite ready for the LGBTQ conversation. Facing this resistance, many pastors went into a holding pattern and didn't force the issue. Other pastors felt called to leave their churches. Other pastors pushed and were fired. Some churches split.

A couple of things need to be said here. First, the conversation about sexuality took nearly everyone by surprise, not just the emerging church. Many forget that, in 2008, Barack Obama couldn't publicly endorse gay marriage. But within the span of a few years, traditional and mainstream views on sex and marriage had become equated with hate and bigotry, a sin on par with racism. Unaffiliated with local churches and denominational structures, authors and social media voices in the emerging church movement could keep pace with the rapidly changing moral landscape to take their isolated stands on their social media platforms. The only voice that mattered was their own. Churches, however, change more slowly, and the rapid moral flip-flop left many faith communities behind. 

The second thing to note here is that this wasn't (and isn't) a problem with evangelicalism. For example, the issue of LGBTQ inclusion has cracked both the United Methodist and the global Anglican communions. It also appears to be pushing the Catholic church to the edge of schism. So, to say that LGBTQ issues cracked the emerging church conversation shouldn't be surprising. LGBTQ issues cracked global Christianity.  

The second way going woke caused the emerging church to fail was that, when social justice Twitter pushed the white male leadership of the emerging church off the stage, many of the voices who filled the void were not associated with the vision and networks that started the movement. When the voices of the early emergent church conversation were marginalized for being too white and too male, the movement lost both its history and forward momentum. In many ways, the emergent church faded to gave way to what we now call "progressive Christianity," with its emphasis on woke, social justice activism. People who once labeled themselves as "emergent" now grab labels like "progressive" or "activist." 

The final way becoming woke caused the emerging church movement to fail has to do with what I describe as "the mystical-to-moral shift" in Hunting Magic Eels. Specifically, when Christianity becomes reduced to social justice activism then politics, rather than God, becomes the binding agent of the community. Recall, the root of the word "religion" means "to bind." Religion is what binds a group together. Among the progressive Christian crowd, social justice politics has become the new religion, the new faith that binds the group together. Churches are replaced with spiritual seekers who are social justice warriors.

For example, take a look at any progressive Christian conference. The table is open to any spiritual seeker, from pagan to Christian to atheist, as long as you share the social justice faith. "All are welcome" the conference invites, but you better not show up wearing a MAGA hat. Simply put, among progressive Christians social justice is required but God is optional

And again, I'm just being descriptive here. You might feel that this history and trajectory is exactly what should have happened to the emerging church, and what must continue to happen to Christianity going forward. But you also might lament how social justice impulses, once again, caused people to cannibalize their own given the inexorable logic of its own purity culture. Personally, as someone who now describes themselves as a "post-progressive Christian," I work to retain a social justice emphasis, supported by a liberationist hermeneutic, while resisting the impulse to reduce God, church, salvation, and faith to political activism. This seems obvious to me, but you'd be surprised to find how rare this impulse is and how difficult it can be to maintain this balance in a faith community.

But no matter how you view what happened to the emerging church, as either good or bad, as the necessary and proper marginalization of white male voices or the failure to join together in centering social justices concerns in evangelical spaces, when those attracted to the emerging church embraced social justice as a new religion, a faith defined by progressive politics and activism, both God and the church were quickly left behind. 

Why the Emerging Church Movement Failed: Part 4, Theology That Got a Little Too Weird

Beyond deconstruction, one of the other reasons the emerging church movement failed, in my estimation, was that the emerging church conversation eventually gravitated, after it became very online, toward unconventional theological perspectives that impaired wider acceptance, especially among evangelical churches. 

At the time, these theological perspectives were exciting and mind-blowing for many people. Seismic, even. But the ideas tended to be esoteric and theory-heavy, appealing mainly to theological nerds with graduate degrees. At the time, the epithet "theobro" was leveled at this online demographic, though this tag could be leveled at the "young, restless and reformed" crew as much as at the emerging church crowd. A "theobro" was generally a white guy with a graduate degree who liked to argue about theology on social media. From the mid-2000s on, as the emerging church began showing up in online spaces, there were a lot of theobros debating online. I count myself among this group, given how much I enjoyed arguing about theology after I had launched my own blog.

Let me give two examples of unconventional theological positions that were debated back then, positions which, I think, got in the way of the movement taking root in more churches. These were Girardian views of the atonement and process theology.

To start, the atonement was debated a lot during the emerging church conversation, especially after blogging came on the scene. I've described these online conflicts as "the atonement wars." The doctrine under the gun was penal substitutionary atonement. The emerging church made penal substitutionary atonement famous. Or, rather, infamous. The emerging church made penal substitutionary atonement "a thing."

There were two related concerns. First, there was the whole "sinners in the hands of an angry God" framing of atonement, the wrath of God needing to be "satisfied." Second, there was the notion that God required blood--the actual killing of a human being--to be "satisfied." This matrix of ideas proved so troublesome, problematic, and toxic to the deconstructing evangelicals in the emerging church that they began searching for what are called "non-violent" views of the atonement, where the violence we see in the crucifixion of Jesus isn't due to the actions of God. Two views rose to prominence at the time, Christus Victor and RenƩ Girard's scapegoat theory. Christus Victor blamed Satan for the death of Jesus. RenƩ Girard's scapegoat theory blamed human beings.

You might not have heard of RenƩ Girard. Like the emerging church, Girard's name has slipped from view. And I think the reason for that is that Girard's view of the atonement became the regulating theory of the atonement for many within the emerging church movement. Consequently, when the emerging church vanished so did Girard's scapegoat theory. They rose and fell together.

In retrospect, it is not hard to see why. For many within the emerging church, Girard's view of the atonement was a life-altering, Copernican revolution. The impact of Girard's ideas was so transformative a zealous, cult-like intensity swirled around him and his ideas. Among the true-believers, Girard had cracked the code. Here was the Master Idea that revealed all knowledge. Girard's theory was the theological Rosetta Stone that unlocked the secret meanings of the Bible, and especially the death of Jesus.

And yet, herein lurked a problem.

Let me say that I'm a huge fan of RenĆ© Girard. I was an early adopter. In the first years of this blog I did a series on Mark Heim's book Saved from Sacrifice, still one of the best introductions to a Girardian reading of the Bible. I loved, and still love, James Alison's Girardian books, like Raising Abel. I used Girard in my first book, Unclean, and, as a consequence, got invited to speak at Girardian conferences. 

And yet, in trying to share these ideas with my own church, I quickly bumped into a problem. You have to do a lot of explaining to get the ideas across. And I do mean a lot of explaining. Girard's ideas are very theory-heavy. Personally, I think Girard is worth the trip, but most people don't like being told that they need to listen to a vey long and speculative theological lecture before they can "really understand" the crucifixion of Jesus. Plus, it strikes people as wildly implausible that, for almost 2,000 years, the church fundamentally misunderstood the death of Jesus until some French dude cracked the code in the 1970s. 

Here's my point. When Girard's scapegoat theory became a dominant, if not the dominant, view of the atonement among the emerging church crowd, the movement stubbed its theological toe, limiting its ability to communicate the gospel to normal, everyday folk. No one wants to be told that you need to learn about "memetic desire" to properly understand Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. 

Process theology is another example of some of theology that began to influence the emerging church conversation.

For example, if you know Tripp Fuller and his popular podcast Homebrewed Christianity, the podcast that hosted so much of the emerging church conversation once blogging and podcasting became a thing, you also know that Tripp is a proponent of process theology, and that the podcasts, titles, and events associated with Homebrewed Christianity promote process theology. 

As I briefly mentioned in Part 1, many within the emerging church were dealing with issues of theodicy. The problem of evil was the most acute theological problem to solve, the trigger of so much deconstruction. Consequently, many were attracted to open, relational, and process perspectives concerning God's "omnipotence." By rethinking God's "power," responsibility for the pain and suffering of the world could be shifted away from God. This shift lessens the theological burden of "the problem of evil" that weighed, and still weighs, so heavily upon so many.

Open, relational, and process perspectives are rich and fascinating theological resources--I love them--especially in conversations about theodicy. For many, these perspectives are literally faith-saving, the only way they can view God's power and remain a Christian. So, in my estimation, good work is being done here. And yet, we encounter a problem similar to the one we observed with Girardian scapegoat theology. Open, relational, and process perspectives are also theory-heavy. The metaphysical fireworks can be exciting, but they get in the way of broad appeal. Plus, there's the nagging issue of heresy. 

Listen, I think people have got to do what they got to do, theologically speaking, to hang on to faith. And if reaching for some heterodox ideas keeps you in the orbit of Jesus Christ, well, there are worse fates in life. As a psychologist, I think theology has as much to do with coping as with creedal orthodoxy. Sometimes you have to rearrange your mental furniture to make sense of the world, and over-policing these re-configurations in the name of "correct doctrine" often betrays a pastoral cluelessness. Plus, God isn't going to send anyone to hell for having a few squirrelly ideas. 

Also, many of the open, relational and process thinkers insist that their views are creedally orthodox, and work to demonstrate this. But this effort only goes to make my point: If your views are always fighting skirmishes to beat back the charge of heresy, your view isn't going to become mainstream. Too much theological headwind. 

There were other theological trends within the emerging church movement we could also highlight. We could talk, for example, about social trinitarianism and the influence of JĆ¼rgen Moltmann, or the popularity of non-dualistic thinking from people like Richard Rohr. (For example, we could do an autopsy of how Michael Gunger took the very popular and emergent-adjacent podcast The Liturgists down the non-dualistic, spiritual-not-religious path.) But our examples of Girardian atonement theory and process theology suffice to make the point. One of the reasons, albeit likely a small one, the emerging church movement failed, in my estimation, was due to the unconventional and esoteric theology that came to influence the movement. From the mid-2000s on, a lot of the foment and energy of the emerging church conversation involved sharing, propagating, and debating these theological ideas online. And while that conversation snapped, crackled and popped among a certain demographic, these debates were very niche and never really had a chance of winning over large numbers of regular folk in the pews, especially normal evangelical folks. 

Simply put, the emerging church failed because much of theology that came to dominate the conversation got a little too weird. 

As a series reminder, do check out the Emerged podcast hosted by Tony Jones and Tripp Fuller, their oral history of the emerging church movement (webpage here, Apple podcast here, and Spotify here).

Why the Emerging Church Movement Failed: Part 3, When Evangelism Became Deconstruction

As a series reminder, do check out the Emerged podcast hosted by Tony Jones and Tripp Fuller, their oral history of the emerging church movement (webpage here, Apple podcast here, and Spotify here).

So, why did the emerging church movement struggle to establish churches? Why did it become a largely online and conference-centric movement only to disappear into the ether? 

What happened to the church in the emerging church?

To be fair, some churches were planted and continue to thrive. And as I pointed out in the first post, many evangelical churches were shaped by the emerging church movement and continue to reflect its enduring legacy. So, the emerging church movement didn't vanish without leaving any ecclesial trace. 

Still, beyond these lingering impacts, the "emerging church" largely vanished. Why?

Recall, one of the central features of the emerging church movement was its engagement with post-modernity. At the start of the movement, this engagement had an evangelistic and missional thrust: How can we reach our post-modern culture where suspicions of meta-narratives and institutional authority are prevalent? Simply put: How do we evangelize in a post-modern culture?

However, very quickly it became apparent that many of the leaders within the emerging church weren't really thinking about evangelizing a post-modern culture but were, instead, proclaiming a post-modern Christianity. An example here would be the trajectory of the work of Peter Rollins. At the start, Peter's work in his book How (Not) to Speak of God was a very helpful intervention in helping us talk and think about God in a post-modern context. (I loved that book.) But as Peter's work progressed deeper into Christian a/theism it became what he called, "pyrotheology," a call for the wholesale deconstruction and demolition of Christian faith. A "burn the house down" approach to faith. All metaphysical convictions had to be jettisoned.  

As I described in Part 1, the emerging church conversation began by trying to help GenX and Millennial Christins live with doubt, and even leverage those doubts toward good outcomes. But "learning to live with doubt" eventually morphed into what we today call "deconstruction," the active tearing down of previously held convictions and beliefs.

To be sure, as I've shared many times, deconstruction is a healthy and vital process in our faith development. We all have to leave behind beliefs which are broken, unhealthy, or immature. But it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that it's very hard to plant and grow thriving churches around a bunch of people who are deconstructing. This isn't rocket science. There has to be some positive belief and conviction at the heart of your church. A church built upon negation isn't going to be around very long. Feel free to evangelize people into nothingness. Go ahead and burn it all down. But while people might buy books or pay money to come to a conference centered on deconstruction, as general rule people don't show up on Sunday mornings to worship a void.

In hindsight, the outcome was predictable. When evangelism was replaced with deconstruction within the emerging church movement any attempted ecclesiology was going to fail. You can't build churches upon deconstruction. 

What deconstruction can and did create were spiritual seekers. In fact, many leaders and followers of the emerging church movement would today be much more comfortable describing themselves as a "spiritual seeker" than as a Christian. But when "Christians" became "spiritual seekers" nothing interesting or distinctive was going to be left of the movement. Spiritual seekers are dime a dozen. 

So, that's another part of why the emerging church movement failed. The emerging church deconstructed itself out of existence to dissipate into the haze of our "spiritual but not religious" culture.