WORLDVIEWS AS CULTURAL AGENTS
“For what you see and hear depends a
great deal on where you
are standing; it also depends on what sort of person you are.”[1]
I.
WHAT
IS A WORLDVIEW?
A.
Introduction
“We go at the painful task of living with a set of
beliefs—faiths, if you will—that organize the helter-skelter of experience into
a more or less systematic and coherent whole.”[2]
“[A]ssumptions appear so obvious that people do not
know what they are assuming because no other way of putting things has ever
occurred to them.”[3]
“A worldview is . . . a fundamental orientation of
the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions . .
. about the basic constitution of reality.”[4]
B.
Worldview
and Its Noetic Structure[5]
The term ‘noetic’ comes from the Greek verb noeo, meaning ‘to understand.’
We all have a noetic structure—an interconnected hierarchy of beliefs
that helps us understand the world around us.
1.
Noetic
structures contain beliefs that are related in several ways.
Noetic structures rarely contain beliefs
that are formally contradictory. [cf. Nash, 55: “human and dog at the same
time.”]
Beliefs are sometimes related simply by habit, not
thought.
The majority of our beliefs are inferred from other
beliefs.
Some beliefs are basic or foundational—they
are not believed on the basis of other beliefs, e.g., the existence of other
minds, or the general accuracy of sense perception.
2.
Beliefs
differ with respect to the influence they exert on other beliefs.
When beliefs at or near the base of a noetic
structure are changed there are serious ramifications for the entire superstructure.
On the other hand, when upper-level beliefs are changed very little adjustment
needs to be made.
e. g., belief in God [foundational] versus the belief that
C.
The
Inescapability of Presuppositions and Perspectives
“We all hold a number of beliefs that we presuppose
or accept without support from other beliefs or arguments or evidence. Such
presuppositions are necessary if we are to think at all.”[6]
Everyone makes assumptions about the world,
presuppositions that cannot be proven, (e.g., the veracity of perceptual
beliefs, the reliability of memory, or the principles of logic).
In addition to these unavoidable presuppositions,
we bring to our experience beliefs that emanate from our place in history. Even
the everyday task of observing the world is not nearly as straightforward as we
imagine; it is deeply “theory-laden”—it brings learning with it.
“We see, and cannot help seeing, what we have
learnt to infer.”[7]
Transparencies: The Necker Cube and Perceptual
Organization.[8]
What we observe is profoundly influenced by what we
bring with us, (e.g., perceptual
problems when congenital cataracts are surgically removed). Our perspective
helps us identify interesting features in the “buzzing, blooming” world of
sense data; it identifies problems that need further work. It also hides things
which people with other learning notice immediately.
D.
Worldviews
in Scientific Observations and Theories
“Most scientific research consists . . . of a
continuing attempt to interpret nature in terms of a presupposed theoretical
framework. This framework plays a fundamental role in determining what problems
must be solved and what is to count as solutions to these problems. . . .
Rather than observations providing independent data against which we test our
theories, theories play a crucial role in determining what is observed.”[9]
“Without waiting, passively, for repetitions to
impress or impose regularities upon us, we actively try to impose regularities
upon the world. We try to discover similarities in it, and to interpret it in
terms of laws invented by us.”[10]
Example: The Copernican Revolution:[11]
Aristotle (4th century BC) and Ptolemy
(2nd century AD) argued that the universe was geo-centric and
geo-stationary. According to these thinkers, all heavenly bodies transverse
perfectly circular orbits around the earth. The Aristotelian and Ptolemaic
systems were able to account for a great deal of what medieval persons observed
in the heavens.
By the sixteenth century problems with this model were
mounting. In order to solve these problems, Copernicus suggested that the
universe is helio-centric (sun-centred), an hypothesis that solved the problem
of the retrograde motion of the planets against the backdrop of the more
distant stars. If the planets traveled at various speeds around the sun, they
would appear to move backwards (retrograde) at certain points in their orbit.
One slow, outer planet (Jupiter[12])
as seen from a fast, inner planet (Earth).
Martin Luther once described Copernicus as “that
fool [who would] reverse the art of astronomy.” In the illustration below
(taken from the Bible that Luther published), we see God as the Orderer of the
Ptolemaic cosmos.
Ancient astronomers had considered the
helio-centric theory, but had generally rejected it because there was no
observable shift in the position of the distant stars, what astronomers now
call, stellar parallax. If the earth
was orbiting the sun and there was no parallax, this would imply that the stars
must be at some unbelievable distance.
Helio-centrism also confronted a serious theological problem. Two passages in
Scripture insisted on a geo-stationary universe. Psalms 104:5 reads: “He [the
Lord] set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.” Ecclesiastes
1:5 reads: “The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it
rises.”
For our purposes it is important to note that
everybody prior to Copernicus saw the
sun and stars rotating around the earth; those after Copernicus increasingly saw the earth rotating around the sun.
In both cases, their worldview profoundly shaped what was seen, what was not
noticed, and which problems needed resolution.
II.
GOD,
NATURE, AND MIRACLES
Since the rise of modern science, theism has been
profoundly challenged by science-based rivals; naturalism still offers the most
serious challenge.
Theories descending from the scientific revolution
argued that the universe is controlled by a set of “natural laws” such as gravitation.
These laws are often understood as self-sustaining powers that control physical
events. It is often assumed, for instance, that gravitation explains why my keys tend to move toward the
centre of the earth. For many, gravity is the final explanation of this event.
For the most part, contemporary Christians accept
this account of a law-governed universe and derive their understanding of
miracles from it. They typically take a miracle to be a divine violation or
interruption of the laws of nature. This definition is widely accepted in
non-theistic circles as well. Theists believe miracles, understood as
violations of these laws, occur; non-theists believe these alleged violations
do not occur. When most contemporary Christians speak of miracles they typically
mean that God has set aside nature’s laws in order to achieve his purpose.
Many of our Christian predecessors would have rejected
the view that miracles are violations of the laws of nature since they refused
to acknowledge that anything operates independently of God.
Earlier Christian
theologians had generally made no sharp distinction between the ‘natural’ and
the ‘miraculous.’ . . . God may produce some events in different ways than
others, but God makes everything happen, and anything might provide the
occasion for reflecting on God’s power and goodness—though events whose causes
we cannot discern may particularly evoke such reflection. . . . Aquinas noted
that ‘the word miracle is taken from admiratio. Now we experience
wonder when an effect is obvious but its cause is hidden.’[13] Thus
a peasant will find an eclipse miraculous, where an astronomer, understanding
its cause, will not . . . in a world where God sustains everything at every
moment, what distinguishes miracles is our inability to understand their causes
and the wonder that results, not the fact that God acts in them but not
elsewhere.[14]
“Even the very things which are most commonly known as natural would not
be less wonderful nor less effectual to excite surprise in all who beheld them,
if men were not accustomed to admire nothing but what is rare."[15]
Christians from Augustine onward understood
miracles, not as violations of the “natural” course of events, but as those
events that arrest our attention.
There is nothing that
God hath established in a constant course of nature, and which therefore is
done every day, but would seeme a Miracle and exercise our admiration, if it
were done but once; Nay, the ordinary things in Nature, would be greater
miracles than the extraordinary, which we admire most, if
they were done but once . . . onely [sic] the daily doing takes off the
admiration.[16]
For Miracles are so
called not because they are the works of God but because they happen seldom
& for that reason create wonder. If they should happen constantly according
to certaine laws imprest upon the nature of things, they would be no longer
wonders or miracles but might be considered in Philosophy as a part of the
Phenomena of Nature.[17]
"The terms nature and powers of nature and course of nature and the
like are nothing but empty words, and signify merely that a thing usually or
frequently comes to pass. The raising a human out of the dust of the earth we
call a miracle; the generation of a human body in the ordinary way we call
natural, for no other reason but because the power of God effects one usually,
the other unusually. . . . Did men usually arise out of the grave as corn grows
out of seed sown we should certainly call that also natural."[18]
For most of their history Christians understood
that all events rely on God’s continuous activity. What we now call “natural
laws” were simply “the customs of God.” We have become so accustomed to the attentive faithfulness of God that we call it
“natural” or a manifestation of “laws.” This surely is misguided and, perhaps,
even blasphemous. By accepting the theory of a law-governed nature and the
resultant theory of miracles as well, we deprive God of His glory—we attribute
to “laws” what is in fact God’s personal activity. The Christ who sustains all
things (Col. 1:17) is thereby driven into the far reaches of heaven from whence
He can only muster an occasional violation of the “laws of nature.”
“The idea that natural laws describe how nature
operates in the absence of some
definite divine agency is actually a purely modern invention.”[19]
[T]he concept of
miracles [as it is currently understood] is not derived from the
Judeo-Christian Scriptures. The Bible does not speak of nature or laws of
nature, but rather of God as the one who orders nature and is active in all events.
The most common biblical terms are ‘mighty acts’ (extra-ordinary as
distinguished from ordinary events) and ‘signs’ (vehicles of divine
significance). The notion of miracles as violations of the laws of nature is a
modern, intellectual one.[20]
Miracles are not violations of autonomous,
objective “laws” but only those occasions when God, for His own (often hidden)
purposes, briefly alters the customary course of his faithful care of his creation.
These deviations from his customary activity are enough to provoke admiration
and wonder in us. If you start with the view that God’s “mighty acts” are
violations of nature’s laws, you will never develop an adequate understanding
of his faithful governance of his world!
III. TESTING A WORLDVIEW?
In the opening paragraphs of the third chapter of
his Worldviews in Conflict, Ronald Nash suggests that we choose our worldview. He uses phrases
such as “[w]e should choose” and we need to make “a reasoned choice among the
systems.”[21]
However, in a subtle but important shift, he devotes the rest of the chapter to
how we might test worldviews. This
has important consequences since choosing and testing are very different
matters.
TWO MODELS OF BELIEF FORMATION
|
Science-Analogue (R. Nash ??) |
Neo-Classical (A. Plantinga) |
|
Data on competing world-views are
carefully assembled for the
purpose of evaluation. |
When I encounter certain situations, I
discover that I possess new beliefs; I find myself believing something. |
|
Beliefs are spontaneously formed in me
in certain common circumstances. |
|
|
After a thorough investigation, the
best set of worldview beliefs is chosen and adopted. Inadequate beliefs and
belief systems are discarded. |
Important new beliefs should be
tested, compared, and rationally evaluated and, if necessary, discarded. |
|
The self is a sovereign
evaluator/chooser analogous to a scientist scrutinizing data and choosing the
best theory. |
The self is a recipient of many its beliefs. It unavoidably relies on beliefs
that are not the product of its choice or reasoning processes. |
“Reformed Theologians such as Calvin . . . have
held that God has implanted in us a tendency . . . to accept belief in God
under certain conditions. Calvin speaks, in this connection, of a ‘sense of
deity inscribed in the hearts of all.’ Just as we have a natural tendency to
form perceptual beliefs under certain conditions, so says Calvin, we have a
natural tendency to form such beliefs as God is speaking to me and God has
created all this or God disapproves of what I’ve done under certain widely
realized conditions.”[22]
“God has so created us that we have a tendency or
disposition to see his hand in the world about us. More precisely, there is in
us a disposition to believe propositions of the sort this flower was created by God or this vast and intricate
universe was created by God when we contemplate the flower or behold the
starry heavens or think about the vast reaches of the universe.”[23]
The close analogy with
perceptual belief formation
“When in broad daylight I open my eyes, it is not
in my power to choose whether I shall see or no, or to determine what
particular objects shall present themselves to my view; and so likewise as to
the hearing and other senses, the ideas imprinted on these are not creatures of
my will.”[24]
“[A] thought comes when ‘it’ wants, and not when
‘I’ want.”[25]
Notice how our language bears witness that we often
receive beliefs apart from willing, choosing, or reasoning, e.g., we “fall” in
love; we “follow” an argument; something “strikes” us; something “occurs” to us,
we are “surprised” [from the Latin, prehendere,
to seize] by what we find ourselves believing. Notice the passivity in all of
these expressions.
Few of us ever choose
our beliefs, let alone an entire worldview as Nash suggests. More typically, we
find ourselves possessing beliefs or we discover that new beliefs are being
formed within us and we proceed from there.
What are the implications
for Christian ministry?
If this account is correct, we need to ask, Do I go
about giving people reasons for choosing the Christian worldview (as in
evidentialist apologetics) or do I seek to guide them into situations where
beliefs about God are often and typically formed—e.g., by encountering the love
of Christ?
John 13:34-35: “A
new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love
one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love
one another.”
Jesus’s claim here seems to be that loving one
another will prompt others to believe that we are his disciples. Perhaps we are
not in the “business” of directly implanting beliefs? If we live in a loving
way among God’s people, we can expect that new beliefs about God and his Son
will be formed in those around us, to the glory of God.
Once Christian beliefs are being formed or have been formed, the new believer or near believer should be encouraged to test his or her new beliefs. It is here, and only here, that Nash’s tests seem (somewhat) helpful. Testing procedures are not (in most cases, at least) the basis on which we come to adopt new beliefs or fundamentally change our worldview.
IV.
MASS MEDIA AND WORLDVIEW FORMATION
A.
The
Communal Promise of Emerging Technologies
“Steam has given us electricity and has
made the nation a neighborhood . . . The electric wire, the iron pipe, the
street railroad, the daily newspaper, the telephone, the lines of
transcontinental traffic by rail and water . . . have made us all of one
body—socially, industrially, politically. . . . It is possible for all men to
understand one another.”[26]
"It [the laying of the transatlantic cable] no doubt has a most
important part to play in the renovation of our world and the establishment of
Christ's kingdom on the earth."[27]
"Peter Cooper's 'contrivance' [the railroad locomotive], one of
them later recalled, proved instrumental 'in making available, in America, that
vast system which united remote peoples and promotes that peace on earth and
good will to men which angels have proclaimed'.”[28]
“The ultimate promise of cable
[television] is the rebuilding of a sense of community.”[29]
“The Internet is not about technology,
it is not about information, it is about communication—people talking with each
other, people exchanging e-mail. . . . Communication is the basis, the
foundation, the radical ground and root upon which all community stands, grows,
and thrives. The Internet is a community of chronic communicators.”[30]
Illustration: Emoticons
Mass media technologies are often described with
metaphors of close proximity and communal relations, e.g., “keeping in touch,”
“staying in contact,” “chatting,” “talking,” “communicating,” etc.
B.
Evangelicals
and Mass Media Naiveté
From the time of their emergence in the
middle of the eighteenth century, evangelicals have been aggressive users of
mass media. For instance, eighteenth-century evangelicals used mass-printed
materials to transcend parish boundaries and to build large constituencies. In
the twentieth century, evangelicals aggressively used print, radio, television,
film, and video to broadcast
their message. Today, many of
the same hopes are attached to newer media such as the Internet, Podcasts, DVDs,
satellite TV, and texting.
“Wherever new sources of communication are
opened up by the persevering enterprise of our fellow citizens, let the Bible
and the tract be transported with the bale of merchandize, and the produce of
the soil."[31]
“[T]he ‘message’ of any medium or
technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into
human affairs.”[32]
What McLuhan says of mass media in general, namely, that the medium is as
transformative as its content, is certainly true of evangelical media-ministries.
Regrettably, there is very little reflection among evangelicals as to what
happens when the good news is transformed into a “message” that can be
broadcast.
The idea that the gospel is a set of
doctrinal propositions goes back to the beginnings of evangelicalism. For
example, Lyman Beecher, a pioneering evangelical activist, said in 1823: “By
the faith once delivered to the saints, is to be understood the doctrines of
the gospel.”[33]
The view that the gospel is a set of simplified statements led evangelicals to
assume that it could be indiscriminately broadcast. But what if the good news
is not a set of propositions? What if it has to do, primarily, with the
inbreaking of our Lord’s kingdom?
How does the medium of the gospel’s
propagation reflexively transform it?
What happens when the life of God among us,
Immanuel, is packaged for broadcasting?
What happens when the incarnated life of
God, manifest in the mutual love of believers for each other, is reduced to
propositions?
How has the perceived need to propagate
the “message” through mass media made the Christian life just like any other
commercial product?
If McLuhan is correct, evangelicals are
monumentally mistaken in assuming that media are purely neutral conduits,
instruments or tools. He could well be speaking of evangelicals when he insists
that it is a type of idiocy not to notice how the medium shapes the message
and, in the end, overwhelms it.
“[A]ny medium has the power of imposing
its own assumption on the unwary.”[34]
THE RISE (AND FALL) OF PROGRAMMATIC MINISTRY
I.
INTRODUCTION
In this unit we will search for interdisciplinary insight
into the everyday ministry practices of evangelicals.
We will explore how evangelicals understood their
world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and some of the enduring consequences
of such.
This is our story, a story buried beneath the
flurry of our activities.
II.
THE
DECLINE OF THE MEDIEVAL COSMOS
Transparency: Ptolemaic vs. Copernican models of
the universe
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this
centre [earth],
Observe degree, priority, and place,
Insisture [fixedness], course, proportion, season, form,
Office, and custom, in all line of order.[35]
The fixed orbits of the heavenly bodies illustrated
the cosmos’s integrated hierarchy of value, meaning, and location. The cosmos was
understood to be an orderly and rational arrangement of all things.
"The arrangement of
the planets was held to have great significance . . . The spheres represented
unchanging perfection, crystalline, perfectly circular, moving in stately
patterns which were a lesson to wayward man, whose sin was a constant threat to
cosmic harmony."[36]
Daly helpfully uses the
term ‘harmony’ to describe the cosmic order. The modern connotations of the
term ‘order’ typically imply an imposed or artificial orderliness. This older
view stressed the harmony, or “natural orderliness, which depends on the nature
of things.”[37]
"With affinities
between father and both God and king, with the powerful harmonist echoes of the
union of man and wife, and of the children as the embodiment of their mutual
love, the family provided the pattern for both larger and smaller political and
social relationships, an essential part of the human cosmology, a reflection of
the harmony of other images in the system."[38]
"So interrelated
was the created world that man's and the rest of creation's actions
reverberated with each other, and all alike stood to collapse if the cosmic
harmony were flouted long or dramatically enough. Sin threatened more than
dislocation; the chaos feared was not mere disorder, but something like the
cosmic anarchy before creation."[39]
The terrifying significance of comets:
Hung
be the heavens with black, yield day to night!
Comets,
importing change of times and states
Brandish your
crystal tresses in the sky,
And with them
scourge the bad revolting stars
That have
consented unto Henry’s death![40]
Satan
stood
Unterrified,
and like a comet burned . . .
And
from his horrid hair
Shakes
pestilence and war.[41]
As widely feared, disorder rose dramatically in
[B]ut when the planets,
In evil mixture, to disorder wander,
What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!
. . .
The unity and married calm of states . . .
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows.[43]
And freely men confesse that this world’s spent,
When in the planets and Firmament
They seeke so many new; they see that this
Is crumbled out againe to his Atomies.
‘Tis all in peeces, all cohaerence gone;
All just supply, and all Relation:
Prince, Subject, Father, Sonne, are things forgot,
For every man alone thinkes he hath got
To be a
None of that kinde, of which he is, but hee.[44]
III.
THE
EMERGENCE OF FORMAL INSTITUTIONS[45]
A.
The
Breakdown of the American Colonial Household
“The family familiar to the early colonists was a
patrilineal group of extended kinship gathered into a single household. By modern
standards it was large. Besides children, who often remained in the home well
into maturity, it included a wide range of other dependents: nieces and
nephews, cousins, and, except for families at the lowest rung of society,
servants in filial discipline . . . the conjugal unit was only the nucleus of a
broad kinship community whose outer edges merged almost imperceptibly into the
society at large” (15-16).
“As the [eighteenth-century American] family
contracted towards a nuclear core, as settlement and re-settlement, especially
on the frontier, destroyed what remained of stable community relations, and
constant mobility and instability kept new ties from strengthening rapidly, the
once elaborate interpenetration of family and community dissolved. The border
line between them grew sharper; and the passage of the child from family to
society lost its ease, its naturalness, and became abrupt, deliberate, and
decisive: open to question, concern, and decision” (25).
B.
The
Colonial Response: Restoration through Law
“Within a remarkably short time after the
beginnings of settlement it was realized that the family was failing in its
more obvious educational functions . . . The famous Massachusetts statute of
1642, prefaced by its sharp condemnation of ‘the great neglect of many parents
and masters in training up their children in learning and labor,’ was one of a
series of expedients aimed at shoring up the weakened structure of family
discipline” (26).
“Such laws [the Massachusetts statute of 1642,
Virginia’s statute of the same year and the Duke’s Laws in New York in 1665],
expressing a sudden awareness, a heightened consciousness of what the family
had meant in education, of how much of the burden of imparting civilization to
the young it had borne, and of what its loss might mean, were only the first of
a century-long series of adjustments” (26).
“The famous
C.
The
Colonial Response: Functions ® Formal
Institutions
“The Puritans quite deliberately transferred the
maimed functions of the family to formal instructional institutions, and in so
doing not only endowed schools with a new importance but expanded their purpose
beyond pragmatic vocationalism toward vaguer but more basic cultural goals”
(27).
“The seventeenth-century statutes reveal
extravagant efforts made not merely to retain the broad scope of apprenticeship
obligations within the structure of the family, but to extend it, to include
within in cultural matters dislodged from other areas and threatened with
extinction. But the evidences of failure and the displacement of functions are
manifest in the records of successive generations” (31).
D.
Social
Restoration Through Formal Education (Schooling)
“For the self-conscious, deliberate, aggressive use
of education, first seen in an improvised but confident missionary campaign
[directed towards Indians], spread throughout an increasingly heterogeneous
society and came to be accepted as a normal form of educational effort” (39).
“The tendency to reduce the once extensive network
of mutual obligations to a few simple strands and to transfer the burden of all
but strict vocational training to external, formal agencies of education
increased through the years” (30).
“In all, there took place a reduction in the
personal, non-vocational obligations that bound master and servant and a
transfer of general educational functions to external agencies. With increasing
frequency masters assigned their apprentices to teachers for instruction in
rudimentary literacy and in whatever other non-vocational matters they had
contracted to teach” (32).
“[B]y the end of the colonial period it [education]
had been radically transformed. Education had been dislodged from its ancient
position in the social order, wrenched loose from the automatic, instinctive
workings of society, and cast as a matter for deliberation into the forefront
of consciousness. Its functionings had become problematic and
controversial. Many were transferred
from informal to formal institutions, from agencies to whose major purpose they
had been incidental to those, for the most part schools, to which they were
primary. Schools and formal schooling had acquired a new importance. They had
assumed cultural burdens they had not borne before. Where there had been deeply
ingrained habits, unquestioned tradition, automatic responses, security, and
confidence there was now awareness, doubt, formality, will, and decision. The
whole range of education had become an instrument of deliberate social purpose”
(21-22).
IV.
THE
DISPERSAL OF THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD[46]
“The central principle of this premodern ecology
was that the wealthiest members of the community lived and worked closest to
the historic core, while the poorest people were pushed to the periphery.
Indeed, the word ‘suburb’ . . . referred exclusively to these peripheral slums,
which surrounded all large towns” (20).
“The basic principle of a city like
The city-centre exerted a powerful inward pull due,
in part, to its efficient communications, business information, and social
opportunities. Outer-city expansion was virtually impossible. The social
mixture within urban households included servants, apprentices, children, and relatives.
All classes lived in close proximity.
“[T]he active role played by women in
Family contact/participation in the life of the
city: The involvement of women in the life of the city was remarkably open. The
family was also very open to influences from neighbours and kin.
About midway through the eighteenth century the
middle class came to the notion that social distinctions required physical
segregation.
“The suburb as we know it, therefore, did not
evolve smoothly or inevitably from the premodern city; still less did it evolve
from those disreputable outlying districts which originally bore the name of
‘suburbes.’ The emergence of suburbia required a total transformation of urban
values: not only a reversal in the meanings of core and periphery, but a
separation of work and family life and the creation of new forms of urban space
that would be both class-segregated and wholly residential” (8).
“The
These trends intensified the emotional bonds
between family members; the family closed in around itself, separated itself
from its environment, and focused on mutual intimacy and child raising. These
trends enormously increased the emotional burden of the “closed” domesticated
family.
“The more favorable disposition to Religion in the
female sex was graciously designed also to make women doubly valuable in the
wedded state. . . . when the husband should return to his family, worn and
harassed by worldly cares or professional labors, the wife, habitually
preserving a warmer and more unimpaired spirit of devotion, than is perhaps
consistent with being immersed in the bustle of life, might revive his languid
piety.”[47]
“On the one hand, they [evangelicals] gave to women
the highest possible role in their system of values: the principal guardian of
the Christian home. On the other, they fanatically opposed any role for women
outside that sphere. . . . This natural disposition [of women to religion] was
a sign of providence, for men’s work necessarily exposed them to the evils of
the city. Women, however, could and must escape this taint by restricting
themselves to the home and devoting themselves to their God-given functions:
the education of children and the emotional and religious support of their
husbands” (35-36).
“This contradiction between the city and the
Evangelical ideal of the family provided the final impetus for the
unprecedented separation of the citizen’s home from the city that is the
essence of the suburban idea. The city was not just crowded, dirty, and
unhealthy; it was immoral. Salvation itself depended on separating woman’s
sacred world of the family and children from the profane metropolis” (38).
Vast changes in the role of women flowed from their
isolation from the productive places which had been their lot in medieval and
rural family life. The suburban woman is now the angel of her isolated
household, the priestess of a disconnected nuclear family.
“[It is folly] . . . to suppose that the present
family, or any other group, can perpetually vitalize itself through some
indwelling affectionate tie, in the absence of concrete, perceived functions. .
. . [A]ffection and personality cultivation . . . [cannot] . . . exist in a
social vacuum, unsupported by the determining goals and ideals of economic and
political society.”[48]
V.
NEWTONIANISM AND ITS UNIVERSAL APPLICATION
A.
Newton
1.
The Law of Inertia: Every body continues in its state of
rest, or of uniform motion in a right [straight] line, unless it is compelled
to change that state by forces impressed upon it.
2.
The Law of Acceleration: Change in motion is proportional to
the motive force impressed, and is made in the direction of the right
[straight] line in which that force is impressed.
3.
The Law of Action and Reaction: To every action, there is an equal and
opposite reaction.[49]
"
(1)
Each
part of the system is distinct from every other part;
(2)
No
part of the system has a fixed or necessary position—it can move or be moved
anywhere;
(3)
No
part is more valuable or “higher” than any other part;
(4)
Each
part has any number of functionally-equivalent replacements;
(5)
Local
instability does not threaten the self-adjusting equilibrium of the whole
system;
(6)
The
system as a whole is held together by an internal, universal, invisible
force—gravity;
(7)
Both
apparent irregularities, (e.g., comets), and regularities (e.g., planets) can
be accounted for by the same universal forces.
B.
Early
Applications of Newton
"[George]
"[David] Hume's
[1711-1776] goal was to produce a new science of individual human moral
behavior that would be equivalent to
"[Charles] Fourier
[1772-1837] believed that the passions were inherently good and the only
constructive and harmonious society was one that gratified rather than
repressed them. To decipher the passions and to design a society that would
allow them full development was to discover the 'divine social code' for human
happiness. Here was the basis for Fourier's claim to have extended the work of
C.
A Newtonian
Analogue Applied to Social Systems
British and American thinkers of the eighteenth
century scrambled to apply
Here is a Newtonian analogue applied to society and
its households:
(1a) Each
function (part) of the social system is distinct from every other function;
(2a) No
function (part) of the social system has a fixed or necessary position;
(3a) No
function (part) of the social system is more valuable than any other;
(4a) Each
part of the social system has any number of functionally-equivalent
replacements;
(5a) Instability
in the household does not threaten the equilibrium of the social system;
(6a) The social system is held together by a
universal force;
(7a) All aspects of the social system can be
accounted for by the operation of this universal force acting on passive parts.
VI.
THE
RELIGIOUS SYSTEM & ITS MIGRATORY FUNCTIONS
In the early days of the American colonies, the
religious, social, and physical worlds were understood in terms of divinely
assigned places and responsibilities. “God had assigned a particular task and a
particular place to each person.”[54]
In the eighteenth century, the application of
Newtonian analogues to religious and ecclesiological matters rapidly took place.
George Whitefield, the influential itinerant evangelist, spoke of the religious
world in Newtonian terms as early as 1739. “[God] is the Great Householder of
the whole world, and I look upon all places and persons as so many little parts
of His great family. . . . As there is here the same sun, so there is here the
same God—in
Lyman Beecher, a well-known evangelical activist
and Congregationalist pastor, suggested in 1819 that “the God who governs the
natural world according to stated laws, administers the concerns of his moral
government by the operation of general principles.”[56]
And Alexander Campbell, the founder of the Disciples of Christ, clearly linked
the Newtonian system of the universe with the moral or religious system:
One God, one system of nature, one universe . . .
[The] universe is composed of in-numerable systems . . . One God, one moral
system, one Bible. If nature be a system, religion is no less so.[57]
By the early nineteenth-century, new “career”
opportunities opened before parish ministers. Increasingly, as Donald Scott
shows, ministers moved from church to church and into the rapidly expanding
voluntary associations. Pastors began to identify their “ministries” with the
professional or career opportunities available to them in the national and
international religious system and no longer with their lifelong bond to a
particular church. In Scott’s words, “the clergyman’s local ties and
commitments . . . were most severely strained by the emergence of translocal
ministry with the national community as its constituency.”[58]
By the early nineteenth century the failings of the
household and parish, which had heretofore been understood as signalling chaos,
could be seen in a more hopeful light. Households and parishes—sites
encompassed by an overarching religious system—were simply collections of
functions that could be supplemented or replaced if they failed to adequately
carry out their tasks. For instance, if the family was unable to carry out a given
function then that function could be transferred to another site within the
religious economy.
The early nineteenth century saw an explosion of
voluntary associations. These single-purpose organizations entered the
religious system in droves, seeking to pick up lapsed household or parish
functions.[59]
Organizations such as the American Bible Society (est. 1816), the American
Tract Society (1823), the American Education Society (1816) and hundreds of
others expended enormous energies on these tasks. One of the unintended
consequences of these energetic efforts was that they extracted “functions”
from their original, local settings. In so doing they assumed that these
functions could be transferred to more “efficient” sites without harming the
original centres—households, churches, local communities.
Churches responded to this highly competitive
situation by adopting the voluntary association model. Specialized and
single-purposed ministries (programs) began to proliferate in mid-nineteenth-century
evangelical churches, beginning with the Sunday school. These programs
typically focused on a particular deficiency in the life of the family, church,
or society. Churches soon discovered, however, that these programs were not successfully
executing their intended functions. As a result, some of their functions were
redistributed to even newer programmatic entities (e.g., DVBS) or to outside
associations (para-church agencies).
In the midst of the growing
clamour of voluntary associations and local ministry initiatives, churches
struggled with the myriad petitions put before them for participation and
financial support. The following were proposed in 1834 as a solution to this chaos.
[T]he
principle of organization, so far as the circumstances allow, should be carried
out into the details of church-operations. . . . Every individual and every
work should be under supervision and control; every thing should be governed by
mutual counsel and animated by mutual knowledge. . . . we should see a unity of
efficient action prevailing in all the congregations of true believers.[60]
Since the mid-1800s, church programs have
proliferated. Today many evangelical churches are almost entirely programmatic.
Dysfunctions within the church, families, para-church agencies, and even
between programs are resolved via additional programming. This model is now so
entrenched that we can scarcely think of the church in any other way.[61]
Observe the explicit functionalism in the following.
Fellowship, worship, nurture, discipline, and
mission, then, summarize the primary functions of a church organization. When
the church becomes dysfunctional in any of these areas, Christians may exercise
their freedom of choice to find another church relationship or supplement their
church membership with an association or organization that meets their
particular needs. This can be an association that grows out of the church body
or one that is considered ‘parachurch’ . . . Briefly defined, the parachurch
organization is a particular group of voluntary associations of Christians
whose purpose is directed at a stated task, relying heavily upon laypersons and
independent of any accountability to an institutional church structure, but
that may assume functions historically associated with the church.[62]
VII.
THE
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF PROGRAM-MATIC NEWTONIANISM
Evangelical ministry methods originate in and are
justified by a type of Newtonian functionalism. Understanding this gives us a
vantage point from which we can view the struggles faced by churches. We should
be careful to note that these “practical” problems originate, in part, in the
intellectual models or worldviews that are assumed by evangelicals.
What are some of the consequences of adopting
Newtonian functionalism as a theory of Christian ministry? Does this model lead
to the following problems?
·
Atrophy,
passivity, and dislocation of the classic centres of the Christian
life—household, community, congregation;
·
Isolation
of programmatic niches and the resulting fragmentation of the church;
·
Church
leadership is absorbed with the administrative demands of its programmatic
activities;
·
Growing
distance between the giver and the recipient of “services”;
·
Overlapping
of competing authorities—church vs. parachurch, program vs. program;
·
Increasing
individualism generated by overlapping and competing authorities;
·
Church
is task-oriented rather than “one another” oriented;
·
The
local parish as a community of believers almost entirely
vanishes.
VIII. TOWARDS A NON-NEWTONIAN ECCLESIOLOGY
A.
Introduction
“[T]here is a dangerous departure, in the present
age of bustle, activity, and vain-glorious enterprise, from the simplicity of
the institutions which Christ has established for the legitimate action of the
Church. He has appointed one set of instrumentalities, and ordained one kind of
agency in His kingdom; but we have made void His commandments, in order to
establish our own inventions.”[63]
“At best, the next generation will probably find
very little encouragement for real faith in a managed and engineered church;
and, at worst, our use of modern methods and techniques will simply confirm the
suspicion that the church is really not fundamentally different from other
humanly-constructed organizations. . . .[W]e have contributed—albeit
unwittingly and unintentionally—to the erosion of the church’s primary mission
in the world, which is simply to bear witness to Immanuel, God with us.”[64]
Today’s programmatic “bustle, activity, and
vain-glorious enterprise” should be seen for what it is: despair, masquerading
as activity. Can you detect despair in the following?
What the church does internally with no intention
of impacting the world outside itself is not mission. But when a local
congregation understands that it is, by its nature, a constellation of mission
activities, and it intentionally lives its life as a missionary body, then it
begins to emerge toward becoming the authentic
Is it true that the church comes into being only as
a result of its purposeful, external activism?
We strain every nerve of motion, exhaust every
capacity of endurance, and push on till nature sinks in exhaustion. . . . There
must be an internal growth that is made by holy industry in the common walks of
life and duty. . . . let us turn to inquire whether there is not a fund of increase
in the very bosom of the church itself.[66]
B.
The
Protestant Church of Le Chambon ,
France
“He [Pastor Trocme, Protestant pastor in the
“Ethically speaking, it should interest us that, in
beginning the Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes, Jesus does not ask
disciples to do anything. The
Beatitudes are in the indicative, not
the imperative, mood. . . . The
Beatitudes are not a strategy for achieving a better society, they are an
indication, a picture. A vision of the inbreaking of a new society. They are
indicatives, promises, instances, imaginative examples of life in the
“The ease with which they [the Christian community
in
C.
Life
and Its Propagation
“When you give somebody a thing without giving
yourself, you degrade both parties by making the receiver utterly passive and
by making yourself a benefactor standing there to receive thanks—and even
sometimes obedience—as repayment. But when you give yourself, nobody is
degraded—in fact, both parties are elevated by a shared joy. When you give
yourself, the things you are giving become, to use Trocme’s word, feconde (fertile, fruitful). What you
give creates new, vigorous life, instead of arrogance on the one hand and
passivity on the other.”[70]
In simple acts of obedience and love, the church
breaks forth among us. It is not the product of our doings or activities; it
can only be received from the hand of the one who said He would build His
church. While we are attending to those around us, we receive the church. While
we are loving our neighbour, the Spirit is at work in mysterious and marvellous
ways in the world.
In 1967 Stanley Milgram conducted an ingenious set
of experiments which demonstrated that we are more closely connected than we
might think. He showed that any two randomly chosen persons in the
D.
An
Ecclesiology of Indirect Agency
1.
The
Gospel = Doctrinal Propositions?
"[I]t is only the
plain fundamental doctrines of the gospel which are necessary to
salvation."[72]
"Paul sees himself
as one who proclaims to euangelion tou theou, the gospel of God (1
Thess. 2:9), among the Gentiles (Gal. 2:2), something which can be done only if
it is accompanied by a total giving of his own person (1 Thess. 2:8). For Paul
proclamation is not, as with Jonah, a once-for-all cry which might be compared
with simply sticking up a poster. The proclamation of the message of Christ, as
he understands it, requires unceasing pleading and wooing, with a love that
seeks, and is accompanied by a constant care for the individual. It also
involves exhortation, warning, encouragement, and witness."[73]
2.
Some
Tentative Reflections on the “Great Commission”
Could the so-called
Great Commission passages have been directed solely at the apostles and even
fulfilled through their ministry?[74]
Why is there no
clear reiteration of the so-called Great Commission in Paul’s or John’s later
writings?
"[T]he gospel of
Christ was preached in the whole world, not only by those who had seen and
heard Him both before His passion and after His resurrection, but also after
their death by their successors, amid the horrible persecutions, diverse
torments and deaths of the martyrs, God also bearing them witness, both with
signs and wonders, and divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost."[75]
"The nature of the apostolic function is clear from the command,
'Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature' (Mark xvi.
15). No fixed limits are given to them, but the whole world is assigned to be
reduced under the obedience of Christ, that by spreading the Gospel as widely
as they could, they might everywhere erect his kingdom."[76]
Col. 1:6, 23b: “[I]n the
whole world, it [the gospel] is bearing fruit and growing . . . the gospel that
you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation (Or, to every creature)
under heaven.” (ESV)
"In the reporting
of Jesus' final words in the Gospels and Acts we should not see a command for
the early churches to obey, but an affirmation of what they found themselves
doing.”[77]
Note that Acts 1:8:
“[Y]ou will be my witnesses” . . . is in the future middle indicative. It is a
prediction, not an imperative.
"An influential
book by Harry Boer [Pentecost and Missions (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1961)], argues that so far as the evidence from Acts goes, the early church did
not evangelize out of a self-conscious obedience to the Great Commission."[78]
E.
The
Purposeless Church
"It is a
mistake, in my judgment, to believe that we can create community around a task
or a mission. This is a disembodied, de-communitized missionary mentality. It
is theology more committed to the Western work ethic than the liberation of the
gospel. As I interpret the New Testament, members of the early Church had a
mission because they were a community. The emphasis was on being, and therefore
doing—not the reverse. They lived and loved with, and for, others outside the
Church, because they dared first to be something new with each other—loving and
caring."[79]
Zechariah 8:20-23: “This is what the LORD Almighty
says: ‘Many peoples and the inhabitants of many cities will come, and the
inhabitants of one city will go to another and say, “Let us go at once to
entreat the LORD and seek the LORD Almighty. I myself am going.” And many
peoples and powerful nations will come to
“Luke has no interest in the utilitarian question
of how people become converted or how the church ought to evangelize, what
technique is most effective or what method yields the most certain results.
These are stories about God’s
actions, not the church’s programs.”[80]
“[the
amazing spread of early Christianity was due to] a single, over-riding internal factor . . . Christian
community—open to all, insistent on absolute and exclusive loyalty, and
concerned for every aspect of the believer’s life.”[81]
“And it is
the church in the fullness of its life—not primarily its arguments—that draws
others to consider the Christian faith.”[82]
“The Sermon [on the
Mount] is the inauguration manifesto of how the world looks now that God in
Christ has taken matters in hand. And essential to the way that God has taken
matters in hand is an invitation to all people to become citizens of a new
Kingdom, a messianic community where the world God is creating takes visible,
practical form.”[83]
“The
Christian religion is a social religion, and can be exhibited to the full
conviction of the world, only when it appears in this social character. An
individual or two, in a pagan land, may talk about the Christian religion, and
may exhibit its morality as far as respects mankind in general; but it is
impossible to give a clear, a satisfactory, a convincing exhibition of it, in
any other way than by exhibiting a church, not on paper, but in actual
existence and operation, as Divinely appointed."[84]
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I
have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that
you are my disciples, if you love one another.[85]
John 17:20-21: “My prayer is not for them alone. I
pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of
them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I in you. May they also
be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”
Perhaps we ought to be looking for a “purposeless”
church—a kingdom not made by human efforts, or responsive to human
machinations, a kingdom that can only be received.
INDIVIDUALISM
AS PRIMARY CULTURE[86]
I.
INTRODUCTION
A.
The
Pursuit of Happiness (Chapter 1)
Brian Palmer: (Suburban
Business Man)
Brian’s divorce caused him to “explore the limits
of the kind of success he had been pursuing” (4).
He “got back into” classical music, reading (4).
“The revolution in Brian’s thinking came from a
reexamination of the true sources of joy and satisfaction in his life” (5).
When asked why his commitment to his new family is
better than his earlier commitment to his career his reasons basically come
down to what seems to make him happy now.
“His new goal—devotion to marriage and
children—seems as arbitrary and unexamined as his earlier pursuit of material
success. Both are justified as idiosyncratic preference rather than as
representing a larger sense of the purpose of life” (6).
“When Brian describes how he has chosen to live,
however, he keeps referring to ‘values’ and ‘priorities’ not justified by any
wider framework of purpose or belief. What is good is what one finds rewarding.
If one’s preferences change, so does the nature of the good. Even the deepest
ethical virtues are justified as matters of personal preference” (6).[87]
“No one can really say that one value system is
better than another” (7).
“[T]o hear him talk, even his deepest impulses of
attachment to others are without any more solid foundation than his momentary
desires. He lacks a language to explain what seem to be the real commitments
that define his life, and to that extent the commitments themselves are
precarious” (8).
Joe Gorman: (
“For Joe, success means achieving the goals set by
your family and community, not using your family and community to achieve your
own individual goals” (8).
Success applied “to the experience of togetherness
the community had created partially through his efforts” (10).
Joe’s goals “are given to him by the traditions of
family and community” (11).
“Joe’s vision of the good life, seemingly rooted so
firmly in the objective traditions of the community, is in the end highly
subjective” (12).
“[D]angerously narrow conception of social justice
can result from committing oneself to small town values.” (12).
Margaret Oldham:
(Big City Therapist)
Margaret places individual fulfillment higher than
attachment to family and community (13).
“In Margaret’s view, the most important thing in
life is doing whatever you choose to do as well as you can” (14).
Margaret: “I tend to operate on the assumption that
what I want to do and what I feel like is what I should do. What I think the
universe wants from me is to take my values, whatever they might happen to be,
and live up to them as much as I can. If I’m the best person I know how to be
according to my lights, then something good will happen. I think in a lot of
ways living that kind of life is its own reward in and of itself” (14-15).
“Like Brian Palmer, Margaret takes ‘values’ as
given, ‘whatever they might happen to be’” (15).
Margaret “has no reliable way to connect her own
fulfillment to that of other people, whether they be her own husband and
children or the larger social and political community of which she is
inevitably a part” (16-17).
Wayne Bauer: (Political
Activist)
After facing a tumultuous rejection of the status
quo and the Vietnam war,
When asked what specific kinds of things liberated
people should create in society,
Four Different Voices in a Common Tradition:
All four assume that there is something arbitrary
about the good life.
This is shown most clearly in their use of the
terms ‘values,’ ‘priorities.’
Bellah et al. suggest that individualism has become
the “first language” of American life (but it is not the only language).
B.
Culture
and Character (Chapter 2)
Utilitarian Individualism: Vigorously pursue your own
self-interest and the social good will automatically emerge. Expressive Individualism: Cultivating
and expressing the self is the highest good. Self-fulfillment is the basis of
all moral evaluations.
“[C]hoice occupies a central position in the value
system of the [expressive] self . . . to choose is to express the self. And
since expressing the self is a moral obligation and expressiveness is the
essence of the authentic self, the very act
of choosing is, in itself, moral, regardless
of what is chosen.”[88]
II.
FINDING
ONESELF (CHAPTER 3)
A.
Self-Reliance
“In the course of our history, the self has become
ever more detached from the social and cultural contexts . . . a socially
unsituated self” (55).
“The note of self-reliance had a clearly collective
context in the biblical and republican traditions. It was as a people that we had acted independently and self-reliantly”
(55). [emphasis added]
B.
Leaving
Home
“[In contemporary culture] childhood is chiefly
preparation for the all-important event of leaving home” (57).
“However painful the process of leaving home, for
parents and for children, the really frightening thing for both would be the
prospect of the child never leaving home” (58).
C.
Leaving
Church
“The self-reliant American is required not only to
leave home but to ‘leave church’ as well. This may not literally happen. One
may continue to belong to the church of one’s parents. But the expectation is that at some point in
adolescence or early youth, one will decide on one’s own that that is the
church to belong to” (62).
“Make my faith my own”
“The American understanding of the autonomy of the
self places the burden of one’s own deepest self-definitions on one’s own
individual choice. . . . Most of us imagine an autonomous self existing
independently, entirely outside any tradition and community, and then perhaps
choosing one. . . . Leaving home in a sense involves a kind of second birth in
which we give birth to ourselves” (65).
D.
Work
Work as calling (communitarian) vs. career (individualistic)
“Though the idea of a calling is closely tied to
the biblical and republican strands in our tradition, it has become harder and
harder to understand as our society has become more and more complex and
utilitarian and expressive individualism more dominant. In the
mid-nineteenth-century small town, it was obvious that the work of each
contributed to the good of all, that work is a moral relationship between
people, not just a source of material or psychic rewards. But with the coming
of large-scale industrial society, it became more difficult to see work as a
contribution to the whole and easier to view it as a segmental, self-interested
activity. But though the idea of calling has become attenuated and the largely
private ‘job’ and ‘career’ have taken its place, something of the notion of
calling lingers on, not necessarily opposed to, but in addition to, job and
career” (66).
E.
The
Lifestyle Enclave
“[For many retirees] work ‘seemed only a
means of achieving a satisfactory private life—a ‘life style,’ as some put it”
(72).
“[Lifestyle] is linked most closely to leisure and
consumption and is usually unrelated to the world of work. . . . Lifestyle is
fundamentally segmental and celebrates the narcissism of similarity” (72).
F.
Grounding
the Self
Margaret Oldham: “It really sort of comes down to
the authority I say I give my values. . . . all those sorts of goals I’ve set
up for myself, and kind of motivate me and tell me which way to go, what to
avoid” (75).
“Now if selves are defined by their preferences,
but those preferences are arbitrary, then each self constitutes its own moral
universe, and there is finally no way to reconcile conflicting claims about
what is good in itself. . . . In the absence of any objectifiable criteria of
right and wrong, good or evil, the self and its feelings become our only moral
guide” (76).
“‘Values’ turn out to be the incomprehensible,
rationally indefensible thing that the individual chooses when he or she has
thrown off the last vestige of external influence and reached pure, contentless
freedom” (79-80).
Are values just personal preferences or are they “doorways”
for intrusive commercialism?
VIEWS OF THE “SELF”
ACCORDING TO CAMPUS SETTING[89]
Percentage Agreeing
|
Issue |
1982 |
1996[90] |
1982 |
General
Population 1982 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Self-improvement
is important to me & I work hard at it. |
87 |
94 |
87 |
66 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I feel a
strong need for new experiences. |
68 |
75 |
78 |
46 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A good
Christian will strive to be a ‘well-rounded person.’ |
79 |
Not Asked |
48 |
Not Asked |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
For the
Christian, realizing your full potential as a human being is just as
important as putting others before you. |
62 |
50 |
44 |
Not Asked |
III. REACHING OUT (CHAPTER 5)
A.
Traditional
Relations/Relationships
“Now the interpersonal seems to be the key to much
of life” (113).
Comment on kinship relations vs. relationships
“[T]he traditional [Aristotelian] idea of
friendship had three essential components. Friends must enjoy one another’s
company, they must be useful to one another, and they must share a common
commitment to the good” (115).
B.
American
Nervousness
“The period [late nineteenth century] preoccupied
with ‘American nervousness’ was also the period in which a national market was
depriving the small towns and regional cities of their effective independence
and throwing increasing numbers of Americans into a national occupational world
based on education, mobility, and the ability to compete” (118).
“The new world of intense, but limited,
relationships that required a great deal of effort to establish and maintain
and the decline of more traditional supportive relationships that could simply
be taken for granted put an enormous strain on the individual. It is in this
context that we should interpret the emergence of the therapeutic culture and
therapeutic relationships that become ever more important in the twentieth
century” (118f).
C.
Therapy
as a Model Relationship
“For all its genuine emotional content, closeness,
and honesty of communication, the therapeutic relationship is peculiarly
distanced, circumscribed, and asymmetrical” (122).
“This asymmetry encourages people to see the
therapeutic relationship as a means to their own ends, not an end of which they
are a part or an enduring set of practices that unifies their ends” (122).
The Logic of Therapy:
(1)
a
freely-chosen arrangement of personal “values” is assumed and
(2)
authentically
owned up to
(3)
in
the social isolation of a professional’s privacy
(4)
with
a guaranteed acceptance of whatever “values” are chosen and
(5)
where
one is encouraged to be committed to what is chosen and
(6)
where
the expression of these values is the highest moral end of life.
D.
Therapy
and Work
“Not only is therapy work, much of our work is a
form of therapy. . . . Co-workers ‘give each other therapy’ to cement teamwork”
(123).
“Therapy’s stress on personal autonomy presupposes
institutional conformity. . . . The therapeutic attitude shapes itself to
follow the contours of both entrepreneurial and corporate work. It encourages
adaptation to such work, whether enthusiastic or skeptical” (124).
“What is not questioned is the institutional
context. One’s ‘growth’ is a purely private matter. It may involve maneuvering
within the structure of bureaucratic rules and roles, changing jobs, maybe even
changing spouses if necessary. But what is missing is any collective context in
which one might act as a participant to change the institutional structures
that frustrate and limit” (126-27).
E.
The
Therapeutic Quest for Community
“The therapeutic conception of community grows out
of an old strand of American culture that sees social life as an arrangement
for the fulfillment of the needs of individuals” (134).
“[F]or the therapeutically inclined, community is
something hoped for, something yearned for, something sadly missing most of the
time, and when found . . . something that the therapeutic language cannot
really make sense of” (138).
“[T]herapy cannot really replace older forms of
relationship, but must somehow seek to reinvigorate them. Yet, as we have seen,
the very language of therapeutic relationship seems to undercut the possibility
of other than self-interested relationships” (139).
F.
Evangelicalism
and the Therapeutic Self
Read selected passages from James D.
Hunter, Evangelicalism, 70.
“Over the course of a few years,
thousands of Willow Creek participants receive therapy. These thousands of
individuals in turn influence their families and friends within Willow Creek
with their new analytical categories.
These psychological terms become the ethical categories of how Creekers
live their lives.
Willow Creek’s
dependence on therapy and its psychological worldview is also visible in the
great number of staff who receive therapy.
An estimated 50 percent of Willow Creek staff received therapy at the
counselling center while I was doing my study. The church so believes in
therapy that it allocates four hundred dollars per year for each staff member
to use for therapy at the counseling center.
Therapy and its
psychological framework is accepted as a necessary tool in
IV.
LOVE
AND MARRIAGE (CHAPTER 4)
A.
Woman’s
Sphere
“The two ‘spheres’ that were clearly separating in
the early nineteenth century are still very much in the minds of contemporary
Americans, and the contrast between them is one of the most important ways in
which we organize our world” (87).
“Thus, while men’s work was turning into a career
or a job, women’s work had the old meaning of a calling, an occupation defined
essentially in terms of its contributions to the common good” (88).
“By the nineteenth century, romantic love was the
culturally recognized basis for the choice of a marriage partner and in the
ideal marriage was to continue for a lifetime” (89).
B.
Love
and the Self
“The love that must hold us together is rooted in
the vicissitudes of our subjectivity” (90).
“But the very sharing that promises to be the
fulfillment of love can also threaten the self. The danger is that one will, in
sharing too completely with another, ‘lose oneself’” (92).
“Love, then, creates a dilemma for Americans” (93).
Comment on “the two shall become one flesh.” Both
become a new person—not one absorbed by the other.
C.
Freedom
and Obligation
“Americans are, then, torn between love as an
expression of spontaneous inner freedom, a deeply personal, but necessarily
somewhat arbitrary, choice, and the image of love as a firmly planted,
permanent commitment, embodying obligations that transcend the immediate
feelings or wishes of the partners in a love relationship” (93).
“[T]he evangelical Christian worries about how to
reconcile the spontaneous, emotional side of love with the obligations love
entails. For the Christian, however, the tension is clearly resolved in favor
of obligation” (94).
“Of course, these Christians seek some of the same
qualities of sharing, communication, and intimacy in marriage that define love
for most Americans. But they are determined that these are goods to be sought
within a framework of binding commitments, not the reasons for adhering to a
commitment” (97).
Comment: Can Christian love be sustained in the
absence of a vital, sustaining, and surrounding Christian community? Is the
isolated self capable of sustaining a marriage through time?
D.
Communicating
“Americans tend to assume that feelings define
love.” (98).
“[Therapeutic attitude:] self is the only source of
genuine relationships to other people. Only by knowing and ultimately accepting
one’s self can one enter into valid relationships with other people” (98).
“Before one can love others, one must learn to love
one’s self” (98).
The second part of the
Great Commandment does not say ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ The
passage does not support the view that ‘healthy self-esteem’ is necessary in
order to be able to have something to give to others. Such a perspective would
only invite the continuing self-absorption manifest in the self-help and
self-esteem movements so prevalent in
“The therapeutic ideal posits an individual who is
able to be the source of his own standards, to love himself before he asks for
love from others, and to rely on his own judgment without deferring to others”
(99).
“This egalitarian love between therapeutically
self-actualized persons is also incompatible with self-sacrifice. . . . In the
therapeutic view, a kind of selfishness is essential to love” (100).
“[T]herapy becomes in some ways a model for a good
relationship (100).
“Both partners in a relationship become therapists
in a reciprocal exchange . . . . In its pure form, the therapeutic attitude
denies all forms of obligation and commitment in relationships, replacing them
only with the ideal of full, open, honest communication among self-actualized
individuals” (101).
“In a world of independent individuals who have no
necessary obligations to one another, and whose needs may or may not mesh, the
central virtue of love—indeed the virtue that sometimes replaces the ideal of
love—is communication” (101).
Communication as monitoring one’s interest in the
expressions of the other.
E.
Love
and Individualism
“On the whole, even the most secure, happily
married of our respondents had difficulty when they sought a language in which
to articulate their reasons for commitments that went beyond the self” (109).
“[T]he selves of the partners, are no longer fully
separable in a long-lasting relationship” (109).
V.
INDIVIDUALISM
(CHAPTER 6)
A.
The
Ambiguities of Individualism
Modern
individualism attempts to derive all social and political structures from
isolated selves. The social good, if there is one, must ultimately descend from
the combined preferences of individuals. All social arrangements are, in the
end, accountable to the interests and desires of the individuals they contain.
An important
question is whether or not individualism can sustain itself across the
generations; is it viable in the long-term?
B.
Mythic
Individualism
Re: The cowboy: “the myth says you can be a truly
good person, worth of admiration and love, only if you resist fully joining the
group” (145).
“The cowboy, like the detective, can be valuable to
society only because he is a completely autonomous individual who stands
outside it. . . . Moral heroism is always just a step away from despair” (146).
C.
The
Social Sources of Ambivalence
“[O]ne of the central ambiguities in the new
individualism—that it was strangely compatible with conformism” (147).
“There has been a long-standing anxiety that the
American individualist, who flees from home and family leaving the values of
community and tradition behind, is secretly a conformist” (148).
“[T]he tendency of individualism to destroy its own
conditions” (150).
“[W]e found all the classic polarities of American
individualism still operating: the deep desire for autonomy and self-reliance
combined with an equally deep conviction that life has no meaning unless shared
with others in the context of community.” (150).
D.
Communities
of Memory
“Communities, in the sense in which we are using
the term, have a history—in an important sense they are constituted by their
past—and for this reason we can speak of a real community as a ‘community of
memory,’ one that does not forget its past. In order not to forget that past, a
community is involved in retelling its story, its constitutive narrative, and
in so doing, it offers examples of the men and women who have embodied and
exemplified the meaning of the community. These stories of collective history
and exemplary individuals are an important part of the tradition that is so
central to a community of memory” (153).
“And if the language of the self-reliant individual
is the first language of the American moral life, the languages of tradition
and commitment in communities of memory are ‘second languages’ that most
Americans know as well, and which they use when the language of the radically
separate self does not seem adequate” (154).
VI.
GETTING
INVOLVED (CHAPTER 7)
“Individuals are expected to get involved—to choose for themselves to join social groups. They
are not automatically involved in social relationships that impose obligations
not of their own choosing, and social institutions that are not the product of
the voluntary choice of the individuals who constitute them are perceived as
illegitimate” (167).
Reflect on the terms “getting involved”, “commitment”
A.
The
Free and Independent Township
Aristotle’s political philosophy held that it is
only when citizens are free from foreign domination, that is, when the
community is self-governing (autonomous), that they can flourish as complete
human beings. The local community provides the forum wherein citizens can learn
to overcome their selfishness as they increasingly identify with the good of
the whole. Political/public life is a morally-transformative process. Even
though persons and families come together to form the city out of
self-interest, they end up living in it for the sake of what Aristotle calls,
“the good life.” A shared understanding of justice and fairness emerges in
their deliberations and binds them together (see Aristotle’s Politics, 1252b).
It was widely understood in pre-modern times that
only in face-to-face contexts could self-interest and communal interest
converge. Within bounded settings, (e.g., the small, self-governing town),
persons could discover a larger, more expansive self and genuine concern for
others and the good of the whole. Persons who participated in these settings
experienced integrated personal, economic, and public lives.
B.
From
Town to Metropolis
Increasingly the public world has come to be seen
as distant and alien from the life of metropolitan citizens. The public world
is a battleground of competing forces, all scrambling to insure that they get
their share of public assets. Political life is becoming an all-or-nothing
competition for scarce resources. It is the last place most would turn for an
education in virtue or to learn to love the good of the whole.
Most of our public activities are episodic and
one-dimensional—voting, mailing a check to a national organization, attending a
charity function, etc. There are
decreasing opportunities to be whole persons in public settings; we experience
this as alienating and disheartening.
C.
The
Concerned Citizen
The retreat to the private world is often short-lived,
however. Inevitably, persons find their interests at risk and they band
together with like-minded citizens to fight their oppressors. These “concerned
citizens” only enter the public world because the stability and security of their
private worlds are at risk. They get “involved” only for the sake of securing
what is threatened; they do not participate as citizens in any holistic sense,
but as representatives of their own idiosyncratic interests.
VII. RELIGION (Chapter 9)
A.
Religion
in American History
“In colonial
The early-American concept of communal liberty vs.
individual liberty:
"[True
liberty was restrained liberty] the perfect consistency of being free and being
governed."[93]
"By liberty, I do not mean independence of law, but the right of self-government, by our own
laws. Freedom for everyone to do as he chooses, without regard to the
rights of others, is anarchy, and not
liberty."[94]
Discuss the American
colonial religious establishment.
“Privatization
placed religion, together with the family, in a compartment-alized sphere that
provided loving support but could no longer challenge the dominance of
utilitarian values in the society at large. Indeed, to the extent that
privatization succeeded, religion was in danger of becoming, like the family,
‘a haven in a heartless world,’ but one that did more to reinforce that world,
by caring for its casualties, than to challenge its assumptions” (224).
“Most Americans see religion as something
individual, prior to any organiza-tional involvement” (226).
B.
The
Local Congregation
For Nan Pfautz, church membership gives a sense of community involve-ment;
obligations to the church come from the fact that she has chosen to join it; it
is the self that must be the source of all religious meaning: “the ultimate
meaning of the church is an expressive-individualistic one. Its value is as a
loving community in which individuals can experience the joy of belonging”
(230). (emphasis added)
“There is even a tendency visible in many
evangelical circles to thin the biblical language of sin and redemption to an
idea of Jesus as the friend who helps us find happiness and self-fulfillment”
(232).
“The salience of these needs for personal intimacy
in American religious life suggests why the local church, like other voluntary
communities, indeed like the contemporary family, is so fragile, requires so
much energy to keep it going, and has so faint a hold on commitment when such
needs are not met” (232).
C.
Canadian
Religious Individualism
Canadian Religious Views[95]
Percent Agreeing
|
I believe
in God. |
84 |
|
I don’t
think that you need to go to church to be a good Christian. |
80 |
|
My
private beliefs about Christianity are more important than what is taught by
any church. |
70 |
|
I believe
the Bible is the inspired word of God (response from those aged 18-34 years). |
62 |
|
Satan,
the devil, is active in the world today. |
48 |
|
I attend
religious services at least once a week. |
20 |
Religious Beliefs/Practices of Americans and Canadians,
1996[96]
Percent Agreeing
|
Affirmation |
|
|
|
Religion is an important
part of life |
79% |
58% |
|
Pray Weekly |
71% |
47% |
|
Attend Church Weekly |
40% |
21% |
|
Read Bible Weekly |
43% |
21% |
|
Identify Themselves as
Christians |
76% |
68% |
|
Identify Themselves as
"Nothing in Particular" |
10% |
16% |
|
Identify Themselves as an
Evangelical |
25% |
11% |
|
"Highly
Committed" Evangelicals |
13% |
5% |
|
Religion is Important to
Their Political Thinking |
41% |
19% |
|
Could Not Name One National
Christian Leader |
42% |
76% |
"[I]t is the tendency of
Canadians to reject Christianity as an authoritative system of meaning, in
favour of drawing on Judeo-Christian 'fragments'—selected beliefs, practices,
and organizational offerings—in a highly specialized, consumer-like fashion. .
. . Canadians select fragments of other nonnaturalistic systems—astrology, ESP,
and so on—without adopting entire systems . . . fragments are perhaps more
functional than all-encompassing religions in a society that requires people to
compartmentalize their experiences in order to play a number of diverse
roles."[97]
D.
Religious
Individualism and the Small Group Movement[98]
1.
Statistical
Profile of the Small Group Movement
MEMBERSHIP IN SMALL GROUPS
Percentage
of the Relevant Population Currently
in
a Small Group That Meets Regularly and
Provides Caring Support for its Members
|
National |
40 |
|
Income $20k or Less |
39 |
|
|
|
|
Income 20-39k |
42 |
|
Women |
44 |
|
Income 40k + |
43 |
|
Men |
36 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
White Anglo |
40 |
|
Age 18-34 |
35 |
|
Black |
41 |
|
Age 35-49 |
42 |
|
Hispanic |
46 |
|
Age 50 + |
45 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In Large Cities |
41 |
|
High School or Less |
37 |
|
In Medium Cities |
42 |
|
Some College |
43 |
|
In Towns/Rural |
40 |
|
College Graduate |
48 |
|
|
|
MEETING THE NEED FOR “COMMUNITY”
Percentage
of Group Members Who Have Felt the Following Needs and
Believe
that These Needs Have Been Fully Met
|
Need |
Felt
Need |
Need
Met |
|
Having neighbours with whom you can interact freely and comfortably |
93 |
43 |
|
Being able to share deepest feelings with someone |
94 |
57 |
|
Having friends who value the same things in life you do |
98 |
58 |
|
Having people in your life who give you deep emotional support |
98 |
66 |
|
Being in a group where you can discuss your basic beliefs and values |
90 |
50 |
|
Having friends you can always count on when you’re in a jam |
97 |
64 |
|
Having people in your life who are never critical of you |
83 |
29 |
|
Being part of a group that helps you grow spiritually |
90 |
53 |
|
Having cooperation rather than competition with people at work |
85 |
31 |
|
Having people you can turn to when you feel depressed or lonely |
96 |
62 |
|
Knowing more people in your community |
95 |
32 |
SUPPORT RECEIVED FROM GROUPS
Percentage of Group Members Who Say They Have
Received Each of
These Kinds of Support From Their Group
|
Made you feel like your weren’t alone |
82 |
|
Gave you encouragement when you were feeling down |
72 |
|
Helped you celebrate something |
51 |
|
Helped you through an emotional crisis |
43 |
|
Helped you make a difficult decision |
38 |
|
Helped you out when someone was sick |
38 |
|
Brought meals to your family |
23 |
|
Provided you with physical care or support |
21 |
|
Provided you with babysitting or child care |
12 |
|
Helped you overcome an addiction |
7 |
|
Loaned you money |
4 |
2.
Small
Group Processes as Theologically Adaptive
“The small-group movement is beginning to alter
American society, both by changing our understandings of community and by
redefining spirituality” (3).
"But small groups are not simply drawing
people back to the God of their fathers and mothers. They are dramatically
changing the way God is understood. God is now less of an external authority
and more of an internal presence. The sacred becomes more personal but, in the
process, also becomes more manageable, more serviceable in meeting individual
needs, and more a feature of group processes themselves" (3-4).
"[T]he small-group movement is currently
playing a major role in adapting
American religion to the main currents of secular culture that have surfaced at
the end of the twentieth century. Secularity is misunderstood if it is assumed
to be a force that prevents people from being spiritual at all. It is more
aptly conceived as an orientation that encourages a safe, domesticated version
of the sacred" (7).
“The most general way in which small groups are
redefining the sacred, therefore, is by replacing explicit creeds and doctrines
with implicit norms devised by the
group” (19).
3.
Small
Groups and Bureaucratic Infiltration
“[Small groups] are supposed to provide the
intimacy that people cannot find in their places of work. As cold bureaucratic
efficiency takes over more of the world, small groups are said to be pockets of
resistance, or at least enclaves in which people can find shelter from the
storm . . . [However] small groups may be a product of the rational,
bureaucratic planning that dominates other sectors of contemporary life.
Indeed, small groups may be extending such planning into an area of life that
formerly depended on nothing but the goodwill of neighbors and friends"
(134).
“Community, then, becomes more intentional as a
result” (14).
“The small-group movement thus is . . . extending
the principles of formal organization into an arena of interpersonal life that
was largely spontaneous and unorganized until very recently” (159).
4.
Small
Groups as Created “Community” and Individualism Extended
"[S]mall groups encourage a different view of
commitment. Because there are so many, we are seldom limited by circumstances.
We can, indeed, shop around. There may be fifty different groups from which to
choose within five miles of our home. And the logic of shopping emphasizes
satisfaction rather than long-term commitment. The idea is to try it out. . . .
But always, the contract is tenuous. It depends on whether the individual
member remains satisfied" (141).
“The availability of hundreds of thousands of
small, highly diverse groups permits American society to loosen itself from its
traditional moorings and become even more mobile and fluid. People can move to
new communities more easily because they know they can join support groups
there; they can shift their religious affiliation to a new denomination for the
same reason; or they can enter a new line of work, withstand the trauma of
leaving a spouse, or become interested in a new political cause” (23f).
Small groups create “modular communities that can
be established and disbanded with relative ease" (8).
"[Small groups] do not fundamentally challenge
our individualism. They allow us not only to retain our individuality but also
to focus deeply on our own personal interests and needs and, for the most part,
to limit the time we spend with other people or the levels of obligation we are
willing to incur toward them. Small groups adapt us to the individualistic
norms of our culture more than we generally realize" (197).