(click on the photograph for a modern celebration of Pentecost
from the Archdiocese of Chicago)
In the Catholic Church, at the time of the Second Vatican Council, there was an Italian word which came to sum up the Council’s purpose and goal, and that was the word aggiornamento. It meant ‘up-dating’ or ‘modernisation’. It also had the connotation of renewal and re-energising: the renewal of Catholic spiritual life and the re-energising of the Church's mission.
It’s difficult to say very much briefly without oversimplifying things but I don’t think it’s misrepresenting the facts of Catholic Church history to say that by the 1950s there was a conviction among many Catholics - certainly among many of the Church’s bishops and theologians - that the Catholic faith had become in a sense fossilised, out-of-touch with modern society, perhaps even with most Catholics’ experience of everyday life.
Before Vatican II: ‘here firm, though all be drifting’
The background to that historical moment was that for hundreds of years Catholicism had defined itself in fundamental opposition to the modern world, in reaction to the Protestant Reformation first of all, then to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution and the revolutionary political movements of the nineteenth century, which were often fervently atheistic and anti-Catholic.
To be a Catholic in the era between the First and Second Vatican Councils meant that you were someone who to a large degree lived mentally in a parallel universe, a universe made up of things like Sunday Mass under pain of mortal sin, a 12-hour fast before communion, frequent confession, devotions to the Sacred Heart, to the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Saints, prayers and indulgences for the Holy Souls in Purgatory and so on.
This was also the world of Papal Infallibility, the Index of Forbidden Books, the Syllabus of Errors and resistance to Modernism, a world where the Church hierarchy, priests and religious, enjoyed considerable prestige and authority (quite unlike their reputation in the Middle Ages, for example!). Catholicism was a great solid, unified system of belief which could have claimed as its motto, ‘here firm, though all be drifting’.
After Vatican II: ‘openness to the world’
One of the slogans of the period ushered in by Vatican II, and an aspect of the strategy of aggiornamento, was ‘openness to the world’, which signified a new, more respectful dialogue with non-Catholic beliefs and even an affirmation of ideas and values which could be held by ‘all men and women of good will’ - in the field of social justice, for example.
The problem with aggiornamento and ‘openness to the world’ - the world in question being largely the developed, Western world of the second half of the twentieth century - was that it generated an over-critical attitude to the Catholicism of the Vatican I era, a readiness to jettison centuries of theological, ethical, spiritual and liturgical development. At the same time it generated an excessively positive, generous and uncritical embrace of modern culture and modern values.
In the years following Vatican II it often seemed as if the Bible and the Church’s Tradition, interpreted by the Church’s teaching authority, were no longer regarded as indispensable sources of knowledge about God and his purposes, while everything contemporary and ‘modern’ was venerated as containing a higher wisdom and truth which Catholics had to adopt, approve and celebrate.
The Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac, who began as a supporter of aggiornamento, said in 1968, three years after the Council and the same year as Pope Paul’s encyclical on birth control, Humanae Vitae:
'Does not such an "openness" become a forgetfulness of salvation and of the gospel, a tending towards secularism, a loosening of faith and morals? Finally this "openness" becomes for others a loss of identity, in a word, the betrayal of our obligation towards the world. Because the Council, following the desire of John XXIII, did not wish either to define new dogmas or to pronounce anathemas, many conclude that the church no longer has the right to judge anything or anyone; they recommend a "pluralism" which is not the pluralism of the theological schools but that of entirely different beliefs from those of the normative faith....The word "renewal" can cover a multitude of abuses!'.[1]
De Lubac, in my opinion, was right, and his alarmed reaction was a kind of prelude to the crisis of the next fifty or sixty years.
There were two basic flaws with the whole idea of modernisation or updating which were perhaps easier to overlook in the nineteen-fifties and -sixties than they are now.
Modern culture essentially hostile to faith...
The first flaw was the failure to recognise that part of the essence of being modern, especially in the way that it developed in the Western world over the last three hundred years, was a flight from God and a revolt against God: a desire to reject the historical legacy of the Christian religion, to deny the reality of any dimension of life beyond the natural, the physical, the material, to deny the realm of the supernatural, of revelation, of grace.
Being modern meant to exalt the power of human reason, of human intellectual and technical ability and to dismiss religious faith as an outmoded fantasy.
If having a modern mentality entails such a flight and such a revolt it becomes impossible to re-cast the Christian faith in a more ‘modern’ mould. It becomes impossible to talk meaningfully about God, or salvation through Christ, or an ultimate destiny of eternal life in heaven in the language and ideas of modern culture because modern culture, by definition, denies the existence of God, denies that human beings are in in any sense needing to be ‘saved’ or rescued, denies that there’s any existence after death.[2]
After the Council this impossibility was obscured by the euphoria and optimistic momentum created by the sweeping programme of change that overtook the Church universally. It didn’t become clear enough that, as the English theologian Charles Davis remarked in 1969, the modern world doesn’t create a fertile environment for the Christian faith, containing all sorts of opportunities for renewed growth. Rather, it creates a desert.
‘There is no modern way of being a Christian,’ Davis wrote, ‘precisely because the modern world is not Christian. Likewise, the problem of worship is not that of finding modern forms of worship to replace outdated forms…There is no modern form of worship because the modern world is secular’.[3]
So the advocates of aggiornamento were too optimistic about the possibility of creating a Christian faith which would fit comfortably with the assumptions and presuppositions of the modern era, and they underestimated the extent to which Christians, if they are to remain faithful to defining beliefs and principles, have to be deviants, out of step with the majority outlook, members of a minority sub-culture prepared to face marginalisation, ridicule and persecution.
This was the mentality of the first Christians, a small minority in a pagan world: strangers and pilgrims with no permanent home in this world, as Saint Paul said, because our true and ultimate home is with Christ in heaven (Phil. 3:20; see also Heb. 13:14).
Maintaining the strong, clear identity of a minority sub-culture - the ‘parallel universe’ of religious beliefs about God and the purposes and goals of human existence - was in fact one of the strengths of Vatican I Catholicism. But it was this strong, clear Catholic identity which was largely lost in the decades after Vatican II. With, it now appears, few countervailing gains.
… and increasingly hostile
The second feature of modern culture which creates problems for a strategy of aggiornamento is that - as we’ve seen more clearly in recent years - modern culture is always in a state of evolution. Specifically, modern values are always moving forward in a vision of life that opposes Christian beliefs, Christian moral principles and Christian convictions about the purpose of human life, and wants to consign the last vestiges of Christian faith to the dustbin of history.
In the nineteen-sixties it was perhaps relatively easy for the advocates of modernisation to argue that the Catholic Church should drop the fortress mentality of the nineteenth century, simplify the Mass, get rid of the Latin language, initiate friendly relations with other churches and other faiths and embrace some of the moral preoccupations that were dominant at the time - social justice, civil rights, the peace movement; action to eradicate world poverty and promote international development. You could argue credibly that that’s what it meant to be modern in the ‘sixties, and most of it was very compatible with Catholic faith.
But what about now? To be modern today means to support things like easy divorce, abortion, surrogate pregnancy, euthanasia and assisted suicide, same sex marriage and whatever new permutations of sexual identity might soon appear on the horizon. It means to accept and celebrate the nebulous and ahistorical ideology of ‘diversity, equality and inclusiveness’, with its favouritism towards selected special interest groups and aspirations to cultural dominance.[4]
At some point Christians have to acknowledge that, through these political and cultural movements, the decidedly anti-Christian aspects that have been present in modern European and Western society for hundreds of years are becoming increasingly dominant. To intensify a process of cultural adaptation or aggiornamento in such circumstances can only evacuate the Christian faith of its distinctive content and ultimately forfeit its loyalty to God.
Liberal Protestantism: a stark warning
The recent history of the Protestant churches has shown where you end up if you regard modernisation as a permanent, irreversible, unchallengeable commitment. You have to surrender to a process by which Christian doctrine and Christian moral norms are continually re-interpreted and whittled away, where the Church community is dragged along in the slipstream of a culture that is busy constructing a common morality and belief-system on explicitly non-Christian, increasingly anti-Christian, foundations.
In the two established churches in Britain, the Anglican Church and the Church of Scotland, the rush to embrace modern values has been uninhibited and visible to everyone. The effect hasn’t been a new missionary success, but a collapse into even deeper social and cultural irrelevance.[5]
In the Catholic Church the same trends have been more of a quiet revolution and more gradual, but the results have been identical.
Today, more than fifty years after the Council, the great project of updating the faith hasn’t resulted in any kind of re-Christianisation of British society, hasn’t expanded the numbers of committed Catholics or brought about any substantial renewal of spiritual life within the Church.
The truth - painful for those who originally entertained such high hopes - is that it’s produced the opposite, in the terms prophetically laid out by Henri de Lubac: loss of faith, loss of Christian moral commitment, loss of distinctive Christian identity.
From aggiornamento to authentic renewal
For that reason I think we have no choice, as our point of departure for serious reflection about Christian spiritual life, but to mark down the whole programme of modernisation as a profound failure. It’s a concept that’s had its day and now we urgently need to abandon it and replace it with a movement of authentic spiritual renewal instead.
Hopefully the Ffestiniog Faith Forum will be a means of discussing and debating the types of issues I've raised in this post and many more questions of faith and spirituality in the contemporary world.
~~~
NOTES
~~~
NOTES
[1] Quoted in Edward T. Oakes, S.J., A Theology of Grace in Six Controversies, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016, p.46.
[2] Liberal-minded Christians always seem to believe that softening Christian language about human sinfulness and emphasising compassion, love and forgiveness instead will persuade non-believers to take the Christian faith more seriously. But the reason Christianity doesn’t resonate with modern secular-minded people isn’t because it presents God as harsh and censorious, but because modern secular-minded people have no sense of themselves as sinners and don’t feel that they need redemption. A kinder, ‘nicer’ image of God is simply irrelevant to them and they’re unlikely to consider the Christian religion more seriously until they experience metanoia (conversion), with its awakening to a personal sense of creaturely humility, sin and guilt, and its realisation of the need to kneel before God in adoration, to be forgiven by him and to make atonement to him.
[3] Charles Davis, The Temptations of Religion, Hodder and Stoughton, 1973, p.96. Davis’ remarks were originally made in the course of a paper read by him at Geneva in 1969 during a consultation on ‘Worship in a Secular Age’ organised by the Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches.
[4] In the current political context, words like ‘diversity’, ‘equality’, ‘inclusion’, ‘tolerance’, as well as their opposites, ‘exclusion’, ‘intolerance’, ‘hate’, ‘discrimination’, ‘prejudice’, and so on, are ideologically-loaded jargon terms. That is, they express specialised meanings quite different from their commonly-accepted dictionary definitions, and their political purpose is to advance the interests of certain social groups and to neutralise the influence of others.
The German Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper described the sophistry involved in much of the modern use of language when he wrote that propaganda, as opposed to simple truth-telling, ‘can be found wherever a powerful organization, an ideological clique, a special interest, or a pressure group uses the word as their “weapon”. And a threat, of course, can mean many things besides political persecution, especially all the forms and levels of defamation, or public ridicule, or reducing someone to a non-person – all of which are accomplished by means of the word, even the word not spoken’. Josef Pieper, Abuse of Language – Abuse of Power, Ignatius Press, 1992 (orig. German ed. 1974), p.32.
What George Orwell wrote in 1946 about the terms ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’ and ‘socialism’ applies to the way today’s identity jargon is employed: ‘Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different’. Earlier in the same essay Orwell observed that the English language ‘becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts’. He could have been describing a typical session of workplace diversity training. ‘Politics and the English Language’ in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 4, Penguin Books, 1970, pp.162 and 157.
[5] A fairly recent example: the Catholic scholar John Haldane commented on some preparatory material for the Church of Scotland’s campaign Speak Out! 10,000 Voices for Change: ‘Nowhere in the message or in the supporting material is there any mention of God, creation, revelation, scripture, covenant, sin, redemptive sacrifice, atonement, sacraments, repentance, salvation, death, heaven or hell - only of “the issues which, if we address them together, will help to make Scotland a fairer, more equal and more just nation in a fairer, more equal and more just world.”’.
Haldane added: ‘As regards a changing Scotland, a more urgent matter for the Kirk might be the dying of the Christian light, and I seriously doubt whether in 2035 the Kirk will still exist save as a residual legal corporation. Note in the statements the seemingly pervasive Pelagianism, the adoption of currently favoured secular political rhetoric, the plea to have some say, and the request to be invited along to other people's events; the desperate longing to be seen to be relevant, and not only part of a ‘progressive’ today but part of an ‘egalitarian’ tomorrow.’ John Haldane, ‘A Tale of Two Cities – and of Two Churches’, First Things Magazine, 23rd October, 2015; https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/10/a-tale-of-two-citiesand-of-two-churches
[2] Liberal-minded Christians always seem to believe that softening Christian language about human sinfulness and emphasising compassion, love and forgiveness instead will persuade non-believers to take the Christian faith more seriously. But the reason Christianity doesn’t resonate with modern secular-minded people isn’t because it presents God as harsh and censorious, but because modern secular-minded people have no sense of themselves as sinners and don’t feel that they need redemption. A kinder, ‘nicer’ image of God is simply irrelevant to them and they’re unlikely to consider the Christian religion more seriously until they experience metanoia (conversion), with its awakening to a personal sense of creaturely humility, sin and guilt, and its realisation of the need to kneel before God in adoration, to be forgiven by him and to make atonement to him.
[3] Charles Davis, The Temptations of Religion, Hodder and Stoughton, 1973, p.96. Davis’ remarks were originally made in the course of a paper read by him at Geneva in 1969 during a consultation on ‘Worship in a Secular Age’ organised by the Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches.
[4] In the current political context, words like ‘diversity’, ‘equality’, ‘inclusion’, ‘tolerance’, as well as their opposites, ‘exclusion’, ‘intolerance’, ‘hate’, ‘discrimination’, ‘prejudice’, and so on, are ideologically-loaded jargon terms. That is, they express specialised meanings quite different from their commonly-accepted dictionary definitions, and their political purpose is to advance the interests of certain social groups and to neutralise the influence of others.
The German Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper described the sophistry involved in much of the modern use of language when he wrote that propaganda, as opposed to simple truth-telling, ‘can be found wherever a powerful organization, an ideological clique, a special interest, or a pressure group uses the word as their “weapon”. And a threat, of course, can mean many things besides political persecution, especially all the forms and levels of defamation, or public ridicule, or reducing someone to a non-person – all of which are accomplished by means of the word, even the word not spoken’. Josef Pieper, Abuse of Language – Abuse of Power, Ignatius Press, 1992 (orig. German ed. 1974), p.32.
What George Orwell wrote in 1946 about the terms ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’ and ‘socialism’ applies to the way today’s identity jargon is employed: ‘Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different’. Earlier in the same essay Orwell observed that the English language ‘becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts’. He could have been describing a typical session of workplace diversity training. ‘Politics and the English Language’ in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 4, Penguin Books, 1970, pp.162 and 157.
[5] A fairly recent example: the Catholic scholar John Haldane commented on some preparatory material for the Church of Scotland’s campaign Speak Out! 10,000 Voices for Change: ‘Nowhere in the message or in the supporting material is there any mention of God, creation, revelation, scripture, covenant, sin, redemptive sacrifice, atonement, sacraments, repentance, salvation, death, heaven or hell - only of “the issues which, if we address them together, will help to make Scotland a fairer, more equal and more just nation in a fairer, more equal and more just world.”’.
Haldane added: ‘As regards a changing Scotland, a more urgent matter for the Kirk might be the dying of the Christian light, and I seriously doubt whether in 2035 the Kirk will still exist save as a residual legal corporation. Note in the statements the seemingly pervasive Pelagianism, the adoption of currently favoured secular political rhetoric, the plea to have some say, and the request to be invited along to other people's events; the desperate longing to be seen to be relevant, and not only part of a ‘progressive’ today but part of an ‘egalitarian’ tomorrow.’ John Haldane, ‘A Tale of Two Cities – and of Two Churches’, First Things Magazine, 23rd October, 2015; https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/10/a-tale-of-two-citiesand-of-two-churches
16 comments:
Honestly, have we all got PhDs? Can't you just write proper what make sense? Ain't that a good idea? Then you've gone done it in 500 words maximum? Blimey, am I the only non-literate 'ere?
Are you saying that you want people to go through life feeling sinful and guilty because it would keep our churches alive? How does that tie in with Jesus saying "I come to bring you joy in all it's fullness" and "The kingdom of heaven is within you"?
Speaking as a reserved middle-class English person your video clip would not be my choice of service but if others actually like that sort of service, why shouldn't they do it? I don't understand some of the following comments that imply it is "wrong". It may or may not be productive in attracting people but that is a different question.
Having read Ian's article and drafts of my own comments below, I see in both, gaps and inconsistencies and also fundamental truths which all help in our debate about the way forward for Christianity in the 21st century. It is a big subject and also an important one.
Father Ian's article seems to look to the past as the template for a theology / religion which will answer todays Western cultural divide between Christians and todays society. I would like to argue that we need - yes, to keep and learn from the best of the past, but also to look to new ways, new ideas, new interpretations of the scriptures and Christian theology. For me that is not a backward or regressive step, but a bold, positive way forward.
Ian seems to assume that once the "genie" of social, cultural change has been let out of the bottle, it can be tidily placed back in the bottle, and everything will return to as it was. So reverse all the changes that the Christian church has made, over the past 100 years, and everything will return to the to the "ideal" Christian society of our grandfathers. It would be as if the 20th (and 21st century) cultural changes had never happened. Sorry but life does not work like that; we cannot turn the clock back.
The Adam and Eve Genesis story gives us a good parallel. Once they had rebelled and tasted freedom; it does not matter what problems, what pain and uncertainty Adam and Eve faced, they could never be happy or fulfilled returning to Eden. There was no going back; they had to learn to adapt and build their lives to a new reality. The same situation was true for people living through the reformation and the enlightenment. Equally true for people living today in a cultural world unrecognisable to our forefathers. We cannot turn the clock back. People's lived reality changes, religion has to change as well, or become an irrelevance.
Some, I suspect a small minority, are very happy to return to a pre-1960s Christianity with all its certainty and familiarity. I'm afraid that the majority of people, certainly in Western society, have moved on. To try to move back to the past would be the equivalent of living in Iran today, where, in order to maintain traditional Muslim values, there has to be a force of "moral guardians" on the streets; men with batons, whose job it is to ensure traditional religious codes of conduct are maintained. Of course much of their anger is centred around the subjugation of women. The "moral guardians", the arbiters of "right and wrong" will never succeed - the genie has already been let out of the bottle. Muslim women in our small global village, with all our technological communications, have seen a better, freer way. (Adam and Eve!) Just like Christianity, the Muslim world is eventually going to have to face its own reformation, or its own Vatican 2.
Trying to return to old ways is impossible. Why can't we keep the best of the past; the wonderful truths born of the collective inspiration of generations of learning; yet still move forward - grow, mature even! Does God want us to stay static, never looking outside "the box - Eden"? Never challenging what our elders taught us from a different age? I think we live in exciting times, if we would only be brave enough to be inspired and not retreat into the old corrals, which no longer work.
"There's holes in them old corrals, perhaps we need to open our eyes and see the gaps before we fall out"!
How does one maintain, never mind build, a religion based upon the complete Bible, both old and new testaments, much of which most people, these days, find/know to be unbelievable and even ridiculous e.g. Creation, Adam/Eve, Noah's Ark, the Miracles, etcetera. Perhaps the emphasis should be upon the sayings and the teachings of Jesus, with much of the rest omitted or explained-away.
The words, the sayings, the teachings of Jesus are what matter.
At least they seem to be enjoying themselves rather than wallowing in wretchedness.
In response to the anonymous comment above, June 5th 9.55am.
I can certainly relate and agree, to a certain extent, to your comments about the the usefulness of the Bible in the 21st century.
I hear some people blithely claim that giving bibles out to everyone, is some kind of wonderful panacea to all people's questions and problems. Sounds like a crazy way forward to me. There are so many inconsistencies, contradictions, and down right racist elements (especially in the Old Testament) that the Bible would be the last book I would give out to anyone! At best it must be given out with extensive guidance notes. (and who can be bothered reading those!!)
There are wonderful elements in the bible, the story of Jesus being the prime example, but the bible does not have a monopoly on wisdom, and learning.
Having read the comments so far, let me respond briefly. The first thing to say is that obviously there are many subjects for future
exploration, and the exploration could be very fruitful.
One important topic emerging from the comments is sin, or, more importantly, 'sin and redemption', or 'human sin and divine forgiveness', historically the core of the Christian faith.
Another potentially interesting subject area - arising from the video clip I posted and the responses to it - is: what is the purpose of Christian worship/communal prayer? Should Christians re-design their public worship to mirror the forms of commercial entertainment which occupy such a large part of modern popular culture or should our public worship help us develop spiritual resistance to a decadent culture where trivial distraction and diversion play far too great a role? (Anyone remember Neil Postman's book 'Amusing Ourselves to Death?)
Turning to Revd Roland's remarks in particular, may I say that I don't think he has responded to my main argument? The argument is that modern culture - the culture of the West for the last 300 years - is inherently secular, Godless and has had a strain of overt hostility towards Christian faith built into it from the start. This has become more obvious over time and is very clear in Britain today.
There is no modern way to be a Christian when being modern means believing that science has replaced religion as an explanation of reality and our morality has become utilitarian.
One can be Christian in modern Western society only by living in conscious resistance and dissidence to majority beliefs and values.
Roland has misinterpreted what I wrote if he thinks that I long to restore some past religious golden age - the Christendom of the Middle Ages maybe. Comparisons to the Iranian purity police are colourful but irrelevant because what I actually said was that the most appropriate model for the Church today is the first generation of Christians: a small, marginal community at odds with majority culture, ready to face ridicule and persecution from an unconverted world. We won't be the ones engaging in coercion and ideological thought-policing - like the first Christians we'll be the victims of intolerance by the larger non-Christian culture.
As a matter of fact, my belief is that it's the liberal church people and church leaders who pine for greater social influence and prestige and importance, and engage in constant compromise and adulteration of the faith to gain approval and acceptance from the secular command centres of politics, media, entertainment and academia.
The truth is that mainstream Christianity has been 'modernising' for two generations now. The modernisers are in charge everywhere - supported and praised by secular opinion - while it's the conservatives who are in retreat and are repeatedly mocked by the secular establishment. The end result of modernisation is the hollowing-out and the eventual fizzling-out of the faith.
The seeds of growth, on the other hand, in my view, can be seen in the groups of people - a minority to be sure - disillusioned with the emptiness of secular culture and attracted by the clear beliefs and challenging moral standards of traditional Christianity, either Catholic or Protestant. A prophetic Christianity, a Christianity of cultural resistance, not endless accommodation. True Christianity, I'm tempted to say.
I'd like to say more, but I think that's more than enough for the time being!
Father Ian's account of Vatican II and his reflections on it, as a priest in the Roman Communion, give insights that make it a good starting point for post-lockdown thinking about the Church and the Kingdom.
Looking back, it was a great privilege for Jill and me to be part of an email group centred around St David's Blaenau during lockdown. A phrase which came out of these exchanges was “direct unmediated access to God”...linked to a sense of the veil between the seen and the unseen being thinner in this time of national trauma.
When push comes to shove, if the Good News of Jesus isn't about a living relationship with our Heavenly Father, then why should anybody want to get in on it?
As one coming consciously into that relationship (without any church being involved) at the age of 16, and living and growing in it for 60+ years, I see the outreach of the Church primarily as enabling others, young and old, to engage with the Father as sons and daughters.
The measure of orthodoxy in this lies in the loving motivation for reaching out and in the outcomes.
Motives other than love – forget it baby! Outcomes? Folk will know if it's happening for them.
So if preaching does it...great. If a sacramental approach does it...great. But if neither is doing it for a locality or an age group, then the way of love is to go to The Father and see what He is doing. And then go with it.
Even if it doesn't fit with tradition.
Or with what we've done before.
Or is outside our comfort zone.
Like St Francis, George Fox, Zinzendorf, John Wesley and Billy Graham.
Jill and I are no longer physically with you in Blaenau, so it's not for us to say: This is how you should do it. This piece is long enough as it stands, but maybe another time – for encouragement, not as “how to do it” - we can share about how we've lived the above paragraph and examples of ways that it's worked out. Here in Walderslade Woods the way is unfolding as we pray... and above all, see and listen. So we stand with you, not with answers but with the assurance that The Father will make clear what He is doing in Blaenau, and that Holy Spirit will comfort you for those times when (as so often for us) it “Goes outside the comfort zone”. Blessings/Kerensa, David and Jill
Anonymous, as I can't sign in. It's Jasmin.
Surely there can be no such thing as "traditional Christianity" except what Jesus would have practiced. And if we stuck with Jesus's own traditions, we would be Jewish!
Jesus repeatedly shows that traditional ways of think must be changed if they interfere with a spirit of love and care for all. So no church can claim to be "traditional Christianity ". You have to look at where the traditions or beliefs
evolved. .
It is very clear that early evangelism adapted its message to suit the society around it. So it would be incorrect to say that there is such a thing as "traditional Christianity "
But there are many different traditions that have evolved to suit different people and societies. . Vive la difference!.
So what do we all have in common ?
Hope?
There's a saying: 'God is love, but he's a lot of other things as well'.
Truth is also important to God, which is why there's such a thing in the Church as orthodoxy.
David's and Jasmin's remarks about 'the way of love' and 'the spirit of love and care for all' are surely far too nebulous to help with any discussion of Christian faith in the contemporary world. Such vague phrases can mean anything to anybody, especially in our materialistic, permissive and disorientated culture.
The love of God and neighbour taught by Jesus as the greatest and first commandment, the divine love demonstrated by his suffering and death on the cross, are a million miles away from the understanding of love held by today's popular liberal humanism.
A good subject for future discussion, maybe?
Jasmine says: 'if we stuck with Jesus's own traditions, we would be Jewish!'
But Jesus' life, teaching, death and resurrection ended the Old Covenant and brought in the New. He made this clear himself in his Sermon on the Mount, for example, presenting his new moral and spiritual teaching, and by instructing the disciples, at the end of his mission on earth, to embark on the new Christian mission, to go out and preach the gospel to all nations and to baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
That's not Judaism.
I used the expression 'traditional Christianity' to describe a type of faith that wants to preserve and pass on orthodox beliefs and principles without dilution or distortion. My point was that commitment to this 'traditional' Christian faith, Catholic and Protestant, is successfully attracting many people seeking spiritual depth as opposed to the shallowness of liberal Christianity.
In my argument the opposite of traditional Christianity is a 'modernising' or 'liberalising' faith, a constant reinterpretation of Christian beliefs and values for the sake of keeping up-to-date with secular society.
So, to illustrate by way of two examples, a traditional Christian believes that Jesus was divine as well as human and that marriage must be between a man and a woman. Whereas the modernising tendency would either not commit itself to these beliefs or maybe even explicitly reject them. But this liberal Christianity isn't attracting anyone and it's fizzling out.
Finally I must say I'm puzzled by this statement: 'It is very clear that early evangelism adapted its message to suit the society around it.'
'Very clear'? As a matter of historical fact the early Church endured great ridicule and persecution and was a Church of martyrs because it refused to adapt its message. And, by remaining firm, over time the Church converted society, not vice versa.
Just one point, Ian, if I may. Re: 'It is very clear that early evangelism adapted its message to suit the society around it.' I thought that Paul, very early on, adapted the message. Early "converts" to "Christianity" were expected to become Jews but Paul, strangely, could not persuade non-Jewish men to undergo the required mutilation of the penis. Paul had the requirement waived for gentiles - a substantial adaptation in early evangelism to suit the society around it.
Let me make a final response now that Roland has moved things on with a new post.
Maybe the decision that (male) gentile converts to Christianity did not have to be circumcised (or observe Jewish practices such as Temple worship and dietary laws) could be described as an adaptation to the larger culture that the Church had moved into as a result of its expansion beyond its Jewish origins. But I'd see it as more a recognition that, with Christ, God's plan of salvation had moved into a new phase in which the regulations of the old covenant had now become redundant. Pau understood this after his dramatic encounter with the risen Christ. I don't think he ever tried to persuade gentile converts to accept circumcision only to change his mind when they objected. Unlike other Jewish Christians Paul was clear from the start that the era of circumcision was over.
On top of that, what the early Church definitely didn't do was to start to alter the content of the faith to incorporate pagan beliefs and morality: adaptation in a very different sense.
Saint Paul himself was outspoken in his resistance to any such tendency:
'...stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter" (2 Thessalonians 2:15); 'For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but having itching ears, they shall heap to themselves teachers in accordance with their own lusts' (2 Timothy 4:3); 'Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind' (Romans 12:2); '...clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh' (Romans 13:14); 'We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory' (1 Corinthians 2:6-8).
I think Saint Paul and the other early Christian missionaries were happy to try to learn the culture and thinking of the pagan world, Greek and Roman philosophy and so on, but only so that they could preach the message of salvation through Christ to them, in its integrity.
There was no question, for example, of 'adapting' in the sense of saying that you could worship the pagan gods while also being a follower of Christ or that you could combine Christian life with pagan sexual morality.
But this is, at least in my opinion, precisely the kind of 'adaptation' that today's liberal and modernising Christians advocate: fundamentally altering the content of Christian belief and morality in line with current (and always changing) secular norms which are incompatible with the truths God has revealed to us.
'Most people today think x', or 'most people today don't accept y', was never an argument put forward by the Church's first missionaries. They preferred to be fed to the lions instead.
It isn't easy commenting on this stuff but it seems to me that there are those who believe that God is connected with right and wrong, hence SIN - and those who believe that God is love - period. The latter may embrace that well known RUMI(?) quote: "out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing is a field, I'll meet you there". After all, if God is only love, we can be freed from right-doing and wrong- doing, at least in terms of punishment from God.
For myself, the existence of fear and guilt are real - as real as joy and peace. If you had known for example, Stalin or Nazi Death Camp Commandants (get the idea?) would you quote RUMI?
Guilt, fear and punishment are as real as joy peace and reward. It seems to me that built into free-will is a conscience of what would be right or wrong to do. The more you believe in the God who sees everything you do and knows you perfectly through and through, the more tendency to believe in the reality of a conscience based on real notions of right and wrong. Is it right to run a Nazi death camp? Is it right to sentence millions to torture and death? And we all know of even worse atrocities. Is it right to drop an A-bomb on a city? Is it SIN? Well obviously not to the people who did it who probably believe there is no final right or wrong and who believe that they will escape accountability with God.
Okay, personally I believe that we all will be held accountable for our lives, choices and actions.
Dave D's focus on God being our Father and we as all His sons is nice but who or what is this Father? A friendly Father Christmas person living in the clouds, handing out presents? To many the idea is too difficult. God, being SPIRIT as Jesus taught, is not even as "concrete" as God sitting on throne in/on a cloud. You can touch and see a father, but God we understand is present eternally throughout time and space, an invisible SPIRIT. (difficult for us to perceive infinite, boundless SPIRIT as daddy?)
And yet God was "walking in the garden" (Eden). It's all very difficult, but maybe there is something metaphorically crucial here in Genesis, and we would be wise not to throw the baby completely out with the bathwater.
My last observation is that the writings on this Forum seem rather or very academic - unconnected with real-life experiences and issues. When I experienced my conversion to Christianity it started with a brush with "satanism", with my handing back a bag of expensive stolen items, and I had to face my own infidelity. I had a certain amount of confessing to do, so that I could restore a reasonable conscience within myself with others and with God.
I needed to free myself as much as possible from the need to lie. Fear, guilt and estrangement from God due to my former lifestyle were not pleasant. Further estrangement from God is the path of anti-social behavior, and the further you go down that path, the more and more difficult it becomes to "reconnect" consciously with God. Rather like that space-probe that got beyond Pluto and took a photo of Planet Earth: a speck of light among other lights and stars.
Better to stay connected to God , the One by whose intelligence Planet Earth existed , who gives life in all its forms, right here on Planet Earth.
I send this waiting for criticism .....
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