What I meant to say...

This is a bit more elegant than my blog about evangelicalism but the message remains the same. Here is an exerpt:

"The Christ proclaimed is often passive, whether in His mother’s arms, or on those of the cross. He is also largely passive in many evangelical understandings of salvation. The ‘punch lines’ of the resurrection and the ascension, so prominent in apostolic preaching, are considerably downplayed. The Lord’s Supper is recast as a ‘pity-party’, where we meditate on how terrible it must have been for Jesus. Rather than memorializing the cross as the great victory of Christ over the powers, we engage in morbid heart-searching. Christ is not present, giving us His flesh to eat; rather, Christ is at a distance..."

"If our relationship with Jesus is merely a personal and emotional love-relationship, informality will tend to be prized in worship. Considered liturgies with formal rites, set prayers, recitations of creeds and carefully structured services present faith as a far more public reality. It is important to recognize that these forms do not preclude emotion; rather, properly used, they serve to evoke, channel and shape emotion in various ways. However, they show that emotion is not the primary thing. The important role of the Lord’s service is not its ability to move and replenish my emotions. Rather, the Lord’s service is covenant renewal. I do not believe that being moved up emotionally is to be regarded as a sine qua non of true participation in the service of covenant renewal. Our relationship with God is not limited to the realm of emotions..."

Thanks to J-Do for bringing to to my attention.

What is an Evangelical?

Something that has been stewing awhile...

A few weeks ago I attended the Friday morning Bible study with some men from church. We spent the majority of the time discussing a section from David Wells' Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology. We talked about how modern evangelicalism is so vastly different from that which characterized those evangelicals of the 16th and 17th centuries, a modern evangelical being one who makes t-shirts to make it clear that he neither drinks beer nor attendeds rated R movies. But are modern evangelicals so different from their earlier counterparts? Not in one sense, it seems to me. That sense is in stressing the individual's personal relationship with Jesus over and above the individual's personal relationship with the Church. It seemed to me, at least in our leader's characterization of Wells' argument, that what gave rise to evangelicalism (at least in part) in the first place was a disatisfaction with the institutional church. Apparently, these churches had become a place that everyone went regardless of their sincerity in doing so. The church was the central building in town and everyone attended church because it was what everyone did but very few seemed to care or bother with coming to terms with why they were going. So, evangelicals (through the Great Awakenings) began to stress a personal relationship with Jesus. The result (intended or not) was a jettisoning of the individual believer from the local institutional church. Modern evangelicals, then, are simply the great grandchildren of such thinking. Manifestly, today's evangelicals are more preoccupied with personal evangelism and piety than with the Church. Church membership is eskewed. It doesn't matter where you go to church as long as (1) you love Jesus and (2) the church you attend helps you maintain that love. This consequence was reinforced the other day when I was discussing this with some friends from school. One remarked that an evangelical leader described an evangelical as one who is (in part) puritanical and pietistic. Asking what was meant by 'pietistic' I was told that it was the stressing of personal acts of holiness (i.e., reading your Bible and praying, etc.). What struck me (again, as the same phenomenon occured in the attempt to describe an evangelical at the friday morning Bible study) is that, in describing an evangelical, no mention is made of the Church. Apparently, then, an evangelical is one who has very little to do with the Church. It's just God, him and his Bible (and t-shirt).

But this seems backwards. What should be primary is one's relationship with the Church and one only has a relationship with the Church, when one has a relationship with a church, that is, a local institutional body of believers. After all, that is where two of the means of grace are found, namely, the Word and the Sacraments.

If I had $603...

I'd buy this. So would Rico.