{"id":15991,"date":"2018-01-18T23:57:55","date_gmt":"2018-01-19T07:57:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=15991"},"modified":"2018-01-18T23:57:55","modified_gmt":"2018-01-19T07:57:55","slug":"imagined-evangelicalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/imagined-evangelicalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Imagined Evangelicalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are all drawn to community. And ironically is it exclusivity which helps build community. at least, for those that are within. Consider how fast our LGP8 cohort made a distinction between ourselves and the other groups by labeling ourselves the great eight. No one made the different cohorts be competitive and tease each other about who was the best. We just did what was natural for us. We drew some lines of limitation in our group so that our group could be drawn closer together. It was unifying to make fun of those stupid 7\u2019s. Except for Jennifer Dean-Hill of course. She\u2019s cool (by marriage). But despite us drawing these lines between cohorts, if any of us should meet some students from LGP1, we would feel still feel some instant camaraderie by virtue of both of us being LGP\u2019s. And thinking about it now I suppose I feel a connection with anyone at Portland Seminary because surely (at least I imagine) they have had similar experiences as me. And to take it another step back, I suppose I share some unity with anyone from George Fox. And Wider again, I felt some immediate relief when I learned that another Californian, Dave, was going to be in this cohort because, well\u2026 Californians know how to party.<\/a> Not to bludgeon this point to death, but lastly, consider how you can be halfway across the world and run into someone who happens to be from your hometown. This type of chance encounter will always produce shock, excitement and instant friendship. But why is this? When we were in our hometown, we weren\u2019t excited to meet a stranger. But placed in a foreign context where we don\u2019t belong and don\u2019t share much with those surrounding us, we become a little desperate to find a little community. And so this serendipitous stranger gives us imagined community. And it’s unifying.<\/p>\n

This concept, but on a national level, is what Benedict Anderson writes about in his book Imagined Communities.<\/em> By this phrase Imagined Communities, he is referring to the formation of a shared perceived national identity, which became a global development in the early 19th<\/sup> century. It should be noted that labels and definitions are difficult and are rarely agreed upon when it comes to nationalism. James Joyce ominously alludes to this difficulty of definition in a line from Ulysses<\/em>,<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2014What is it? says John Wyse. <\/em>\u2014A nation? says Bloom. <\/em>A nation is the same people living in the same place\u2026 or in different places.[1]<\/strong><\/a>\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

But for us, Anderson lays out two criteria for what is required to have nationalism; it must be limited<\/strong> and it must be sovereign<\/strong>. By limited, Anderson means that it must have some level of exclusivity to unite a people together. Just like the LGP8\u2019s is a closer and more secure group now that no one else can join. And by sovereign Anderson is saying the nation must have independence from any other sort of categorization, like religion. This is a huge shift world-shift, for up until nationalism primarily identified with their religion. In the past, to be Roman meant to have Roman gods. But now, people could be British and not be part of the church of England.<\/p>\n

And so nations all over the world began drawing lines and marking boundaries to separate themselves and this began building unity amongst those who were on the inside. And as they drew lines many people who lived on the borders of these boundaries gained a new identity, sometimes unknowingly.<\/p>\n

A line is drawn and a village mayor says, \u201coh, I guess we\u2019re Russian now\u201d<\/p>\n

A villager responds, \u201cwhat the hell is Russia?\u201d<\/p>\n

A lot of power goes to the person who gets to draw the lines.<\/p>\n

And today new lines are being drawn. Last week we looked at what it means to be evangelical. And many of our LGP8\u2019s highlighted and wrote about their desire (and much of America\u2019s desire) to draw new lines for what it means to be evangelical. Their imagined communities had spoiled as they were witnessing powerful evangelicals acting in ways that should be viewed as \u201cunbecoming of an evangelical\u201d. So in an act of spiritual gerrymandering, they attempt to redraw lines so as to exclude those they no longer wish to be identified with. They say, \u201cOh, no I don\u2019t like you; I\u2019ll redefine my category to no longer be associated with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

They might be right. This might be needed.<\/p>\n

The one who is able to draw the lines is a powerful person.<\/p>\n

And Anderson writes in Chapter 11 of how many nations as they expanded across the globe followed the trend of renaming newly acquired territories as new versions of something old.[2]<\/a> New England, New York, New Amsterdam, and even New Mexico. And of course, with this \u201cnew\u201d naming came separation between the new and the original (now old by default). This also brought the assumption that the old was subservient or lagging behind the new. These groups, as Anderson describes, might be parallel to each other in many things and yet there is still a great distance between them. This seems to be a great description of how many denominations split and renamed themselves to be the new version of the old, many times remaining practically parallel to the former.<\/p>\n

Evangelicalism was supposed to be a term that encompassed many denominations, and yet today it is becoming a term lacking in distinction and lagging behind in relevance.<\/p>\n

Perhaps today we need a \u201cNew Evangelicalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

But who can draw these new lines?<\/p>\n

It will be drawn by those leading the megachurches, where people can walk into a church of 5,000+ and feel an imagined community amongst its ranks. It will be drawn by the loudest ministers in media who preach to an audience of hundreds of thousands and stream their definitions 24 hours a day.<\/p>\n

grey skies ahead indeed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

____<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> James Joyce,\u00a0Ulysses<\/em>\u00a0(Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2018), chp. 12.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Benedict R. O’G. Anderson,\u00a0Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism<\/em>\u00a0(Verso, 2016), chp. 11.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/p>\n

Anderson, Benedict R. O’G. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism<\/em>. Verso, 2016.<\/p>\n

Joyce, James. Ulysses<\/em>. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are all drawn to community. And ironically is it exclusivity which helps build community. at least, for those that are within. Consider how fast our LGP8 cohort made a distinction between ourselves and the other groups by labeling ourselves the great eight. No one made the different cohorts be competitive and tease each other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[775,585,1017],"class_list":["post-15991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-benedict-anderson","tag-imagined-communities","tag-lgp8","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15991"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15992,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15991\/revisions\/15992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}