{"id":38727,"date":"2024-10-16T09:00:51","date_gmt":"2024-10-16T16:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=38727"},"modified":"2024-10-14T09:03:51","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T16:03:51","slug":"in-pursuit-of-a-more-perfect-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/in-pursuit-of-a-more-perfect-union\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cost of Resistance To Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

I grew up with a nominal Anglican faith. It was church at Christmas and Easter and perhaps a few Sundays sprinkled in. I decided that I would leave the church as a teenager because it held little relevance to my life. I was a theist and there was a moral component to my life but that was about it. At the age of 17, I was introduced to an evangelical church and two years later I experienced an inner conversion of faith as I trusted Christ. My experience of conversion came because of the preaching of Jim Gunzel, a wise and godly pastor who took the time to explain the significance of the cross, called for conversion and the fullness of the Holy Spirit, invited me into ministry as lay person and encouraged us to study the bible in small groups. I had found a spiritual home that I have come to love, and this unique cultural milieu has formed me in very specific ways. The experiences that I just noted are identified as part of the uniqueness of the evangelical movement amongst other Protestants in David Bebbington\u2019s Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s. <\/em><\/p>\n

Bebbington defines Evangelicalism through four key characteristics.<\/p>\n

Conversionism<\/strong>: The belief that people\u2019s lives need to be transformed through the work of the Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n

Activism<\/strong>: The Expression of the gospel through intense effort as a sign of true conversion to Christ.<\/p>\n

Biblicism<\/strong>: A focus on the bible, the teaching of the bible, and a belief that all spiritual truth can be found in the bible alone.<\/p>\n

Crucicentrism:<\/strong> Stressing the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, in particular the doctrine of substitutionary atonement.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As I read Bebbington I was reminded of the documents at the National Archives Museum in DC and the importance of having foundational documents to guide the movement.\u00a0 These documents were forged over time and required hard work and sacrifice to attain. Once set, however, there was an understanding that these statements would evolve. I\u2019m sure that after all their hard work, the creators of those documents felt like they had something special and lasting. Yet, one of the displays at the museum noted, \u201c\u2026checks and balances written into the Constitution guarantee that debate continues. The creation of a \u2018more perfect union\u2019 is an ongoing process.\u201d (National Archive Display). There was a common understanding that what they had would need updating and refining. Reflecting on this made me wonder why many Evangelicals seem so threatened by change in our movement. Why would we not pursue, \u201ca more perfect union\u201d, rather than resist change? Change is inevitable. Indeed, cultural forces have introduced unavoidable change into the evangelical milieu.<\/p>\n

Bebbington notes that in Evangelicalism, \u201cIts outward expressions, such as its social composition and political attitudes, have frequently been transformed. Its inward principles, embracing teaching about Christian theology and behaviour, have altered hardly less. Nothing could be further from the truth than the common image of Evangelicalism being ever the same.\u201d[2]<\/a> But this transformation has not always been intentional. Ideally, one would hope that Evangelicalism would influence the society within which it is embedded, and it certainly has made a positive impact. However, it has also been unintentionally influenced by the culture. Bebbington explains how this change occurs, \u201cThe process of change can best be seen as a pattern of diffusion. Ideas originating in high culture have spread to leaders of Evangelical opinion and through them to the Evangelical constituency.[3]<\/a> As I read Jason Clark\u2019s dissertation, Evangelicalism and Capitalism: A Reparative Account and Diagnosis of Pathogenesis in the Relationship<\/em>, I was struck but the way that capitalism has shaped Evangelicalism due to our lack of attention to our form. Clark comments, “Evangelicalism within my accounts so far is seen as both a creature of capitalism, and a way of responding to capitalism. Initially for Evangelicals, and dominant for them, was the desire for inner spiritual renewal of the self around an identity in Christ. Yet that social imagination for the self eventually atrophies and becomes a market imagination within capitalism. We can see that a lack of attention to the form of church by Evangelicals led to its taking a form captive to the logic of market imaginations.”[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

As I reflected on Clark and Bebbington, I could see how my own church culture has been influenced by the forces of capitalism, among many others. Consumer religion, rather than disciple making, has been long shaped the life, and budgets, of the evangelical community. The role of pastor has, in many cases, been transformed to that of an expert leader who functions as a business CEO and, in some cases, a celebrity. In Bebbington\u2019s work, it was noted that the role of clergyman was transformed from someone who performed services to active work and that Wesleyan pastors worked 90-100 hours per week.[5]<\/a> My own life negatively testifies to overwork and near burnout. I also reflected on Simon Walker\u2019s \u201cbackstage\/frontstage\u201d and, in a highly consumer culture, the increasing need for leaders to maintain a certain frontstage image rather than live an integrated life. All of this to the detriment of the formation, care and cure of souls, as well as the formation, care and cure of the leader\u2019s soul.<\/p>\n

Could it be that our resistance to change, and lack of intentionality, in the evangelical community has made us even more susceptible to the negative forces of our culture? Would we not pursue an intentional and re-greening of our movement, while holding onto the form that really matters, rather than allow ourselves to be unintentionally shaped by the surrounding cultural forces?<\/p>\n

As I close allow me to circle back to my own experience. I grew to love the Evangelical movement, and I know that I protect the things I love. Change means we lose something of what we love, and we are forced to embrace a new reality. Change displaces us and disorients us. However, the lesson of Bebbington and Clark is that change is going to happen and if we leave don\u2019t attend to ourselves and pursue change intentionally, we will be unintentionally shaped. It seems that our worst fears are realized by resisting change rather than actively pursuing it to get to where we want to go and become an even better version.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> D. W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain a History from the 1730s to the 1980s<\/em> (London: Routledge, 1988), 2.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Bebbington, 268.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Bebbington, 271.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Jason Clark, Evangelicalism and Capitalism: A Reparative Account and Diagnosis of Pathogenesis in the Relationship<\/em> (Newberg, n.d.), 81.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain a History from the 1730s to the 1980s<\/em>, 10\u201312.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I grew up with a nominal Anglican faith. It was church at Christmas and Easter and perhaps a few Sundays sprinkled in. I decided that I would leave the church as a teenager because it held little relevance to my life. I was a theist and there was a moral component to my life but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[12,467,2967],"class_list":["post-38727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bebbington","tag-clark","tag-dlgp03","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38727","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\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38727"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38846,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38727\/revisions\/38846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}