No one is advocating for an outright and across the board dismissal of tradition, unless that tradition is deemed to be irrelevant and not helpful for moving Christianity forward.

John Mark:

Ah, there is the thing. I feel safest in calling a tradition “irrelevant” when I am in community with those who deeply wish it isn’t irrelevant and carefully argue it is not. I don’t trust myself that much . . . or the kind of people my age who happen to like music I like.

If I am not part of a big, old, continuous conversation (read: Church), I always suspect I am about to cater to the spirit of the age or at least the spirit of my crotchety age.

John Mark

P.S. If this my last post on this thread, it is only because time is short and Plato is long . . . and I have to go think some more about Plato.

If you are a twenty-something year old and you think you’ve engaged the traditions of two millenia of historic Christianity enough to dismiss them as irrelevant and “begin the messy and at times overwhelming process of drafting something new,” you’re kidding yourself.

Believe me when I say, we don’t think we’ve engaged the traditions of two millenia enough to dismiss them as irrelevant. No one is advocating for an outright and across the board dismissal of tradition, unless that tradition is deemed to be irrelevant and not helpful for moving Christianity forward.

We do want to build something new on the solid foundation of good, Biblically based tradition, shirking only those things that do not stand the test of time and of sound theology. We believe, and few would argue, that many of the “traditions” that bolster evangelicalism are barely old enough to be considered tradition, nor fundamental enough to be saved.

I would ask you, Albert, not to pass on Patrol, nor anything you encounter for the first time based on a slight initial analysis. You will miss out on a lot of good this way, I believe.

Amen to that.
My knowledge of church history is not anywhere where I’d like it to be. Having said that, the more I learn, the more I realize that every single issue or alternative point of view that anyone ever comes up with, has be hashed and re-hashed over the centuries.
And, in most cases, sufficiently answered for those who would take the time to listen.

But so many twenty-somethings are not calling themselves “post-evangelical” because they know too little theology or have put too small an effort into synthesizing it with reality. They have come from the most apologetics-obsessed generation of Christians in American history, and have realized that many of their prepared answers are for questions that no one is asking. Adrift in the cultural sea, many turned to traditions and theological systems of the past, only to find those similarly unequipped to address the questions of our time. The only choice has been to begin the messy and at times overwhelming process of drafting something new.

If you are a twenty-something year old and you think you’ve engaged the traditions of two millenia of historic Christianity enough to dismiss them as irrelevant and “begin the messy and at times overwhelming process of drafting something new,” you’re kidding yourself.

I could be missing something; this is the first I’ve heard of Patrol. But if this adolescence is really representative of their work, I think I will respectfully pass on their publication and recommend they read those writings again with a more humble and charitable disposition.

First, to John Mark, I’m not sure that anything new is being said in the criticisms of evangelicalism. But after reflection, I’m not sure that’s a problem. Those who have been around evangelicalism for a while have heard (and probably made) all the critiques, but there’s still a place for them. We stand, I think, under judgment and are in need of being constantly called to renewal. In that way, I think the post-evangelicals are helpful (as were the emergents, and the online church people, and every other dissenting or progressive group).

In that way, like Jared I am sympathetic to the critiques of post-evangelicals like Patrol and Michael. I think we should keep dialoging with them, and try to get to the root of the problems of evangelicalism. But my basic problem with much of post-evangelicalism–though I really think Spencer avoids this problem–is having a blind spot for what they are critiquing. We bemoan political captivity while justifying our cultural captivity. We embrace post-modernism even while decrying its effects on religious and social life. Critiques of evangelicalism’s captivity to modernity don’t have much force for me if they stay within that domain, as so many of them do. But then, this is simply to retread arguments I’ve made elsewhere.

Additionally, I worry about our ability to *see well* outside the context of loving relationships with the Church. I’m a Chestertonian about such matters: love isn’t blind, it is bound. And the more it is bound, the less it is blind. I worry that by consciously separating themselves from evangelicalism, those who have perhaps the most prophetic insight will lose their ability to see it as it is–in need of judgment, but also full of hope and possibilities. See Chesterton’s “The Flag of the World” for more.

I don’t know much about the impending collapse of evangelicalism, nor do I much care. It seems like the sort of interesting prediction that I love to debate, but doesn’t affect much of how I behave or live. In the meantime, we will all go about loving our neighbor as best we can and working for the sake of the Gospel in our own lives and in our churches. Check back with me in a decade and maybe we can reflect about how such predictions turned out.

Additionally, I wrote this keeping Patrol and Michael Spencer distinct in my mind, a distinction that I hoped would be maintained. I agree that Michael’s interest is much more historically grounded, and I appreciate very much his criticisms and even more his drawing many people’s attention to things like liturgy (more, please!). My hope was simply to get Patrol to clarify their own position, as the editorial had a number of aspects that were troubling to me.

Here’s what I want to say about the future of evangelicalism and post-evangelicalism: it’s bleak. It’s dying. But then, the Church is always dying in every generation, for the Church is a human church full of human problems. But because I think that evangelicalism has been Christ’s, and Christ is God’s, I have hope that it will continue to be reborn. In this, I think Mark Galli’s take on the matter is instructive (yes, more self-linking from me): http://mereorthodoxy.com/?p=2018

So, in sum, yes to Michael Spencer, yes to hearing the people that are disaffected from evangelicalism, but yes also to robust orthodoxy, the people in the pew, and evangelical loyalties. And no to false dichotomies. I hate false dichotomies.

Best,

Matt

Thanks for having the courage to say so.

I was mentioned in an evangel post, so I commented. Graciously. No drooling. Deferential. Etc.

Big Mistake. Lesson officially learned.

As a fan and as a brother, Michael, I have to say: You are way, way too sensitive to anything that even smells like criticism. In my post, I disagree with you. That’s it. I don’t think I was being harsh (though if I was someone please let me know).

Also, I think we’d all do well to get outside of our holy huddles and learn more about other groups. Evangelicalism is a big place. The moment you start making pronouncements about what is happening to it as a whole you are bound to get it wrong.

I’ll give you one example from my own life. When I lived in Chicago I decided to visit Willow Creek so that I could see first hand what I had been making fun of for years. I slipped into a Saturday night service thinking I was going to get plenty of material to mock them on my blog. Instead, I heard a preacher (not Hybels) proffer one of the clearest Gospel messages I had heard in a long, long time. I have no doubt that God used that message to save the lost that night.

Since then I still level criticisms at Willow Creek. But now when I do so now the my complaints are narrower and more circumspect. If someone were to say that Willow Creek is a gospel-less church I’d call them out on such a slanderous accusation. Once we start thinking that we are doing church right and everyone else is wrong, we’re treading on dangerous ground.

We should always remember that we are not the final judges of the evangelical church. That task belongs to the One who sees what we sometimes miss.

Yet I’m still hopeful about this thing evangelicalism, whatever it is. I agree with you on the collapse (although it sort of took Tim Keller to agree it was gonna happen to make me put my chips in :-), but I think those who persist in small(?) pockets of missional, confessing communities will be substantially evangelical, even if they don’t like the name.

And let’s at least observe that the megachurchianity crowd has little use for the word evangelical anyway. Few even know what it means. I don’t think it’s fair to let them keep it. :-)

Bottom line: I may be playing the violin while the Titanic sinks, but it’s only because the music is truer than the ship.

I didn’t even know that I had a previous comment removed on this blog in the past several weeks.

Can you provide evidence to substantiate your charges? What was the blog post/thread and my comment that you removed previously?

And for the record, I don’t think that my earlier comment was wrong and it shouldn’t have been removed.

Anyways, can you provide evidence to substantiate your charge that you removed a prior comment of mine on this blog in the last several weeks? I’m not aware of any “Strike One.”

1. telling me something that fits some already existing older group of Christians.

2. fracturing over disagreements just like their parents.

As for me, I am a citizen of Christendom and a Nicene Christian . . . trying to understand my King and my Kingdom (and live out my Creed) is more than enough.

I am trying to solve my problems . . . and hope that this is at least some contribution to the culture as a whole.

[1] Everybody wants to be Martin Luther, but nobody wants to nail anything to the door. Isn’t it the right thing to do to start with what is true, and good, and whatever is beautiful, then understand the “ought”, and then address our disaffections with our circumstnaces?

[2] Can the Nicene Creed really solve this problem? There’s not a lot there about redeeming the culture or the pH scale of sins to tell us how much offense the Holocaust can muster in us vs. how much scatalogical jokes ought to revile us — let alone the relevance of music styles. How’s Nicene Confessionalism going to solve this problem?