The Evangelical Moment

The Public Square

In the many worlds of evangelical Protestantism today there is enormous vitality—including theological vitality. That makes possible substantive conversations, such as the project known as Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT). Nobody has contributed more to that conversation than Dr. Timothy George, a Baptist who is dean of Beeson Divinity School and who will also deliver our annual Erasmus Lecture in October. In the June/July issue we published “The Pattern of Christian Truth,” in which George argues that, despite evangelicalism’s emphasis on the authority of the Bible, evangelicals “too often construe its authority as a kind of divine reference book, a sort of inspired manual, that can be understood quite apart from the Christian heritage of Bible-based theology and wisdom across the centuries.” There is, he says, a propensity for reading the Bible apart from, and sometimes against, the history of Christian orthodoxy, which results in novelties that are, in the precise sense of the word “heretical,” when we remember that the Greek haeresis means “choice.”

In my last years as a Lutheran I published a book titled The Catholic Moment. Turnabout is fair play and Kenneth J. Collins, a professor of theology at Asbury Theological Seminary, has now brought out The Evangelical Moment: The Promise of an American Religion (Baker, 288 pages,). It is in many ways a useful book, especially in its description of the various forms of evangelical Protestantism: historical evangelicalism, reformational evangelicalism, Puritan and pietistic evangelicalism, awakening evangelicalism, revivalistic evangelicalism, charismatic evangelicalism, and fundamentalist/neoevangelicalism.

Members of these many groups and their subgroups may dispute Collins’ depiction of their “distinctives,” but all would likely agree with his claim, shared by almost all who write on this subject, that evangelicals are marked by four characteristics: commitment to the authority of Scripture, the atoning work of Christ, the necessity of personal conversion, and the imperative to evangelize others. A problem, of course, is that a quarter to a third of Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and oldline Protestants in America also answer to those characteristics. The result is that Collins never quite gets beyond the widespread perception that an evangelical is a Christian who is negatively defined as being not Catholic, not Eastern Orthodox, and not a liberal Protestant.

In recent decades, evangelicalism has been further torn by heated disputes over the “inerrancy” of the Bible, meaning that the Scriptures, at least in their original texts, are literally true in all matters they address, including chronology, biology, and geography. Collins suggests that the “battle for the Bible” is now over, with 40 percent of the members of the Evangelical Theological Society having abandoned the doctrine of inerrancy.

One may wonder how this progressive reading would sit with the millions of members of, say, the Southern Baptist Convention. Collins also endorses the view that evangelicalism is moving beyond the foundationalist theology of the past and into what is commonly described as a postmodernist understanding of truth. He quotes the very prolific and influential British evangelical, Alister McGrath: “The time has come for evangelicalism to purge itself of the remaining foundational influences of the Enlightenment, not simply because the Enlightenment is over, but because of the danger of allowing ideas whose origins and legitimation lie outside the Christian gospel to exercise a decisive influence on that gospel. . . . We have been liberated from the rationalist demand to set out ‘logical’ and ‘rational’ grounds for our beliefs. Belief systems possess their own integrities, which may not be evaluated by others as if there were some privileged position from which all may be judged.”

Collins has very decided views also on evangelicalism and feminism, to which he devotes a long chapter. He is unimpressed by the fact that the great majority of Christians in the world belong to bodies that, in continuity with two millennia of history, believe women cannot be ordained to what is traditionally called the presbyterate. Their convictions are dismissively attributed to prejudice and their arguments are casually derided as “specious.” Striking throughout the book, on this score and others, is the indifference toward Christians in the southern hemisphere—in Africa, Latin America, and Asia where Christianity, especially in its evangelical/pentecostal and Catholic forms, is experiencing explosive growth. That indifference is perhaps implicit in his subtitle’s reference to evangelicalism as “an American religion.” This national preoccupation is also in severe tension with his repeated claims that the evangelicalism he is describing is committed to the fullness of the catholic—as in universal—experience of the Church.

At crucial points, his argument reflects a certain defensiveness, perhaps because he is a former Catholic who became an evangelical Protestant. He wants it understood that he is as catholic as anybody else, albeit a lower-case “c” catholic, and he much resents the fact that Catholics do not see it that way. Consider the case of a certain Richard John Neuhaus. “If one is born and raised in a Lutheran home and then follows the leading of conscience by converting to Roman Catholicism, as Neuhaus did, then that decision must be respected by all. The Roman Catholic Church, however, apparently does not return the favor in kind.” He protests that the Catholic Church does not respect “Protestant converts who have humbly and obediently followed the gentle leading of conscience and the Holy Spirit.” Particularly offensive to him is this statement in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or remain in it.”

It is hard to understand why Professor Collins is offended. Surely it is obvious that, if one knows that about the Catholic Church, if one agrees that the Catholic Church is what she claims to be, one could not be led by conscience and the Holy Spirit to leave the communion of the Catholic Church. It is obvious that Collins does not think the Catholic Church is what she says she is and therefore he is not a Catholic. In the Catholic understanding that is lamentable, but it does not mean he is not saved.

At the same time, Collins is rather aggressive with his own excommunications. Except for extremely rare instances of pastoral necessity, the Catholic Church invites to Holy Communion only those who are in communion with a bishop who is in communion with the bishop of Rome. This, if I understand Collins, means that the Catholic Church is not “Church” at all. He favorably quotes the evangelical theologian Miroslav Volf who writes: “Any church excluding Christians at a given place is not merely a bad church, but rather is no church at all, since a Eucharist to which not all the Christians at a given place might gather would not be merely a morally deficient Eucharist, but rather no Eucharist at all.”

So much for Paul, Cyprian, Gregory of Nyssa, Anselm, Augustine, and a host of other worthies, who excluded from communion, for various reasons, people who, in a favored phrase of the author, confessed the lordship of Jesus Christ. The first four ecumenical councils, to which the author is very favorably disposed, decided who would and who would not be admitted to communion. As Timothy George writes in the essay mentioned earlier, “A Church that cannot distinguish heresy from truth, or, even worse, a Church that no longer thinks this is worth doing, is a Church which has lost its right to bear witness to the transforming Gospel of Jesus Christ who declared himself to be not only the Way and the Life, but also the Truth.”

About many things Collins is very well read, but then one comes across the most remarkable lacunae. For instance, he repeatedly charges that Rome’s ecclesiological claims un-church Eastern Orthodoxy. It is as though he has not read the pertinent documents of Vatican II or the extended and generous treatment of Orthodoxy in the 1995 encyclical Ut Unum Sint (“That They May Be One”), which suggest that all that is lacking for full communion between Rome and Orthodoxy is full communion. Nor is there a reference to Dominus Iesus, a document issued in 2000 that clearly spells out why Orthodoxy is composed of “sister churches” that are truly Church in a way that other Christian communities are not. One almost gets the impression that, in order to justify his separation from the Catholic Church, Prof. Collins attempts to recruit everybody—from Orthodoxy on the sins of the West to liberal Protestants on feminism—for his side and against Rome. I say “almost,” for his argument is frequently elusive.

Collins takes issue with fellow evangelical Thomas Oden who has urged that full communion among all Christians can be established on the basis of agreement on the doctrinal consensus of the first millennium. Collins dislikes some of the Marian developments of the second half of the first millennium and therefore plunks for limiting agreement to the first five hundred years. All Christian communities can get together because they are “already orthodox in several key respects in affirming the truth of Scripture, the early creeds, and the four great councils.” But then there is the sixteenth century, which, he says, is “the second great creedal epoch of the church” and must be permitted to reform “the subsequent tradition.” So all that is now required for Christian unity is that Catholics and Orthodox agree they more or less had it right for the first five centuries but went off the rails for a thousand years until put right by the Protestant reformers of the sixteenth century. This is an ecumenical proposal that, one ventures to predict, will not take us very far.

The Evangelical Moment succeeds in explaining some of the varieties, conflicts, and confusions within the worlds of evangelicaldom. Collins is correct in claiming that evangelicalism, broadly defined, is or is fast becoming the dominant form of Protestantism in America. But he is wrong to suggest it is “an American religion.” The religion under discussion is Christianity, of which evangelicalism is a wondrously diverse and vibrant expression. Catholic teaching gratefully recognizes the saving and sanctifying grace evident among evangelicals, viewing them as brothers and sisters in Christ who are, as the Second Vatican Council says, in a “certain but imperfect communion with the Catholic Church.” In the Catholic understanding, the goal of ecumenism is the completion of that existing unity in full communion. As Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, has frequently said, none of us can foresee, never mind control, the ways in which the Holy Spirit might lead us to that fervently desired goal. I think we can be quite sure, however, that it will not happen by individual theologians constructing a church of their choice by liberally picking and choosing, according to their preferred understanding of biblical truth, what they recognize as belonging to the history of the Church of Jesus Christ through time. Collins’ preferences and putative certainties notwithstanding, history is not so compliant as that.

As Timothy George understands, there is “a discernible pattern of Christian truth, a pattern derived from the apostolic witness and maintained across time as the depositum fidei, or what the New Testament calls ‘the faith once delivered to the saints.’ This pattern is embedded, like a genetic code, in the inspired text of Scripture itself.” Of course, Catholics would want to say more than that with respect to how that pattern is discerned and how it informs what is authoritatively taught. But evangelicals who understand that there is such a pattern will, I expect, be less enthusiastic than is Kenneth Collins about his depiction of “the evangelical moment.”

Thinking With The Church

The leadership of the Society of Jesus decided that Fr. Thomas Reese should be replaced as editor of America magazine. Fr. Reese, who was editor for seven years, said he agreed with the decision but, apparently, he later changed his mind. Institutions of all kinds make personnel decisions, and sometimes people are unhappy with such decisions. The present instance has occasioned a brouhaha in which it is claimed that Fr. Reese was removed on the orders of an allegedly oppressive Pope Benedict. Everybody should calm down, take a deep breath, and think again.

America is a Catholic magazine in the service of the Church and her mission. It is no secret that in recent years many people—probably including Pope Benedict when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger—criticized the magazine for undercutting that mission, which is to present as effectively as possible the teaching of the Church. That mission requires intellectual integrity in honestly engaging arguments that question or oppose Catholic teaching. Catholicism does not pit faith against reason or faithfulness against intellectual inquiry. St. Ignatius Loyola, the sixteenth-century founder of the Jesuits, gave us the fine phrase sentire cum ecclesia—”to think with the Church.” Thinking with the Church requires thinking.

The troubles at America are not about intellectual integrity or freedom. As a priest and editor, Fr. Reese exercised intellectual integrity and freedom in committing himself to the Church and the mission to which the magazine is dedicated. Unfortunately, under his editorship, America frequently seemed to be unwilling to take the side that, I believe, it is actually on. The problem was a basic mistake in editorial policy. It was thought that being “fair and balanced” required publishing on an equal footing articles that supported and articles that opposed the Church’s teaching, as though the Church’s teaching was but one opinion among others. The problem was compounded by the fact that such articles dealt with publicly controversial questions such as the moral understanding of homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and the exploitation of embryonic stem cells. On such questions, the Church has clearly defined positions. The practice of America suggested to some the magazine’s neutrality, at best, or hostility, at worst, to the Church’s teaching. Not surprisingly, they asked of the magazine, “Whose side are you on?”

Again, intellectual integrity requires honestly engaging opposing arguments. It does not require providing a platform for opposing arguments. I dare say that an editor working for Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, or the National Rifle Association who regularly turned an organization’s publication into a platform for those opposed to the mission of the organization would soon be looking for another job. Of course, as Catholics understand it, the Church’s mission is immeasurably more important, having to do with the salvation of souls and the morally right ordering of society. Moreover, it is hardly the case that readers need America in order to be aware of alternative and opposing viewpoints. Presumably, they are reasonably well-informed people with access to innumerable media that are critical of the Church’s teaching.

A Catholic magazine—and it should be obvious that a Jesuit magazine is Catholic—may decide to publish an exchange or debate between conflicting positions, but there should be no doubt that the magazine is on the Church’s side. A magazine of intellectual integrity and excitement is a magazine that knows where it stands. As for being fair and balanced, one should always be fair, but balance understood as neutrality is a formula for banality. Of course, there is a problem if an editor is in fundamental disagreement with the institution for which he works. One thinks, for instance, of someone at the NRA who undergoes a change of mind about the merits of banning guns. But we can confidently assume that was not Fr. Reese’s problem. He not only works for the Church; he is solemnly vowed to surrender himself in her service, and, as a Jesuit, has taken a particular vow of loyalty to the Pope.

As editor, Fr. Reese, whom I count as a friend, seriously misunderstood the meaning of fair and balanced. The Society of Jesus decided it would be better for the magazine and for him if he moved into a different ministry. End of story. Unless, of course, one is interested in generating suspicion and hostility against the pope. Needless to say, no faithful Catholic would want to do that.

The above is my op-ed piece requested and published by the Boston Globe. Perhaps a few more things should be said. It all started with a story in the New York Times. “Vatican Is Said to Force Jesuit Off Magazine.” That is the headline—on the front page yet. The “Is Said” is the key. In the jargon of journalists, the Times “didn’t have the story.” Fr. Thomas Reese, the editor in question, didn’t say he was forced out. Nobody named in the story, including me, said that. The real story is that Laurie Goodstein and her editors were declaring, under the disguise of news, that Pope Benedict is clamping down on any hint of criticism. The last line of the article alludes ominously to a warning that Catholics may be forced back into an intellectual “ghetto.” The ever-excitable Andrew Sullivan seizes upon the Times article to declare that Fr. Reese was “fired” as editor of America by that “petty, prissy tyrant” Benedict XVI. He depicts the alleged incident as “a call to arms for those of us who need to save the Church from this disastrous choice for the papacy.”

I am afraid that the editorial reaction of Commonweal was hardly more temperate. The editors worry that “the Vatican’s shocking dismissal” of Reese will “lend credence to the still-widespread impression that the Catholic Church is a backward-looking, essentially authoritarian, institution run by men who are afraid of open debate and intellectual inquiry.” They note that Reese also published articles supportive of the Church’s teaching and declare, “It is possible to ascribe the incredibly maladroit timing and handling of this decision to Vatican incompetence, arrogance, or obliviousness.” The removal of Reese is “inexcusable,” reflecting “insensitivity and recklessness,” and is an instance of “the arbitrary and self-serving exercise of ecclesiastical authority.” “For those who had hoped that the pastoral challenges of his new office might broaden Benedict’s sympathies, this is a time of indignation, disappointment, and increased apprehension.”

One is put in mind of G.K. Chesterton’s little poem on the occasion of a certain F.E. Smith declaring in Parliament that the bill on Welsh Disestablishment was “a bill which has shocked the conscience of every Christian community in Europe.”

Are they clinging to their crosses,

F.E. Smith,

Where the Breton boat-fleet tosses,

Are they, Smith?

Do they, fasting, trembling, bleeding,

Wait the news from this our city?

Groaning “That’s the Second Reading!”

Hissing “There is still Committee!”

If the voice of Cecil falters,

If McKenna’s point has pith,

Do they tremble for their altars?

Do they, Smith?

The poem concludes with: “Chuck it, Smith.”

What purpose is served by the Commonweal editorial, which is titled “Scandal at America,” other than to “lend credence to the still-widespread impression that the Catholic Church is a backward-looking, essentially authoritarian, institution run by men who are afraid of open debate and intellectual inquiry”? Is Commonweal not fomenting precisely what it says it fears?

The editorial concludes with this: “What [the Vatican] has done to Thomas Reese and America is the scandal. Is it possible that not one bishop has the courage to say so? That too is a scandal.” The assumption is that bishops agree with Commonweal but lack the courage to say so. An alternative view is that bishops, along with others, think that Commonweal, along with the Times, simply got the story wrong. The undisputed fact is that the leadership of the Society of Jesus, in consultation with Fr. Reese (and, at least in his initial statement, in agreement with Fr. Reese) decided it was time for a change. The Society of Jesus is not mentioned even once by Commonweal. Why are the Jesuits not criticized for caving in to, as the editors would have it, illegitimate Vatican pressure? It would appear that Commonweal is out for bigger game. Pope Benedict, for instance.

Once again, intellectual inquiry is not only permitted in the Catholic Church; it is required. Commonweal says, “Evidently, the [Vatican] insists that any church-sponsored publication aimed at the educated faithful confine its activities to catechesis.” Not at all, although solid catechesis has been in dreadfully short supply in recent decades. What is expected of a Catholic publication is that it be Catholic. Minimally, that means that it does not convey the impression that authoritatively defined teaching is but one opinion among others, that it does not leave the reader in doubt as to whose side it is on.

Commonweal is not church-sponsored but is generally thought to be Catholic (although a former editor insisted to me that it did not define itself as Catholic). First Things is ecumenical and interreligious. Whatever our formal relationship with the Catholic Church, or lack thereof, we all have a responsibility not to “lend credence to the still-widespread impression that the Catholic Church is a backward-looking, essentially authoritarian, institution run by men who are afraid of open debate and intellectual inquiry.”

A final note: A source close to America says that Jesuits have been told that there was a mid-March letter from Cardinal Ratzinger, then still prefect of CDF, ordering the removal of Fr. Reese as editor. Nobody we spoke to claims to have seen such a letter. “In the Jesuit tradition, these things are dealt with by word of mouth,” explains our source. An expert on curial procedures says that only the Pope, then John Paul II, would have been authorized to issue such an order to the Father General of the Society. Whether CDF did or did not send such a letter is not pertinent to the above reflections. Final final note: Meeting at the end of May, the Catholic Press Association voted 48-28 against a statement expressing concern about Fr. Reese’s resignation. Members argued that it would be irresponsible to protest when they did not know what had really happened. This could be the beginning of an outbreak of sanity.

Unfurling The Flag Of Faith

John Podesta was President Clinton’s chief of staff during the impeachment procedures, so you know he is a man not averse to taking on tough jobs. Now he is head of the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank, which has launched a program called the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative. With the help of people such as Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine, the aim is to steal the “faith and values” card from those who are depicted as the extremists of the religious right, both evangelical and Catholic. (Podesta is very upfront about his being a Catholic.) A Zogby poll sponsored by his organization shows that 54 percent of the electorate belongs to “the silent majority” composed of religious moderates, progressives, and “nontraditional religious voters” who are cool to, or opposed to, the positions backed by conservative Christians who vote Republican.

The astute Andrew Ferguson is skeptical about Podesta’s proposal to defeat Republicans by aping them. Ferguson writes: “Podesta’s faith initiative shows the delusion at the heart of this mimicry. There’s no doubting that religious conservatives have been one of the great engines of Republican electoral success. Yet this part of the conservative movement has been what a progressive might call ‘organic,’ a spontaneous coming-together of like-minded people in the face of intolerable offenses (so conservatives believed) from the larger secular culture. The religious right, in other words, is a bottom-up movement, bound together by a sense of grievance. Podesta’s initiative, on the other hand, looks like an attempt to gin up an artificial movement that otherwise shows no independent signs of viability. Podesta is aware of the criticism and says he’s not imposing a ‘top-down’ movement from Washington. ‘It’s religious leaders at the congregational level that are going to make this happen,’ he says. ‘We can enable them, we can assist them, we can be a catalyst.’ This assumes, of course, that such a catalyst is necessary. The electorate contains many progressives with religious convictions, as Podesta’s own poll demonstrates. It’s also true, however, that they are politically engaged. And they’re Democrats. Podesta hopes to rescue the Democratic Party by giving it something it already has.”

That strikes me as about right. Grievance is not the most edifying factor in politics but it is critically important. There is nothing on the left that so widely and egregiously offends moral conviction as does Roe v. Wade on the right. Among evangelicals especially the grievance factor is regularly reinforced by the contempt with which they are viewed by those in control of the commanding heights of culture. True, the contempt is reciprocated, but who really cares about what those rubes think? Podesta’s silent majority of moderates and progressives who are more or less religious and don’t like the religious right are, as Ferguson says, already in the Democratic fold or are not part of the politically attentive public. Democracy is about majority rule, but electoral majorities are formed by politically potent minorities, and potent minorities are generated—not only, but very importantly—by grievances.

Apart from faculty lounges and leftist editorial rooms, nobody believes that Christian conservatives are out to overthrow the Constitution and establish a theocracy in this country. Mr. Podesta’s problems are compounded by the fact that there is no way he can steal the abortion card, since the overwhelming majority of Americans believe the abortion license should be sharply limited. If, as seems to be the case, something like 75 percent of voters favor limiting legal abortion to the first three months and then only in narrowly prescribed circumstances, they are, for practical political purposes at present, to be counted as pro-life, whether or not they call themselves pro-life (although a majority of voters now do). Mr. Podesta’s Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative looks like a forlorn effort, although he is not to be criticized for trying. In a country in which eight out of ten voters claim to be religious, any sane political operative will recognize the wisdom of unfurling the flag of faith.

While We’re At It

• Charles Krauthammer has about had it with the new war on certainty, as he calls it. Doubt is in, conviction is out. He notes the recent cover article in the New Republic lauding the “conservatism of doubt,” as well as the big flop of a Hollywood movie that depicted the Christians and Muslims of the Crusades as champions of interfaith understanding. Of course the war on certainty is very specifically aimed at the most dangerous of certainties, those that are suspected of being rooted in religion. Such convictions, he writes, are criticized as “a deep violation of the tradition of American pluralism, ecumenism, modesty, and skeptical restraint.” Krauthammer concludes: “That widespread portrayal is invention masquerading as history. You want certainty? You want religiosity? How about a people who overthrow the political order of the ages, go to war and occasion thousands of deaths in the name of self-evident truths and unalienable rights endowed by the Creator? That was 1776. The universality, the sacredness, and the divine origin of freedom are enshrined in our founding document. The Founders, believers all, signed it. Thomas Jefferson wrote it. And not even Jefferson, the most skeptical of the lot, had the slightest doubt about it.”

• I don’t vouch for the authenticity of this. It was sent me by someone who calls himself “Diogenes.” The editorial note by “JL” does lend a note of credibility to the claim that it is the first draft for a story in the New York Times. In any event, here it is:

Pick Seen as Sign of Contradiction

By Ian Fisher

CAESAREA PHILIPPI (20 Kislev). Yesterday’s surprise announcement that doctrinal hardliner Jesus of Nazareth had been anointed “messiah” provoked mixed reactions in the diverse and sometimes fractious Israelite community, ranging from cautious disappointment to frank despair.

“I see it as a missed opportunity,” said Herodias Schneidkopf, a Galilean incest-rights activist. “Many of us were hoping for someone more open to leadership roles for women and more appreciative of our experience. I don’t feel valued.”

Respected archpriest Caiaphas Bar Nun agreed. “Above all, the messiah should be a good listener. How can we as a faith community keep credibility among the youth of today if we cling to every jot and tittle of an outmoded social code while thousands die of leprosy and hunger? Today’s highly educated Judahite community isn’t satisfied with the old answers. I’m afraid it’s a missed opportunity.”

Even some members of the Messiah’s personal entourage expressed misgivings. The Rev. J.E. “Dimples” Iscariot, S.J., a media consultant, did not hide his regret. “A missed opportunity, I’m afraid. We in the Society of Judas traditionally enjoy a special relationship to the messiah, but we’ll find this choice very hard to explain to gays and lesbians—I mean, of course, to gomorrhaists and sodomitesses—as well as to the divorced and the marginalized. Why just the other day I saw 300 denarii, which might have been used to help find a cure for leprosy, squandered on wholly unnecessary ritual excesses.”

Fighting the spread of leprosy is a vexed issue among contemporary Palestinians. Most polls show Israelites widely ignore official teachings on ethical matters, preferring to follow their own conscience. Some see Jesus’ moral conservatism as a rigidity that leads to disfigurement and death in at-risk populations—and that may ultimately doom his movement