Modernism in the Church

Book Review of David Wells’ God in the Wasteland
Grand Rapids: William B. Eeardmans Publishing 1994

The primary concern of God in the Wasteland is the influence modernism and modernity has had on the Christian Church as a whole. Wells, a theology professor, offers a look at the trend of mega-church building, its emphasis on marketing, and its effects on theology. He discusses how the philosophies of Christianity, postmodernism, and New Age spiritualism have reacted to modernism and its perhaps prematurely called death – the end of the “Enlightenment project.” In the wake of the centuries old endeavor, a progression towards the ideal of man, the effects are still felt in the church. Christians are faced with re-establishing their relationship with God after distancing themselves for those centuries.

There are two methods of modernism that the Church has incorporated: marketing and giving the people what they want. This results from an attitude shared with capitalism: the people are consumers. This, consequently, makes God the product and the Church the salesman. The terms are irreligious, but as Wells point out, they are used by those practicing a church growth doctrine. The exemplar of this doctrine is George Barna, who applies business models to churches to make them grow. He states that pastors would do better to have a Master of Business Administration degree, rather than a Master of Divinity. Modern pastors need “gifts” of delegation, confidence, interaction, decision-making, visibility, practicality, accountability, and discernment. Barna suggests the power of visual realization, envisioning the large church and making it happen. The greatest controversy is over his idea of adapting the product to the customer’s needs. Another advocate of a more ‘pragmatic’ approach to church building is David Macavran, who published Understanding Church Growth and established the American Institute for Church Growth in the 1970’s. Macavran used psychology, marketing, and behavio9ral health research for his theories. Theology was conspicuously missing.

Giving the people what they want prompts the question what should the Church compromise? As modernism dominates in society at large, or the reactionary postmodernism or New Age spiritualism among segments of society, the Church may embrace the influence in order to attract members of society. Teachings on God’s transcendence, holiness, providence are taught much less than it once was. Condemnation of sin, emphasizing God’s judgment, and the reality of Hell are minimized as these do not appeal to the consumer as sovereign, another philosophy some modern churches share with capitalism, along with ideas finding legitimacy and value in the marketplace. Instead a multi-media presentation is made to self-interest. Wells writes of this environment, “It is here that entertainment and worship are not merely interspersed but often indistinguishable. And it is here, where life should be receiving its most serious and sustained analysis, that tons of literature and countless hours of television and radio programming are being produced that contain nothing more than the sorts of empty clichés and hollow comforts that are available everywhere else in the modernized world ... at this very moment, evangelicalism has bought cultural acceptability by emptying itself of serious thought, serious theology, serious worship, and serious practice in the larger culture” (27).

Modernization within the church has fostered two approaches: the therapeutic and the managerial. The therapeutic approach sees sin as a sickness, and the right technique is available in the marketplace to heal people. The manifestation of this is the support group. The managerial approach looks for efficient techniques for happiness.

Another way modernism may affect the Church, though not by purposeful program, but by a pervasive philosophy in society, is the elevation of the individual, beyond the appeal to consumer or patient. Modernism replaced God with self. Philosophers such as Kant, Nietzsche, Rority, and Fish not only put self on the throne as legislator and arbiter of truth and justice, but elevate the self to become creator of reality. They bring into question whether there is an external reality, which brings into doubt any external God to whose image the self should conform. “Thus thwarted in their effort to find meaning outside themselves, moderns have sought to relocate all reality internally, detached from any fixed moral norms” (94).

Wells recognizes effects of modernism in general, but we can spot them within the Church too. One effect is the attitude and language of victimhood. “This spiral into pervasive victimhood... marks a corresponding erosion of personal responsibility, and suggests that genuine moral discourse about what is right and wrong, irrespective of private interests, is increasingly less possible. Contemporary culture has so diminished our moral capacity, so robbed us of a concern to act responsibly, that we tend to resent moral demands from without or simply to dismiss them out of hand” (135).

The appeal to self-interest, the adaptation of the Church, the emphasis of certain socially accepted traits of God and a suppression or denial of the unpopular traits, all elevate the value of self while diminishing the values of God. God becomes weightless. “...what was once objective in God’s being, what once stood over against the sinner, is either being lost or transformed into something we discover first and foremost in ourselves in such a way that God’s immanence is typically psychologized. ...A God with whom we are on such easy terms and whose reality is little different from our own – a God who is merely there to satisfy our needs – has no real authority to compel and will soon bore us” (92-93).
This passage, the last line especially, is a bleak prophecy that appears to be taking place now.

The Material and the Metaphysical

I.A. Richards, in Poetries and Sciences, differentiates between truths and “pseudo-statements,” what is more commonly called facts and opinions. Truths are proven by empirical evidence, pseudo-statements cannot be proven by this method. The pseudo-statement may be true, but it cannot be proven. Science presents statements of truth; math presents pure truth. Myth, religion, metaphysics, poetry, all make pseudo-statements. Science is informed, and therefore good for humankind. The others mentioned are ignorant, and a frame of thinking, of believing in “magic,” that was outmoded centuries ago. Richards doesn’t hide his judgment. Strange thing is his statements are pseudo-statements. Just by his word usage – calling all things metaphysical to be magic – he berates anyone who thinks there is something other than the material. I will refer to his scientific perspective as materialistic, and his magical perspective as metaphysical.

I do not intend to try to prove God with empirical evidence. I am not an apologist. I write from the point of one who has already embraced and espoused Christianity. My contention with Richards, at this point, is his pseudo-statement that those who believe the metaphysical perspective are more limited than those who have the materialistic perspective.

The restriction of the metaphysical perspective isn’t ignorance, but it may very well be moral. As a Christian I have abstained from promiscuity, drunkenness, recreational drug use. Many, unfortunately, would describe my life, and my knowledge, as very limited. The fact that I don’t know what a “tea-bag” is when it comes to homo-eroticism proves that. (Incidentally, I have no intention to investigate this further, but I have heard references in pop culture, like the TV show Family Guy.) I would not classify it as ignorance. I may just as well turn the argument on them: they don’t know what it is to be committed, or to have a religious vision, or what baptism in the Holy Spirit is. It seems to me that to classify knowledge as only attainable of what is material is quite restricted.
(This was a journal entry from January, 2009)

A Contemporary Essay on Man

Mere Humanity, by Donald Williams, is a study of whether man, a being especially endowed by God to be more than an animal, is a myth. The question is prompted by contemporary concepts, such as materialism, naturalism, and Freudianism, which try to debunk the myth that man is anything but an animal. Williams answers by observing selected works of the three authors: G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien.

The three authors have in common their Christianity and their use of story. For Chesterton and Tolkien the fact that man creates stories proves he is different from the animals, above the beasts; they are endowed with reason, as stated in Chesterton’s Everlasting Man and Tolkien’s essay, “On Faery Stories.” Lewis’s belief in the elevation of man is evident in both his Space trilogy and the series Chronicles of Narnia, in which man is related to the animals by their Maker, but made to rise above animal nature, though some will give into it by choice. (Note, in the Chronicles man is meant to rule the land and the creatures, but not meant to exploit them. Given with dominion is responsibility.) Lewis incorporates the medieval/Renaissance view that man is higher than the beasts and just below the angels, such as expressed in Pico Mirandola’s On the Dignity of Man. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit, and The Simarillion illustrate a special place for man also. He is mortal, moral, and ever hopeful.

Williams applies these views to contemporary philosophies, especially those influencing the academic world. An appendix addresses postmodernism, which is defined as a disbelief in any objective truth, largely as a result of disillusionment with modernism earlier in the twentieth century, which promised absolute objective truth. Both reject Christianity because both consider it to be subjective. Williams also addresses reductionist philosophies, which reduce man to a product, such as of economy (Marxism), or conditioning (Behaviorism). The authors who elevate man reject the reduction, as they allow, like God, that he has a free will.

I found the book very useful and entertaining. While it is scholarly, offering a very good reference list for further study, it does not read as many academic papers do – for a very select group It is especially relevant for Christian scholars and students, but also offers an overview of three authors Christians should know. As Donald Williams is both a scholar and a pastor, he applies the literature to the world Christians live in.

Donald Williams' website: http://doulomen.tripod.com/

Multiple Meanings in Charles Williams' The Place of the Lion

In The Place of the Lion Williams writes an elaborate Revelations kind of prophecy, blending realism with the supernatural and symbolic. The place of the lion is earth; the lion is both a Form for the supernatural beings medievalists called Intelligences, and the symbol for man, as the lion in the story is a hybrid of both. This is the opposite of what Williams’ friend, C.S. Lewis, made of the lion in The Chronicles of Narnia, where it symbolized God. In Williams’ book this is the eagle. The eagle is also the Form the protagonist, Anthony, identifies with, if not interchanges with. Other animals represent multiple meanings too, such as the snake is a literal threat to Anthony, as well as a Form, such as Aristotle called it, for the supernatural force to come into our world, and the symbol for Satan or evil.

The mixture of meanings reflects the theme of the other world opening up into, and destroying, this world. Williams portrays the chaos and confusion this could cause, and the various kinds of reactions by characters. The most substantial characters – Anthony, Damaris, his beloved, and his friend Quentin – all have some knowledge of the supernatural world as depicted in literature and the Bible, but they don’t necessarily believe it until it impinges on their world. For instance, Damaris studies and writes her thesis on medieval literature, specifically Abelard. She is aware of the religious beliefs of the period, but she does not share them. They are only of academic interest. It is only after an encounter in which Abelard comes alive, and becomes death, that she realizes the truth – that Abelard was real, not just an historical figure or concept.

Williams integrates his interest in philosophy and literature without becoming overbearing or too obscure (a criticism made by friends of other works of his). Christianity is the true account to which the story conforms, but it also incorporates Plato’s Ideas, Aristotle’s Forms, and the argument between universals and specifics that Abelard became noted for, at least in his own autobiography.

More importantly, Williams addresses the world of academics he worked in all his life. The portrayal of Damaris reminded me of C. S. Lewis, though this was written before Williams and Lewis became friends. Their friendship started with correspondence when Lewis wrote Williams after reading The Place of the Lion. Lewis, like Damaris, knew the Bible and the Christianity medieval philosophers taught. Lewis taught on medieval literature himself. But he did not believe it until his conversion at age 33, in 1931, the year The Place of the Lion was published. In Williams’ book the intellectuals have potential for salvation by their knowledge, but it must become belief, otherwise they may come to their destruction by refusing to acknowledge the truth was ever more than an idea.

Rational Religion

From June, 2005
It is interesting to reflect on how reading coincides with events of life, affecting my perspective, even my actions. A few months ago I was reading the Augustan poets. The Augustan period in English literature, late 17th-early 18th centuries, is marked by Neoclassicism. Authors like John Dryden, Alexander Pope, and Jonathan Swift translated the Greek and Roman authors into English, and added their own writings in similar style, such as their satires. One of the English authors, Joseph Addison, inspired me to start ZED by his version of a newsletter, The Tatler, which he and Richard Steele published and distributed through coffee houses, (yes, the trend in America of reading poetry in coffee houses is not at all new). These English authors worked to improve the ideas, language, and form of English. Works like Pope’s The Rape of the Lock epitomized ‘high’ style in English.

These authors also praised Reason, or rationality. Deism, the belief in God but not his participation in our world, arose as a rational religion. People of intellect taught religious tolerance, avoidance of extreme thinking, and discouraged personal revelation of God. Suspicion and doubt of any knowledge not gained from empirical evidence led to disbelief in miracles and the supernatural. Thus developed the belief – to put it simply for this overview – that God created the world, then withdrew, no longer interacting with mankind. By removing the miraculous, Christianity became a code of ethics, the Bible became a book of wisdom, or a book of manners, but not the truth of God. Christ’s divinity and his redemption of mankind were nullified.

This is still the problem of Christianity for intellectuals; they must decide whether to face towards a supernatural God, one not seen by empirical evidence. This problem, throughout the centuries, has prompted people to search. At the same time I read the Augustans, I also proofread Edwin Abbott’s collected letters, The Kernal and the Husk, (1886). He accounts of his search for rational religion. Following Descarte’s example, he discarded the teachings of others and sought self-tested truths. While reading a work like his I was reminded of C. S. Lewis, who was a rational atheist turned rational Christian.

Some characterize this kind of search as doubt, and handily offer, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test,” Matthew 4:7. But for those who question, if they do not search, they will always have doubt. I understand their desire for reason.

Yet I also understand that God does not reach the heart by empirical evidence. Such evidence would still leave many unpersuaded. Unfortunately, many will not witness the miracles they hope will convince them. How many would like to believe, but at some time in their lives they gave God a great opportunity to do a miracle and he did not? The truth is miracles, by definition, are rare.