Filed under: Bible, Books, Discipleship, Evangelism, History, In the News, Life, Pastoral Care, Philosophy, Politics, Prayer, Religion, Social Justice, Spirituality, Taylor's A Secular Age, The Holy Spirit, The Trinity, Theology, Worship | Tags: a response to ross douthat, akm adam, can christianity be saved?, can liberal christianity be saved?, christian particularity, come let us reason together, craig uffmann, diana butler bass, disseminary, foolishness of the gospel, liberal christianity conservative christianity and the caught-in-between, rachel held evans, ross douthat
Part I: A Furious Few Days in One Small Corner of the Interwebs:
The article that kicked it off:
- Ross Douthat’s July 14 op-ed “Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?”
The responses that rolled in:
- Craig Uffman over at Living Church’s “A Response to Ross Douthat”
- Diana Butler Bass at The Huffington Post’s “Can Christianity Be Saved? A Response to Ross Douthat”
- Rachel Held Evans’ “Liberal Christianity, Conservative Christianity, and the Caught-In-Between”
- AKM Adam’s “Come, Let Us Reason Together”
And finally, far less Facebook-ed:
- A follow-up by Douthat himself, “What is Liberal Christianity?”
Part II: My Own Response
The worst of the responses to Douthat have failed to hear his argument. To be clear, contra Uffman and Butler Bass, he is NOT making the decades-old evangelical argument that the American mainline churches’ drop in attendance since the Cold War era is due to those churches’ lack of Christian conviction, values, faithfulness, etc. Not even the Southern Baptist Convention (shrinking symbol of American evangelicalism) leads with that argument any more.
The heart of Douthat’s op-ed instead comes at its end:
What should be wished for…is that liberal Christianity recovers a religious reason for its own existence…the leaders of the Episcopal Church and similar bodies often don’t seem to be offering anything you can’t already get from a purely secular liberalism.
The only response that I have read that really hears this final point is AKM Adams. And it’s on this point that Douthat is completely right.
Part III: An Oddly Illustrative Juxtaposition
During my time at Duke Divinity, I served a year-long internship at a rural North Carolina United Methodist Church. Other populations have their Rotary or Kiwanis or Knights of Columbus, but rural North Carolinians have the Ruritan Club. Members get together a couple times or more each month, eat well, raise funds for various causes, sometimes join together in volunteer opportunities.
Almost every active member of the church was a Ruritan (or the spouse of a Ruritan), and almost every active Ruritan was an active member of one of the local churches. The two populations were virtually interchangeable, but what this meant is that the church could have no discipleship-oriented activities, service projects, classes, small groups, Bible studies, or worship services while the Ruritans were meeting or having an event.
For the lay and previous pastoral leadership of this particular congregation, this was not a problem. My own read is that this was not a conflation (as one might want to assume unfairly of rural North Carolinians) of being a good American and being a Christian. The conflation was between being a person who cared for others and being a Christian.
They are not the same.
Part IV: An Old Hope
The Episcopal Church in particular, but also other mainline denominations such as the UCC, as well as parts of the PCUSA, the UMC, and the ELCA (and sorry if I’m leaving out any) are just like the Ruritans. There are plenty of good things to be said about Ruritans, and there were plenty of good reasons for liberal Christians to be a non-violent witness at the Chicago G-8 Summit this year.
But because I’m a Christian, I am fool enough to believe that by the Holy Spirit, when a Ruritan serves a pint of Brunswick stew to another Ruritan, it can be Christ serving Brunswick stew. And when an Anabaptist Catholic Worker refuses to return the blows of an overzealous riot policeman, that can be Christ loving the world once again.
There is a difference in the Christian’s way of being in the world, because of what we believe about the triune God in the world, and because of the particular way that particular God has sought out our particular selves. This particularity is called the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God help us if we lose it, no matter how much our churches may shrink or grow.
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The Taser's Edge 
Thanks for making note of my article, Nick. But it seems you did not read my response carefully. I certainly did not respond similarly to Bass. Indeed, I rarely agree with Bass. If you read carefully, you’ll notice that I said Douthat misdiagnosed the problem. The problem is not liberal Christianity, but two things: (1) the cultural phenomenon of nihilism, and (2) TEC’s poor response to that. Not sure how you read what you describe in what I wrote. If you think about what I’d said, you’ll notice the irony. I am saying Douthat is wrong because the problem is not liberalism but belief in nothing. That’s much worse than Douthat suggests. My argument follows Hauerwas’ and Milbank’s critique. I’m a Dukie, too. We must have been there at the same time.
Comment by Craig Uffman July 21, 2012 @ 11:22 am