The Radical Resurgence

A Sociological Examination of the Traditional Elements of Religion

Religion comes first as a family or clan or personal endeavor to win the services of supernatural force in situations not otherwise controllable. Out of this endeavor a priestly caste comes into being and the gods are born. The recognized existence of specialists in the manipulation of the gods becomes the point of departure for a new system of relationships, a new mode of association between men and gods. This new system constitutes a church. It is a separate and distinct institution of society. It has its own traditions, its own learning and its own scheme of education for transmitting its knowledge and training its generations of experts. It has its own household and its own household economy. It bears the same relation to the rest of the community as any other institution seeking to live and grow in and with the complex striving disorder of works and beliefs we call civilization.

Since the Protestant Reformation in Europe, churches have multiplied and their importance has decreased. The Reformation was itself postulated on the principle that the relation between a man and his gods — or at least their revealed word — was primary and direct. It repudiated the well- known doctrine of Roman Catholicism that only through the mediation of a church, i.e., through the intervention of professional mediators, can a man establish communication with his gods…. Nevertheless, the institutional habit is so deeply ingrained in the social inheritance of the moderns that a religion without an institutional setting is difficult to conceive….

So far as religion exercises a recognizable modifying influence upon society, it does so through the medium of churches. Let us, then, inspect the general structure of the church, and get a view of its anatomy. On the first appearance the institution, however small and poor the example may be, looks pretty complicated.

In the New Testament we should be struck by the utter simplicity that characterized life in the early churches. We are given a broad picture of church life, but many particulars – which are troublesome for us – are left untouched by the New Testament. As time elapsed, the visible church lost its original simplicity and became enmeshed in a quagmire of ecclesiastical machinery and theological speculation.

The Lord’s Supper is a case in point. There is a simplicity about this practice in the sketchy New Testament data. Yet in post-apostolic times the remembrance meal (1) became embedded in hierarchical church structures so that it became a mysterious ritual to be “administered” by the “ordained,” and (2) ended up being the source of endless speculation about “what happens” in the “sacrament.”[1]

The evidence indicates that this remembrance meal, and the instruction which accompanied it, was a center point in Christian assemblies (cf. Acts 20:7). Eating together in the “breaking of bread” and remembering the Lord in the Supper were virtually synonymous in Christian worship.[2] Obviously, many things have changed in our practice since the early days. In this article, I would like to explore some basic points concerning the Lord’s Supper – based on 1 Corinthians 11:17-34 – and compare them with our conceptions and practices.

The asteroid has struck, the sky is darkening, and the mainstream churches and any evangelical megachurch you care to name are the dinosaurs.

The asteroid is late capitalism and it is darkening the skies in at least two ways.

(1) The global economy is putting an end to national economies and marginalizing the modern nation state. The present recession is the result of our inability to understand or control global financial flows. People in the right places press a few keys on their desktops and laptops and vast amounts of money leap across boundaries and around the world and ‘national’ economies are twisted into bizarre pretzel shapes by the event.

Capital intensive forms of church and parachurch will undergo a mass extinction event as this recession is followed by later ones. It is impossible to predict (much less control) the outputs of what mathematicians call ‘ a chaotic system’ so this will just be the first of many such downturns each resulting in yet another episode of what the economist Shumpeter called ‘creative destruction”.

(2) Historic cultures are replaced by a symbolic marketplace. Cultures are looted in order to replace them with niche markets, lifestyle options, and colorful commodities. Counseling options of all sorts become available (Freudian, Neofreudian,and Postfreudian psychotherapy are joined by Jungian depth psychology, Adlerian analytical psychology, gestalt therapy, rational-emotive therapy, reality therapy, Skinnerian behavioral modification, hypnotherapy, group therapy, New Age spiritualities et cetera, et cetera).

“When I wrote in my letter to you not to associate with people living immoral lives, I was not meaning to include all the people in the world who are sexually immoral, any more than I meant to include all usurers and swindlers or idol-worshippers.

To do that, you would have to withdraw from the world altogether. What I wrote was that you should not associate with a brother Christian who is leading an immoral life, or is a usurer, or idolatrous, or a slanderer, or a drunkard, or is dishonest; you should not even eat a meal with people like that. It is not my business to pass judgment on those outside. Of those who are inside, you can surely be the judges. But of those who are outside, God is the judge.”  1 Cor. 5:9-13

Many churches today are faced with a very serious problem and are not even aware of it. If people who were poor or homeless or immoral or generally lower-class were to appear as visitors or new converts in many churches, our initial response would be negative.

We would be put off, perhaps, by the way they smell. Or we would say “we don’t want our children around such undesirables.” The result of these attitudes is that churches have isolated themselves from those with needs, and feel threatened when the security of their homogeneous, white, middle-class atmosphere is violated. Why is this the case?

Its ideology, at least, has to do with the doctrine of “separation” that was crystallized in many denominations earlier in this century. Church leaders taught those in the pew that Christians were to be totally separate from unbelief and sinful lifestyles, using 2 Cor. 6:14-18 as a proof-text.

To be sure, there is an important element of truth in such sentiments. Christians must not mingle with society in ways that compromise gospel values. However, this separation doctrine seems to have translated into church practices which flatly contradict both the example of Jesus and the teaching of Paul in l Cor. 5:9-13.

Decision-making.

It cannot be without significance that in both cases where Jesus used the term “church” (ekklesia), the concept of “binding/loosing” was connected to it (Matt.16:18; 18:17). John Yoder summarises some key aspects and implications of this ‘‘binding/loosing” function in the church:

Two aspects of meaning. (1) Forgiveness: to “bind” is to withhold fellowship, to ‘‘loose” is to forgive . . . . (2) Moral discernment: to “bind” is to enjoin, to forbid or make obligatory; to “loose” is to leave free, to permit . . . . Moral teaching and decision-making in Judaism took the form of rulings by the rabbis on problem cases brought to them, either ‘‘binding” or “loosing” depending on how they saw the Law applying to each case . . . .

By taking over these terms from established rabbinic usage, Jesus assigns to his disciples an authority to bind and loose previously claimed only by the great teachers in Israel . . . The promise of the presence of Christ “where two or three are gathered in my name” in the original context of Matt. 18:19-20 refers to the divinely authorised process of decision.

The word ekklesia itself does not refer to a specifically religious meeting, nor to a particular organisation: it rather means the “assembly,” the gathering of a people into a meeting for deliberation or for a public pronouncement . . . . The church is where, because there Jesus is confessed as Christ, people are empowered to speak to one another in God’s name . . . .

We understand more clearly and correctly the priority of the congregation when we study what it is that it is to do. It is only in the local face-to-face meeting, with brethren and sisters who know one another well, that this process can take place of which Jesus says that what has been decided stands decided in heaven . . . .

Decision Making.

One of the most basic elements in the fabric of church life is decision-making. Every church makes decisions (even not making a certain decision in itself still constitutes a “decision”). Churches decide such things as when to meet, who will be received into the church, how to use church funds, who will teach, and how they will be governed. Yet it is precisely in the area of decision-making that most churches are totally untrained and unprepared, The inability to resolve conflict is a central reason why churches are splitting at epidemic levels.

Two key reasons why churches split are (1) the lack of participation by the whole congregation in decision-making, and (2) the refusal of the leadership and/or congregation to confront problems, which then repeat themselves in the future (Wayne Kiser, “Church Splits,” Evangelical Newsletter, 9:6, March 19, 1982).

The most important thing a church must learn in its life as a body is how to work through things together. To put it in the language of 1 Cor.1:10, we must learn “how to agree.”

1 Cor.1:10 — “I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought.”

The Corinthian believers had a serious problem: they were clustering around personalities, which then caused divisions. To solve this problem, Paul appeals to them “to agree” about the sinfulness of this situation. If they “agreed” the divisions could no longer exist.

The following excerpt comes from David Fitch’s blog. You can read the entire post at the link at the bottom.

Recently (in private e-mails) I have been getting some heat from some Neo-Reformed friends who feel I have either not been fair or too critical of Neo-Reformed theology on this blog. On other hand, some members of the committed Neo-Reformed have engaged me (again via private e-mail)  letting me know they appreciate my insights and dialogue. They have been encouraging. All this to say, I think dialogue between Neo-Reformed folks and Neo-Anabaptist Evangelical Missional people like me would be a very good thing. And I have been convicted of not doing enough to move us in this direction.

This is why I was so glad (even freaked out a bit) when my Canadian bro Darryl Dash (otherwise know as “Triple D” by another Canadian bro because he as a recent Doctor of Ministry degree) put this list of questions before me and asked me to respond for his blog. I sense a good impulse here. Dialogue together for the Kingdom. So at the risk of losing my reputation as a grumpy Neo-Anabaptist (evangelical), I answered these questions and I post them here. Darryl will be posting them on his blog as well here! I have hopes this will lead to further discussions of this kind. Way to go Darryl!!

1. There seems to have been a resurgence of the Neo-Reformed and Anabaptists at the same time. It’s almost like they’re parallel movements. What’s behind that?

If you ask me, this has to do with the cultural turning point facing the North American church. There’s a unhinging of sorts happening in N. American culture where the larger culture is becoming unhinged from the Christian moorings of its past. One can easily see this happening in Canada, Europe and the northern United States. And so now we, here in N. America, find ourselves in a “mission field.” We are forced to ask the question, how do we engage this newly secularized, even antagonistic-to-the-gospel culture? How can we be faithful to God’s Mission in Jesus Christ? In my opinion, the rise of Neo-Reformed and Neo-Anabaptists comes from responding to this cultural shift.  They can be interpreted as two parallel movements responding to this shift.

Today I come to my final essay in our series on Anabaptism. A question may legitimately be asked by those who have had the patience to complete the reading of the preceding sketches in this series: Why should a committed Baptist so vigorously promote Anabaptist ideals? The answer is that Anabaptist principles can be applied to many modern problems of church life –  restoring church discipline to our nominal memberships, fostering the ministry of the “laity,” furthering religious liberty, promoting global missions – to name but a few.

I must insist that I did not produce these essays because I am in favor of belittling the work of the Magisterial Reformers. For clarity’s sake I must repeat that I am thus indicting the Reformers only because they were inconsistent with their own principles of reformation. Here, of course, I am not alone in my thinking. As far back as 1914, Henry C. Vedder, in his book The Reformation in Germany (p. 345), had this to say about the Anabaptists:

They were the only party among those protesting against the errors of Rome who were logical and thoroughgoing. They alone accepted in absolute faith and followed to its necessary consequences the principle avowed by the leading reformers, that the Scriptures were the sole source of religious authority…. The Anabaptists alone had penetrated beneath the surface of traditional Christianity and comprehended the real Gospels of Jesus…. In a word, the Anabaptists were the real reformers, and the only real reformers, of the Sixteenth century.

In this essay I must turn aside from weightier matters of historical theology to deal with a rather simple-minded subject. If we were to read Matthew 23 and take Jesus’ words at face value, we should come away with the notion that He was not very impressed with all the titles we make so much of today. We should feel that all this talk about “Doctor” and “Reverend” and “Senior Pastor” is somewhat superficial, that titles are merely manmade epithets and quite contrary to the idea of a brotherhood church.

At the same time, if we were to read the New Testament epistles we would get a pretty clear hint of what Christian leadership looked like. It is a very far cry from the world’s model of a CEO or institutional president. And there is to be no pride, no bossiness, no “swagger” whatsoever. The New Testament is always insisting on mutuality and stressing the fact that we are all brothers (or sisters) in Christ, though, of course, some are “big brothers” in the sense that they have more wisdom and experience than others.

We must remind ourselves that in the passage where Jesus forbids the use of honorific titles He gives us a reason: “…for only One is your Teacher, and you are all brothers.” Jesus commands us to foreswear such titles, not because they are evil in and of themselves, but because they maximize what should be minimized in the family of God, where each member has equal value and worth.

The question that I want to sketch in this essay is one that concerns me greatly. One of the greatest threats to Christianity is Christendom. Christendom is an effort of the human race to abolish true Christianity. It does not attempt to do this overtly but under the pretext that it is genuine Christianity. I admit that here again popular beliefs of theologians and biblical scholars have perpetuated the false idea that Christendom is acceptable to God. In this whole arena of thought there is a grievous lack of any exegetical precision.

Now at the same time and in a corresponding manner, the sixteenth century Anabaptists, led not by Protestant or Reformed thought but by the Scriptures themselves, radically challenged the entrenchment of Christendom in European culture. A major difference between the Anabaptists and the Protestants was their view that the Scriptures provided models both for theology as well as for church organization. The Anabaptists were interested in restitutio, not reformatio. They considered themselves neither Protestant nor Catholic but a third way. The Bible, not tradition, provided the patterns for church organization just as plainly as it revealed the basic theological content of the faith.