13 Ideas Destroying Christianity: The Hartford Appeal Revisited
Cameron (00:00.91)
Hello and welcome to Thinking Out Loud. I'm your co-host Cameron McAllister.
Nathan (00:04.653)
and I'm your co-host, Nathan Rittenhouse.
Cameron (00:06.348)
We have you dear listeners to thank once again for sending us an interesting topic and bringing to my attention at least a very interesting document. And I'm really grateful for having it brought to my attention because it's good and we're going to go through it and you're going to like it. But this is the, that's right. Yeah, I know. I really am sorry about that. But it is, so this is called the Hartford appeal.
Nathan (00:25.559)
You're making it sound very eat your broccoli there, Cameron. But so.
Cameron (00:34.65)
And it was initially drafted, started as a, it's, the story is fun. So it starts with Peter Berger, one of the great sociologists. Don't make fun of me, Nathan. He re in the world of sociology. He's a, he is. Okay. Thank you. It is. And by the way, it probably, I don't need to say that it is rare for a sociologist to be a household name, but Peter Berger was fun quote from Peter Berger that I've always appreciated.
Nathan (00:46.189)
Okay, he is well known. This is one that I'm going to give you a slide. He, yeah, okay.
Cameron (01:03.254)
Of course, he touches our lives personally. He had a tremendous influence on a friend of ours, Oz Guinness. So he was a mentor to Oz and to many others. So just a fantastic figure. Also had a pretty sizable impact on James Davidson Hunter as well. Big deal for us if you've been listening for a while. But anyway, Peter Berger and Richard John Newhouse, who would eventually go on to found First Things.
Nathan (01:09.819)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (01:33.526)
magazine, but at first, before he was a Catholic, Newhouse was a Lutheran pastor and he was a real social activist campaigning, 1974. So campaigning against both abortion and also the Vietnam War, very vocal voice there. But the two of them were having a conversation one day, probably over some drinks that were amber colored or a little bit more stiff. And they wanted to isolate.
Nathan (01:42.907)
We're talking 1974 here.
Nathan (02:00.483)
on brandilutheranism.
Cameron (02:01.898)
Yes, right. Exactly. But they wanted to isolate those features of mainline Christianity, which was the dominant strain of Christianity. Well, culturally dominant strain of Christianity at the time that really annoyed them, sort of distill them very clearly so that they could then make it clear to others and go after these issues. They ended up getting quite a few other
people in on this, this started as a conversation, then became an actual document, which can stand alongside things like the Barman declaration. think in this Plough article that was sent to us, this gentleman even puts it alongside 95 Theses. I don't know about that, but it elevates it up there. But you had some big signatories. I think Robert Lewis Wilkin was on there. Stanley Hauerwas was on there. some big gult.
Nathan (02:55.461)
Dolis Avery's.
Cameron (02:58.006)
Yeah, big theological names added their signatures. One concept I thought was really helpful, and then this was a phrase coined by the theologian Carl Rahner, but latent heresy. Really, really helpful. Really, really helpful. So what he means by that is in the past, heretics were pretty honest. They repudiated a key piece of Christian doctrine. They would say, for instance,
Nathan (03:13.826)
Mm. Or...
Cameron (03:27.136)
I don't believe Jesus was fully human or I don't believe Jesus was equal with the father or something like that. You have a clear stamp it on paper, heresy. Nowadays, people often drift unassuming into heresy because they're not paying attention to the ways in which culture is structuring their theological thinking. That's where so much of these points that come out of this document reflect.
Christians who have kind of just drifted along with the zeitgeist and are not their orientation doesn't come from God and his word and his people. comes from the their marching orders come from the culture. So really helpful.
Nathan (04:07.291)
So, yeah, and this podcast is going to be our reevaluation of their main concepts or, quote, false and debilitating ideas that the appeal addresses. And we're just gonna see how they aged, Cameron. So let's, yeah.
Cameron (04:21.304)
Sure. Hey, one more footnote here that I think is more than a footnote. And I think we've mentioned this before because other articles have drawn attention to this. So mainline Protestantism, you might say on the one hand, it's dead. The mainline churches are empty. They are kept open purely by just the funding that keeps their doors open, but there is nobody in there and the Pew is largely listening. But on the other hand, critics have pointed out, yeah, but it's...
They basically were elevated into irrelevance because the values that these mainline churches were teaching have triumphed. In fact, they are so much part of the cultural air we breathe now that going to those mainline churches is unnecessary because they've won. They're victims of their own success, in other words.
Nathan (05:10.075)
This goes back to a conversation I mentioned once where I asked a Berkeley, California guy talking about religious sociology and I asked him what his vision of Christianity could offer a young person that a political party couldn't. And he said, oh no, you don't need to be a Christian to believe and do these things. That is what Cameron's talking about there. So yeah, there would be a way in which the liberal Protestant movement would say we've won.
Cameron (05:30.786)
Yeah, that's it.
Nathan (05:37.344)
that the things that were central to us have become part of the broader political discourse, we might push back a little and say when something jumps out of theology into politics, it might not age in the way that you think it would. So yeah, that's a good clarification there, a good reminder. I will say though, as we jump into this, that a lot of these declarations, references to the barmen, to the 95 theses, that sort of thing, they are critiques of the church by the church. And so these are not
So there's a genre here that has a similarity of this is not a bunch of Christians getting around saying this is what's wrong with the world. These are Christian thinkers gathering together and saying, hey, heads up, these are things that become false and debilitating ideas within the church. So this is, let's clean our own room. Yeah, this is Christian critiquing Christian for the sake of Christianity. But they would say, I think Christ against the world for the world is sort of a... So you have to get this right. So they're not...
Cameron (06:23.438)
Let's clean our own room. Yeah.
Nathan (06:36.133)
They're not squashing the political action and energy there. They're just saying that unless we get our theology right, some of the rest of this won't make sense in the future. you're ready to do this? I'm just going to read it. And then Cameron, you say, and here's an example today that we can kick it around and work right through it. So we'll try to be quick here. Theme one, modern thought is superior to all past forms of understanding reality and is therefore normative for Christian faith and life.
Cameron (06:50.414)
Go for it.
Cameron (07:02.638)
100%, this is in practice what C.S. Lewis called chronological snobbery, a very, very helpful phrase. And again, it's not usually, it's a tacit assumption. We don't clearly articulate it, but we drift, if we just go with the default setting of our day, we just assume, yeah, the way we see the world right now is correct. That's just the way things are. And in the past, people were largely prejudicial.
primitive, superstitious, they didn't have modern science.
Nathan (07:34.095)
Well yeah, mean, obviously we know way more about biology and human nature than the Apostle Paul did.
Cameron (07:40.268)
Right. So what we're doing there, well, what we're doing there, that's true. We do. And we know more about the position of the planets and all of that. Now, what thinkers have often pointed out, one recent example,
Nathan (07:41.787)
He wasn't as human as we are.
Nathan (07:56.636)
I was saying that slightly sarcastically. So there's a scientific sense in which we understand it better, but there are also some things we haven't improved on in our understanding of humanity either.
Cameron (08:00.025)
Sure.
Cameron (08:08.022)
Right. So what a recent example of a person who points this confusion out really clearly is John Gray. Others have said this as well, but we often confuse technological progress with moral progress. So we have tremendous technological progress. One of the reasons why we buy into the lies of modernity that we're basically in control of our destiny and all of that is because of the immense success of the scientific revolution and because of
Nathan (08:21.711)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (08:37.358)
the immense technological success that we have seen, that has tended to mislead us into thinking that human nature has progressed in some way as well. It has not. So are you going to gain no in... So if you reject that line of thinking, then you can recognize that you can turn to ancient thinkers, Eastern, Western, alike, you can read Lao Tzu and discover great profound insights.
and learn from these people. And also the ancients can teach you things. So yeah.
Nathan (09:15.195)
So well, yeah, and to add the extra layer of icing on this, they're saying that that modern understanding is therefore normative for Christian faith and life. it's, maybe they wouldn't say that we can't learn something from the past, but if we start to imbibe this idea that the modern conversation is the foundation of, and this gets into some sneaky things too, Cameron, like even the phrase, like what would Jesus do? Does imply that we would be able to,
through our modern rational process analyze and dictate what Christ would do in any given situation and then apply that based off of it. So we don't say, did Jesus do? We say, what would Jesus do? And then we become the mediators of the application of the ethics of Christ to a situation. And so I'm not saying that that's bad to think in those terms, but just caution there because this does play out pretty significantly in the way in which we think about in new scripture. All right.
We're gonna have to resist the urge to follow a thousand rabbit trails. Keep moving here. Theme number two, religious statements are totally independent of reasonable discourse.
Cameron (10:23.436)
Yeah, that follows the, what is called often the fact values split that, and we have to speak, we have to speak in hasty generalizations here necessarily. We can't go through all of the long intellectual history and the genealogy of this thinking, but essentially a lot of this, can lay at the feet of the two enlightenments. You know, there's the, there is, there are, there are multiple enlightenments. There's the radical enlightenment, think French revolution.
And then there is what we could call the common sense enlightenment, which gained tremendous traction in the United States. That's coming largely out of Scotland. And those were, those were thinkers, Francis Rutherford, Thomas Reed. We don't remember their names as well today, but they exercised a tremendous influence on our nation here. Well, our nation, we both live in the United States. But the notion that, you know, what you have
in the tangible world of, again, what you can establish through scientific analysis or through empirical observation, that this is what ought to be occupying our time and this is what ought to gain most of our concentration and focus. Religious convictions and all that are important, but they're mainly important for
Nathan (11:40.677)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (11:47.531)
structuring your moral life. I'm reading a book right now that's really helpful on this without faith, without creed. It's really respected in scholarly circles. It doesn't get as much attention today. If you read Charles Taylor or somebody else, this book is going to show up in a footnote because it's really important. There's a marvelous section that I'm in right now talking about how Christianity gets reduced to just moralism.
and that this goes hand in hand with the enlightenment thinking that was sweeping the nation. It starts with the best of intentions, but why moralism? Because moralism is practical. It focuses on your actions and in your behavior and what you can do. Now, historically speaking, religion was not just concerned with moralism. Religion was concerned with transcendent reality that takes us beyond the earthly scope of our human experience.
So the notion being, focus on practical affairs, on what you can do in the real world. The spiritual stuff is good, but it's mainly private.
Nathan (12:52.613)
Where does the phrase non-overlapping magisterium come in here? That you kind of have these two split...
Cameron (13:00.003)
Yeah, that's a really well articulated way of putting it that comes to us from Stephen Jay Gould, I believe, coins that phrase later on, but he's describing something that had, there was another famous essay about this called The Two Cultures. And those two cultures in question were religion on the one hand, science on the other. But yeah, the notion that they are both phenomenal spheres of human inquiry and endeavor, but
Nathan (13:28.219)
but they don't touch. So maybe that's the summary of this and this is what these guys are pushing back as a false idea is that you have, much more could be said, but you don't have, as Christians, you don't believe that you have spheres of reality that don't touch, intersect and overlap with each other. Moving on, theme number three, religious language refers to human experience and nothing else. God being humanity's noblest creation.
Cameron (13:29.327)
Yeah, they don't touch. They don't touch. Yeah.
So much more could be said. We're not gonna.
Cameron (13:53.507)
I think you should take a, I keep answering all these. let's get you, let's get that written house. Hmm. Yeah.
Nathan (13:54.742)
Let's do this. Yeah, so I think this is Jordan Peterson right here. So think of the Carl Jungian idea that has manifested itself in a lot of the center-right conservative space where God is the manifestation of the collective human experience.
Maybe something that happens in the Old Testament that has a profound statement about the reality of human nature and interaction with each other isn't a story that actually happened, but it's that as you have hundreds and thousands of years of people telling stories that these common themes materialize and morph into something that can be symbolized metaphorically to work as a proxy for our way to understand the complexity of humanity. So you don't have to have a God who is there.
But you can have this constellation of collective human experience that manifests itself in a way that gives us a referent point so that we can talk about things that are happening meaningfully in our individual and collective lives. This is the one where Dallis talks about going into the church that says, this is great. How did it say? God is other people. God is other people. And he said he wished he had a giant Sharpie that he could put a comma so that it said, God is other people.
Cameron (15:02.927)
This is great.
God... Yeah.
Cameron (15:14.831)
I love it.
Nathan (15:15.579)
So, yeah, so God is other people verse. So if we're saying that God is other, that is the definition of holiness. To be separate, be distinct, to be other than. And he's like, come on people, get this, not God as other people. And so, boy, we could have a lot of fun with this one, but I don't know, do you have anything you want to add to it?
Cameron (15:22.381)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Cameron (15:32.323)
Yeah, a thread running through most of these is they are very human centric. They're taking the emphasis off of God. Yeah. So God is other people could not be a more apt expression of that. Yeah.
Nathan (15:38.468)
Yes.
Nathan (15:44.806)
But that's not a joke like that. mean, you'll see that. I mean, it's a lot that. some of these things that, yeah, anyway. right. Number four, Jesus can only be understood in terms of contemporary models of humanity.
Cameron (15:47.565)
You will. No, it's not parody. Yeah, absolutely.
Cameron (15:59.533)
Why don't we be equal opportunity offenders with this one, Nathan, and pick on evangelicals for a little bit on this one too. It's true that the mainline churches were guilty of this, but it's also true that you have many evangelical churches that in an effort to reach the culture, meet people where they're at, accommodate, whatever you want to call that, end up capitulating because they are so worried about engaging and walking in lockstep with the culture.
and translating that they end up compromising the actual integrity of the gospel itself, especially when it rubs up against the, when it clashes with the culture. So you think of a recent example, still fairly notorious of a mega church pastor who shall remain unnamed, who you can Google and you'll immediately figure this out, who said we need to unhitch from the Old Testament, for instance. Well, if you want to fill your, if you want to continue to have thousands of people, scores of people flocking to your church,
He's right. You should unhitch from the Old Testament in our moment. If you want to cater to a certain crowd, yeah, no, I'm qualifying there. Contemporary models of humanity, but that's what this is talking about. You have to understand Jesus in contemporary terms. WWJD, I think you mentioned it earlier. I think that fits into this as well, this paradigm. So just want to say that this is a very common tendency. It often begins with
Nathan (17:00.455)
well hang on. Yeah, there you go. Contemporary models of humanity, yes.
Cameron (17:25.017)
good intentions. So many of these things, I mean, there's a reason the phrase the road to hell is paved with good intentions exists. So many of these efforts do begin as earnest efforts to try to do something good, but they go awry when we end up losing sight and losing focus of, well, God. know, Wyn Collier recently, I mean, that sounds really funny, but Wyn Collier,
Nathan (17:47.259)
You
Cameron (17:51.511)
You know, he's known now as the author of the recent biography of Eugene Peterson, Burning in My Bones. Good book, by the way. But he was doing a lecture to the pastors, graduating pastors from Trinity, Ted's Evangelical Divinity School. And his lecture or his message to them was, as pastors, you need to talk about God. And it was so good.
And he was really self-conscious. He said, I was self-conscious about this at first, because I'm going to go here and I'm not going to tell you something exotic and cool and new. I'm just going to, but that's the one thing that's needful and it's often neglected. So all I have to say here.
Nathan (18:18.455)
you
Nathan (18:28.579)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so let's let's work on. Yeah All right, man, this could have been a 13-point, know part series But we're gonna just cram it all in here. Everybody can go do their do your own research boy. There's a modern one for you. Okay Number five all religions are equally valid. The choice among them is not a matter of conviction about truth, but only of personal preference or lifestyle Do we even have to do this one?
Cameron (18:35.999)
I know. Sheesh.
Cameron (18:42.019)
Yeah.
Cameron (18:51.053)
Nathan, take it away. I mean, I don't think this one needs much time. Yeah.
Nathan (18:56.003)
just stick a co-exist bumper sticker on this thing and keep on trucking.
Cameron (19:02.115)
Yeah, to that we say, nah.
Nathan (19:04.891)
Yeah, well, let me say this is that one of the interesting things about these statements is that the many of the signatories of this appeal later reflected back on it and recognized that the degree to which these elements weaseled their way into liberal Protestantism was manifest in the fact that liberal Protestantism no longer exists. So we could equally call this list things you should start teaching in your church if you don't want to exist in 30 years.
Cameron (19:28.367)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (19:35.86)
Because there's kind of like these are
Cameron (19:38.233)
Well that's good.
Nathan (19:40.613)
They're in, it's kind of like two guys who do a podcast that tell you to listen to fewer podcasts. It's a self-defeating. Yeah.
Cameron (19:46.703)
How to teach yourself into obsolescence. 13 steps and 13 easy steps.
Nathan (19:53.422)
Right, yeah, okay. anyway, okay, we're just gonna go past that one. All right, number six, to realize one's potential and to be true to oneself is the whole meaning of salvation.
Cameron (19:58.607)
Yeah, let's go.
Cameron (20:06.701)
Yes, that's, I want to say maybe two, three sentences and then I want to hear you say a few sentences too. Go. Yeah. Well, this is very much, I want to say that this is a phrase that represents the triumph of the therapeutic where you want to focus on your own self fulfillment, your own sense of, yeah.
Nathan (20:11.365)
I'm going say two words. Human flourishing.
Cameron (20:35.885)
You want to seek happiness and fulfillment and satisfaction, psychological satisfaction on your own terms. Just one more phrase here that's really helpful. Religious man, and this is coming from Philip Reef. This comes from his book, Triumph of the Therapeutic. But yeah, religious man is born to be saved. Therapeutic man is born to be pleased.
Nathan (20:59.279)
There you go, true self. Now, this one's a little bit tricky Cameron, because it says, is the whole meaning of salvation. So we don't want to jump on the head of the idea that I've come that they may have life and have it to the full. Categories of fullness and abundance, life, those are all very biblical principles. They're in there. like John Jefferson Davis's definition of salvation is that salvation is when your true self is in perfect relationship with ultimate reality.
Cameron (21:26.639)
Yeah, that's great.
Nathan (21:26.703)
But for Christians, ultimate reality is the triune God. Our true self is made as his image and sinful and broken and proper relationship is through the redeeming work of Christ that works in that way. So there is a sense here in which understanding who we really are is important, but it isn't defined by ourselves and our full potential and being true to ourselves are not inherently the goals within.
Cameron (21:50.159)
Yes, that's good. Let me add two quick observations just to put this into perspective a little bit more. One would be, I already said it, these are all very human-centric, but the other one is you don't need God for any of these. He's unnecessary for all of these. All of these can be, which is why, by the way, many of these churches did preach themselves into obsolescence because once these were internalized by the culture,
Nathan (22:05.455)
Right. Yeah.
Cameron (22:20.515)
The churches no longer became necessary because you don't need a church for any of these. So that's another way of showing how thoroughly secular each of these actually is. They don't require God.
Nathan (22:29.108)
I mean, they just require the right mushroom and right self-help book. Off you
Cameron (22:35.395)
Yeah, you don't need God to be pleased at least in the short run. But as C.S. Lewis said, I always knew a bottle of Sherry could do that.
Nathan (22:43.663)
Yeah, right. Yeah. theme seven. Since what is human is good, evil can adequately be understood as failure to realize potential.
Cameron (22:53.795)
You know, let me just say here that ironically, one of the great antidotes to this untruth is a mainline Protestant and his name is Reinhold Niebuhr. Reinhold Niebuhr wrote very, very powerfully about evil as something real and something essential to understand, to making sense, proper sense of human nature. Understanding evil is squandered potential.
is a travesty. When you look at what's going on in the world around you, when you look at history, if you look at the great atrocities that come to mind when we think of historical injustice and say, well, this is failure to realize one's potential, you'll see just how marvelously inadequate that reading is. It just cannot stand before the stark reality of heaps of in mass graves.
genocide, ethnic cleansing, poverty, you know, as a result of political corruption, you name it. I mean, on and on we can go.
Nathan (24:00.26)
Yeah, so one of the places this might pop up is, and it's not wrong, but in a lot of our evangelism, we've used the word for sin, hamarthia, as to miss the mark. That's been a common way that we've talked about sin, which does play into this a little bit as like, it's just missing the, so there's a truth to that, but the idea isn't like, Hitler just missed the mark a little bit of his true potential in life. I mean, he was.
Cameron (24:26.157)
He should have been a painter. Yeah.
Nathan (24:29.145)
Maybe that, but that doesn't offset. there's a, yeah, let's just have, have a little call.
Cameron (24:35.759)
There's a kernel, there is a kernel of truth there, to say, the, I guess the great lie that I'm trying to get at here, and I would do this, you know, being a Calvinist, is that there is, there's an essential, I would say, flaw in human nature itself. Human beings are fallen. This is implicitly denying that. Humans can go.
Nathan (24:58.981)
So it started up by saying since what is human is good you remember when the young ruler asked Jesus what good teacher and she's like, yeah, no one's good. But God alone start over so Theme seven There you go theme eight This one there's some overlaps here. And so it's interesting to me that for six seven and eight they separate these out So let's think about the distinctions here. But theme eight is that the sole purpose of worship?
Cameron (25:02.776)
Right.
Cameron (25:07.289)
Yes.
Cameron (25:13.005)
Yep. Exactly. Yep.
Nathan (25:27.095)
is to promote individual self-realization in human community.
Cameron (25:32.653)
Yeah, nothing could be further from the mark of worship understood in its traditional sense, in any religious setting, by the way.
Nathan (25:42.075)
Okay, so where might they show up? I don't like the music.
doesn't promote my individual self-realization. Or some of the people at my church irritate me. Doesn't play into my idea of the perfection of human community. Now, again, they're careful here. say the sole purpose of worship, because worship does help us understand who we are. There are lots of wonderful theological quotes about people saying that unless, until you realize who God is, you aren't going to be able to understand who you are. And that until we understand who God is, we aren't going to be able to build and form meaningful relationships with other people.
that's there. What they're pushing out here is that the sole purpose of worship is for me to become fully self-aware and actualized and build community around me.
Cameron (26:28.781)
Here's another one that shows up among this. I've heard this a few times. Yeah, I just, I worship better in nature. You I don't like going to church. It's just, but when I'm in the mountains, you know, I hear a babbling brook or, know, in just the majesty of nature, there I'm worshiping most freely. That's where I really encounter God.
Nathan (26:52.427)
Yeah, the trick there, so I mean, and that is true. It is, can be a worshipful thing, but that's also not human community. So there's a little bit of a hitch in to get you up there.
Cameron (27:01.723)
And you're also, yeah, that's again, that's a little bit more human centric part of what, so we need to be structured in our worship. We do actually need dogma. We do need guidance in our worship. We do need focus in our worship. We do need to, yeah.
Nathan (27:19.387)
It's a challenge. You're either asking, what does worship do for me? Or what does worship do for God?
Cameron (27:27.599)
A huge piece of all of these is that God, part of what they're trying to challenge Newhouse and Peter Berger initially in their conversation is that God is transcendent. The reason that's so important, yeah, we'll get there. All right, I'm foreshadowing.
Nathan (27:41.916)
Well, hang on, we're going to get there. We'll get there. right. Foreshadowing cliffhanger, done, done, Theme nine institutions and historical traditions are oppressive and inimical to our being truly human liberation from them is required for authentic existence and authentic religion.
Cameron (28:01.251)
We're suffering the consequences of having believed this for a long time. Yeah, right now we're in a place now culturally where more and more people, especially younger people are appreciating, gee, we do need institutes. And this is going to be a time of tremendous effort to build, to rebuild, repair institutions. It's a time for building because everything's been leveled and there's so much wreckage.
Nathan (28:04.239)
Burn it all down.
Nathan (28:27.407)
I think there's a generational gap here in the understanding of the degree to which this has happened.
Cameron (28:32.419)
I agree. Yeah, you're right. Say more about that. Yeah.
Nathan (28:35.323)
Here's an image that I shared with somebody recently. in the kindergarten classroom that I attended years and years ago, there was this big wooden car. And it had a real car steering wheel on it. It was great fun. You jump in the wooden car and you can spin the steering wheel around. The steering wheel had no steering column. There was no front axle. There were no wheels on this thing. The steering was just pretending.
So you could get in there and drive wherever you wanted in your imagination till your heart's content, but no actual change was happening in the world. And I feel like the collapse of institutions has happened in the same way that a lot of the traditional ways in which we thought we engaged with the world, you jump in there and liberal Protestantism could grab the steering wheel of culture. And there was a, a steering column and a front axle and pinion gears and okay. Aside from how hydraulics and everything else front axle, front wheels, who won't get in all that.
But there isn't a connection between the theological Christian steering wheel and the front wheels of the vehicle of culture. you play with the steering wheel, you're just pretending you're steering. You're not really changing what's happening because the institutions, the linkage there no longer exist for meaningful.
effort being manifest in a way that looks like it's changing the world around you.
Cameron (29:53.817)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Nathan (29:55.878)
So it can lead to apathy very quickly because you're like, yeah, the parts aren't there to make this thing go. So will those have to be rebuilt? Yes. Whole another conversation. Theme 10, the world must set the agenda for the church. Social, political, and economic programs to improve the quality of life are ultimately normative for the church's mission in the world.
Cameron (30:20.003)
I don't think much needs to be said here. I think this is so self-evidently an issue. And I think you see it on all sides of the aisle.
Nathan (30:29.999)
Can I give you one? Let me give you one. Just example. So I was at this conference, maybe five years ago, sitting around a table with a guy who's part of a church at, this was in California on brand. And I was asking about a church. said, well, we're our average attendance is about 12 people. and we're all in our mid seventies. And I said, so what are you, what are you focused on? And he said, well, we know that climate change is really important to young people.
So for the last three years, every one of our Sunday mornings has been about climate change. And I was like, well, there you go. So you have a group of 12 people in their mid seventies sitting around talking about climate change for three years, hoping to attract the young people. The world must set the agenda for the church. Social, political and economic programs to improve the quality of life are ultimately normative for the church's mission in the world.
Cameron (31:13.839)
Hmm.
Cameron (31:24.505)
Hmm, yep.
Nathan (31:26.937)
And I'm not saying that you can't talk about creation care or theology of the physical at all, but to, but to say that the, that what is hot politically at the moment is what the church should be losing its mind over. I mean, Cameron, for example, we all know that the core of the universe revolves around the straight of Hormuz, right? Ultimate reality is grounded in the flow of oil in the middle East.
Cameron (31:28.889)
Yeah, of course.
Cameron (31:44.238)
Well...
Yep. If you buy into a certain vision. So the other easy place to point here is pull it a, I hate this word, politicization. It's hard to say, but yeah, but again, all sides of the aisle, people take it and run with it in a progressive direction. People take it and run with it in a conservative direction. There are plenty of large congregations still where you can go in and people have definitely accepted Trump into their hearts. There are plenty of other churches where, you know,
The opposite ideological agenda is sort of setting the terms of Sunday morning. So you see that a lot. This is an easy one to point to.
Nathan (32:23.247)
Yeah, well, okay. right. Anyway, theme 11, an emphasis on God's transcendence is at least a hindrance to and perhaps incompatible with Christian social concern and action.
Cameron (32:36.129)
Absolutely can see that all the time because and you again You see this you see this everywhere. I see this plenty among in evangelical circles It's the idea that well, yeah, then you're you're gonna be so heavenly minded that you're no earthly good to anyone That's the anecdote I've heard there's and there's so again Sure, and there's
Nathan (32:52.507)
Karl Marx had that critique of Christianity as well, that it gave you a false hope in the future so you wouldn't be politically engaged in changing the physical world that you live in now.
Cameron (33:00.823)
And I don't want to make Guy the Death of a thousand qualifications. There can be a kernel of truth there. There are people who, are there people who over-spiritualize? Sure. But I don't think most of us are in danger of that. I think most of us are in danger of over-imminentizing our faith, where we just focus only on the here and now to the complete and total exclusion of the transcendent, to the complete and total exclusion, frankly, of God. This is where one of the most helpful books on this for me,
Nathan (33:15.707)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (33:29.217)
I still recommend it was, didn't come out to much fanfare, but it was Craig Gay's book, The Way of the Modern World. Probably why I didn't do that well, because what a boring title, but it's a marvelous book. And he has the phrase in there, practical atheism, just to describe millions of Christians, well, self-identifying Christians who go to church usually and say that they're Christians, but then live as though God is not real.
Nathan (33:38.779)
You
Cameron (33:57.409)
or live as though he's not in control, he's not authoritative at all. So I think this is a huge issue.
Nathan (33:57.573)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (34:03.599)
My hope is built on nothing less than the condition of my 401k. And Jesus. Yeah, so there's a way in which we... Sure. Okay. Number 12. The struggle for a better humanity will bring about the Kingdom of God.
Cameron (34:18.543)
struggle was real. I just had to. I'm sorry.
Nathan (34:20.239)
This one is a little... This is interesting to think about where the mind space of the church would have been in the 1970s there. Because I feel like this kind of post-millennial, over-realized eschatology, I guess maybe coming out of the Civil Rights era where there had been some big wins, that this would have seemed to have a bit more traction. This doesn't...
Cameron (34:34.639)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (34:49.755)
as much to me today like what were... except for your Doug Wilson types and that more theocratic vision. I think there's some confusion and clarity that this maybe would be one that I'd want to go back and think, yeah I'm not sure exactly how people are using... Yeah, anyway, you have any thoughts on this? This one's a little bit like, I think the idea of building or bringing about the Kingdom of God has become a bit ambiguous theologically.
Cameron (34:53.071)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (35:19.801)
in the evangelical world.
Cameron (35:19.947)
I think, yeah, I think I would agree with you. It's not something that's in vogue as much anymore. Now it could, it could make a comeback because it, it has, if you look again, look at the history of that idea, there are, it has times where it's very, very much a slogan, but I'm with you.
Nathan (35:37.061)
Well, I mean, it's Jesus's first sermon, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. So I mean, so it's not a non biblical concept to try to lean into.
Cameron (35:44.365)
No, but in the way in which they're indicating it being used here. Yeah, I haven't seen that in a little bit. I'm with you on that one.
Nathan (35:51.576)
The counterpoints to, even though this was the kingdom of God was a big thing for Jesus, is that his, and he did heal the sick, fed the hungry, the whole nine yards, that still wasn't his primary mission.
Cameron (36:02.446)
Well, here's one interesting observation, potentially interesting observation. I think right now the cultural atmosphere is so pessimistic that it's not conducive to this line of thinking right now because you talked about some victories and major reforms that allowed for that kind of disposition to flourish. It was also in sort of in the late 18th century,
It really flourished as well. But again, it was tied to ideas of, you know, it was basically post-millennial kind of lines of thinking. We don't have time to go into all of that, but there was, it did. We've been on a long trajectory of disillusionment since the two world wars. are there still, so maybe, yeah, are there still some optimists out there? Absolutely. But by and large, the atmosphere is pretty pessimistic and that doesn't
Nathan (36:42.351)
Yeah, but the World Wars kind of knocked the spunk out of the early manifestations of this.
Cameron (37:00.429)
That line of thinking in its secular sense doesn't flourish in pessimistic times.
Nathan (37:05.455)
Number three, number 13, the question of hope beyond death is irrelevant or at best marginal to the Christian understanding of human fulfillment.
Cameron (37:13.741)
Yeah, this is our bread and butter at Thinking Out Loud because we focus a lot on realistic Christian hope. And we look at the Christian virtue of hope as something that necessarily exceeds earthly expectations. So that often the question that you're faced with is when it comes to hopeful lines of action is not, this work? But is this the right thing to do? And then you can see, you can kind of measure hope.
Nathan (37:16.219)
You
Cameron (37:43.915)
in those terms, but yeah, you're following the triumphant Jesus who will return to make all things new, wipe away every tear. But if you erase that expectation, then that changes the whole trajectory of hope.
Nathan (38:00.198)
There's maybe an easy, if I can attempt a crude summary of all of these concepts in light of what you said there, is that you have two systems. Either this is a closed system, you have our little pale blue dot in globe, and all of the resources for good must come from within it. Or it is an open system, that there's a triune eternal creative God who intervenes, is sovereign over, and it...
Injects and in weaves and builds and crafts and shapes Not only what happens in the physical timelines of our lives But for an eternity something that is expansive beyond even our conceptions of the material here and now So it's either a closed system or it's an open system And if it's an open system, then our concept of human fulfillment is much broader. It is Certainly not irrelevant or even close to marginal
in understanding what's going on here. So I think what's the takeaway from all of this, Cameron? I think if you're a Christian who's, you know, want to kind of have some anchor points to, to, to clip your carabiner in and say, I'm not going to get blown away by crazy ideas that are happening in the world around me. Uh, go back and, and, um, muse over, pray over this Hartford appeal. Some of the statements there, I think if you're a church leader, maybe this is a great thing to print off and take to your leadership team and to just sit down and have some honest reflection about.
Hey, where are we vulnerable to adopting some of these ideas that have been pointed out now for 50 years, but have certainly not gone away? Where are they manifesting themselves in new ways in our time? How can we talk more about God and preach and teach with a way in which the concept of His transcendence as an ontological priority then gives us the foundation for our interactions with the people in the world around us.
Cameron (39:39.599)
Yes.
Nathan (39:53.347)
And so to make sure that we're really keeping the horse ahead of the cart here, in the way in which we think about where we're, focusing, where we're structuring our attention, where we're building or alleviating anxiety of what we're calling people to actually grow into, individually and corporately, where we're calling people not to be distracted by certain things, where we as a church might be forgetting some of the things that Jesus said about what it means to be his people.
Use this as a launch point. Again, it's not divine. It's not scripture, but it's just kind of a helpful little marker in time to say, here's the point in time in which a number of theologians first sat down with some things that were irritating them about the church, wrote it down and we can learn from them today. So we hope this is helpful to you. It's been fun for us to think through and let's keep each other accountable as we try to live well with a vision of a big God and not slip into silliness. You've been listening to Thinking Out Loud.
podcast where we think out loud about current events and Christian hope.
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