I took Joe Carter's advice today (by the way, I'm thinking of changing the name of my blog from "Jollyblogger" to "Hat Tip: Evangelical Outpost") and decided to read "outside the circle," today and read "Heaven Can't Wait" by David Schimke on the Utne Reader website. This is basically an appeal for progressive religionists to reclaim Jesus from the fundamentalists. For instance:
The Jesus they taught me about lived and died in the name of justice, in the spirit of peace. He was an anti-establishment activist who begot peacemakers from Gandhi to Chavez, King to Mandela. And I had forsaken him: in social circles, because my progressive friends equated Western religion with naivete; professionally, because I wanted to get the story. And while, on some level, I will always be sorting out the whole religion thing, I'm no longer reticent to say that I believe Jesus walked the earth. That I believe he provoked the powerful, considered economic injustice a sin, and welcomed all people -- no matter what their race, religion, sex, or sexual preference -- without judgment or expectation.
In short, I believe Jesus was a radical, and the time has come to start saying so.
His idea of the difference between progressives and conservatives/fundamentalists comes out in this quote:
In the main (and here I confess to a gross generalization), Americans who consider themselves Christian tend to think about the New Testament's central character in one of two distinct ways. For many, what matters most is that Jesus was a divine spirit who died for their sins. To accept him as your savior is to be saved, and the pursuit of that salvation is paramount. For a smaller percentage of believers, Jesus is a peasant revolutionary who lived by example and died for it. To model your behavior after his is to bring earth closer to heaven.
Basically, he says that those who typically consider themselves Christians locate the essence of their faith in terms of atonement and the progressives see the essence of the faith in terms of example. Jesus is paramount to both, but they have different ideas of what was paramount to Jesus.
With me being a conservative it would be tempting to launch into a diatribe about progressives here, but I don't want to do that. In fact, I agree with David that Jesus was very much a revolutionary, but not in the way he describes it. Also, I think his description of typical American Christians is basically accurate, and that is one of the problems with typical American Christians.
When I say he is accurate in his description of American Christians, and that this is the problem, I mean that he correctly identifies our individualistic worldviews. Many believe that the sum total of Christianity is me and my salvation. It is true that ndividual salvation is the "first thing" of Christianity, after all, one cannot call himself or herself a Christian if they are unsaved. But to say that this is the "first thing" is not to say that it is the "only thing." There is a social expression to salvation. The true Christian is the one who loves his neighbor as himself and this manifests itself in all kinds of ways.
It is these social manifestations that Schimke is most concerned with. In the article he largely (though not exclusively) plays out his ideas in the political arena. He frames the debate between conservatives and progressives in political terms. He also chastizes the Democratic party for efforts to put a spiritual veneer on their platform to capture the "family values" voters who have swung republican. This would be dishonest. Instead of changing to a more spiritual sounding rhetoric, the dems need to reclaim Jesus. Speaking of an interview he did with a Christian talk show host, he says this:
. . . I went on to explain that while I appreciated his preoccupation with salvation, my main concern was good works. That the Jesus I met in the Bible would be more concerned about curing AIDs than outlawing homosexual marriage, more troubled by world hunger and violence than an erosion of "family values."
While I have never met the author, I would guess that I would disagree with him about the particular issues he raises, but I have an even deeper disagreement.
He has fallen into the same mistake that many conservatives make and that is making enemies out of friends. Salvation and good works are friends in the mind of Jesus, with the latter flowing from the former. On the one hand good works are based on salvation. A good work cannot be a good work unless it is done from the basis of faith (salvation). However, a "salvation" that doesn't issue forth in good works is no salvation.
Just as Schimke admittedly speaks in generalizations, I will do the same. Conservatives tend to emphasize salvation to the exclusion of social action. Many conservatives still equate social activism with the late 19th and early 20th century "social gospel," where the "gospel" was left out of social activism. Progressives emphasize social activism to the exclusion of the gospel of salvation through faith in Jesus name. The point is that both sides are missing the point.
But the deepest issue here and therefore the deepest disagreement I
have with the author again concerns the essence of the Christian faith.
The crucial question of Christianity is not what you say about this issue or that issue but what do you say about the person of Jesus - "who do you say that I am?" Progressives who affirm the primacy of social activism miss the point that the dominant issue of the day is not a particular social issue, but it is a heart issue - rebellion against God. Conservatives who focus exclusively on individual salvation miss the point that the salvation Christ brings transforms entire communities, not merely individuals.
Progressives like the idea of community transformation (i.e. through
social activism) but miss out on the fact that the way of
transformation, at least in Christian terms, is the way of repentance
and faith.
True Christianity contradicts all man-made forms of religion, be they conservative or progressive. Or, as Tim Keller says, the gospel contradicts both religion and irreligion. The center of Christianity is the person of Jesus. All of these other issues are important, but only as they flow from a proper understanding of who Jesus is and who we are in relation to Him.
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