We're All Evangelistic

by

Perspectives

January 05, 2022

We just don't agree on how to articulate the gospel in contemporary culture. Because we live in  different cultures. 

The classic UM Good News/traditionalist complaint about United Methodists in the liberal/progressive tradition is that our theology has inevitably made us universalists, and that we therefore have no interest in evangelism. There are many missing links in this reasoning. Theological liberalism doesn't imply universalism for example. But the key problem is that this assertion fails to recognize that the liberal theological tradition is in fundamentally evangelistic. 

Schleiermacher's Speeches on Religion to its Cultured Despisers, the root work of theological liberalism is intended to be evangelistic and apologetic. It seeks to render the Gospel both comprehensible and credible in the context of the emerging 18th century  Enlightenment culture. It is no different in this regard than Augustine's City of God or Anselm's On the Trinity, or for that matter Paul's preaching before Felix and Agrippa or Peter's preaching on Pentecost. 

All are efforts in a particular place and time to contextualize the gospel so that non-Christians will place their faith in Christ. 

The problem arose when Schleiermacher's theology began to gain influence in wider Protestant Christian circles. He was writing into a social situation in which there were two rapidly diverging cultures. The culture of the "despisers of religion" that existed in the universities and salons of Enlightenment-inflected European culture was far from the still non-Enlightenment cultures of most Europeans, whether Catholic or Protestant (and these two were distinctly different cultures as well.)

Of course this not only had religious implications, but political implications as well. Any cultural difference within a single polity necessarily becomes a political division if both cultures possess political power. But that is another story.

On the positive side Schleiermacher's evangelistic work breathed new life into Protestant Christianity within the particular Enlightenment culture for which he wrote, both in Europe and the United States. Faith in Christ became a credible option for those who would have otherwise simply become atheists. Universities that would have otherwise turned their backs on Christianity as unscientific and irrational could continue to give it a place in both seminaries to train pastors and departments of religious studies. 

But contextualization always brings with it the danger of embedding that which isn't amenable to the Gospel into the life of the church. All the forms of contemporary Roman Catholic and Orthodox worship began as a way of making Christian worship contextual in the setting of the Roman empire. But eventually their obvious ties to the cult of the emperor/god would be offensive to the cultures of early modern Europe and would be rejected entirely by Puritans, Hussites, Brethren, and ultimately the majority of US Protestants.

Priests in albs and chasubles are one form of contextualization. Pastors in academic gowns and stoles are another. Preachers in suits and ties are another. And worship leaders in skinny jeans, t-shirts, and a jacket are another. Each is both a rejection of a previous evangelistic enterprise and the formation of a new such enterprise. The same thing is true of the formation of the New Testament canon and for that matter the ecumenical councils and their creeds. All arose out of a response of the Gospel to emerging cultural contexts. 

And this is true of the course of both the evangelical and liberal theological traditions. UM traditionalists believe that a credible gospel must offer the world an alternative to the now dominant culture. On one hand their enculturation of the Gospel remains uniquely suited to those parts of American culture that never accepted the basic worldview of the Enlightenment and to some extent those non-American cultures that likewise do not share that worldview. On the other hand it offers an alternative worldview to those who find the now dominant culture hollow, unfulfilling, and lacking in structure and meaning. The Lordship of Christ, a continual theme in traditionalist discourse, is Good News to those who feel tossed by the tempest of rapid, chaotic, cultural and political change. It is a rock upon which new lives and communities can be built.

But the liberal tradition is equally evangelistic. It simply focuses on preaching the gospel in a different culture both in the US and globally. Its evangelistic focus is the emerging post-modern, post-Enlightenment culture. This culture cannot comprehend a Gospel characterized by mythical understandings of the natural order. This culture cannot comprehend a Gospel that does not address neo-liberal economics, systemic racism, anti-semitism, and homophobia, the increasing marginalization of a growing impoverished class, constant violence, and reactionary politics designed to entrench white power. In short the liberal tradition believes that a Gospel which offers a safe haven from cultural change and political conflict is no Gospel at all. It embraces the danger that the purity of the Lordship of Christ may be sullied by His engagement in partisan politics and uncertain and shifting moral standards. 

Perhaps one can see that part of the problem with speaking of evangelism has to do with the expected outcome of an evangelistic ministry. Church bureaucrats focus, naturally, on membership and giving – but hopefully no true evangelist cares about the form without the power of the gospel. More prescient is that the fact that for traditionalists the proper response to the true preaching of the gospel is initiation into both the assurance of God's redeeming love and  into the fixed moral order that makes life bearable in the tempest tossed seas of contemporary or indeed any culture. 

This isn't the change that liberals have typically looked for. Rather they seek a change of heart that results in a radical commitment to God's Reign in the form of working out of Biblical principles of justice and righteousness whose application may overturn conventional morality, expose one to moral hazard, and leave one completely dependent on Christ for redemption. The liberal church isn't one of comfort and safety, but of dangerous confrontation with the powers and principalities of the world. There, as for Schleiermacher, it is most in touch with Christ and most dependent on his grace. 

Naturally these two responses can overlap. An evangelistic community may offer more than one response to the Gospel in its contextualized preaching of that Gospel. But it is unlikely that these two forms of evangelism will be comfortable in the same ecclesial structure unless that structure makes ample room for the reality of a multi-cultural society and thus a multi-cultural church. 

And this is where we get to the real difference between the three potential branches of the UM tree. True progressives and true traditionalists do not believe that a multi-cultural church can be evangelistically effective. Both are counter cultural, and see the counter-culture of the Christian church as the central feature of its evangelistic message. A multi-cultural church, if the diversity is deep and real, cannot be counter-cultural. Centrists in the UMC believe that the church not only can, but should be multi-cultural and diverse even if this means embracing internal conflict. It is counter cultural only to any culture of exclusion. 

It cannot be predicted which of these three models of evangelism will be most effective. It is possible that all three will have their niche, preserving and expanding the reach of the Gospel in particular places and times, much like the various churches that emerged out of the ecumenical counsels and later the Protestant Reformation. 

It may be that the Holy Spirit breathes through the world much like we do, its life-giving breath expanding and diversifying into different cultures and societies and then drawing them back into the life of the One God. What appears to be blown apart is really just being prepared to once again be drawn in. 

The Rev. Dr. Robert A. Hunt serves as Director of Global Theological Education and Director, Center for Evangelism at United Methodist-related Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. This post is republished from his blog, The Crossroads of Christianity and Culture.