Scholarly Winds

ON BELONGING, BELIEVING, AND BECOMING

Another contemporary discussion that Olson address is is the process of church interaction.

The debate centers on the proper ordering of three key words; believe, belong, and become. There are proponents for each of the three orderings of the words, and Olson advocates for the belong, believe, and become ordering. It is indeed a tough line to draw between accepting people as they are and challenging conformity into the image of Christ. As Olson points out “we are a group of people little different in our lifestyle from the world around us.”

Certainly a double standard has operated within the church for those outside the walls and for those inside the walls. Typically this is seen by sweeping the “sins of the congregation” underneath the rug, and a form of exploiting the sins of those outside the community.

The cardinal of all sins within all evangelical circles is sexual sin. Usually, most of the attention both inside and outside of the church is directed towards these issues. Other sins such as lying, bitterness, hatred, and injustice take a backseat to these. Olson argues that we must “blur the boundaries between the sinners in the church and the sinners outside the church.” and goes on to say “There is no line between “them” and “us” when it comes to being sinners.”

Olson’s thesis in this chapter is quite convincing and has support, what however fails to persuade, is his failure to distinguish between sinners who have repented and those who have not. In reference to us all being sinners, that it true, however it is also true that not all sinners are alike in their response to sin. It would have been nice to see Olson comment on this aspect of sinners and repentance. In all other regards, Olson is to be commended for highlighting the church’s tendency to focus on the “hot button issues” and not speaking out against all sin.

CONCLUSION

Overall Olson issues a challenging call to all of those who would call themselves evangelical. He confronts those who have turned evangelicalism into a new form of fundamentalism and issues a call to return for those who have ridded themselves of the term. Olson in his book argues for a return to the third way that evangelicalism has historically been, the middle ground between fundamentalism and liberalism. Olson’s call to return to the historic roots of evangelicalism needs to be heeded in order to be truly evangelical.

The solution for Olson is that “progressive evangelicals move beyond conservatism into what I call “postconservative evangelicalism.”

While not all of Olson’s arguments are persuasive as others, he does put forth a coherent argument on several key issues. We would do well to listen with open ears and open hearts to the concerns, critiques, and the credibility that Olson’s argument brings.

ON SOCIAL ACTIVISM

The title of chapter eight of Olson’s book is quite interesting in light of the last presidential election. The title of the chapter being “Redistributing Wealth without Socialism.” While this book was published in 2008, it seems highly relevant to this recent election and the current economic crisis. Pertinent in that then Senator Obama was charged with the accusation of  socialism and for “spreading the wealth around.” To which many republicans and evangelicals objected. As such Olson’s discussion of wealth, resources, the rich and the poor, and the response of evangelicals is quite applicable.

For many, any attempt to “redistribute wealth” is merely a political guise for socialism, who’s angry, but closely followed brother communism, is to be avoided at all costs. In fact, Olson states that “If there is one thing especially associated with being conservative in America, it is belief in a free market economy…many conservative Christians equate capitalism with being Christian and American.”

So in avoidance of anything remotely socialistic, the gap is ever widening between the rich and the poor. What are evangelicals to do?

The Bible certainly is not silent on the issues of wealth and money, nor is it silent on the position of followers of Jesus in regards to the poor.

Furthermore the Bible “cries out for justice for the poor and hurls invectives at the rich.”

Yet somehow evangelicals have found themselves leaning more to the right on the political scale, and in recent history has been absent from some of the largest social active movements. The Old Testament is full of prophetic warnings and curses for such neglect of the poor and marginalized. Similar attitudes are found in the New Testament, where in the Epistle of James, true religion that God desires, is one that looks after those who are neglected by society. Likewise many of the early Christians held everything in common. While there are certainly differences between the first and twenty first centuries, the principles remain the same. It is an aspect of Christian devotion to look after and care for those who are “helplessly poor.”

A third way is necessary in order to be truly evangelical. Ironically, many evangelicals who oppose Darwinian evolution, adopt and practice a form of social Darwinism, by advocating and promoting a very antigovernment and anti-welfare type of mindset.

It should be the responsibility of the rich to advocate on the behalf of the poor, and if the government is needed to implement such procedures to protect those on the fringes of society, evangelicals should see this as an ally rather than an enemy.  In fact a conservative position economically may be less evangelical than previously assumed. Olson concludes the chapter with the following thoughts, “Redistribution of wealth is biblical; an ever-widening gap between the rich and poor is not. A person can be more evangelical by being less conservative when it comes to economics.”

ON TRANSFORMING CULTURE

No other area of Christian life and study has seen such polarization as the issue of Church and Culture. Pendulum swings abound within this field, from groups who so closely identify with the culture that they lack any clear Christian distinctions. Likewise, some groups have so withdrawn from culture that they are no longer that “city on the hill” they are commanded to be. From the Religious Right to the anabaptists different groups have tried to walk the thin line of engagement with culture.  From the minds of Richard Mouw to H. Richard Neibuhr each generation has attempted to find a balance of cultural engagement. Where is a middle ground to be found?

Olson argues that “conservative Christians are perceived as people who want to criminalize behavior inconsistent with the Bible or with Christian values and principles.”

This has also recently been seen in the book “UnChristian” which also states that the culture around Christianity perceives them to be anti-gay.

As Olson points out most conservative Christians “believe it is the Christian’s duty to change the world using power when persuasion fails.”

Likewise, “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is for them a mandate to go into the political realm and triumphalistically take it over and dominate it for Christ and his kingdom.”

In the history of cultural engagement there have been two primary approaches to culture, some have adopted a  “Christ against culture” model while other have adopted a “Christ transforming culture” model. One can look back across the landscape of evangelicalism and see where each paradigm was operating. Olson strives to communicate that to be truly evangelical one has to abandon the current paradigms for cultural interaction and reform Evangelicalism. Olson’s solution is that “Before trying to change society, evangelicals must reform themselves and their congregations and institutions away from individualism, consumerism, and therapeutic Christianity (“your best life now”).”

Too often, conservative evangelicals have adopted principles and practices from a culture it is trying to engage, for the altruistic goal of transforming culture.

One needs to be quickly reminded, that the the modes of operation and the practices of the kingdom of God are radically different than the patterns of the world. The church cannot continue to adopt the practices of a fallen world and attempt to pursue, follow, or accomplish the plans of God’s kingdom. The patterns are not parallel, they head in two completely different directions, to entirely different goals.

ON BIBLICAL LITERALISM

Another characterization of evangelicals is that they all take the bible literally. Biblical literalism has been and continues to go alongside a high view of scripture. For if we believe in the authority of scriptures, an interpretation is necessary to understand this scripture.  Thus in order to be faithful to the scriptures for life and practice, many evangelicals insist on a literal hermeneutic. Olson historically tracks biblical literalism and notices a changing of terminology over the past “whereas literal interpretation of the bible was once tied especially with fundamentalism (maximum religious conservatism), it is now associated with conservative evangelicals in general because the nomenclature has changed.”

Issues such as the creation account in the first two chapters of Genesis have received such attention. Scholars are divided, with some taking the account literally, while others stress the nature of the genre, and others see the passage as poetry. However, with proponents such as Ken Ham receiving somewhat national attention, along with the current debate of teaching creationism in public schools, the image of evangelicals as biblical literalists has been engrained into the minds of the media and adopted as synonyms.

The obvious problem with such biblical literalism is that no one practices what they preach. Everyone from conservative, progressive, to liberal, all pick and choose what biblical texts to take literally and which texts to spiritualize. Usually this is defined by the current social-cultural milieu of the day rather than on any clear set of methodological principles. This idea of literalism has struck a contemporary note in two recent publications. One such note is the recent book by A.J. Jacobs, where “In the Year of Living Biblically” he attempts to take every aspect of the biblical text literally for one year.

A non-religious Jew is even struck by the way that many Christians pick and choose the texts they want to apply. More recently, Scot McKnight has tackled the issue of biblical interpretation in his book entitled “The Blue Parakeet”.

Each author, along with Olson, have attempted to bring awareness to the picking and choosing of each group and to show that biblical literalism is not the answer.

For Olsen, the problem is that “the term biblical literalism is a misleading concept; nobody believes every sentence of the Bible literally.”

While agreement can be found Olson’s statement that “truth can be conveyed nonlitearlly”

Other disagreements arise with some of Olson’s methadology. For instance, Olson criticizes Rudolph Bultmann and Paul Tillich for arguing that the historical resurrection was not as factually important as the importance of the effect of faith it had in the life of the disciples.

He then goes on to address the book of Jonah, which itself has been scrutinized for its historicity. Olson then makes the contradictory statement of “If Jonah spurs one to affection and action, it is being taken seriously whether or not a huge fish actually swallowed a human being.”

In essence, the historicity of the account is not as important as the effect it has in the life of the believer. One is hard pressed to find a difference between the statement of Olson and that of Bultmann. If one can apply the same standard to Jonah, why not to the resurrection account?

Agreement can be found among the importance of stories within the Old and New Testaments. One could honestly argue that the story of Abraham is more fundamental than Jonah. Nonetheless, methods and practices should have continuity to insure integrity and validity in interpretation. While it is impossible to take every sentence of the bible literally, and in some cases this would be the exactly the wrong approach, we should exercise caution so that the literal baby will not be thrown out with the metaphorical bath water.

I’m currently in a History of Evangelicalism class taught by none other than Stan Gundry, Academic Vice President of Zondervan. One of the requirements for the class is a book review of a current evangelical topic. My first selection was Roger Olson’s  “How to Be Evangelical without being Conservative.” The title of the book really intrigued me, as did the contents as I started reading. Beginning today, I will be posting my review section by section.

In Roger Olson’s book “How to Be Evangelical without being Conservative” he addresses the current assumption of many mainline evangelicals and popular media that presumptuously link the titles of evangelical with conservative.  In Olson’s distinctions between the two terms, one should not associate conservative with evangelical, as there may be areas, that to truly be evangelical one cannot be conservative. In fact Olson challenges the major assumption that “Most people assume that to be evangelical is to be conservative socially, politically, and theologically.”

Olson bolsters this claim with his definition of evangelical. For Olson, a broad description of the posture of evangelicalism means “being radically open to the gospel in all of its implications, including our comfort zones and vested interest in upholding the status quo and reiterating the past…that’s not conservative or liberal; its radical, extreme, and progressive.”

MORALITY

One of the first issues Olson confronts is morality. In his chapter entitled “Building Character without Moralism” Olson puts forth the primary thesis that evangelicals in the historic definition of the word are “too rigid in their morality and too moralistic toward outsiders (that is sinful unbelievers).

Morality in this chapter is defined as “setting up a code of conduct that derives largely from tradition and seeks to enforce it on people with harsh sanctions for this who fall short of perfection.”

Although recent history has seen the rise of the Moral Majority and the  Religious Right as beacons of this mindset, Olson argues that this is far from being biblical and even farther from being truly evangelical. One truly is bewildered by the past and current attempts to foist Judeo-Christian morality onto a Protestant defined depraved humanity.  How one holds these two positions together presses the the realms of logic. The charge of inconsistency seems to be highly relevant at this point.

Olson argues biblically, that neither Jesus nor Paul, and for that matter the early church, tried to help the surrounding culture pull themselves up by their moral boot straps. In fact Paul’s language at the end of First Corinthians five seems to indicate that Christians have no place in judging the outside world.

Olson holds that the main thrust of the Bible’s moral code is a call for character reformation of God’s covenant people. Olson goes onto critique the movements such as the religious right when he says “nowhere do I see Jesus Christ or any apostle giving Christians a mandate to change the word by using political power”

In conclusion, Olson argues that to be truly evangelical, one must give up the temptation to be moralistic, and the attempts to make a pagan culture moral. Rather the true evangelicals, as biblicists, should be concerned with the inward and focus on transformation of character. Because moral conservatism is concerned with making people behave by the use of rules and shame. Evangelical morality is about “fostering an environment where God’s spirit can inculcate the desire to please God through a life of obedience.”