America

Weaving a Future: The Chalmers Option?

/ JRLonas / 2 Comments

Few would argue that all is well “in these dread latter days of the old violent beloved U.S.A. and of the Christ-forgetting Christ-haunted death-dealing Western world“—it’s what most needs to be done about it that divides people. I’m increasingly convinced that something very like Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option represents a good path forward.

Even if we weren’t facing an impending crisis of religious liberty, I’ve got little confidence in the current status quo of American church life. The standard combo of buildings, preaching (which is vital!), programs (which can be useful!), partisan politics (which will be our undoing!), music (which can be meaningful!), messaging, and mission statements is failing to reach unbelievers and retain believers in active membership.

A Poor Competitor
Why? It is too compatible in many respects with other visions of the good life, and asks just enough of us to make it a poor competitor. A church that offers little more than a tepidly baptized consumer culture is no substitute for “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” As Russian author Eugene Vodolazkin put it, “people need other things to live by,” and the church should be the fountain from which a purer vision flows.

In multiple conversations of late around the subject of preserving and strengthening this faith, I’ve used the The Benedict Option as a gauge of sorts—testing appetites for the hard work of a Christianity uncoupled from the shackles of Americanism. Most resonate with the call Dreher articulates to a faithful, intentional community of spiritual formation, even if there is disagreement over his particular application. Others (often those who hold the power and purse strings) see tweaks and innovations to be made, for sure, but believe the basic design is still working.

This is why pursuing legal cover for churches and nonprofits, conscience protections for service providers, and other current political maneuvers (though crucial) cannot be the whole solution. For generations, we’ve been discipled to believe that we can live and let live; that the rest of the culture is just one radio revival away from returning to our fold. The opposite has turned out to be true, and it is we who are walking the aisle to pledge faith to the other side. Americanism is a religion; glistening advertisements the illuminated manuscripts of its bible of consumption. Protecting a vision of the church that fails to recognize this does nothing to advance Christ’s kingdom, and often works actively against it.

Perhaps this is why the reaction to Dreher’s thesis has been so heated (albeit often from those who pan the book without having read it, or, at least strain to miss the point). Nothing less than the nature of the church is at stake. Either the Gospel matters in every nook and cranny of life or it doesn’t matter at all. Either “in [Christ] all things hold together,” or nothing holds together at all. Such an all-encompassing and embodied faith ought to be the pursuit of any healthy church.

Of course Dreher isn’t the first to call for such. One of his more ardent detractors, James K. A. Smith, is a leading voice in this direction. What Dreher adds to the discussion is framing it in terms of strategy. How do we get to a place where such a holistic vision is the Christian norm? This requires something greater than simply an intellectual assent to the the idea of a revitalized church. Human behavior seldom shifts on the merits of an argument alone.

A New Affection
Smith tells us that “We are what we love,” but warns that we may not love what we think. Retraining our loves takes discipline, but it also requires grace-driven vision. This is not a new idea, by any stretch. In the early 19th Century, well-known Edinburgh pastor Thomas Chalmers preached a sermon entitled “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection.” In it, he said:

“The heart is not so constituted; and the only way to dispossess it of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one. Nothing can exceed the magnitude of the required change in a man’s character—when bidden as he is in the New Testament, to love not the world; no, nor any of the things that are in the world—for this so comprehends all that is dear to him in existence, as to be equivalent to a command of annihilation” (emphasis mine).

Within the context of the serThomas_Chalmers_-_Project_Gutenberg_13103mon, Chalmers leans heavily toward personal spiritual discipline as the key to answering that call. In the life and ministry of his church, however, a powerful grasp of embodied grace worked itself out in faithful care for the needy, massive social reforms, and holistic approach to ending poverty and restoring dignity in his city.

Chalmers seems to have understood that the Gospel of Christ speaks of a relentlessly physical reality—an incarnate Savior who bled, died, and rose just as surely as he preached, healed, and forgave. A Christianity that promises only spiritual gifts lacks real “expulsive power” to dislodge our present comforts and fears. A Christianity that demands nothing of us in this life but a public piety and lip service to doctrine sounds an awful lot like a “command of annihilation.” Sitting on a cloud, strumming a harp for eternity is hell, not heaven. What we need to understand is that this call to a whole-body, whole-life discipleship is a feature, not a bug, in God’s good design.

Turns out, we do need other things to live by. Nothing short of this world-upending, world-rebuilding mission—given to us directly from the hands of Jesus Christ the Son of God!—can dislodge our stubborn pursuit of self, wealth, and health.

Perhaps this Scottish churchman has much to teach us yet, particularly in terms of how we live out the Gospel toward the wider society. Perhaps his call to look to the poor and oppressed can cure our atrophied vision and give us the strength to endure. Who is more likely to accommodate their faith to the cultural winds, the one who is afraid of losing privilege or the one who has long endured shame? A church unwilling to suffer is bound to be swept into irrelevance by the increasingly anti-Christian mainstream.

To put it another way, what do we have to lose? Any commitment to biblical truth and standards will ultimately land us on the margins of modernity. Better to rush there ourselves in love, “boast of the things that show our weakness,” and embrace the lessons forged in hardship by those who have always lived there. This faith in which we stand, this church we love, which Christ has promised will endure to the very gates of hell, is embodied, suffering, and persevering—just like our Lord. Pursuing the fullness of His kingdom, on earth as it is in heaven, is the way we will weather the coming storm.

Further thoughts
Theological Poverty: More on “The Chalmers Option”
Talking Past Each Other: Class and Culture in the Church
The Spiritual Vitality of Place

Photo: Dew on spider web with flame azaleas, Elk Knob, North Carolina, June 2017.

Considering Our Options: Reviewing Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option

/ JRLonas / 5 Comments

The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, by Rod Dreher, 2017, New York, Sentinel.*

Jeremiads against the corrupt culture of the surrounding world are nothing new in Christianity. The looming collapse of the social order has been forecast time and again, with a standard of accuracy that would make meteorologists into clairvoyants by comparison. Why, then, consider the subject again? What value could there possibly be in stirring up despair and provoking jeers from those outside the faith?

For one thing, the Jeremiad has fallen out of favor, within the church as much as without. We in the West don’t want to see the problem. Rather than wringing our hands waiting for the apocalypse, we are often twiddling our thumbs and trying to get the most out of our comfortable lives here and now. In this sense, Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option is not a Jeremiad at all, but more akin to the work of another prophet: “A voice of one calling: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way for the LORD….‘” (Isa. 40:3).

There is a plenty in the book that weeps for the state of our culture, but Dreher focuses his criticisms and prescriptions on the Western church—namely our unwillingness to see how the ground beneath our feet has shifted. The time has come, he argues, to look around, make a strategic retreat from the familiar battlefields of the culture war, and shore up our homes, churches, and institutions against the quicksand of what he calls “liquid modernity.” We can no longer “fight the last war,” attempting to persuade non-Christians through politics and preaching to return with us to the (largely fictitious) halcyon good old days. The majority has turned against the teachings of Scripture, and we must instead build a case for the truth and goodness of Christ and His church, as well as the structures and commitment to live that out.

Dreher’s approach here is neither new nor untried, and he engages in the text with several contemporary authors (Russell Moore, Yuval Levin, James K. A. Smith, and others) sounding similar themes. He has several advantages in this space, though. As a journalist rather than a professional theologian, he has taken the time to observe culture from a more critical remove, seeing the flood rising across denominational and regional lines, and finding stories of silver linings in unlikely places. As an Eastern Orthodox Christian, he has been steeped neither in the culture of hyper-spiritual gnosticism that so often has infected fundamentalists nor the individualism and over-emphasis on relevance that has often hollowed out the mainstream American evangelical worldview. As somewhat of a political “crank”, broadly conservative but standing outside of either major party, his ideas push well past political solutions to the problems he identifies. His even-handed, ecumenical tone acknowledges the divides between the various constituenciesbenedict-option_w-copy he addresses while calling attention to the divide that runs through each of them: their relative unwillingness to acknowledge the dissolution of the faith taking place under their collective noses.

Because Dreher has been talking about these themes in public (largely through his blog at The American Conservative) for many years, The Benedict Option as a book is a chance for him to clarify (and answer critics) of the Benedict Option as a concept. It is rare for a work to come to an audience who have so many settled opinions on it (see here and here for a couple of recent examples), and Dreher’s good-faith effort to make his case here has been broadly successful. In just 244 pages, Rod manages to distill a decade of blog posts, seminars, and conversations into an adroit summation that covers vast ground with earnest clarity while avoiding undue simplification.

Continue reading →

A Prayer from Paralysis

/ JRLonas / Leave a comment

To bear the image is a fearful thing;
No small, simple responsibility.
What we do with it, for it, to it will
Make or break us now and eternally.
O Lord, fashion us eyes to see the sin
With which we break the mold you’ve given us.
Each one as wretched as the next in line,
Each one as precious to Thy holy heart,
Each one weighed and wanting in the extreme,
Each one weighed and filled with crushing glory.
Innocence and guilt are measured by Thee,
And not in a moment decided here.
To bear the image is a fearful thing.

“O LORD, how long shall I cry for help,
and you will not hear?
Or cry to you ‘Violence!’
 and you will not save?
Why do you make me see iniquity,
and why do you idly look at wrong?
Destruction and violence are before me;
strife and contention arise.
So the law is paralyzed,
and justice never goes forth.
For the wicked surround the righteous;
so justice goes forth perverted”
(Hab. 1:2-4).

Crying_Stone_Luba_Zukowa_Poznan copy

At the Turning of the Tide?

/ JRLonas / 1 Comment

“You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.” ~ William Wilberforce

Citizen journalist David Daleiden and his Center for Medical Progress started lobbing weekly grenades into the lap of America’s “safe, legal, and rare” abortion culture in early July. The effects of exposing the ghastly nature of Planned Parenthood’s business have been bracing; footage of PPFA’s insouciant staff tossing out price quotes and lists of body parts over lunch is as damning as the direct images of dismembered children.

I’ve lived my entire life under the laws that permit these crimes against heaven, shaking my head at cowardice and prevarication from “pro-life” politicians, discouraged into complacent resignation. This is the way things are in Babylon.

I’ve written recently (here, here, and here) about the ways God is glorified and the Church is served through marginalization and suffering. Growing accustomed to being down and out in regards to the wider culture seemed (and in many ways still seems) a sensible course. We know God is on our side, but we are supposed to appear as “aliens and strangers” to our fellows.

The exile we’ve been preparing for has been centered on the prospect of diminishing religious freedom, particularly in regards to holding a biblical view of marriage. After the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, the wagons were circling and no one was expecting the resurgent roar of the pro-life cause.

The Lord’s plan for exiles is not only humbling and purification, though. He also uses them to speak truth to the hearts of kings (i.e. Daniel with Nebuchadnezzar and later Darius), to secure religious freedom (see Ezra), prevent deadly and unjust persecution (Esther), and to lead the remnant to full obedience (Nehemiah). In all of these cases, the people involved were called simply to obedience–the action was brought about by God.

Whenever God moves, among the surest signs it is His own doing is that the faithful are as surprised by Him (though joyfully so) as His enemies. The Lord is on His throne as ever, and He delights in such reversals that protect the innocent, reveal the guilty, and bring Him glory.

All this is in His perfect timing, for these issues are not at all unrelated. The degeneration of marriage and the devaluing of children go hand in hand; at the end of this cultural project, we have been forced to reconsider the beginning. The sexual relationship God ordained in marriage to join man and wife as one flesh often, in due course, literally produces one flesh anew through the bearing of children. Fruitfulness is part of the created design for marriage. When we hate the children we create, it is only natural for this chosen fruitlessness to progress to a state of inherent fruitlessness. Ultrasound

Daleiden’s perseverant courage has reminded me of the boldness and persistence a righteous cause should call forth in us. Seeing in cold light the evil of this selfish practice brings me to mourn again for the bloodguilt of my people in celebrating it. Having walked through three pregnancies together, my wife and I appreciate the gravity of abortion in ways we couldn’t when we were younger. To see the familiar features of little children brutally snatched from the womb and cut to pieces sparks a fire to fight for their lives. 

For many of us, being “pro-life” has been a part of our identity, but this is the shot in the arm we needed to press the battle to its end. For those who have silently nurtured doubts about the morality of abortion, these videos are confirming their worst suspicions. God’s creation speaks His truth; these are not “clumps of cells” but image bearers of the Most High. There are no reasonable doubts. We are called to care for orphans and widows, and who is more fatherless than a child scheduled for dilation and extraction?

For those who have supported abortion in carefree ignorance, there can be no more simple excuses. To defend Planned Parenthood has always been to celebrate horrendous sin, but no euphemisms remain to hide behind. Sin, as always, has overreached. The complacency and triumphalism of these profiteers of murder gives the lie to every sly evasion. Lives are being ended, and those doing the killing know it full well.

A wave is cresting. This can be a “Selma moment” in the march to secure right to life for the unborn. The cameras are rolling and the world cannot unsee what it is seeing; to oppose the movement now is to stand with the entrenched power of visceral evil. I don’t want to live in a place that lets this continue anymore.

The time to press hard is here, and pursuit to the end leaves us no room to “go wobbly” on the hill we are charging. We don’t fight a vague, sinister force but a corporate conglomerate, an “Abortion, Inc.” Moral questions are being plainly directed at Planned Parenthood, which controls 40% of the national market in this death-dealing. Removing the half of their funding that comes on the backs of taxpayers is a no-brainer. If this round is lost because of lackluster zeal, the shame is ours.

The goal, of course, is the end of abortion for good. Opposition will not always be so easy as it is now, with walls divinely crumbling before us. What we hope is that the demise of Planned Parenthood sparks opportunities to change hearts across the board.

Perhaps, the Lord has allowed the cultural position of the Church to be weakened for such a time as this. These undefended children can no longer be seen as pawns in a political game. The power play is coming from those who would wield the state against the innocent, not the other way around. Over time, as more see this as a moral issue than a partisan ax to grind, abortion will fade from the political scene. But this will only increase the need for the Church to love and care for the victims of crimes, poor choices, and sinful deception. To take abortion off the table will bring children from difficult situations, and opportunities to nurture them and their parents alike.

Obstruction and misdirection continue. Satan does not relinquish strongholds but by the power of God, and he is ferocious in a corner. Let us not grow weary in this good aim or be distracted by the smokescreens of the enemy.

We are all sinners, but that does not justify the taking of innocent life to hide sin’s consequences.

Those who have and perform abortions need the Gospel, but that begins with repentance from sin.

Abortion is a consequence of other sins, both individual and institutional, but we must stop punishing the victims in order to show real mercy to the guilty.

Stop. Killing. Babies. Then we can talk about all the rest.