1 BE FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT
the words from which I wish to speak are well know:
you will find them in Acts 2.4,
'They were all filled with the Holy Ghost'
and in Ephesians 5.18,
'Be filled with the Spirit'.
the one text is a narrative; it tells us what actually happened.
the other text is a command; it tells us what we ought to be.
in case there should be any doubt in our minds about it being actually a command, we find it linked to another command,
'Be not drunk with wine, but Be Filled With The Spirit.
now, I am sure there is not one here who, if I asked him, Do you try to obey that command, 'Be not drunk with wine'? would not answer at once, 'Of course, as a Christian, I obey that command'.
but now, as to the other - Be filled with the Spirit', have you obeyed that command?Is that the life you are living? if not, the question comes at once, Why not?
and then comes another question, ,
Are you willing to take up that command tonight and to say:
by God's help I am going to obey.
I will not give myself any rest until I have obeyed that command,
until I am filled with the Spirit.
I want at the very commencement to say that it is here a simple question of listening to a command
*2 of God's Holy Spirit, in His Word...
we want to begin at once by saying God has this message to every Christian in this place:
My child , I want you to be filled with the Spirit.
let your answer be: Father, I want it too;
I am ready,
i yield myself to obey my God;
let me be filled with Thy Spirit tonight.
and lest anyone should have a wrong impression as to what it is to be filled with the Spirit, just let me say that it does not mean a state of high excitement, or of absolute perfection, or a state in which thee will be no growth. No.
being filled with the Spirit is simply this - having my whole nature yielded to His power.
when the whole soul is yielded to the Holy Spirit, God Himself will fill it.
now the question I want to ask is, What Is Needed In Order To Be Filled With The Spirit?
the question is of the utmost importance, and if we try to find the answers that have to be given, it may help to search us.
we prayed, in the hymn we have just sung, that God might Search us and those answers will help each of us to look into our heart and life and say: Am I in that condition in which God can fill me with the Spirit? I think the answers we shall find may also help to encourage us. there may be souls here who may say honestly, as we go on step by step:
Thank God , I am ready for that; and they may perhaps see that they are kept back from this full blessing just by
*3 some ignorance or prejudice or unbelief or wrong thoughts of what the blessing is.
Now, I do not see how we can better find the answer to our question that by looking at the way in which Christ prepared the disciples for the Day of Pentecost. you know what is done in heathen countries where the missionary preaches. converts come to him and he forms a baptismal class and there are cases in which he keeps these young converts for a year, or longer at times, in the baptismal class, to educate and train and test them and to prepare them for the Christian life. and, brethren, Jesus had His disciples 3 years in His baptismal class and they had to go through a time of training and preparation. it was not a magic thing , an arbitrary thing, the Holy Spirit coming down upon them. they were prepared for it. John the Baptist told them what was to come. he not only preached the Lamb of God who was to shed His blood, but he preached - and he tells us that it was by special revelation from God - that He on whom he saw the Holy Spirit descend would baptize with the Holy Ghost.
and now, wherein consisted the training of those disciples? wherein consisted their preparation for the baptism of the Holy Spirit?
I ask you, first, to remember that They Were Men Who Had Forsaken All To Follow Jesus. you know the Lord Jesus went to one and said, Forsake your net; and to another , Leave that place in the receipt of custom and come and follow me. and they did it and they could afterwards
Saturday, September 14, 2019
Friday, September 13, 2019
9.12.19 MUST SAY NO - Joshua Steely on When Christians Can't Compromise Touchstone Magazine
compromise is often a good thing. relationships involve a lot of compromise and it is especially justified when dealing with matters that are not of great significance. in such cases, compromise is generally a good thing.
but when it comes to important, foundational matters, such as those concerning doctrine and morals, compromise on something when you shouldn't, you yourself become compromised. you will then have to compromise more and more and in the end you'll find that you've been compromised all the way over to the other side (or very nearly).
this happens, in part, because a compromise involves some degree of moral equivocation. when you compromise on something, you implicitly concede that the other position is justified, at least to some extent. that's why we compromise on things that are inconsequential or unclear, or where both sides have a valid claim and why we don't compromise on murder or theft. if we started compromising on the latter, our whole justice system would become compromised.
A PRAGMATIC COMPROMISE
Observations in this area are relevant to the various efforts being made by churches, denominations and other Christian bodies to compromise with the sexual
24 revolution. one contemporary example is the 'Fairness for All' (FFA) compromise being promoted by the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) in this case, a compromise is being pursued that is, I think, shortsighted at best.
the FFA is a motion supporting the inclusion of 'sexual orientation' and 'gender identity' as protected categories in anti-discrimination law as long as compliance carve-outs are made to protect religious liberty. the problem with the NAE and CCCU endorsing the motion is not that they are Deliberately acquiescing to the sexual revolution, but that the form of resistance they are advocating with this document effectively amounts to such. as reported by J.C. Derrick in World magazine online ('Boards Back SOGI Compromise', Dec. 12, 2018. one of the supporters of the motion, Shirley Mullen, described the goal in these terms: 'as Christian higher educators, we are increasingly persuaded that the most viable political strategy is for comprehensive religious freedom protections t be combined with explicit support for basic human rights for members of the LGBT community'.
of course, that way of putting it doesn't quite capture the reality. basic human rights for all people are derived on the basis of being human, not on the basis of membership in some identity group or other. the question is not whether everyone should enjoy Basic human rights, but whether Special rights and protections should be granted to people on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity. nevertheless, the NAE and CCCU, well-meaning Evangelicals with the goal of securing religious liberty, are proposing to accept the codification of gender identity and sexual orientation as protected classes in non-discrimination law as long as religious exemptions from compliance with such laws are allowed. t;hey are not altering their theological beliefs about human nature and sexuality; they are merely making a pragmatic, not a theological, compromise.
COMPROMISED WITNESS
but such a pragmatic compromise would compromise the Church's witness to the truth in a confused culture. by supporting the addition of 'sexual orientation' and 'gender identity' (SOGI) to anti-discrimination laws, Christians would be implying that these are legitimate categories, that they are valid markers of human identity in the same way that race and sex are. but that is precisely what orthodox Christianity Disputes and it is precisely why we refuse to uphold such categories in our churches, schools and other organizations.
in other words, orthodox Christianity denies the charge of bigotry in, for example, the refusal of a Christian school to hire homosexual teachers. such a refusal is not bigotry because 'sexual orientation' is not a valid category of human identity. it is a moral category, not an anthropological category. refusing to h;ire someone based on SOGI is not analogous to refusing to hire someone based on race or sex; it is analogous to refusing to hire someone based on some other kind of sexually immoral behavior such as polygamy or promiscuity.
but if Christians support adding SOGI categories to human rights legislation, they will be implicitly agreeing that these are legitimate categories of human identity. then a defense of the right to discriminate on these bases does become a defense of bigotry. in trading SOGI acceptance for religious protection, Evangelical leaders are trading away the theological anthropology that underpins their contention that the LGBT agenda is wrong about humanity and wrong for humanity.
such a trade will prove to be a bad deal in the long run. American law is not written in stone and the events of recent years have made it abundantly clear that LGBT advocates are not content simply to win the freedom to do as they please and let Christians (and others) opt out of participating. they may accept FFA as a nice First Step from the Evangelicals, but will expect it to be followed up with more compromises in their favor.
what of the Evangelicals who believe they are making this trade in order to establish firm boundaries and safeguard religious freedom? having compromised on the philosophical basis for opposing the LGBT agenda, they will find themselves continually pressed to act in a manner supportive of it: 'You've admitted that Trans Rights Are Human Rights;
how can you then deny these people their human rights?
Embrace equality!
Hire them!
Affirm their lifestyle!
Bet on the right side of history!
I'm afraid that if the FFA compromise is made, it will only be the first such compromise the NAE and CCCU find themselves making - not the last.
it will not solidify the right to religious freedom, but endanger it.
THE MORE FAITHFUL OPTION
there is an alternative, a less pragmatic and more courageous option.
American law may not be written in stone, but God's law is the 10 Commandments quite literally. the first of these calls us to have no other gods but God alone.
we may say to an increasingly pagan culture, 'No; God is God and he has told us what is right about humanity and right for humanity.
we will not sign on to these new categories of humanity you have created, which simply codify sexual immorality'.
we may suffer for saying that.
we may miss the window of compromise and find ourselves facing an implacable foe.
that foe may defeat us and take away our religious freedom.
but at least we will not have given it away.
but when it comes to important, foundational matters, such as those concerning doctrine and morals, compromise on something when you shouldn't, you yourself become compromised. you will then have to compromise more and more and in the end you'll find that you've been compromised all the way over to the other side (or very nearly).
this happens, in part, because a compromise involves some degree of moral equivocation. when you compromise on something, you implicitly concede that the other position is justified, at least to some extent. that's why we compromise on things that are inconsequential or unclear, or where both sides have a valid claim and why we don't compromise on murder or theft. if we started compromising on the latter, our whole justice system would become compromised.
A PRAGMATIC COMPROMISE
Observations in this area are relevant to the various efforts being made by churches, denominations and other Christian bodies to compromise with the sexual
24 revolution. one contemporary example is the 'Fairness for All' (FFA) compromise being promoted by the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) in this case, a compromise is being pursued that is, I think, shortsighted at best.
the FFA is a motion supporting the inclusion of 'sexual orientation' and 'gender identity' as protected categories in anti-discrimination law as long as compliance carve-outs are made to protect religious liberty. the problem with the NAE and CCCU endorsing the motion is not that they are Deliberately acquiescing to the sexual revolution, but that the form of resistance they are advocating with this document effectively amounts to such. as reported by J.C. Derrick in World magazine online ('Boards Back SOGI Compromise', Dec. 12, 2018. one of the supporters of the motion, Shirley Mullen, described the goal in these terms: 'as Christian higher educators, we are increasingly persuaded that the most viable political strategy is for comprehensive religious freedom protections t be combined with explicit support for basic human rights for members of the LGBT community'.
of course, that way of putting it doesn't quite capture the reality. basic human rights for all people are derived on the basis of being human, not on the basis of membership in some identity group or other. the question is not whether everyone should enjoy Basic human rights, but whether Special rights and protections should be granted to people on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity. nevertheless, the NAE and CCCU, well-meaning Evangelicals with the goal of securing religious liberty, are proposing to accept the codification of gender identity and sexual orientation as protected classes in non-discrimination law as long as religious exemptions from compliance with such laws are allowed. t;hey are not altering their theological beliefs about human nature and sexuality; they are merely making a pragmatic, not a theological, compromise.
COMPROMISED WITNESS
but such a pragmatic compromise would compromise the Church's witness to the truth in a confused culture. by supporting the addition of 'sexual orientation' and 'gender identity' (SOGI) to anti-discrimination laws, Christians would be implying that these are legitimate categories, that they are valid markers of human identity in the same way that race and sex are. but that is precisely what orthodox Christianity Disputes and it is precisely why we refuse to uphold such categories in our churches, schools and other organizations.
in other words, orthodox Christianity denies the charge of bigotry in, for example, the refusal of a Christian school to hire homosexual teachers. such a refusal is not bigotry because 'sexual orientation' is not a valid category of human identity. it is a moral category, not an anthropological category. refusing to h;ire someone based on SOGI is not analogous to refusing to hire someone based on race or sex; it is analogous to refusing to hire someone based on some other kind of sexually immoral behavior such as polygamy or promiscuity.
but if Christians support adding SOGI categories to human rights legislation, they will be implicitly agreeing that these are legitimate categories of human identity. then a defense of the right to discriminate on these bases does become a defense of bigotry. in trading SOGI acceptance for religious protection, Evangelical leaders are trading away the theological anthropology that underpins their contention that the LGBT agenda is wrong about humanity and wrong for humanity.
such a trade will prove to be a bad deal in the long run. American law is not written in stone and the events of recent years have made it abundantly clear that LGBT advocates are not content simply to win the freedom to do as they please and let Christians (and others) opt out of participating. they may accept FFA as a nice First Step from the Evangelicals, but will expect it to be followed up with more compromises in their favor.
what of the Evangelicals who believe they are making this trade in order to establish firm boundaries and safeguard religious freedom? having compromised on the philosophical basis for opposing the LGBT agenda, they will find themselves continually pressed to act in a manner supportive of it: 'You've admitted that Trans Rights Are Human Rights;
how can you then deny these people their human rights?
Embrace equality!
Hire them!
Affirm their lifestyle!
Bet on the right side of history!
I'm afraid that if the FFA compromise is made, it will only be the first such compromise the NAE and CCCU find themselves making - not the last.
it will not solidify the right to religious freedom, but endanger it.
THE MORE FAITHFUL OPTION
there is an alternative, a less pragmatic and more courageous option.
American law may not be written in stone, but God's law is the 10 Commandments quite literally. the first of these calls us to have no other gods but God alone.
we may say to an increasingly pagan culture, 'No; God is God and he has told us what is right about humanity and right for humanity.
we will not sign on to these new categories of humanity you have created, which simply codify sexual immorality'.
we may suffer for saying that.
we may miss the window of compromise and find ourselves facing an implacable foe.
that foe may defeat us and take away our religious freedom.
but at least we will not have given it away.
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
9.11.2019 The Academy's Blond Spot (Thomas Albert (Tal) Howard on 'The limits of 'Post-Colonialism' in Touchstone - A Journal of Mere Christianity
19 the attacks this past Easter against Christians in Sri Lanka were horrific in themselves, but the horror deepens when we realize that they fit a broader pattern of global persecution. unfortunately, in the West, certain sensibilities and assumptions hinder us from perceiving the magnitude of the problem. for this reason, several months ago, the British foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, made know an independent review into how the British government responds to worldwide persecution. a feeling of post-colonial guilt, he assayed, has hindered people's ability to grasp the enormous scale of the issue, as Christianity is often associated with 'white privilege' and missionaries are regarded contemptuously as agents of imperialism.
Hunt is on to something. but the problem is not confined to British society. the Western academy at large in North America and Europe, in its thralldom to 'post-colonial theory', has some answering to do.
Since Edward Said's landmark Orientalism ( 1978), study after 'post -colonialist' study has produced a rigid orthodoxy. Colonizers lorded it over the colonized,
20 exploiting them economically, socially and culturally. the 'White Man's Burden', Europe's mission civilisatrice, was a sanctimonious justification for the ruthless suppression of indigenous peoples in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. integral to this outlook is the assumption that Christina missionaries were dupes of colonial power 'imperialism at prayer', according to one scholar. in the 'presuppositions of a Saidian master narrative,' Jeffrey Cox has summed up, missionaries are 'simply, imperialists; if different from other imperialists, it is because they were marginal, or because they were worse'. frequently assigned books such as Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart of Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible, both scathingly critical of Western missions, enforce to unwitting under-graduates the general consensus.
to be sure, this outlook contains considerable truth. colonialism could be a cruel force and missionaries sometimes abetted it. the historical record on this is quite clear. but sweeping theories bout the past usually err not in being wholly wrong, but in reaching farther than their grasp allows. in this case, the role of missionaries and their global legacy today are far more complex than post-colonialist theorists have recognized. what is more, uncritical adherence to the post-colonialist narrative blinds one to the vastly under-reported humanitarian crisis of
Christian persecution, especially of lower-class and minority groups drawn to Christianity during colonial times. the post-colonialist outlook also leaves one at a loss to fathom the post-Western flowering of Christianity taking place today in the erstwhile colonized world.
fortunately in recent years, the academy has also produced several studies that controvert reductive versions of the post-colonialist perspective. these studies deserve a much wider hearing than they currently have.
The Conversionary Protestant Missions
the first is by Robert D. Woodberry of Baylor University, author of 'The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy', published in the American Political Science Review (2012), among the most highly awarded articles in this prestigious journal's history. setting his sights on those who would ignore or contemn missionaries, Woodberry argues that the global activity of 'conversionary Protestants' (CPs) from the late 18th to the early 20th century is a leading cause of the global spread of liberal democracy over against various forms of tyranny and oppression. 'CPs', he argues 'where a crucial catalyst initiating the development and spread of religious liberty;, mass education, mass printing, newspapers, voluntary organizations.
*21 most major colonial reforms and the codification of legal protections for nonwhites'. these innovations in myriad global mission sites studied by Woodberry in turn 'fostered conditions that made stable representative democracy more likely'.
Woodberry stresses the Protestant emphasis on sola scriptura. unlie some past missions that focused on elites, he claims, Protestant ones emphasized popular literacy and education, two key ingredients of civil society and the emergence of liberal democracy;. what is more, in their search for converts, Protestant missionaries regularly reached out to lower-class individuals and despise minorities, such as Dalits ('untouchables') and tribal classes in India. in this respect. writes Woodberry, CPs 'influence class structure by dispersing education to women and the poor, making texts widely available, spawning civil society among non-elites and moderating abuses of power - with demonstrable political consequences'.
for their part, minorities and lower-class individuals were disproportionately attracted to Christian notions of human dignity (imago Dei) and the gospel's emphasis on spiritual equality. as the Apostle Paul put it in Galatians: 'There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus'. Gal. 3.28 as was often true ;in the Roman Empire, conversion to Christianity frequently came to the downtrodden as liberation from age-old structures of ostracism and indignity.
Woodberry's thesis is nuanced. (def - subtle difference or distinction) he is aware that European state churches were often part of the problem. he therefore emphasizes that he is particularly concerned with Conversionary Protestants - the ones the British have tagged as 'Nonconformists'. collectively, they amounted to so many gnats in the face of Empire, as well as being disrupters of indigenous forms of complacency toward the poor and the marginalized. 'In trying to spread their faith, Woodberry summarizes his argument, 'CPs expanded religious liberty, overcame resistance to mass education and printing, fostered civil society, moderated colonial abuses, and dissipated elite power. these conditions laid a foundation for democracy'.
Putting Flesh on Persecution StatisticsProcesses of decolonization after World War II, of course, opened new chapters in the history of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. the withdrawal of colonial powers produced a flurry of new political regimes, subscribing to various forms of self-determination. but in the process, non-elite and minority groups who had converted under colonialism often came to be seen as pariahs, 'contaminated' by past Western influence and hence especially vulnerable to discrimination. this is a significant claim of a more recent study, Under Caesar's Sword: How Christians respond to Persecution (Cambridge University Press, 2018), edited by Daniel Philpott of the University of Notre Dame and Timothy Samuel Shah of Georgetown University.
Under Caesar's Sword recognizes and rues the many forms of global religious persecution that exist today, including those more recently in the news: Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and Uighurs in China.
but a focus on these truly heart-wrenching cases, coupled with the post-colonialist assumption that Christianity is largely an oppressive force in history, obscures the true global reality today. according to Open Doors USA, 211.5 million Christinas (one out of every 12) experience h;high, very high or extreme persecution, with hundreds of deaths each month. the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary puts the figure much higher. in 2009, the International Society for Human Rights, a secular NGO based in Frankfurt, Germany, estimated that 80% of all acts of religious discrimination in the world were directed at Christians. other monitoring groups corroborate these findings; the most conservative figure is 60%. a report of the U. S. State Department shows that Christians face persecution in over 60 countries, while reports from the non-partisan Pew research Center have consistently shown the preponderance of persecution directed against Christians. although a few scholars and journalists have documented the phenomenon, it is not a burning cause for the mainstream media, most human rights organizations, and, not least, the academy, which otherwise bristles with global 'social justice' causes.
Under Caesar's Sword adds flesh and bone to the raw-statistics. Christians in India and Sri Lanka, for example, are perceived as 'foreign' elements in their won countries. they are reminders of colonialism, who compromise the political agendas of Hindu nationalists in India and Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists in Sri Lanka. something similar holds for the Hmong minority in Vietnam and Laos, and for the Kachin people in northern Myanmar, who now face a 'slow genocide', according to a recent article in The Guardian. the difficulties that Christians face in China and
*22 especially in North Korea have been well established, as has the resistance that non-Orthodox Christians face in former Soviet countries.
In Iraq and Syria, Christians are 'on the brink of extinction', according to Kent R. hill, as they are in many places throughout the Middle East. 'The global reputation of Islam is at stake, he pleads - a situation that 'provides incentive for both Muslims and Christians to work together for a ...more peaceful future'. in 1900, Christians made up an estimated 14% of the population in the Middle East; today it is 4%. the spread of militant Islam is also a major problem in post-Soviet central Asia, Indonesia and many African counties - to say nothing of the well-documented Coptic Christians' agonizing plight in Egypt, where church bombings on major Christian holidays have become routine.
Under Caesar's Sword echoes and adds scholarly heft to the findings of 2 other recent books: John R Allen Jr's The Global War on Christians and Paul A. Marshall, Lela Gilbert and Nina Shea's persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians, both published in 2013. given the scale of violence taking place, these authors, too, are at a lost to explain the relative inattention the topic receives in the Western media and academy, although Allen helpfully explains that anti-Christian persecution falls into an unfortunate liminal (def - of, pertaining to situated at the limen (threshold) ) or realm: the topic is 'too Christian' to excite the left and 'too foreign' to excite the right - and simply too many dots need connecting to grasp the scope of the problem.
sadly, even Western Christians regularly miss the big picture. for many, the persecution of Christians is simply too far away and they are consumed by domestic political issues, their own internecine battles and self-inflicted wounds. additionally, for many liberal churches, Allen notes, complaining about the persecution of christians runs against' interfaith correctness'. Liberals do not want to be accused of special pleading and too many embrace the post-colonialist narrative in toto. worries about being regarded as Islamophobic, moreover, stifle those who would soberly point out the appalling record of religious freedom in many Muslim-majority countries.
Focusing on Reception over Transmission
If Edward Said and His sympathizers were correct about missionaries,one would think that decolonization would have coincided with massive, voluntary de-Christianization. of course, this has not happened - just the opposite in fact. Christianity is growing in the 'Global South', as scholars such as Philip Jenkins, Peter Berger, Dana Robert, Todd Johnson and Lamin Sanneh have long shown. the share of Christians worldwide who live in sub-Saharan Africa is expected to increase dramatically between now and 2060, from 26% to 42%, due to high fertility in the region. in sheer numerical terms, Africa has already nearly eclipsed Latin America as the global region with the most Christians. China and India are poised, too, to witness significant growth in their Christian populations in the coming decades.
except for isolated pockets, the Western academy has not seriously reckoned with the changes afoot. Yale Divinity School's (late)Lamin Sanneh helpfully explains that European and American scholars too often focus on the agents of imperialism, including missionaries. in this 'elite discourse', one finds much that corroborates Said's outlook. but if the focus shifts to how non-Western peoples Received the Christian message and Translated it into their own cultural realities, a very different picture emerges.
these facts, observes Sanneh, have 'all but slipped from scholarly consciousness, in large part because attention was directed to the priority of foreign transmission rather than local reception; since transmission focused on organizing the missionary effort in Europe and North America, attention shifted there rather than to the local setting'. such a focus, he continues, enforces the image of missionaries as 'the earnest journeymen of imperialism'. but eh reality is far more complicated. Sanneh again on the academy's blind spot:
Missions cultivated local sensibility and that greatly complicated the language of colonial control. instead of welcoming this complexity as a boon for scholarship, scholars of missions demurred, reluctant to abandon the claim of foreign mischief and eager to retain their reputation as progressive champions of victims and oppressed groups.
*23 fortunately, outliers (def - the person or thing that lies outside) exist in contemporary scholarship. Jeffrey Cox's Imperial Fault Lines: Christianity and Colonial Power in India, 1818-1940 (Stanford University Press, 2002) incisively complicates the Saidian master narrative. Boston University's Dana Robert and her students have done exceptionally careful work on missions and the global indigenization of Christianity, including her own widely acclaimed Christian Mission: How Christianity Became a World Religion (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)
A Luxury We Can't Afford
several other examples could be adduced. unfortunately these are the exceptions that confirm the rule: the academy at large remains beholden to the post-colonialist master narrative.
again, the narrative is not without insight into the darker aspects of colonialism. but embracing it too sweepingly presents one with a simplistic Manichean outlook, in which Christian missionaries and their legacies, due to associations with Western colonialism, are ipso facto accomplices of evil.
over-reliance on the narrative, furthermore, prevents one from fully grasping what Sanneh calls Christianity's 'post-Western awakening', one of the most remarkable developments in modern world history. more gravely still, it fosters and unconscionable blindness to the fiery ordeal that many Christians the world over now experience.
Ignorance of these realities is a luxury that we and especially they, can no longer afford.
Hunt is on to something. but the problem is not confined to British society. the Western academy at large in North America and Europe, in its thralldom to 'post-colonial theory', has some answering to do.
Since Edward Said's landmark Orientalism ( 1978), study after 'post -colonialist' study has produced a rigid orthodoxy. Colonizers lorded it over the colonized,
20 exploiting them economically, socially and culturally. the 'White Man's Burden', Europe's mission civilisatrice, was a sanctimonious justification for the ruthless suppression of indigenous peoples in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. integral to this outlook is the assumption that Christina missionaries were dupes of colonial power 'imperialism at prayer', according to one scholar. in the 'presuppositions of a Saidian master narrative,' Jeffrey Cox has summed up, missionaries are 'simply, imperialists; if different from other imperialists, it is because they were marginal, or because they were worse'. frequently assigned books such as Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart of Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible, both scathingly critical of Western missions, enforce to unwitting under-graduates the general consensus.
to be sure, this outlook contains considerable truth. colonialism could be a cruel force and missionaries sometimes abetted it. the historical record on this is quite clear. but sweeping theories bout the past usually err not in being wholly wrong, but in reaching farther than their grasp allows. in this case, the role of missionaries and their global legacy today are far more complex than post-colonialist theorists have recognized. what is more, uncritical adherence to the post-colonialist narrative blinds one to the vastly under-reported humanitarian crisis of
Christian persecution, especially of lower-class and minority groups drawn to Christianity during colonial times. the post-colonialist outlook also leaves one at a loss to fathom the post-Western flowering of Christianity taking place today in the erstwhile colonized world.
fortunately in recent years, the academy has also produced several studies that controvert reductive versions of the post-colonialist perspective. these studies deserve a much wider hearing than they currently have.
The Conversionary Protestant Missions
the first is by Robert D. Woodberry of Baylor University, author of 'The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy', published in the American Political Science Review (2012), among the most highly awarded articles in this prestigious journal's history. setting his sights on those who would ignore or contemn missionaries, Woodberry argues that the global activity of 'conversionary Protestants' (CPs) from the late 18th to the early 20th century is a leading cause of the global spread of liberal democracy over against various forms of tyranny and oppression. 'CPs', he argues 'where a crucial catalyst initiating the development and spread of religious liberty;, mass education, mass printing, newspapers, voluntary organizations.
*21 most major colonial reforms and the codification of legal protections for nonwhites'. these innovations in myriad global mission sites studied by Woodberry in turn 'fostered conditions that made stable representative democracy more likely'.
Woodberry stresses the Protestant emphasis on sola scriptura. unlie some past missions that focused on elites, he claims, Protestant ones emphasized popular literacy and education, two key ingredients of civil society and the emergence of liberal democracy;. what is more, in their search for converts, Protestant missionaries regularly reached out to lower-class individuals and despise minorities, such as Dalits ('untouchables') and tribal classes in India. in this respect. writes Woodberry, CPs 'influence class structure by dispersing education to women and the poor, making texts widely available, spawning civil society among non-elites and moderating abuses of power - with demonstrable political consequences'.
for their part, minorities and lower-class individuals were disproportionately attracted to Christian notions of human dignity (imago Dei) and the gospel's emphasis on spiritual equality. as the Apostle Paul put it in Galatians: 'There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus'. Gal. 3.28 as was often true ;in the Roman Empire, conversion to Christianity frequently came to the downtrodden as liberation from age-old structures of ostracism and indignity.
Woodberry's thesis is nuanced. (def - subtle difference or distinction) he is aware that European state churches were often part of the problem. he therefore emphasizes that he is particularly concerned with Conversionary Protestants - the ones the British have tagged as 'Nonconformists'. collectively, they amounted to so many gnats in the face of Empire, as well as being disrupters of indigenous forms of complacency toward the poor and the marginalized. 'In trying to spread their faith, Woodberry summarizes his argument, 'CPs expanded religious liberty, overcame resistance to mass education and printing, fostered civil society, moderated colonial abuses, and dissipated elite power. these conditions laid a foundation for democracy'.
Putting Flesh on Persecution StatisticsProcesses of decolonization after World War II, of course, opened new chapters in the history of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. the withdrawal of colonial powers produced a flurry of new political regimes, subscribing to various forms of self-determination. but in the process, non-elite and minority groups who had converted under colonialism often came to be seen as pariahs, 'contaminated' by past Western influence and hence especially vulnerable to discrimination. this is a significant claim of a more recent study, Under Caesar's Sword: How Christians respond to Persecution (Cambridge University Press, 2018), edited by Daniel Philpott of the University of Notre Dame and Timothy Samuel Shah of Georgetown University.
Under Caesar's Sword recognizes and rues the many forms of global religious persecution that exist today, including those more recently in the news: Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and Uighurs in China.
but a focus on these truly heart-wrenching cases, coupled with the post-colonialist assumption that Christianity is largely an oppressive force in history, obscures the true global reality today. according to Open Doors USA, 211.5 million Christinas (one out of every 12) experience h;high, very high or extreme persecution, with hundreds of deaths each month. the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary puts the figure much higher. in 2009, the International Society for Human Rights, a secular NGO based in Frankfurt, Germany, estimated that 80% of all acts of religious discrimination in the world were directed at Christians. other monitoring groups corroborate these findings; the most conservative figure is 60%. a report of the U. S. State Department shows that Christians face persecution in over 60 countries, while reports from the non-partisan Pew research Center have consistently shown the preponderance of persecution directed against Christians. although a few scholars and journalists have documented the phenomenon, it is not a burning cause for the mainstream media, most human rights organizations, and, not least, the academy, which otherwise bristles with global 'social justice' causes.
Under Caesar's Sword adds flesh and bone to the raw-statistics. Christians in India and Sri Lanka, for example, are perceived as 'foreign' elements in their won countries. they are reminders of colonialism, who compromise the political agendas of Hindu nationalists in India and Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists in Sri Lanka. something similar holds for the Hmong minority in Vietnam and Laos, and for the Kachin people in northern Myanmar, who now face a 'slow genocide', according to a recent article in The Guardian. the difficulties that Christians face in China and
*22 especially in North Korea have been well established, as has the resistance that non-Orthodox Christians face in former Soviet countries.
In Iraq and Syria, Christians are 'on the brink of extinction', according to Kent R. hill, as they are in many places throughout the Middle East. 'The global reputation of Islam is at stake, he pleads - a situation that 'provides incentive for both Muslims and Christians to work together for a ...more peaceful future'. in 1900, Christians made up an estimated 14% of the population in the Middle East; today it is 4%. the spread of militant Islam is also a major problem in post-Soviet central Asia, Indonesia and many African counties - to say nothing of the well-documented Coptic Christians' agonizing plight in Egypt, where church bombings on major Christian holidays have become routine.
Under Caesar's Sword echoes and adds scholarly heft to the findings of 2 other recent books: John R Allen Jr's The Global War on Christians and Paul A. Marshall, Lela Gilbert and Nina Shea's persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians, both published in 2013. given the scale of violence taking place, these authors, too, are at a lost to explain the relative inattention the topic receives in the Western media and academy, although Allen helpfully explains that anti-Christian persecution falls into an unfortunate liminal (def - of, pertaining to situated at the limen (threshold) ) or realm: the topic is 'too Christian' to excite the left and 'too foreign' to excite the right - and simply too many dots need connecting to grasp the scope of the problem.
sadly, even Western Christians regularly miss the big picture. for many, the persecution of Christians is simply too far away and they are consumed by domestic political issues, their own internecine battles and self-inflicted wounds. additionally, for many liberal churches, Allen notes, complaining about the persecution of christians runs against' interfaith correctness'. Liberals do not want to be accused of special pleading and too many embrace the post-colonialist narrative in toto. worries about being regarded as Islamophobic, moreover, stifle those who would soberly point out the appalling record of religious freedom in many Muslim-majority countries.
Focusing on Reception over Transmission
If Edward Said and His sympathizers were correct about missionaries,one would think that decolonization would have coincided with massive, voluntary de-Christianization. of course, this has not happened - just the opposite in fact. Christianity is growing in the 'Global South', as scholars such as Philip Jenkins, Peter Berger, Dana Robert, Todd Johnson and Lamin Sanneh have long shown. the share of Christians worldwide who live in sub-Saharan Africa is expected to increase dramatically between now and 2060, from 26% to 42%, due to high fertility in the region. in sheer numerical terms, Africa has already nearly eclipsed Latin America as the global region with the most Christians. China and India are poised, too, to witness significant growth in their Christian populations in the coming decades.
except for isolated pockets, the Western academy has not seriously reckoned with the changes afoot. Yale Divinity School's (late)Lamin Sanneh helpfully explains that European and American scholars too often focus on the agents of imperialism, including missionaries. in this 'elite discourse', one finds much that corroborates Said's outlook. but if the focus shifts to how non-Western peoples Received the Christian message and Translated it into their own cultural realities, a very different picture emerges.
these facts, observes Sanneh, have 'all but slipped from scholarly consciousness, in large part because attention was directed to the priority of foreign transmission rather than local reception; since transmission focused on organizing the missionary effort in Europe and North America, attention shifted there rather than to the local setting'. such a focus, he continues, enforces the image of missionaries as 'the earnest journeymen of imperialism'. but eh reality is far more complicated. Sanneh again on the academy's blind spot:
Missions cultivated local sensibility and that greatly complicated the language of colonial control. instead of welcoming this complexity as a boon for scholarship, scholars of missions demurred, reluctant to abandon the claim of foreign mischief and eager to retain their reputation as progressive champions of victims and oppressed groups.
*23 fortunately, outliers (def - the person or thing that lies outside) exist in contemporary scholarship. Jeffrey Cox's Imperial Fault Lines: Christianity and Colonial Power in India, 1818-1940 (Stanford University Press, 2002) incisively complicates the Saidian master narrative. Boston University's Dana Robert and her students have done exceptionally careful work on missions and the global indigenization of Christianity, including her own widely acclaimed Christian Mission: How Christianity Became a World Religion (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)
A Luxury We Can't Afford
several other examples could be adduced. unfortunately these are the exceptions that confirm the rule: the academy at large remains beholden to the post-colonialist master narrative.
again, the narrative is not without insight into the darker aspects of colonialism. but embracing it too sweepingly presents one with a simplistic Manichean outlook, in which Christian missionaries and their legacies, due to associations with Western colonialism, are ipso facto accomplices of evil.
over-reliance on the narrative, furthermore, prevents one from fully grasping what Sanneh calls Christianity's 'post-Western awakening', one of the most remarkable developments in modern world history. more gravely still, it fosters and unconscionable blindness to the fiery ordeal that many Christians the world over now experience.
Ignorance of these realities is a luxury that we and especially they, can no longer afford.
Saturday, September 7, 2019
EASY COME, EASY GO: Serve God, and don't worry about the money Andree Seu Peterson, in World magazine, 9.14.2019
in the same month of August, these 2 things happened to me:
I paid $239 to a New Jersey court for the dubious pleasure of holding my cell phone in hand while driving in plain sight of a cruiser.
Second, a Korean woman I don't even remember who knew my late husband and happened to dine with a distant acquaintance, asked said acquaintance about me and ended up writing me a check for $200.
so it was kind of a wash, financially speaking.
If you are of a mind to do any thinking about God's working in your life, what conclusion would you draw?
partly that depends on where you put the 'but' in the sentence, right?
i mean, you can say,'I got a windfall 200 smackers one day in summer - but lost it all on a traffic violation'. or you can say, 'I lost a couple hundred dollars on a traffic ticket - but lost it all on a traffic violation'.
Or you can say, 'I lost a couple hundred dollars on a traffic ticket - but got it mostly back in the form of an out-of-the-blue gift!' it's all in the way you look at things. I guess.
but the 'wash' thing keeps bugging me in some fundamental philosophical way - the way that through 6-plus decades it seems that monetary gains and losses have cancelled each other out on balance. nothing went quite the way I envisioned:
I made sizable stupid money blunders and sizeable unexpected gains. some of those losses were for innocent mistakes and almost all the augmentations were unmerited.
there has been no closely correlated one-to-one correspondence between my wits and my money. the old adage has born out: '
'Easy come, easy go'.
Ben Shapiro chides cultural snowflakes:
Facts don'[t care about your feelings'.
I propose a similar axiom: 'Cash doesn't care about your deservingness'.
Don't worry about money because money isn't worried about you.
Jesus spoke of the fickleness of Lady Lucre this way:
'moth and rust destroy...thieves break in a steal'.
My Great Depression-scarred maternal grandmother was a world-class money worrier and had amassed a fortune in nickels and dimes by her nineties, only to be pressured into handing the whole caboodle over to my father's failing furniture business, which tanked anyway.
how many needs and pleasures did she deny herself and others to make that fortune that took wind in a moment?
when I was a widow (that was a 14 year stretch), and totally unemployable except for writing, for some reason I wasn't worried about money.
and it's a good thing too, because it would have been a waste of perfectly good brain cells:
a total stranger from Texas phoned and said the Lord had put it on his heart to buy me a car. no thank you, I have a car, I said. Hmm, he said, then I'll send you a check.
the next week I got $25,000 in the mail.
I wasn't aware I would need it, but God was.
we may take these boons when Heaven grants them, and be grateful.
My brother and his wife were subsisting on bread and yogurt and faith during seminary and missionary support-raising days.
then his father-in- law uncharacteristically phoned to say he bought them a Citroen CX, which unbeknowst to my brother was in 1983 one of Citroen's most expensive models (copied by Rolls Royce).
Later, at a cafe in Ales, France, the father-in-law joked with a couple of his buddies: 'So how do you like that?
I bust my butt all year working at the restaurant, yet I drive that crummy little jalopy, whereas my son-in-law here, the prayer merchant, drives that big fancy Citroen!
there's something wrong here!'
'Not at all, said my brother. 'It's quite normal'.
'What do you mean, it's normal? the elder asked.
I reached into my handbag and pulled out my pocket Bible and turned to the book of Ecclesiastes... I read out loud:
'To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness; but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who please God'. (Ecclesiastes 2.26) (Marc Maillloux, God Still Loves the French).
Seek first the kingdom of God and He will take care of you. it's the only thing you can rely on.
I paid $239 to a New Jersey court for the dubious pleasure of holding my cell phone in hand while driving in plain sight of a cruiser.
Second, a Korean woman I don't even remember who knew my late husband and happened to dine with a distant acquaintance, asked said acquaintance about me and ended up writing me a check for $200.
so it was kind of a wash, financially speaking.
If you are of a mind to do any thinking about God's working in your life, what conclusion would you draw?
partly that depends on where you put the 'but' in the sentence, right?
i mean, you can say,'I got a windfall 200 smackers one day in summer - but lost it all on a traffic violation'. or you can say, 'I lost a couple hundred dollars on a traffic ticket - but lost it all on a traffic violation'.
Or you can say, 'I lost a couple hundred dollars on a traffic ticket - but got it mostly back in the form of an out-of-the-blue gift!' it's all in the way you look at things. I guess.
but the 'wash' thing keeps bugging me in some fundamental philosophical way - the way that through 6-plus decades it seems that monetary gains and losses have cancelled each other out on balance. nothing went quite the way I envisioned:
I made sizable stupid money blunders and sizeable unexpected gains. some of those losses were for innocent mistakes and almost all the augmentations were unmerited.
there has been no closely correlated one-to-one correspondence between my wits and my money. the old adage has born out: '
'Easy come, easy go'.
Ben Shapiro chides cultural snowflakes:
Facts don'[t care about your feelings'.
I propose a similar axiom: 'Cash doesn't care about your deservingness'.
Don't worry about money because money isn't worried about you.
Jesus spoke of the fickleness of Lady Lucre this way:
'moth and rust destroy...thieves break in a steal'.
My Great Depression-scarred maternal grandmother was a world-class money worrier and had amassed a fortune in nickels and dimes by her nineties, only to be pressured into handing the whole caboodle over to my father's failing furniture business, which tanked anyway.
how many needs and pleasures did she deny herself and others to make that fortune that took wind in a moment?
when I was a widow (that was a 14 year stretch), and totally unemployable except for writing, for some reason I wasn't worried about money.
and it's a good thing too, because it would have been a waste of perfectly good brain cells:
a total stranger from Texas phoned and said the Lord had put it on his heart to buy me a car. no thank you, I have a car, I said. Hmm, he said, then I'll send you a check.
the next week I got $25,000 in the mail.
I wasn't aware I would need it, but God was.
we may take these boons when Heaven grants them, and be grateful.
My brother and his wife were subsisting on bread and yogurt and faith during seminary and missionary support-raising days.
then his father-in- law uncharacteristically phoned to say he bought them a Citroen CX, which unbeknowst to my brother was in 1983 one of Citroen's most expensive models (copied by Rolls Royce).
Later, at a cafe in Ales, France, the father-in-law joked with a couple of his buddies: 'So how do you like that?
I bust my butt all year working at the restaurant, yet I drive that crummy little jalopy, whereas my son-in-law here, the prayer merchant, drives that big fancy Citroen!
there's something wrong here!'
'Not at all, said my brother. 'It's quite normal'.
'What do you mean, it's normal? the elder asked.
I reached into my handbag and pulled out my pocket Bible and turned to the book of Ecclesiastes... I read out loud:
'To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness; but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who please God'. (Ecclesiastes 2.26) (Marc Maillloux, God Still Loves the French).
Seek first the kingdom of God and He will take care of you. it's the only thing you can rely on.
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