Monday, August 20, 2007

The Pioneering Protestants

Abstract:
According to cross-national research, Protestantism has significantly contributed to global democratization. While Protestantism does not inevitably cause democratization, it often generates social dynamics that favor it. Some of the most important of these are:

1) the rise of religious pluralism;
2) the development of democratic theory and practice;
3) the development of civil society;
4) the spread of mass education;
5) printing and the origins of a public sphere;
6) the reduction of corruption; and
7) economic development.

The article explores how Protestant groups, including Protestant missionaries, have promoted these dynamics in the past. It also argues that contemporary Protestant movements -- particularly Pentecostalism -- are continuing to do so in the present, though with less dramatic results.

Excerpt:
"The authority of Christ," wrote the Scots Calvinist divine William Graham in 1768, "removes all civil distinctions, and all superiority founded upon such distinctions, in his kingdom. All are upon a level equally, as they shall soon be before the awful tribunal of the great Judge." This stirring fusion of theology, eschatology, and politics not only characterizes Scottish Calvinism but also says much about the relationship between Protestantism and democracy. As an egalitarian religion profoundly opposed to hierarchy, Protestant Christianity would seem to enjoy a powerful affinity with democracy.

If the affinity between Protestantism and democracy is powerful, however, it is not automatic or uncomplicated. History and social science show that Protestantism has contributed to the development of democracy, yet they also show that the connections are often far from straightforward. After all, Protestantism has at times countenanced the establishment of brutal regimes and antidemocratic movements: The "righteous" dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell enjoyed the overwhelming support of English Puritans; the Dutch Reform Church of South Africa theologized in defense of apartheid; and while some German Protestants (especially in the Confessing Church) fought Nazism, many others gave Hitler their warm backing. Recently, Protestant evangelicals in the Third World have lent their support to "godly" authoritarians such as former Zambian president Frederick Chiluba.

In other words, opposing hierarchy and liberating individual consciences in religion does not automatically make one a foe of authoritarianism and a friend of liberty in politics. ... We argue that there is nonetheless compelling cross-national evidence of a causal association between Protestantism and democracy. At the same time, we emphasize that the association is not direct or automatic but mediated and contingent.

LINK: http://www.eppc.org/publications/pubID.2072/pub_detail.asp

The Pioneering Protestants By Timothy Samuel Shah, Robert D. Woodberry Posted: Friday, April 16, 2004

ARTICLE Journal of Democracy Publication Date: April 15, 2004

Saturday, August 18, 2007

This is a statement on the limitations of democracy taken from a 1981 paper on Christianity and Democracy issued by the Institute for Religion and Democracy. IRB was formed by a group of Roman Catholics and Protestants.

The paper can be accessed in FIRST THINGS archives at the following link:

http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9610/articles/documentation.html.

"We readily acknowledge that democratic governance is unsatisfactory. Everything short of the consummation of the rule of Christ is unsatisfactory. For Christians, it is precisely the merit of democracy that it reminds us of this truth and sustains the possibility of humane government in a necessarily unsatisfactory world. There are tensions and contradictions within democratic theory and practice. Especially problematic are relationships between the individual and the community, between formal process and substantive purpose, between popular participation and power elites. We do not deny these and other problems. Rather, believing that democratic theory and practice is still developing, we would encourage in the churches a lively examination of the problems and their possible resolutions. Such an examination only begins with the basic outline of democratic governance set forth in this statement and should be informed by the maxim framed by Reinhold Niebuhr: "Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."'

Friday, August 17, 2007

Why I believe in Democracy

Recently there was a pejorative (and undoubtedly playful) reference in one of our blogs to egalitarianism and democracy in local congregations. This motivated me to go back and restudy some of my material on Christianity and democracy.

I believe, along with Weber and Hegel, in the importance of ideas – ideas of cultural consequences. Weber showed in 1906 how ascetic Protestantism, particularly Calvinism, helped facilitate the rise of capitalism (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1958). British sociologist David Martin (Tongues of Fire, 1990) carries Weber’s analysis further in his study of industrializing England and the Weslyan Methodists. Some scholars are analyzing how the current Pentecostal explosion will alter the political and economic cultures of Latin America over time. Someone should be studying the same phenomenon in China.

The idea is that political culture of a nation is formed from pervasive religious beliefs over historical time. This political culture greatly influences the political structure of the nation and the corresponding values help determine the choices of the actors within this structure.

One of the reasons why the United States has had a successful democracy and a “democratic” political culture was the inability of any one state “Church” to establish its political “theocratic” preeminence in 1776. Roman Catholics in Maryland, Anglicans in Virginia, Puritans and Congregationalists in New England and Baptists in Rhode Island were forced to concede to separation of church and state because none of them had sufficient power to establish their own religious monopoly in the newly formed United States (not that they didn’t desire it). This religious “pluralism” forced the churches into a position of mutual respect, tolerance for opposition and the willingness to dialogue through the political process – all prerequisites for democracy. One might say, they were forced to take seriously Jesus’ instruction to “love their enemies.

In our church circles, it has always been fashionable to say “the kingdom of God is not a democracy.” Because we recognize Jesus is Lord, we have tended to also emphasize sovereign authority and to some extend dismiss democracy as a crass form of government of the people.

The more I study political cultures and belief systems, democratic and authoritarian, the more disturbing I find our easy dismissal of democratic values. The tendency among conservative Christians toward fundamentalist authoritarianism is a sign of our times, a reaction to the breakdown of modernity. Karen Armstrong, in The Battle for God, traces the rise of Jewish, Christian and Islamic fundamentalism and shows that all three stem from the same dynamics – the desire for control and certainty in the face of accelerating cultural and technological change.

I hope we will stop casually dismissing democracy and take a serious look at the congruency between the teachings of Jesus (especially the Sermon on the Mount) and democratic values of respect for the other, tolerance of opposition, willingness to limit and share power and the protection of human rights.

I have posted for discussion a document issued in 1981 by the Institute on Religion and Democracy on our Covenant Thinklings google discussion group, called Christianity and Democracy.

http://groups.google.com/group/covthinklings/

(go to the "FILE" link and select First Things Christianity and Democracy.doc)

It can also be accessed on-line at:

http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9610/articles/documentation.html.

Our ideas have long term consequences. Do we really want to dismiss democratic values in the name of authoritarian theocracy? Do we really want to give some religious hierarchy the power to determine the Will of God for State and Society? Lets think this over. That is exactly what we are opposing in the Middle East and particularly in Iran.

j

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Name Change

hey guys! I am back in Miami. Thanks to all of your kind and encouraging responses, and your thoughtful feedback on this issue of organic church planting, I decided not to delete my document, erase my blog, burn all of the jump drive back-ups, use the "F" word, and get a job as a truck driver for UPS. Instead, I am going to change the name of my paper: from "Organic Church Planting" to ....something like.... "Multiplying Communities of Faith" or "Planting and Nourishing Kingdom Communites Through Biotic Principles" or ..... feel free to offer me a suggestion...maybe... "99 ways to beat your head against the wall while you grow old and senile" (Just kidding -- maybe I should have posted this on my humor blog).

I am most definitely going to permanently drop the word "organic." -- too much baggage. I'll probably also drop the English word "church" for the same reason...although I still like the word "planting."

My thinking has continued to evolve rather radically since I wrote the "Organic Church Planting" paper in 2003, so, why keep pressing for something that I no longer exactly believe in myself the same way as I did in 2003?

On another note, I have been thinking, and I have decided that I am not terribly interested in ecclesiology apart from a clear connection to missional mindset (misiology if you will). It seems a little static to me without mission (especially mission in the U.S.A.). Or to put it another way, without living reproduction and multiplication, what is the point in keeping the body preserved and healthy? Mere survival?

By-the-way, if you have not read the passage below by Watchman Nee from The Normal Christian Church Life, I highly encourage you to take a few moments and read through it, even if for no other reason to better argue with me in the blogs and email. I think it is quite profound, and I regret that I did not follow his advice more closely over my last 20 years of church planting.