Wednesday, August 27, 2008

People of faith challenge Democrats

Yahoo News

Donald Miller, a 37-year-old author from Portland, Ore., is little known to most voters but revered among many young evangelicals for his best-selling spiritual memoir "Blue Like Jazz

Miller was a loyal Republican but said he left the party, in large part, because he thought Republicans pandered to evangelicals on abortion and gay marriage to win votes without accomplishing much.

Democrats are "reaching out to us, and I'm not naive as to why — they want our votes," said Miller, who gave a two-minute prayer to close Monday's convention session. "But they won't get them and keep them unless they continue the momentum of adopting policies that promote the sanctity of life."

Miller cited progress along those lines — including on abortion. His other priorities — poverty, global warming — also reflect a widening evangelical agenda that might benefit Democrats, if not in large numbers in November then in future elections. Miller also said he'd leave the party if some Democrats keep mocking people of faith…

…That freedom also was evident when Bishop Charles Blake, head of the 6 million-member Church of God in Christ, spoke of "disregard for the lives of the unborn." Blake, who called himself a pro-life Democrat, challenged Obama to adopt policies to reduce abortions and chided Republicans for not caring about "those who have been born."

Monday, August 25, 2008

Newbigin - Chapter 1, Dogma and Doubt in a Pluralist Culture

Newbigin begins the chapter by talking about his experience as a cross-cultural missionary in India… reading the Upanishads and the Gospels in the Ramakrishna Mission, India is a religiously plural society with the freedom to follow whatever religious path one chooses. Jesus was viewed as one of many great teachers (Newbigin: 3).

Newbigin discusses the changes that secularism and pluralism has wrought in the role of religious faith. Religious truths came not to be regarded as facts in the same way as scientific facts. Only what can stand up under the critical examination of the modern scientific method can be taught as fact, as public truth: the rest is dogma. “Dogma” derives from dokien, “to seem.” It is the word used to designate that which seemed good to a competent authority (Newbigin: 5).

The New Testament repeatedly affirms a radical contradiction between the apostolic message and the wisdom of the world. To subject every alleged truth to the critical scrutiny of reason is, in our culture as in the Greek world of Paul’s day, the mark of a mature person (Newbigin: 6).

The principle of pluralism is not universally accepted in our culture. There is a sharp distinction between a world we call “values” and a world of what we call “facts.” In the former world we are pluralists; values are a matter of personal choice. As long as the church is content to offer its beliefs modestly as simply one of the many brands available in the ideological supermarket, no offense is taken. But the affirmation that the truth revealed in the gospel ought to govern public life is offensive (Newbigin: 7).

If we are to meet secular criticism, if we are to be faithful bearers of the message entrusted to us, we need to pay attention to four points:

One: Part of the reason for the rejection of dogma is that it has been entangled with coercion, with political power, and with the denial of freedom of thought and conscience. When coercion of any kind is used in the interests of the Christian message, the message itself is corrupted.

Two: We do not defend the Christian message by domesticating it within the reigning plausibility structure. That was the great mistake of the eighteenth-century defenses of the reasonableness of Christianity (Newbigin: 10). That the crucified Jesus was raised from death to be first fruits of a new creation is—in the proper sense—dogma (Newbigin: 12).

Three: It is essential that we recognize that to be witnesses, does not mean to be possessors of all truth. It means to be placed on a path by following which we are led toward truth. There is indeed a proper place for agnosticism in the Christian life. There is a true sense in which we are—with others—seekers after the truth. The apophatic tradition in theology has always insisted on the fact that no human image can grasp the full reality of God (Newbigin: 12).

Four: The dogma, the thing given for our acceptance in faith is not a set of timeless propositions: it is a story. Moreover it is a story that is not yet finished, a story in which we are still awaiting the end when all becomes clear. The 18th century apologists wee wide of the mark at this point: The Christian religion which they sought to defend was a system of timeless metaphysical truths about God, nature and man. Any valid defense of the Christian faith, I believe, must take a quite different route. It is to be primarily understood as an interpretation of the story—the human story set within the story of nature. Every understanding of the human story must rest on a faith commitment—for we do not yet see the end of the story (Newbigin: 13).

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


Newbigin, Lesslie. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Cambridge and Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989.

BIO

Lesslie Newbigin was British missionary and theologian born in 1909 and educated in a Quaker school. He was converted to faith in Christ in Queen’s college at Cambridge in 1928 and began to work with the Student Christian Movement. He was ordained in 1936 by the Church of Scotland and was sent to Madras, India as a Presbyterian missionary. He eventually became Bishop of Madras in the fledgling Church of South India, an ecumenical group of Protestants (Wikipedia). After his retirement in 1974, he moved to Birmingham and became a pastor and a lecturer at a nearby college. He died in 1998.


From Wikipedia:
“He is remembered especially for the period of his life when he had returned to England from his long missionary service and travels and tried to communicate the need for the church to take the Gospel anew to the post-Christian Western culture, which he believed had unwisely accepted the notions of objectivity and neutrality developed during the Enlightenment. It was during this time that he wrote two of his most important works, Foolishness to the Greeks (1986) and The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (1989)”


Christopher Duraisingh from the forward:

“Newbigin has the courage to take up a position and the conviction to defend it against what sometimes appear to be impossible odds. What he has to say—and says with refreshing clarity—comes out of his background of long pastoral experience, missionary commitment, ecumenical vision, and unwavering confidence in the gospel."

Here is a passage on page 9 that adjusted some of my own thinking:
“In the famous story of the blind men and the elephant, so often quoted in the interests of religious agnosticism, the real point of the story is constantly overlooked. The story is told from the point of view of the king and his courtiers, who are not blind but can see that the blind men are unable to grasp the full reality of the elephant and are only able to get hold of part of the truth. The story is constantly told to neutralize the affirmation of the great religions, to suggest that they learn humility and recognize that none of them can have more than one aspect of the truth. But, of course, the real point of the story is exactly the opposite. If the king were also blind there would be no story. The story is told by the king, and it is the immensely arrogant claim of one who sees the full truth which all the world’s religions are only groping after. It embodies the claim to know the full reality which relativizes all the claims of the religions and philosophies.”

ok -- my new copy of McLaren just arrived as I was writing this ...I'll hit it this week.