2. You Are Here
Sample Chapter
After Madalyn Murray O’Hair disappeared, outspoken atheism seemed to go into hibernation. This was a loss for all of us, because atheists are people who take God seriously enough to push off from him, which amounts to a form of contact. We have much to learn from atheists if we have ears to hear.
Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens represent the return of outspoken atheism to the public square. (1) They make the case that religion is the greatest source of evil in the world and that we’d all be better off if we imagined and then brought into being a world without it. Their voice is amplified by the vengeful resurgence of religious intolerance expressed in religious warfare. No doubt about it, religious zeal is one of the great threats to human welfare these days.
The more you get to know any religion with a long history, including Christianity, the more you become aware of the extremes it produces: extreme good and extreme evil. One of the most understandable reasons for avoiding religion altogether is the feeling that we’d all be better off in the balanced middle zone occupied by less aggressive attempts at getting things right at any cost, including the well-being of people.
Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens highlight the dissonance any thoughtful person feels in the contemporary religious climate about the pursuit of God on the Jesus path. Yet Jesus remains one of the most studied figures in history. His words continue to haunt us, whether we count ourselves among those who believe, those who doubt, or those who muddle their way forward, informed by both ways of seeing. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’” (Matt. 5:43–44). Where did such words come from?
On a pilgrimage, only one step matters—the next one. But taking the next step requires sorting through a tangled web of impressions. To proceed, we do well to consider where it is we’re coming from and what we might be bringing with us.
You Are Here
Whether or not we have a settled religious identity, we all have a collective religious history, even if a distant one. For all the complaining or rejoicing we may do about how secular our society has become, the fact remains that we are a very religious society. Belief in a personal God remains high. A recent survey reported that 47 percent of American non-Christians believe in the virgin birth. (2) Many of us have a parent or grandparent or close friend whom we consider to be devout. Our view of God is shaped by our religious history, so it’s worth locating ourselves on the map, so to speak. A pilgrimage always begins where we are.
The following graphic attempts to simplify the incredibly diverse field of religion to something we can consider in a kind of shorthand. It is a handy tool, which means it reduces a complex reality into manageable categories. The reduction process squeezes out important aspects of reality. But if it’s not handy, it’s not helpful.
Big Picture Landscape
Obviously, this graphic has a Western slant; Judaism has a much smaller number of adherents than are represented by these quadrants. Yet the religion of Israel has been so influential in Western history as to justify its own quadrant. The Eastern religions quadrant represents a kind of “other” category that includes practices as diverse as Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Shintoism, animism, and practices grouped together under New Age.
Christianity On Pilgrimage
This being a book about Jesus brand spirituality, we are concerned with the Christianity quadrant, (3) which can be described with its own set of four. But first, we’ll sprint through more than two millennia of Christian history to help us get our bearings along the axis of time. This exercise reveals that Christianity itself has been on a pilgrimage. Throughout history, the Jesus movement has morphed into new forms, even as older forms remain and adapt.
In the first generation, Jesus left behind a messianic movement among the Jewish people. Within decades, Christianity was on its way to becoming a global religion; it rapidly became the Gentile (non-Jewish) path to full inclusion with the God of Abraham. This new form of faith was facilitated by the road system of the Roman Empire because religion happens in the world, and changes in the world shape it powerfully. (4) Like all major shifts, this emerging faith was not without struggle—the anguish and controversy of its bloody struggle to survive are all over the pages of the New Testament.
In the fourth century, Christianity faced oneof its biggest tests: success. The Roman Empire embraced Christian faith as the state sanctioned religion. This in turn gave birth to the monastic movement as devout individuals sought a more spiritually enlivened form of faith removed from the trappings of the empire.
In the eleventh century, there was a split between Eastern and Western expressions of Christianity as Eastern Orthodoxy parted ways with the dominant Western form headquartered in Rome.
By the sixteenth century, the faith went through another massive shift—a reformation in reaction against Roman Catholicism that became known as Protestantism. This new form was facilitated by the printing press. It too was not without struggle, even bloodshed.
Twentieth-Century Ferment
Let’s take a closer look at the twentieth century to understand more about the movements that shape the religious landscape today.
Christian fundamentalism was an early response to the juggernaut of modern science and rationalism that still influences the landscape today. Fundamentalism is an attempt to reassert a Christian worldview based on a literalist reading of the Bible, profiled against what were viewed as modern incursions toxic to faith. It was a movement that focused a great deal on orthodoxy, or correct belief, as defined by its leaders at the time. Other Christians responded to the rise of modernity by adapting to its more secular worldview; this was especially the case in the historic mainline denominations. Often, denominations were split by these divergent responses.
While this was under way, another movement broke out called Pentecostalism, marked by “speaking in tongues”(5) and a renewed emphasis on spiritual experience. It valued responsiveness to the impulse of the Spirit, whether that meant elevating the role of women or breaking down racial barriers—two marks of early Pentecostalism. In time, lacking a theology of its own and rejected by much of the established church, Pentecostals relied on the strict biblical system of fundamentalism, (6) even though this originally left little room for the Pentecostal emphasis on the Spirit and subjective experience. Pentecostalism remained a movement on the social fringe in the first half of the twentieth century, leaving the traditional churches of the Protestant Reformation and Catholicism untouched by its fervent appeal to experience. Much of Christian religion in the middle and upper classes lacked a vocabulary for spiritual experience. (7) Matters of the head ruled over matters of the heart, whether through a carefully reasoned fundamentalism or the increasing accommodation to the modern secular values found in more liberal, mainline churches.
Eventually, the Pentecostal movement began to spread beyond the lower socioeconomic class, bringing renewal movements to the mainline denominations, often referred to as Charismatic Renewal. (8) In the mid-twentieth century, evangelicalism also began to separate from its more sectarian sibling, fundamentalism. Modern evangelicalism as an American phenomenon formed in the wake of popular evangelist Billy Graham.
As noted earlier, my adult faith connection occurred in the context of something called the Jesus Movement, a religious movement of the late 1960s counterculture, which was marked by anti-institutionalism and the somewhat delusional view by young members of the baby boomer generation that we were discovering Jesus for the first time apart from all the “dead churchianity” that had gone before. In time, this movement was absorbed into more established forms of evangelicalism and fundamentalism, adapting to the theology and view of Scripture in those settings.
The rise of the “religious right” in the 1980s is another significant development. This was a diverse movement shaped by political conservatism, including theologically conservative Roman Catholics, evangelicals, and fundamentalists, energized politically by the legalization of abortion on demand. This political movement has been strongest in rural and suburban communities. It should be remembered that many other Christians throughout the century leaned in the direction of liberalism.
Amid the great religious ferment of the twentieth century, Christian practice became much more diverse; institutional boundaries became less significant. A given denomination might have constituencies that leaned fundamentalist, while others leaned toward a loosening of historic faith, and still others explored a renewed interest in spiritual experience. These trends led to splits, mergers, and entirely new denominations. While Christianity as a whole held steady in the United States—some denominations losing members, others gaining—it underwent explosive growth in the developing world with significant gains in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. (9)
The robust and often dicey pilgrimage continues to this day. With significant developments like the Internet, where information exchange takes place at the speed of light, the resurgence of religious warfare, and a gathering global environmental crisis, it’s likely we are in the midst of a new shift that will be recognized clearly only after it has taken place.
Which brings us to the landscape of Christianity today . . .
The Quadrants Of Christianity
The liturgical quadrant represents those church communions for whom the proper and faith-filled celebration of the liturgy (a prescribed order of service with heavy reliance on rituals, symbols, robes, candles, and set prayer) is of central importance. These communions include Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and some forms of Lutheranism, representing the longest-standing forms of Christian faith.
The social justice quadrant includes churches that preach what used to be called the “social gospel” (10) for its emphasis on social justice. Central to this identity is a concern to redress injustices like racism, sexism, and poverty; these are believed to be sustained by deeply imbedded social structures. Included are United Methodists, some Presbyterians, and “peace churches” such as Mennonites and Quakers. The African American churches that fueled the American civil rights movement were a powerful presence in the social justice quadrant.
The evangelical (11) quadrant represents those for whom the Bible, the “born again” conversion experience, and the preaching of the gospel are central identifiers. Less clearly defined than the groups within the liturgical and social justice quadrants, evangelicals include Baptists, Nazarenes, and Free Methodists, to name a few. Churches that lean toward a strictly literal interpretation of the Bible and a more sectarian approach are called fundamentalist. Both evangelical and fundamentalist churches are represented in this quadrant.
The renewalist (12) quadrant is arguably a subset of evangelical, except that its sudden eruption and rapid expansion set it apart as a distinct expression. (13) It is marked by a renewed interest, one might even say craving, for experience. Pentecostalism is the major form, including the Church of God in Christ and the Assemblies of God. Charismatic Renewal, a movement crossing many traditional denominational boundaries, affected existing churches and formed new ones of its own. (14)
You Are Here: Family Background
Familiarity with this landscape helps orient us to the starting point of our own pilgrimage. Most of us base our impressions of Christianity—and by association, its founder—on a small sample of the landscape. The big picture provides a broader perspective for our own experience, offering options we might not have known about otherwise. If you grew up with the impression that Christianity is a religion of the privileged, it’s helpful to know that Pentecostalism thrives among the underprivileged. If you are familiar with a faith tradition that cares little for social justice, it’s enlightening to realize that this is not a characteristic of Christianity as a whole.
Most people have a family history that informs their perspective on Christianity. For example, my maternal grandmother grew up in the Church of England. My family tree has roots in the liturgical quadrant. My grandmother was raised in the Victorian era, when matters of religion were important, but not for polite conversation. In my house growing up, I can’t recall reading bedtime Bible stories or praying at meals (though I’m sure this happened occasionally), and certainly not engaging in frank conversation about religious matters.
My father, whom I remember as a much less devout Episcopalian than my mother during my formative years, was the son of a man who was the “prodigal” in a very strict Plymouth Brethren family. This church tradition, rooted squarely in the fundamentalist section of the evangelical quadrant, came up with the theology behind the wildly popular Left Behind series of books about the end of the world. (15)
The relatives I’ve met on this side of the family are some of the kindest souls I know. My great-uncle Stuart prayed for me daily since my birth. I consider him a bona fide saint. His family loved my father as if he were a son.
Yet the strict, fundamentalist form of faith that surrounded my grandfather while he was battling alcoholism didn’t offer him much help. At the time, Alcoholics Anonymous was just hitting the scene, in large part because the church hadn’t learned how to help addicts. From what I can surmise, the form of faith my grandfather rejected may have been heavy on finger pointing and light on burden lifting. No one sat me down to explain this; it’s simply my best reconstruction from bits and pieces of family lore. This left my grandfather much to react against, which I’m guessing he passed on to his son, who in turn, I’m quite sure, passed it on to me. I have a visceral and angry reaction against any faith that starts to look moralistic or overly rule based.
I note this reaction with irony, because in my early years as a Christian, I slipped into just that kind of religious practice. The Jesus Movement was free-form but vigorous Christianity. I was quite sure I knew better than the establishment honoring, institutionally ossified faith of my Episcopal upbringing. For all its attention to liturgical detail, to my way of thinking it was a weak-kneed faith that was getting soft in the head.
Adolescents who get religion slip easily into moral superiority. I was no exception. I had a binary faith—in my perspective, I was either “on” or “off.” The rules for holy living; the roles for men and women; the right way of thinking, feeling, and acting in nearly every situation were easy to discern and to be embraced with certainty. There’s much about those early years of faith that I treasure. There’s also plenty over which I cringe.
So I’ve been shaped by both influences—my mother’s quiet Episcopalian faith and my father’s identification as a religious outsider, simultaneously drawn to the vigorous faith of his forefathers and put off by its shortcomings. I’ve absorbed and reacted against each of these influences. Pilgrims always start somewhere, and that place travels with them wherever they go.
As you consider these four quadrants of Christianity, you might use them to better understand the impressions of Christianity that you inherited by virtue of your upbringing. It’s the first step in discerning which direction might take you one step closer to knowing Jesus of Nazareth better.
What You’ve Added Along The Way
Moving from what you started with, you can now trace your own spiritual pilgrimage, such as it is, through this landscape. Mine involved forays into at least three of the quadrants. Starting off in the liturgical quadrant (the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer just north of Detroit), I fancied myself an atheist after reading the works of Ayn Rand as a fourteen-year-old. This took me off the landscape for awhile, but it didn’t erase my history there.
After getting married shortly after high school graduation for the reason most people get married before planning to (let the reader understand), my wife and I found ourselves in great duress as parents who had plenty of growing up to do. We responded to the love and witness of a young couple who were considered “Jesus People,” rooted loosely in the evangelical quadrant. I can remember my dismay shortly after coming to faith at seeing the Time magazine cover in June 1971 with a Peter Max drawing of Jesus to depict the Jesus People movement. I had no intention of joining a movement—thought I was one of an elite handful of people discovering Jesus for the first time.
One of our earliest mentors in faith was a graduate student at the University of Michigan who grew up in India as a member of the Ceylon Pentecostal Mission. Living in Ann Arbor at the time, we eventually developed close ties to a Christian community that was predominantly Roman Catholic and a center for what became the Catholic charismatic renewal, a form of Pentecostal influence on Catholicism. Later, we became active in a new church movement called Vineyard, which is known for blending influences from the Pentecostal and evangelical quadrants. (16) Ours is the only church in the Vineyard association of churches whose pastor at one point received a blessing with the laying on of hands by then bishop, now Cardinal Cordes, a personal assistant at the time to His Holiness John Paul II. My next-door neighbor is Ralph Martin, one of the leading lay Catholic evangelists in the world. Sometimes I feel like a very minor Forrest Gump in the Christian landscape. Perhaps you can see why the image of pilgrimage resonates with me.
New Connections Reshaping The Landscape
As you can see from this whirlwind tour, there is a trend in the process of reshaping Christianity in the twenty-first century. From the perspective of this graphic, it could be called border blending. It looks something like this:
Wherever you look these days, there is blending going on. (17) People from liturgical traditions are influenced by charismatics, who are influenced by Pentecostals. Evangelicals are discovering fixed-hour prayer, a practice of monastic communities in the liturgical portion of the quadrant. Younger evangelicals often contend that rampant abortion and sexual promiscuity are not the only social evils; AIDS, poverty, and care for the environment are moral issues too.
The swirl of influences can be invigorating and sometimes dizzying. Many African American churches have blended social justice with evangelical and charismatic sensibilities. Churches that have never blended these before are now doing so. My friend James Rhodenhiser, rector of St. Clare of Assisi Episcopal Church (a liturgical church with a long history of social justice concern), began his pastorate there by dancing charismatically at his ordination and then launching a first ever Bible study program that drew eighty eager participants for serious weekly Bible study. The times are definitely changing.
Corner Dwelling Continues
Not that there aren’t corner dwellers in this landscape . . . Corner dwellers are those convinced that their camp has an exclusive understanding of the truth and merits the God-awarded corner on the market. Within the liturgical quadrant, you can find those who believe that church unity will happen only when everyone returns to headquarters as the binding authority of faith and practice. Within the evangelical quadrant are plenty of people who see unity as a simple matter of adopting their literal reading of the Bible, which is patently, obviously, and unassailably correct in all its particulars. And so on and so forth.
In the old days, we were all corner dwellers because we lived and did our religion in cultural-intellectual-geographic ghettos, unaware of any other approaches. In my neighborhood growing up, you knew who the Catholics were because they were a minority, and you didn’t attend their church because your clergyperson warned you against such things. I’ve met Catholics on the East Coast who tell me they only knew of Protestants by reputation.
But mass media, increased mobility, loosening social ties, and a more cooperative attitude have broken that down. Enter the Internet. Now, to be a corner dweller, you really have to work at it; you have to intentionally create and sustain a group-think ethos through social control mechanisms, contempt for others, and a defensive mentality. Even then, your child is only a mouse click away from the rest of the world.
The Tug Toward The Center
The thrust of history, and, I believe, the dynamic of the Spirit, is not toward the corners but toward the interior borders and, ultimately, toward the center. The center is the heart of the matter, the matter being God as understood and experienced and revealed by Jesus.
As pilgrims scattered throughout this landscape take one step closer to knowing, one step closer to the center, new connections are taking place between people; new information is being exchanged; new expressions of faith are emerging.
The center is not a lowest-common-denominator spirituality. It is a recombinant spirituality that is yearning, growing, moving toward a new synthesis or, more likely, several versions of a new synthesis, converging toward a center that has always been there but is rarely occupied.
The conviction that one quadrant or the other owns the trademark on the truth is disintegrating as it encounters the hard rock of reality. The move toward the center is often a step from a pilgrims’ point of origin in one quadrant toward treasures located in higher concentrations in a neighboring quadrant. There’s much to be learned by the curious, open-minded, and discerning traveler in this landscape.
Different aspects of the active dimension of Jesus brand spirituality can be found in the social justice, evangelical, and renewalist quadrants. The social justice quadrant encourages social activism aimed at changing social structures. Nevertheless, the evangelical and renewalist quadrants, focused more heavily on personal piety, have historically fueled major social movements like the abolition of slavery. The kind of change that spreads from person to person until a tipping point is reached is often fueled in these quadrants.
Many of the contemplative treasures of faith are imbedded in the liturgical quadrant, especially in the monastic tradition. At first glance, the liturgical emphasis on set prayers and ritual seems a far cry from the experiential delights of the renewalist quadrant. Dig a little deeper, though, and you find some wild-eyed mystics in those monasteries having dreams and visions and ecstasies that are not far removed from Pentecostalism.
The biblical treasures, long emphasized in the evangelical quadrant, are finding fresh expressions in other quadrants as evangelical and Pentecostal scholars gain greater acceptance across tribal boundaries. (18) Perhaps the most influential scholar in the field of historical Jesus studies is the Anglican bishop N. T. Wright, who is highly regarded by many younger evangelicals.
The communal treasures find different expressions throughout this landscape. The social justice quadrant is inspired by the search for a beloved community of racial and inclusive harmony. The liturgical quadrant has a profound love for the historical church enterprise and its emphasis on “the communion of saints.” The evangelical and renewalist quadrants tend to emphasize personal gatherings of pilgrims in small groups.
Discovering how these treasures will affect one another as they interact in new ways is the reason you want to be around for all this.
The center is packed with tribal treasures, but it holds more loosely to tribal loyalties. The center is and always has been a place beyond all places. The center is not ultimately Rome or Geneva or Canterbury or Constantinople, not Azusa Street or Colorado Springs. (19) Nor is it even Jerusalem. (20) The journey home is from and through these and other places, wherever it is we find ourselves.
The center makes of every place a way station. It’s the center toward which Abraham was drawn when he left Ur for a place the Lord would show him. The center is the place he looked forward to, “the city . . . whose builder and maker is God” (Heb. 11:10 NKJV).
The center, if such exists, is a place we cannot find but is finding us . . . a city where the streets have no name, whose memory, tucked away in all our hearts, makes of every other place the “not yet” place, because a pilgrim is one who says, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”
Jesus Brand Spirituality Study Questions:
Orientation To The Landscape
If you are discussing these questions in a group, you may want to refer to the Discussion Ground Rules for guidance. These can be found in the appendix.
1. What are some of the impressions you have of Christianity in contemporary society that exemplify what the author refers to as “trademark infringement on the Jesus brand” [see p. 6]?
2. Are you (or do you have a loved one who is) reluctant to pursue spirituality on the Jesus path because of negative associations with the religion that bears his name? How do you see those associations affecting you (or your loved one)?
3. How do you feel about viewing spirituality as a pilgrimage focused on taking the next step closer God? What are the advantages (and perhaps disadvantages) of this approach [see pp. 4–7]?
4. Trace some of the influences that have shaped your view of faith, using either the big picture quadrant of world religions [see p. 19] or the quadrant of Christianity [see p. 24].
5. What are some of your observations, thoughts, or experiences of what the author describe as “border blending” [pp. 31–32] or “corner dwelling” [see pp. 32–33].
6. What are some of your observations, thoughts, or experiences of what the author describes as “the tug toward the center” [see pp. 33–36].
1. See Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Knopf, 2006); Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006); Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve Books, 2007).
2. Nicholas D. Kristof, “Believe It, or Not,” New York Times, August 15, 2003, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9800E7DE1730F936A2575BC0A9659C8B63 accessed November 5, 2007.
3. My friend Mark Kinzer, a leader within Messianic Judaism, places himself in the Judaism quadrant, though he claims Jesus of Nazareth as his promised Messiah. Many of his Jewish (as well as Christian) colleagues would much prefer that he place himself in the Christianity quadrant. It’s a messy business, religion. See Mark S. Kinzer, Postmissionary Messianic Judaism (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2005).
4. I’m indebted, once again, to the insights of Phyllis Tickle for much of this whirlwind tour through Christian history, especially the observations about the effect of technological advances on Christian thought.
5. Sociologists refer to this as glossolalia, a form of ecstatic speech with structure and a rudimentary syntax but whose meaning is usually unknown to the speaker.
6. For those keeping track, this system was called dispensationalism because it divided the biblical narrative into several distinct “dispensations,” or eras.
7. Thanks to Phyllis Tickle for this insight.
8. The term charismatic derives from the Greek charismata, referring to the “spiritual gifts” referenced by Paul in 1 Corinthians 12–14 and other places.
9. While the God Is Dead movement was hitting mainline churches in the 1950s and observers began to speak of the “post-Christian” era, Pentecostalism was just beginning to make major gains overseas. Less dramatic movements such as the Jesus Movement and Charismatic Renewal began to reshape the landscape in the United States. Harvey Cox, professor of religion at Harvard, wrote a book on the spread of Pentecostalism, admitting that his and his colleagues’ prediction of the end of the Christian faith couldn’t have been more wrong (Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century [New York: Addison-Wesley, 1994]).
10. For more about the social gospel, see the seminal book of the movement: Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis (New York: Macmillan, 1909).
11. Phyllis Tickle labeled this quadrant “conservative” in a lecture presented to First United Methodist Church of Ann Arbor, February 10, 2005.
12. Renewalist is a term used by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life to describe both Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity; see their report “A 10-Country Survey of Pentecostals,” October 2006, http://pewforum.org/surveys/pentecostal/ (accesssed December 14, 2007).
13. Renewalism is the fastest growing form of Christianity today, especially in the Southern hemisphere. Philip Jenkins, a religious scholar, has said that the typical Christian is no longer a white European or North American, as commonly thought, but a young single woman living in Nairobi, and, no doubt, Pentecostal in faith and practice. See Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, (London: Oxford University Press, rev. and exp. ed. 2007).
14. Charismatic renewal refers to newer versions of the Pentecostal movement that place less emphasis on the gift of tongues and make other cultural and theological adaptations, depending on a given context.
15. The thirteen-book Left Behind series, written by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye and published by Tyndale, is based on the fundamentalist theology of dispensationalism.
16. See Rich Nathan and Ken Wilson, Empowered Evangelicals: Bringing Together the Best of the Evangelical and Charismatic Worlds (Ampelon Publishing, 2008).
17. If this graphic were three-dimensional, it could represent the extent of border blending much better, because it seems to involve every possible combination.
18. Examples include Ben Witherington III, a noted Jesus scholar who is also an evangelical, and Gordon Fee, a noted New Testament scholar who is also a Pentecostal. Viroslav Wolf from Yale Divinity School (not a Pentecostal institution) has roots in the Pentecostal movement in Romania.
19. The centers of Roman Catholicism, the Protestant Reformation, the Anglican tradition, Eastern Orthodoxy, Pentecostalism, and American evangelicalism, respectively.
20. The center of Judaism and Christianity and one of the centers of Islam.