by Steve | Sep 15, 1995 | Archive - 1995
Archive: Goddess litany at UM seminary chapel ignites controversy
At United Methodism’s Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary (GETS) in Evanston, Illinois, spring term ended on a controversial note when a May 4 chapel service included a litany offering questions and prayers to more than a dozen ancient goddesses.
The litany, “A Psalm in Search of the Goddess” was taken from Miriam Therese Winter’s Women Wisdom, and followed this pattern:
Caller: Who are You, O Holy One? How have Your daughters named You?
Voice: I am Nut of the sky, of Egypt, Goddess of Affection.
People: Nut, we call upon Your name and long for Your affection.
Caller: Who are You, O Holy One? How have Your daughters named You?
Voice: I am Anath-Astarte, and Lady Asherah of the Sea from the biblical land of Canaan.
People: Anath and Astarte, forgive us, for all we have done to You.
The litany offered such interactive prayers to a number of goddesses including a “Prehistoric Goddess”; “Ishtar and Innanna” from the ancient Near East; “Sophia”; “Isis” of Egypt, eye of Re the sun god; “Hathor”; “Cybele”; “Hera and Athene, Aphrodite and Artemis, Demeter and Persephone—the goddesses of Greece”; “Anath and Astarte and Lady Asherah” mentioned above; and “Gaia,” Earth Mother.
Five days after the service, Garrett faculty member, Dr. Robert Jewett, responded to the chapel by circulating a statement in which he gave historical data about violent and perverse rituals and activities surrounding the worship of goddesses such as Cybele, Ishtar, Anath, and Lady Asherah.
“If worship is the acknowledgment and adoration of what faith communities hold to be supreme,” he wrote, “then praying to such deities should be repudiated as a fundamental contradiction of Christian faith.” He reminded the seminary community that if it wanted to identify a community that “celebrated a deity who had overcome social distinctions between males and females, Greeks and Jews, slaves and free, then look to some branches of the early Christian church, not at the Greco-Roman mystery religions celebrating Cybele or Isis.” Those ancient cultures hold “no promise of liberation for either females or males,” he wrote.
While affirming “the appropriateness of feminine metaphors for God,” Professor Jewett cautioned, “but this does not legitimate praying to false deities. … To revive the adoration of brutal deities in the name of liberation is not only an unfortunate example of historical amnesia; it is also a violation of some of the deepest commitments of Garrett-Evangelical and of the faith we are called to advance.”
Dr. Rosemary Radford Ruether, a faculty member and the chapel speaker at the May 4 chapel, responded to Dr. Jewett’s paper by giving her own views on the controversy. The Jewett and Ruether papers were subsequently copied and placed in the seminary’s Administration Building for general distribution.
In her response, Professor Ruether, who had not seen the litany prior to the service, acknowledged “the planning of the service was poorly done. Elements of the service were thrown together at the last minute in a way that made an incoherent whole.”
She continued: “While I think the use of the Psalm in the May 4 liturgy was a mistake in terms of audience and communication strategy, it is, to my mind, not theologically objectionable” (emphasis in original).
Dr. Ruether went on to explain, “Basically the Psalm [litany] recognizes that true glimpses of the divine have been found in the many female names for deity that have been found in Jewish tradition, in Christianity and in the many religions of the ancient world that have named the divine as female. As we move beyond a Christian parochial exclusivism to including some recognition of world religions, we at GETS cannot continue to assume that only true insights into the divine are found in our Biblical and Christian tradition, while other religions enshrine only idols and demons which teach evil views and practices unworthy of God” (emphasis in original).
Responding to Dr. Jewett’s citing of the violence and war associated with the goddesses named, Dr. Ruether asked, “Can we ignore the enormous legacy of war and violence in Hebrew Scripture and Christianity?” She said, further, “In short, I think we need to get beyond our Christian patterns of religious bigotry in which we see only horror and evil in other religions, while ignoring their good qualities, and refer only to the kindly qualities in our religion, while ignoring its record of violence and injustice.”
On May 18, Professor Barbara Troxell and Dean of the Chapel Ruth Duck called a student forum at which more than 50-60 students and faculty were present for discussion. The purpose was to prayerfully seek discernment and understanding, not to “vilify” or “find fault.”
On May 30, Garrett-Evangelical President Neal F. Fisher issued a statement summarizing how the entire matter had been handled. His statement cited portions of the seminary’s chapel policy, which says in part: “Scripture, which provides the common language and narrative of the church in all its diversity, is central to worship at Garrett-Evangelical.” The guidelines encourage worship planners to use “inclusive language in referring to God, so that exclusive gender reference is avoided.” The guidelines also say, “Always, faithfulness to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ should be sought.”
Fisher also described the seminary’s policy that consultation be held between the student conducting chapel and a faculty member, prior to preparing the outline for worship. “That consultation did not take place in this case,” he said.
Fisher has expressed to many UM leaders and to Good News that the “litany introduced into our seminary chapel on May 4 was not one that I or my faculty colleagues would be willing to defend. Our stated aim is to ‘gather to praise God, to engage the scripture witness to God in Christ, and to encourage one another to live in faith.’ In my view we clearly failed on all counts in this litany. I found it theologically objectionable and completely out of place in our chapel.”
Fisher continued: “As an educational institution, we try to acknowledge a mistake when we make one and to learn from it. I think we have all learned from this incident, and we have done it in a manner that honors fellow member of the Body of Christ and not one that demeans them.”
by Steve | Sep 12, 1995 | Archive - 1995
Archive: Tarzan Christianity
By Duffy Robbins
When I was a young boy, one of my favorite television heroes was Tarzan, “King of the Jungle.” I can still see him flying through forests, his bronzed muscles framed by that classic leopard-skin outfit, the whole jungle coming alive with the sound of his trademark scream.
The most amazing part of Tarzan’s whole show was the way he could swing from tree to tree. There was always a vine right where he needed it, always the right length, and always loose enough to release from the tree with the slightest tug.
I used to wonder about that. I roamed in the woods behind our house looking up at the tree tops, suspicious that it would take more than a quick pull to launch these vines. I worried about what might happen if Tarzan’s vine were ever too long or too short. I imagined how sad it would be to see my leopard-clad hero swing down into the jungle floor with a thud, and how gruesome it might be if the vine were ever too short to allow my hero to make it to the next “vine station.” These were frightening thoughts for a young boy.
I think my greatest fear, though, was that Tarzan would someday come to the edge of the jungle and simply run out of trees. Imagine Tarzan screaming his way through the jungle … first to one tree … then to another … then to another … then to another . .. when all of a sudden … Tarzan comes to a clearing. No tree. No vine. Just a blur of flesh and leopard skin flying through the air. Not a pretty thought.
And yet, it is precisely that image that comes to my mind sometimes when I think about the students we work with in our youth ministries. I can see them in my mind’s eye, swinging from Sunday night to Sunday night, youth meeting to youth meeting, retreat to festival, summer camp to mission trip.
But what will happen to them when they come to the clearing? What will happen when they leave our youth groups and no longer have the luxury of swinging from one tree-top experience to the next? What will happen when they find themselves out there in the jungle of everyday life with all of its risks and dangers?
My great concern is that what we are seeing in the lives of so many of our students is a classic case of “crash and burn”—a plunging, groping blur of leopard skin and Bible cover. In short, we are witnessing “Faith Failure.”
Is There Life After Tree Tops?
For those of us in youth ministry the critical question is how we can prevent this kind of fall. How can we nurture our students in such a way that they can survive in the jungle without experiencing the pain of “faith failure”? To be sure, it is God who begins the “good work,” and it is God who can see it through to “completion” (Philippians 1:6). But, as youth workers we dare not overlook the fact that our task is not completed just by getting teenage Tarzans to jump into the jungle; we must help them to land, to stand, and to keep walking with Christ on a daily basis.
Some of you reading these words have only recently returned from summer camps and retreats with your youth groups. Many of you have seen God work mightily in the lives of your students. That’s wonderful! It’s always a joy to think back about summer nights, work camps, prayer times, and camp fires. If you’ve been out with a group of teenagers this summer, you deserve a little reminiscence (and a purple heart!).
But, let us be warned that “a crisis not followed by a process becomes an abscess.” We must be careful to avoid breeding in our students a Tarzan Christianity that swings from one tree top experience to the next. The job of youth ministry is not in getting kids to swing from the trees; it is in helping them cling to the Vine.
There are any number of factors that short-circuit this important work. Ultimately, however, the key to preventing a nasty fall is restoring a consistent balance in the way we do youth ministry. In the next several issues of Good News we will examine some of the most common errors of imbalance in our youth ministries.
by Steve | Sep 10, 1995 | Archive - 1995
Archive: Passion for God
Early Methodism was filled with vigor; vitality, and the fire of the Holy Spirit. The passion for God in the heart of the circuit riders and revival preachers was the spark that caused the miraculous growth of early American Methodism. The following letter is dated May 10, 1887 and entitled “A short sketch of the life and conversion and call to the ministry of Austin Taft.” We believe that you will be blessed and encouraged by this testimony. —the editors
My parents were Presbyterians after the strictest sect. We left Vermont when I was 15 years old. I never saw but one Methodist in that state. We settled in the state of New York—Steuben Co. where I lived until I was married on the 9th of February 1831. Here I became acquainted with the people called Methodists. But I was taught they were from witches, full of wild fire and [that it] was very dangerous to hear them preach. In 1833 we moved to Huron Co., Ohio. Here we found a Methodist Society that held their meetings in a log school house near our house.
We frequently went to hear them preach and I was convinced they enjoyed something that we knew nothing of. Subsequently a two-day prayer meeting was appointed in the neighborhood conducted by H. G. Dubois. We attended this meeting, but became offended at the loud and noisy demonstrations witnessed there and left with disgust.
The meeting continued and we were urged to come back by a good sister and attend the meeting; for the Lord was reviving his work. I told my wife it was none of their business whether we attended meeting or not—But if she desired to go I would harness the team and we would go.
We went and found a number of the leading men of the town at the altar of prayer pleading for mercy. I was invited to go and went and resolved that I would seek God until I found Him. With cries and tears, I pled for mercy. My feelings were so intense that I despaired even of life, but concluded I would spend life’s last hour in pleading for mercy, with little or no expectation of finding it. Eternity with all its dread realities opened up before me and it’s impossible for any pen to describe the awful agonies of my mind. It is beyond all human description.
It seemed to me I had already entered the dark abodes of eternal night, and right here something seemed to whisper to me—that there was mercy for me. I stopped and listened for a moment. What a word—mercy for me. It was the best news I ever heard. From that moment my faith laid hold upon the Savior’s promises with an unguiding grasp, and I saw a light in the distance far above my head, which grew brighter as it came near, and when it reached me I fell to the floor as quick as the lightning flash, and that moment was filled with the fullness of God. Old things passed away and all things became new. My happiness was complete. … And I remained motionless for 45 minutes without power to move a muscle. My good Presbyterian father thought I was dead and talked of sending for the doctor.
The people were engaged in singing, shouting, and praising God—and it was the best music I ever heard. I arose singing “O How Happy Are They, Who their Savior Obeyed.” From that time to this I have never opposed the Methodists for making a little noise. I soon felt it my duty to join the Methodist Church; told my good mother one day at her house what my intention was. She told me not to do it; that it would be my ruin.
On my way home, while passing through a piece of woods, my heart was strangely drawn out in prayer. I fell upon my knees and asked God to send staying power upon my mother. That moment the power of God came upon me like a mighty rushing wind, and I know my prayer was answered. My sister came to our house that afternoon and said soon after I left their house while mother was setting the table for dinner she suddenly fell to the floor and shouted aloud the praises of God and thanked God that she had the same religion that Austin had. Father and mother soon joined the M.E. Church and have long since joined the Church on high.
I felt from the time of my conversion that it was my duty to preach the Gospel of the Son of God. I told the Lord I had no education, had no gifts and it was impossible for me to preach, and asked to be excused. But I had no rest while I refused to do my duty.
At last I told the Lord if He would give an evidence that I could not doubt, I would try. I went into the dense forest about one-half mile and laid the case before God in prayer. And all at once the Savior appeared before me. There seemed to be a halo of Glory around his person and his person appeared as bright as the lightning. This appearance was manifested twice and vanished out of sight but left inscribed upon the heavens in great bright golden capitals—The Promise— “Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the world.” O! How many hundreds of times have I realized the fulfillment of this blessed promise by feeling his presence with me when trying to speak for Him, and this is the best witness that we can have. Amen.
This letter was written by an ancestor of Margaret Stratton, youth pastor and children’s coordinator of the Johnson Hill United Methodist Church in Eutaw, Alabama.
“My relatives on my father’s side were known as the shouting Methodists,” she says. “They were overjoyed with the love of Jesus Christ, and the world could see it. People were created to have a deep relationship with God and these shouting Methodists drew sincere people to the Methodist Church. There, people were looking for more of God in their lives.
“I believe this letter will be a blessing to all the Christians in the United Methodist Church who are seeking to understand their roots.”
This testimony first appeared in The Advocate, the magazine of the Alabama/West Florida Annual Conference.
by Steve | Sep 6, 1995 | Archive - 1995
Archive: Church Growth Through Intercessory Prayer
By R.A. Pegram
Churches can and will grow for many reasons. There are seminars, consultants, videos, and shelves full of books available to instruct on church growth. Growth can come about by the personality, natural abilities, and winning ways of a pastor. But sometimes, growth in a congregation can be deceptive.
Several years ago, while serving a district superintendent, I observed good growth in a particular church that had a new pastor. The cabinet brought him in from the South and he had a very winning personality. Every time I met with the leaders of that congregation, they enthusiastically praised this young pastor. Then I received a phone call and found out that he was having an affair with a sixteen-year-old from a former pastorate. Needless to say, the growth did not last.
Church growth (meaning members) can be brought about by publicity, gimmicks, contests, and giving away prizes to the one who brings the most new people. Church growth may be obtained by simply entertaining a crowd—never challenging them to change. Church growth may also be developed by using marketing techniques that have been proven effective in the business world.
In other words, churches that grow are not always growing for the right reasons and in the right way. After all, even many false churches can grow. Cult grow!
As followers of Jesus Christ, it is not the growth that we are concerned about. Growth is a side effect! But as we put Jesus and his kingdom first in our lives, we want to see the church grow because we want others to join our happy throng and become a part of the kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
If the kingdom of Jesus Christ has first place in our lives, we want to obey Jesus’ greatest command: “Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).
This will cause church growth that remains. But the growth is a secondary issue.
How do we make people disciples of Jesus the Christ? If we try to make them our disciples, we all are led astray. Paul did not ask or want people to follow him as Paul. He wanted people to follow him only as he followed Christ.
To be a church that makes disciples, we must be disciplined to live lives like Jesus lived. We cannot do that by using only our mental powers. We can know with our intellect all about Jesus from the Scriptures, but it is impossible for our human abilities to supply the power to live as Jesus lived.
While in the human body, Jesus’ power to discipline his life in obedience to the Father did not come from his human intellect and will. He had a special communion with God the Father. Jesus took time to pray! He prayed for his Father’s glory.
We need to pray that Jesus will be glorified in us, so that our lives will give glory to Jesus and in turn give glory to the Father. Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Glorify your Son that your Son may glorify you” (John 17:1).
Jesus prayed for his disciples, “I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those you gave me, for they belong to you.” He wanted his glory to shine through them. He prayed for their safety. They were to be kept by the power of God’s name. But he prayed for this. It did not come automatically! He prayed that they would have his joy in all its fullness. Jesus also prayed that they would be kept safe from the evil one, so that they could be truly dedicated to God!
We need to pray also for what Jesus promised in this prayer concerning love. He talked to God the Father about the same love that God has for Christ being in us, and that Jesus himself could then be in us!
Jesus not only prayed, but he also wanted and needed others to pray with him.
In his darkest hour before his arrest, he took Peter, James, and John to be near him as he prayed. After he had prayed—and then found them asleep—he said to Peter, “Could you not keep watch with me for one hour? … Watch and pray” (Matthew 26:40).
Jesus had prayed for an hour. He needed others to pray with him. He commanded them to “keep watch and pray.” Yes, there are times when we need to pray alone-then there are times we need to pray in partnership.
Jesus set the example for us. We need to pray if we expect results from our lives and ministry. The result God wants is for people to be brought from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light.
The only way to see a church grow on a sure and firm foundation that will endure the storms of time is through intercessory prayer. Only by the growth of individual churches will we see the church grow in the United States and in the world. The time to pray is now!
In Taking Our Cities For God (Creation House), John Dawson says, “It is time to exercise worldwide faith, to pray worldwide prayers, and to expect a worldwide outpouring of God’s Spirit. More than half the people who have ever lived are now alive. The population is climbing to more than five billion. If we don’t have an awakening in this generation, more people will go to an eternity without Christ than in all the past generations put together.”
Outpourings of the Holy Spirit on the church come by way of intercessory prayer. We pray and God sends! At Pentecost, I believe the disciples were praying not only for themselves, but also for the people of Jerusalem who had rejected Jesus. Many of those who had rejected Jesu were relatives, friends, acquaintances, and business associates. The disciples were interceding for Jerusalem with a oneness of purpose. They wanted to see people come to believe in their resurrected Lord. When the Holy Spirit fell on those who were praying, I believe they were so filled with God’s love that their prayers were set on fire for the people they knew.
We can pray people into the kingdom. They did! And today we live in a world where we are in touch around the globe. We are not in touch only with the people in our Jerusalem. Since communication and travel have caused us to be worldwide people, we need to pray worldwide prayers. Then, as John Dawson says, we need to expect a worldwide outpouring of the Spirit of God upon us!
I do not want to stand before God and give an account of myself if I failed to pray to receive an outpouring of God’s Spirit on my city, my country, and my world.
We need to pray until we release control of even our own prayers to God! God will lead us in how great a thing to ask. We need to let God reign over our emotions as we intercede for our church and our world. Nehemiah interceded for Jerusalem when he heard about the difficulty the people had, and that the walls and gates had not been restored. “When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed…, ‘O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God…'” (Nehemiah 1:4-5a). Dawson believes that many Christians “are unable to move with the Spirit into seasons of travail because they have a fear of experiencing deep emotions. The root of this hindrance is the fear of losing control, yet our whole spiritual life depends on our yielding control to the Holy Spirit.”
I have no trouble with the “church growth ” concept when I view it from the perspective that many in our generation are lost today and will be lost eternally if we do not bring them in. This growth, if it is to come by prayer, will not come by quoting a few words or saying a quick prayer that lacks the power of the Holy Spirit. The outpouring of God’s Spirit (real church growth) will come and many will tum when we pray Christ’s own fervent and expectant prayers for the lost!
We must believe people are indeed lost in order to pray effective intercessory prayers. We must be willing to invest our time. “The only thing that will sustain the intercessor through a long season of prayer is continued revelation from the Holy Spirit,” writes Dawson. “The Spirit loves the Father; the Spirit reveals the Father’s compassion; and the Spirit gives us the faith to know that the joy of answered prayer will always come to those who continue in faithfulness. ”
We must lose ourselves in God’s Spirit to truly intercede. I am reminded of a chorus we sang long ago, “Let me lose myself and find it Lord in thee. May all self be slain, my friends see only thee. Though it cost me grief and pain, I will find myself again. If I lose myself and find it Lord in thee.
We need to pray for the lost until we lose ourselves in God’s love for them and identify with their lostness. When we lose ourselves in God, we will allow God’s view of things to dominate our thinking. “The priorities of eternity and the spiritual world should be the realities that dominate our thinking,” Dawson writes. When we die, I’m afraid we will find out that the phantoms we call reality today will be seen for what they are. The very things we think of as reality today will show up as the unreal. The things we talk of as other-worldly will be the real world of eternity. Let’s live and pray for the things that will mean the most to us a thousand years from now. Those people who do not know Jesus the Christ in this life, will be somewhere one thousand years from now. Our prayers can make a difference! What a privilege God has given us in the power of intercession.
Finding time to pray
We live in a busy world. Most all of us lead very busy lives. How do we find time to pray? I’ve noticed that people find time for what is really important in their lives.
Susannah Wesley, mother of John and Charles Wesley—the founders of Methodism—had nineteen children. She didn’t have all the conveniences that we have today. She was also a pastor’s wife. But every week, she spent one hour of spiritual training with each child. John remembered the hour his mother set aside for him for the rest of his life, and he prayed during that hour. Every day she set aside one hour and went into her bedroom from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m., closed the door, knelt beside her bed, and prayed and read the Bible! “How would you like to try to explain to Susannah Wesley why you can’t find time to pray?” asks Larry Lea in his book Could You Not Tarry One Hour? (Creation House).
Prayer was very important in her life, and her intercession changed the world!
We can and must change the world with our intercession for the unchurched. I have a special burden for the lost and feel this is the basic way we should grow as a church.
C. Peter Wagner believes, “Satan is not unduly threatened by the kind of prayer that stays within the Christian community. As long as we are not expelling him from the lives of people, he will let us be as religious as we wish. But if we begin to take seriously our call to Christian service and especially our commission to world evangelization—I speak advisedly—all hell may break loose.”
Let’s cause all hell to break loose! The power we have within us known as the Holy Spirit is so much greater than the powers of hell, that we have nothing to fear! Let’s do it! Do what? Let’s declare war on the spirits of darkness through prayers of intercession. We can and will bring people from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light!
We are in a war! Let’s take the offensive. By prayer we can go after the forces of Satan. Peter Wagner speaks of taking the world view espoused by Jesus Christ so we will cooperate most naturally with the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ world view sees the cosmic drama as a clash of loyalties between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world. We are to invade the kingdom of darkness first of all by intercessory prayer in order to release the captives and bring them into the kingdom of our God!
Prayer is our most important weapon. In The Last of the Giants, George Otis Jr. writes concerning the role of prayer: “With effects as boundless as the God whom it stimulates, prayer is easily the single most important weapon in the believers’ arsenal today. It is writer Walter Winks’ spiritual defiance of what is, in the name of what God has promised. Intercession visualizes an alternative future to the one apparently fated by the momentum of current contradictory forces. It breathes the air of a time yet to be into the suffocating atmosphere of present reality!”
Otis points out that the intercessory prayer mentioned more than thirty times in the book of Acts preceded virtually all major breakthroughs in the outward expansion of the early Christian movement.
By being willing to be intercessors and by recruiting many others, we can—and I believe we will—have major breakthroughs and outward expansion today in the part of God’s kingdom called United Methodism!
R.A. Pegram recently retired after serving 45 years as a United Methodist pastor. He is the former senior pastor of Faith United Methodist Church in Neenah, Wisconsin, a congregation he pastored for 19 years. The Rev. Pegram now lives in Intercession City, Florida.
by Steve | Sep 4, 1995 | Archive - 1995
Archive: Seminaries in Crisis
By Geoffrey Wainwright
Almost all seminary professors will tell you that theological education is in a crisis. Nevertheless, they will tell you that their own institution is doing a pretty good job. Therein lies the self-delusion. Chances are, those professors are themselves part of the problem. Since self-diagnosis is so difficult, some outside views may help to reveal what’s wrong. As I read the external reviewers, three critical areas appear from the outset.
First, the curriculum.
In the rather conservative Christian journal First Things (January 1992), we read the lament of Professor Robert Jenson who taught for decades at the Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania: “Long ago, the church’s demand for various sorts of ‘practical’ and therapeutic ‘experiences’ in the seminary curriculum reduced their space for theology below the viable quantity. Biblical, historical, and systematic theology are hard disciplines, to which only the very able and well-prepared can catch on quickly. … A few years ago the situation further deteriorated as the recruitment of students changed. Seminary students now for the most part arrive with no appropriate higher education whatsoever. More disastrously yet, a decisive number seem somehow to self-select from the least catechized segments of our in-any-case secularized churches. This, of course, changed the curricular situation from calamitous to hopeless.”
More benignly put, present-day theological students need—more than ever, in the circumstances described by Jenson—a basic and thorough grounding in the classical disciplines that treat the essential identity of the church: Scriptures, tradition, and doctrine. And yet, the seminaries have added ever-new humanistic elements to the curriculum (psychology, sociology, management studies … ) without adding to the time required for training ordinands. There is now no time for acquisition of the biblical languages, and precious little time for serious instruction in the sacred texts themselves.
A church which, like the United Methodist, claims adherence to the “primacy of the Scriptures” surely needs to insist that its future ministers be better schooled in them. It can be done, if the priorities are set right. In the sixties and seventies I taught in the Protestant Faculty of Theology at Yaounde in the Cameroons. There, our African students—for whom even the medium of instruction (French) was not their mother tongue—spent much of their first year in acquiring a working knowledge of Hebrew and Greek; and for each semester of their remaining three years, they were required to take at least one course in biblical exegesis or theology that presupposed the original languages. Our purpose was to equip them, not only for the regular task of biblical preaching, but also for the work of translating and retranslating the Bible into the African languages. The Gambian theologian Lamin Sanneh has recently shown, in his book Translating the Message (1989), the powerfully renewing effect of vernacular translations of the Scriptures upon the peoples who receive them. Our own churches and cultures badly need the renewal that fresh contact with the Word of God through scripturally literate pastors and preachers can bring. How can the Word of God enliven a congregation and a people that are deprived of its exposition?
Or take the case of Christian doctrine. Even at Duke Divinity School I am allowed only one semester in which to teach the basic course in theology, covering all the major doctrines of the faith. How can contemporary theology be done without a deep awareness of the tradition to which we owe our faith? On a recent teaching exchange with the United Faculty of Theology in Melbourne, Australia, I discovered that the basic course in theology lasts for a full year, and that each student is then required to add a further major course in one of the principal doctrines of the faith—Trinity, Christology, ecclesiology, or whatever.
Second, let us move from curriculum to syllabus.
Even if the curriculum allows an appropriate proportion of time to the essential disciplines, much depends on what is actually taught in any given course. Let’s look this time at the Christian Century (February 5-12, 1992)—a generally liberal publication—where we read the observations of Jon Levenson, professor of Jewish Studies at Harvard Divinity School, lamenting the “political correctness” that effectively excludes the teaching and affirmation of the historic Christian faith at a not untypical seminary: “In an institution once explicitly and formally Christian and still culturally so, largely dedicated to the education of ministers, one can deny with utter impunity that Jesus was born of a virgin or raised from the dead. But if one says that he was the Son of God the Father, one runs afoul of the institution’s deepest commitments. If the ancient Christological confession is to be retained at all—and this, presumably, is only a matter of personal preference—it must be recast in gender-neutral terms. … The older formulation may still be employed for purpose of critique—to show the alleged androcentrism of the early church, but not for purposes of affirmation, at least not without an immediate qualification to the effect that the traditional language is a historically conditioned convention and an unhappy one at that.”
So what does it profit us, then, if the curriculum allows, say, a decently modest amount of time to the study of pastoral care but the syllabus is packed with the drivel spouted by most applicants for a recently open teaching position in the subject, without any awareness of classical issues and debates in Christian anthropology and soteriology? A semester devoted to Richard Baxter’s Reformed Pastor would be far more beneficial to the future minister than scripturally uninformed, and theologically Pelagian, elucubrations on self-improvement and self-fulfillment. Thank God for the sterling efforts of Thomas C. Oden to renew pastoral theology on a scriptural and traditional basis!
What kind of a course in “Worship and Preaching” is it that is limited to the “how-to” and has no room for study of the classic Christian rites, the theology of the sacraments, the history of scriptural interpretation, and the rhetorical and oratorical masterpieces of the great preachers throughout the church’s tradition?
Third, then, the professors.
The secular journalist Paul Wilkes, in the December 1990 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, wrote about “the deeply troubled world of America’s seminaries” under the title “The Hands That Would Shape Our Souls.” The article concentrates chiefly on seminary students, but what about the professors who are forming the future pastors who are to be charged with the care of souls? Wilkes notes that some faculty members, “who were in graduate schools during the tumult of the 1960s and 1970s, tend toward an orientation that could variously be described as anti-institutional, antidogmatic, deconstructionist, ‘post-Christian,’ or Marxist. As graduate students, these faculty members were relentless in their questioning of smug sectarianism or unthinking adherence to a creed, and some would say unapologetically that the God who brought them into such studies did not make the cut as the new, lean team was chosen. … Now in their forties and fifties, they have adopted religious beliefs and values that diverge sharply from tradition.”
In other words, we are in the presence of what Roger Kimball, on the wider academic scene, calls The Tenured Radicals. What is to be done when, say, a tenured professor in a United Methodist seminary adopts a particular position in sexual politics as the criterion for taking or leaving scriptural material, and decides to add from explicitly “pagan resources” what is otherwise missing?
In my judgment, an absolutist version of “academic freedom,” imported from a secular world that is otherwise committed only to relativism, is quite misplaced in an ecclesial institution. The church believes that it has received by divine revelation certain decisive insights into truth, and the task of its preachers and teachers can only be to explicate and interpret the gospel and the faith, not to subvert them. The last thing that United Methodists need worry about is that the seminaries might fall, Southern Baptist style, into the hands of the fundamentalists. The far greater risk arises when appointed teachers sit loose to historic Christianity.
In United Methodist terms, that means that the “theological exploration” commended in the text of the 1992 Discipline should take place within the framework of official Methodist doctrine as set, not by a word-processor in Nashville, but by the Wesleyan and other historic standards. Happily (and in no small measure by virtue of A Foundation for Theological Education), there is now emerging from the 1980s a new breed of younger United Methodist scholars whose dissertations in Scripture, history, theology, and liturgy locate them firmly within the evangelical, catholic, orthodox faith. It is vital that they be appointed to teach in the seminaries.
What then is to be done?
John Henry Newman wrote a classic essay “On consulting the faithful in matters of doctrine. ” In changing times, the instinct of faith often proves more durable among “ordinary Christians” than among their intellectual leaders, for they are less subject to the flights of fashion. Still, in our day seminary teachers and students need to become more accountable both to the flock and to the chief shepherds of the flock, the bishops. For their part, the Council of Bishops in May 1991 adopted a “Statement on the Quality and Education of Ministry for the United Methodist Church.” Though formulated in less detail than it might have been, this document already sets out some appropriate demands for curricula, syllabi, and instructors to follow, and some suitable questions to be raised by all who are engaged in testing candidacies for ordination.
As we look to the future, the maintenance or restoration of the church’s health will in large part depend, humanly speaking, on the care taken in appointments to teaching positions, approval of candidates for ordination, and elections to the episcopacy. Meanwhile, professors, pastors, and bishops might well ponder the self-critical questions John Wesley framed in his “Address to the Clergy ” of 1756 (Works ed. Jackson, vol. 10, pp. 480-500)—and ask how the present generation could come closer to a satisfactory remedy, and the next generation be helped to come closer yet.
Geoffrey Wainwright is the Robert E. Cushman Professor of Christian Theology at Duke University Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina. This article originally appeared in The Challenge. It is reprinted here by permission.
