by Steve | Mar 15, 1994 | Archive - 1994
Archive: Feminist Theology Examined
Sophia and the Bible
by John Oswalt
The recent proceedings at the “Re-Imagining” Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, have been a cause of great concern throughout the mainline denominations. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the gathering was the worship and adoration paid to Sophia. In their desire to educate the attendees the propagators of this form of worship have put forward several theologically unsound concepts. At their roots, these propositions are a reflection of feminist theology, and as such, deserve our critical investigation.
Unfortunately, the feminist theological view cannot be called a valid interpretation of biblical intent, because it refuses at the outset to let the Bible say what it will from within its own self-understanding. The feminist interpretation focuses not so much on what the biblical text says, but upon what it might have said if certain things included in the text were not in the text, and if certain things which are not in the text were in it.
The new teachings about Sophia are not the result of scholarly and objective look at Christian doctrine. They are an attempt by persons who have rejected the biblical teachings about Christ to remain within the “Christian” Church. Susan Cady, a UM minister and co-author of Wisdoms Feast: Sophia in Study and Celebration, asked herself a very interesting question as she celebrated communion one day. She asked: “What am I doing? Celebrating the experience of some man? What does He have to do with me?” Later that same week Cady wrote about a vision of Sophia, peering through the window of a door and calling to her, “What are you afraid of anyway? Do you think I care about your old theology? Do you think I care what name you name me?” When you are dealing with this kind of rationale, argumentation is of little use.
The feminist outlook makes a very selective use of biblical evidence to support its case that there is a warrant for the Christian worship of a goddess called “Sophia.” Furthermore, a good deal of the argumentation consists of conjectures about what the Bible might have said about the goddess if certain conjectured developments had taken place. In other words, we very frequently find a conjecture resting upon conjectures which rest upon still others.
It has been asserted that the personalization of wisdom is a prominent feature of the “Old Testament.” In fact, the only place in the entire Old Testament where wisdom is personified is in three passages in the early chapters of Proverbs, where the personalization is heavily qualified by the context. The chief support for the theory is actually drawn from the apocryphal books of Baruch, Sirach, and Eccleasiasticus, which the Jewish community never accorded canonical authority. Yet many feminist scholars have chosen to gloss over this very important fact. They then proceed to use the phraseology “Old Testament” to include the Apocrypha, with the result being that uninformed audiences are misled into believing that the canonical Old Testament contains a significant number of these instances of personalization. This is not responsible use of data.
When it comes to the actual biblical statements, feminist scholars show a distressing tendency to assign meaning without paying adequate attention to context, whether within the passage or around it. This is especially true with regard to the Proverbs passages. For instance, hokma, “wisdom,” is regularly treated as a synonym of “understanding” and “discretion.” It is perfectly clear in this context that these latter two words are not proper nouns and that therefore “wisdom” is not either. This setting tells us that, far from declaring that the Jews believed in the existence of a goddess named Hokma, the passages are personalizing an abstract concept for the purposes of impact. Attention to these and other clues within the Proverbs passages themselves makes it abundantly clear that the literary device of personification is being used and that no statement about divine personages is intended.
This contention is further strengthened by a study of chapters 1-8 of Proverbs in the light of chapter 31 and the entire book. Such a study shows that the purpose of the book is to attribute wisdom to the kind of a wife who if clung to faithfully, will build up her husband; and folly to an adulteress who promises everything, asking nothing while actually taking everything and giving nothing. Far from speaking about a Hebrew goddess who can give credence to the agenda of 20th Century western feminism, these chapters are urging us to cling to the accumulated principles for living which the book contains just as one would cling to a spouse who will do nothing but good for her mate.
These scholars completely ignore this contextual shaping of the materials and thus produce an interpretation which is totally at odds with the book; or, if the contextual shaping is finally addressed (as in the previous paragraph), they swiftly categorize that understanding with a hotly pejorative “sexist” label. They then undertake a convoluted consideration of the possible social context of wisdom literature to explain how this unfortunate condition could have come to exist. But their own research concludes that it is impossible to determine why the supposed goddess might appear in such a setting. It hardly warrants mentioning that if feminists had paid adequate attention to the context in the first place, the hypothetical goddess would never have appeared and would need no explanation.
Furthermore, there is a tendency among these scholars to read much more into a statement than plain sense will bear. Several cases in point appear in Proverbs 8. In books such as Wisdom’s Feast, it is suggested that this chapter points to an Israelite belief in a female consort of God who sexually creates the world with him. But a straight-forward reading of the text says none of this. What it says is that wisdom was the first of God’s creations, and was with him as he created the rest of the world, delighting in all he did. Wisdom is a creation, not a divine being. Wisdom does not create, but only accompanies the transcendent God as he creates. As for the idea of “playing” or “delighting in” connoting sexual activity, there is nothing in the context to suggest such a concept. God delights in wisdom and wisdom delights in what he has made, especially human beings.
If feminists have read into the chapter what is not there, then what is the chapter’s point? The chapter is, in fact, saying that the wisdom teachings—the principles for appropriate and effective living that follow in the book—are not simply a human, utilitarian collection. By means of imagery, a common feature of wisdom writing, the chapter is insisting that the wisdom principles of the Bible are inherent in creation itself. In fact, these principles were built right into creation by God. That is why it is so important to live by them, and that is why they will be such a blessing to the person who does live by them. There is no goddess here.
The New Testament
The feminist treatment of the New Testament is similar. Scattered passages are read in ways which neither their espoused world view nor their contextual shaping will permit. Then, when these scholars are asked why even with this kind of radical surgery there are still so few passages to support their case, they answer that the other statements (which do not exist) were suppressed. This is not responsible use of the text nor of the rules of evidence.
A reading of Paul’s half dozen references to wisdom in their contextual settings makes it clear that for him God’s wisdom is God’s determination to save the world by means of the death and resurrection of his son. Thus, Jesus is the embodiment of that wisdom, and it is an offense to the Jews and folly to the Greeks. There is no female figure either implicit or explicit here. Even more to the point, the independent female deity which these scholars have constructed is not here.
The case is somewhat different in the book of John. Here the general similarity in language with some of the apocryphal wisdom literature does suggest that John has appropriated some of the descriptions of personalized wisdom to talk about Jesus. But what does that say? Not nearly what feminist scholars claim for it. First of all, this connection of Jesus to wisdom is far from being the organizing principle of the book.
Secondly, they do not understand the program of the Gospel of John. Quite clearly, the evangelist is saying that all the fragmentary philosophies which were current in the religious culture of the period between the Old and New Testaments have found their goal and their fulfillment in Jesus Christ. What none of those philosophies could do in saving the world, he has done! For their incompleteness he gives completeness. All that is right and true about them is to be found in him, and it is by comparison with him that what is right and true about them emerges. Thus, John is far from identifying Jesus with the hypothetical wisdom goddess in an effort to garner some of her supposed fame for his messiah candidate, Jesus. Rather, John was saying to those Jews of his day who were viewing wisdom as their own equivalent to Greek philosophy, that what they were actually looking for was Jesus. John is not identifying Jesus with the supposedly glorious Sophia; he is incorporating wisdom into Jesus! According to John, it was Jesus for whom the Jews were groping in their increasingly elaborate images of wisdom during the intertestamental period.
It might be surprising that Sophia proponents give so little attention to the book of James, which is the one book in the New Testament that could be called a wisdom book. Their inattention is explainable, however, because the wisdom discussed in James is so clearly connected to principles for living that there is no room for the hypothetical goddess.
The Early Church
The treatment of early Church history by feminist scholars shows the same kinds of errors which characterize their biblical exegesis. Particularly distressing are the drawing of large conclusions from small amounts of evidence and the use of hypotheses as though they are facts. We are told by some proponents of Sophia worship that their practices were very important in the early church, yet almost no evidence is given in early Christian documents to support the assertion, and what is given is highly ambiguous. It is then argued that Sophia worship was lost because it became associated with Gnosticism in the Christological controversies and became a casualty when gnostic theology was defeated.
First of all, we know almost nothing directly about Gnosticism; what we do know is largely by implication from the writings of its opponents, and those implications are subject to multiple interpretations. Second, it does not follow that the supposed Sophia worship was part of Gnosticism merely because we believe the gnostics sponsored salvation by means of intellectual accomplishment. Third, to say that what does not now exist—that is, evidence that any Christians ever believed in a goddess of wisdom—does not exist because it was rewritten and ultimately written out, is to beg the question in a most serious way. But even if all the above could actually be shown to be matters of fact, which they cannot, since those who gave Christian theology its distinctive shape would have declared Sophia worship heretical, how can we now lift it up as a worthy choice for Christian belief?
Conclusion
In their reaction against what they see as the sins of Western Christendom, feminist scholars have chosen a way which, throughout its long history, has produced the very opposite effects of those they hope for. What they have chosen is the way of paganism, in which the gods are simply an expression of this world. This is the world view of all the great world religions except Judaism, Christianity, Islam—all three of which have been shaped by the Old Testament. The feminist world view, known as continuity, holds out the hope that we can be one with “Mother” earth and, in so doing, overcome the tragic limitations which life seems to impose upon us. But it is all a mirage. Continuity and the religions it spawns are a false hope. Where in those religions are women treated as persons? Where in those religions are the poor seen as possessing rights? Where in them is oppression attacked? Where in them is wholeness of persons and communities and nations and the world seen as a goal? It is only finally in the Christian faith that these understandings are to be found. To be sure, we Christians have often fallen far short living up to them, and it is very probably because of many of us men. But if so, the way back is not to destroy the faith. Insofar as feminist spirituality denies the biblical world view and adopts an alien one—to that extent it separates itself from anything rightly called Christian and sells itself into prostitution to a way that has never produced anything but bondage. If Sophia is God, we all, men and women alike, are lost. If God, the transcendent God of the Bible, is the dispenser of a wisdom far above that of human imagination, there is hope for us all.
John Oswalt is the chair of the Biblical Studies Division and Beeson Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary. He is a noted Old Testament scholar in the area of Ancient Near Eastern cultures, literature, and language. Dr. Oswalt is also a contributing editor to Good News.
by Steve | Mar 9, 1994 | Archive - 1994
The Cult of Sophia
By William R. Cannon
March/April 1994
The cult of Sophia is the strangest phenomenon to arise in the church in this generation. In many ways it is reminiscent of the “God is Dead” movement of 30 or more years ago. There is, however, one major difference between the two. The “God is Dead” movement was confined to the works of less than half a dozen religious philosophers and was limited to academic circles. It never got off college and university campuses. It had no influence whatsoever in the life of the church or society in general. It was short-lived, lasting little more than a year, so that one might say it was dead almost as soon as it was born. In contrast, the cult of Sophia is more general in its manner of expression, appealing to the popular rather than to the academic mind. It is not limited to literary and oral exposition but is accompanied by rites and ceremonies, bringing with it an agenda for worship, a program for action, and its own ministry and mission. Its purpose is enhance the value of women in society, and its manner of doing this is to project feminism onto ultimate reality or to enshrine womanhood as such in the very nature of the Godhead itself.
The Sophia cult gained attention through Wisdom’s Feast: Sophia in Study and Celebration, a book written by two United Methodist ministers and a Roman Catholic in 1988. It provides liturgies and services of worship to Sophia. One such service was conducted in the chapel of the Theology School of Drew University, as a substitute – so we have read in news reports – for Holy Communion. It would appear, therefore, that the present day Sophia cult is prominently promulgated by some pastors of the United Methodist Church.
It is further assumed that they got their justification for the worship of Sophia from a series of ancient gnostic manuscripts discovered in upper Egypt in 1945. We have known of Gnosticism long before this discovery was ever made through the writings of the Fathers of the Church, as early as the Second Century, when Gnosticism was declared a heresy and its adherents were expelled from the Church. These manuscripts provide no new information, though one of them may well be the writings of Valentinus, the most important of the gnostics.
The promulgators of present-day Sophia worship claim that they are using Sophia as just another name for God, and they do this in order to show that there is a female side to God and that God must no longer be referred to by male names and images alone. From a historical point of view, the name Sophia is a very unfortunate choice. Ancient Gnosticism did not depict wisdom in either the Greek or the Hebrew meaning of the word, or as we understand wisdom today. Sophia was a clever, mischievous, misguided, and misplaced entity at the very end of the chain of emanations. She produced the demiurge, who at her behest, created a world so evil that God had to send help in the form of another emanation named Jesus to rescue us from it and return us through knowledge (gnosis) to an ordered existence. The whole gnostic system was a tapestry of speculation, fantasy, and mythology, with no basis in fact and history. And the same seems to be true of present-day Sophia worship. Those who promote it offer their own thoughts and theories as truth and, as did the gnostics of old, substitute their beliefs for the New Testament account of the nature of Christianity.
In contrast to all other religions which advance teachings or the thoughts and opinions of their founders, Christianity rests on the mighty acts of God in history. It is a religion of fact which antedates and creates faith. It begins with a babe in a manger in Bethlehem, focuses on a teacher and performer of miracles in Galilee, points to an old rugged cross, and a man dying on it, and culminates with an empty tomb in a garden outside Jerusalem and a Savior risen from the dead. Christianity rests on history, not ideology.
It is pitiable that a group of feminist enthusiasts within the church find that the only way they can advance the cause of women in this “Ecumenical Decade: Churches in Solidarity with Women” is to modify the doctrine of God to the degree that the feminine principle is made a part of the Godhead. If they only thought through carefully the teachings of Christianity, they would realize that this is unnecessary, even redundant. There is more than enough in the Bible that affirms the importance of women and gives them their opportunity of leadership and creativity in society alongside and equal to that of men. In the Old Testament there are Miriam, Deborah, Naomi, Ruth, and Queen Esther, who serve as role models along with David, Solomon, and the prophets. In the New Testament there are Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, Mary and Martha, Mary Magdalene, Lydia, and Priscilla, all of whom either played an important role in the earthly ministry of Jesus or else joined and supported the apostle Paul in the formation of the Church. Except for our divine Lord himself, there is no person in the Bible more significant than the Virgin Mary. It was through her, a woman, that the incarnation took place. It was Mary, a woman, who was the mother of the Incarnate God. Mary said of herself in the Magnificat, .. All generations will call me blessed, for the mighty one has done great things for me” (Luke 1:48-49). It is not possible to conceive a position more noble than that of the Virgin Mary – a woman – mother of Christ.
There is not a single instance to be found in the Bible where the name Sophia is used as a female name for God. To be sure, Wisdom is personified by the use of the feminine gender in chapters 7-10 of the Book of Proverbs, but this is purely a literary device used to enhance the value of wisdom and its importance in the conduct of life. Never is wisdom in those passages equated with God. On the contrary, wisdom is equated with us. Our marriage to wisdom and her marriage to us is essential to our success and happiness in life.
Since this Sophia cult appears to offer a service to Sophia as a substitute for Holy Communion, in which milk and honey take the place of bread and wine, this act contradicts history. When God became human in Jesus of Nazareth, he took the form of a man, not a woman. No matter how one feels or how intensely one wishes it might have been otherwise, it is impossible to alter history. Historically speaking, we cannot transpose the principle work of Jesus on to someone else. We cannot change Jesus of Nazareth into Sophia.
When any person or group of persons, male or female, exalts its own interests and values above everything else, especially to the extent of trying to alter the concept of reality to suit its own aims – then that person or group of persons collapses into idolatry, worshipping self and class rather than God. They are described correctly by the pre-Socratic philosopher who said, “If horses and oxen had hands, they would make God in their own image.” This is precisely what the adherents of Sophia have done. These extreme feminists have made for themselves an idol and they call that idol God. Without knowing it, they are worshipping themselves.
Christianity rests on God’s own disclosure to us. It cannot tolerate our projection of ourselves on to God. We are bound, body and soul, to the teachings of the Bible. One dares not add to or subtract anything from those teachings. St. Augustine deals succinctly with this matter when he writes: “If you believe what you like, and reject what you dislike in the Gospel, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourselves.”
William R. Cannon is a retired bishop of the United Methodist Church, former dean of Candler School of Theology, former chairman of the executive committee of the World Methodist Council, and author of 14 books.
Bishop Hunt Addresses Sophia
UMNS
Recent efforts by some Christians to fuse worship of “Sophia” with Christianity is nothing more than an “attempt to reconstitute the godhead,” a heresy that “staggers the religious mind,” said UM Bishop Earl G. Hunt at the January meeting of the Congress on Evangelism.
“No comparable heresy has appeared in the church in the last 15 centuries,” observed the retired bishop from Lake Junaluska, North Carolina.
“When the church seems to be losing its struggle with powers and principalities, weird things begin to happen,” he told the convention of more than 1,000 lay people and clergy.
Bishop Hunt called the current interest in Sophia ” a weird prostitution of the Eastern Orthodox idea of Saint Sophia” and said that “this is material which must be eradicated from Christian thinking now.” He called upon his fellow bishops to deal with the heresy “forthrightly and firmly.”
In a list In a list of steps that could be taken to renew the denomination, Hunt said that the church must be “cleansed of heresies old and new.”
He warned that “one of the danger signs is that church leaders, in effect, have declared ours to be a post-heresy age” in which almost anything can be construed as “Christian.”
Hunt said emergence of such trends signals a need for a “deep and sweeping change, a radical transformation” across the denomination.
Bishop Hunt is president of the Foundation for Evangelism, which raises money to fund evangelism professorships at United Methodist seminaries.
Adapted from United Methodist News Service.
by Steve | Jan 16, 1994 | Archive - 1994
Archive: United Methodist Women Get Taste of Sophia Worship
by Dottie Chase
A standing ovation for lesbians. A service of milk and honey to the goddess Sophia. A presentation denying the atonement of Jesus Christ. What is going on here? And why are there so many United Methodist women attending this conference?
Billed as “A Global Theological Conference By Women; for Women and Men,” this meeting was promoted by Christian churches. Orthodox Christians, however, would find little historic Christian theology. Convening in Minneapolis, this was ” Re-Imagining,” an ecumenical gathering associated with the World Council of Churches (WCC) for those of the feminist, “womanist,” or lesbian perspective. Many of the speakers voiced similar themes: condemnation of patriarchy and the exclusion of lesbians and homosexual men in the church.
Of the 2200 registrants, 391 were United Methodist. The Women’s Division of the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM) staff and directors were urged to attend this conference as this quadrennium’s theological workshop (Women’s Division staff and directors expenses were paid for by the division).
“They are exploring the sensual and sexual side of the divine, rooting around in the contemplative and introspective interplay with God,” observed reporter Martha Sawyer Allen of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, “and talking about women’s daily experiences of the divine in every culture as central to theology today.”
Participants gathered around “talking” tables and were asked to scribble out spiritual thoughts with crayons, re-imagine God through emotional images, and sing a song of blessing to Sophia, the goddess of Wisdom.
When asked what she thought of the Sophia-oriented liturgy, one United Methodist Women (UMW) director said that she had never heard of Sophia before, but was sure she would learn more about her. This same UMW director decided not to participate in one of the table activities, but was encouraged to join in by her table facilitator even though participants were told from the podium that they were either free to participate in activities or to abstain.
At one point in the conference, Melanie Morrison, co-founder of Christian Lesbians Out Together (CLOUT), requested time to celebrate “the miracle of being lesbian, out, and Christian.” Then she invited all other lesbian, bisexual, and transexual women to join hands and encircle the stage.
Religious News Service (RNS) estimates that “roughly 100 women converged upon the dais, many smiling. One held high the rainbow flag, which has become a symbol for the diversity among lesbians and gay men. Many of the women remaining in the audience rose to their feet and began to applaud.”
The Rev. Kittredge Cherry, a minister in the predominately homosexual Metropolitan Community Church, was one of the women holding the rainbow flag. She told RNS that the goal of the demonstration was to help people “re-imagine” the church as the embodiment of justice for everyone, including lesbians and homosexual men.
The lesbian theme was heard repeatedly from major speakers. In a workshop called “Prophetic Voices of Lesbians in the Church,” Nadean Bishop, the first “out” lesbian minister called to an American Baptist church, claimed that Mary and Martha in the Bible were lesbian “fore-sisters.” She said that they were not actual sisters, but lesbian lovers.
Janie Spahr, a self-avowed lesbian clergywoman in the Presbyterian Church USA who was prevented by that denomination from serving a local church, said at the conclusion of her presentation that her theology is first of all informed by “making love with Coni,” her lesbian partner. She then gave this challenge: “Sexuality and spirituality have to come together—and Church, we’re going to teach you!”
Judy Westerdorf, a United Methodist clergywoman from Minnesota, told the workshop that the Church says God gives sexuality as a good gift, but that 1 out of 10 is a bad gift and you’re not supposed to open it. (She was referring to claims that 10 percent of the population is homosexual, statistics that have been proven to be inaccurate.) Westerdorf added, “The Church has always been blessed by gays and lesbians, … witches, … shamans.” She joked about the term “practicing homosexual,” noting that her partner says she’s not practicing, she’s pretty good.
Theological Smorgasbord
The “Re-Imagining” event presented a smorgasbord of cultural ideas and religions, allowing attendees to pick and choose to their liking. “Be speculative,” participants were told by conference organizers, “there is no ‘answer.’ We can’t imagine what God is like. Being together in our own images is the ultimate.”
There were other workshops that dealt with feminist theology, politics, music, and belly dancing.
One of the conference speakers lashed out against alleged oppression by Christian missionary teachings in India. Aruna Gnanadason, a native Indian feminist, explained that the red dot on her forehead was a form of protest against those who said her forehead was only a place for the sign of the cross. She invited participants to join her in protest by crayoning a red dot on their foreheads as well. Gnanadason said that the red dot represented the “divine in each other.” In this instance, the mark of those not wearing the red dot was a very visible sign of those not fully participating with the conference activities.
Chung Hyun Kyung, one of the speakers, identified herself as a “recovering colonized Christian and a recovering feminist fundamentalist.” The ideal is the “reincarnation of good,” she said. Kyung explained that Asian theology totally rejects the idea of sinful man, propagating the understanding that humans are good and become better from the god within.
One major seminar was titled “Jesus,” although no orthodox Christian understanding of Jesus was discussed. This seminar, attended by about 500 individuals, began with singing to Sophia, and “bringing attention to our own bodies” and swaying to and fro. Participants were told that the ideal is to re-image Jesus within the feminist understanding from our cultural roots.
Presenter Delores S. Williams, a “womanist” theology professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, said, “I don’t think we need a theory of atonement at all.” Her remark was greeted by applause. “Atonement has to do so much with death,” she said. “I don’t think we need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff.” Continuing, she said, “We do not need atonement, we just need to listen to the god within. … If Jesus conquered sin, it was in the wilderness and life, not his death (resurrection). The first incarnation of God was not ‘some dove on the shoulder,’ but in Mary and her body.” At this point, all the participants were encouraged to call out “through a woman’s body.”
Another feminist theologian who led the “Jesus” seminar was Kwok Pui-Lan. She said the Asian experience can’t imagine any Jesus. She stated, “We cannot allow others to define our sin. What is our sin? Who is this funny God that would sacrifice a lamb. We don’t even see a lamb in the Asian experience. The Chinese do not have a word to compare to the Hebrew/Greek word for God.” Dr. Pui-Lan indicated that the Chinese do not believe God stands outside creation but that the humanist Confucian tradition emphasizes the propensity for good in humankind, and that they develop moral perfection and sainthood by maturing and emphasizing enlightenment.
Another seminar focused on the history and future of The Ecumenical Decade/Churches in Solidarity with Women. Begun by the United Nations, this program was limping along until the World Council of Churches gave it priority. It was noted that it is “truly amazing” that women have even stayed within the patriarchal churches. Participants were encouraged to ignore any charges of divisiveness; and not to worry about the collapse of unity within the churches.
Named as United Methodist sponsors for this event were: Bishop Forrest C. Stith, UM Co-Chairman of the U.S. Committee of the Ecumenical Decade/Churches in Solidarity with Women; Jeanne Audrey Powers of the General Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns and a member of the Re-imagining Steering Committee; and Bishop Sharon Brown Christopher (Minnesota). UM funding sources were the Minnesota Conference Commission on the Status and Role of Women; Minnesota Conference UMW; Women’s Division of the GBGM; and Wesley United Methodist Church as a neighboring host.
“The seminaries and the Vatican can keep on defining orthodoxy largely for the passing-on of the traditions through the ordained clergy,” conference speaker and feminist theologian Elizabeth Bettenhausen told the Star-Tribune. “But we laity have always crossed our fingers behind our backs when they lay out what orthodoxy is. We know in our daily lives theology has to be much fresher and more flexible than the definitions of orthodoxy can ever be.”
For a conference which drew upon the mainline Christian denominations for its supporters, funding, and participants, this event utterly failed to represent the historic Christian faith of these denominations. To the contrary, the “Re-imagining” conference, the Women’s Division’s choice as the quadrennium’s theological workshop, truly abandoned any form of orthodox Christian theology. As evidence, read the following liturgy of the service of milk and honey dedicated to Sophia:
“Our maker Sophia, we are women in your image: With the hot blood of our wombs we give form to new life. With the courage of our convictions we pour out lifeblood for justice . …
“Sophia, creator God, Let your milk and honey flow. Sophia, Creator God, Shower us with your love. …
“Our sweet Sophia, we are women in your image; With nectar between our thighs we invite a lover, we birth a child; With our warm body fluids we remind the world of its pleasures and sensations. …
“Our guide, Sophia, we are women in your image. With our moist mouths we kiss away a tear, we smile encouragement. With the honey of wisdom in our mouths, we prophesy a full humanity to all the peoples. …
“We celebrate the sensual life you give us. We celebrate the sweat that pours from us during our labors. We celebrate the fingertips vibrating upon the skin of love. We celebrate the tongue which licks a wound or wets our lips. We celebrate our bodiliness, our physicality, the sensations of pleasure, our oneness with earth and water.”
Dottie Chase is a United Methodist laywoman from Willard, Ohio. She has been a delegate to General Conference and has served on various national program boards for the UM Church. Susan Cyre of the Presbyterian Layman contributed research to this article.
by Steve | Jan 15, 1994 | Archive - 1994
Archive: Wither the Seminaries?
by Riley Case
The School of Theology at Claremont: Chung Hyung-Kyung, an Asian theologian who integrates Buddhism, Shamanism, Taoism, and Confucianism into a new Asian understanding of Christianity, receives a creative ministry award. Drew University, the Theological School: Communion is offered in the name of Sophia, goddess of wisdom. Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary: Professor Rosemary Radford Ruether writes liturgies for women that celebrate the cycles of the moon. Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University: A seminar on witchcraft is held during Women’s Week.
Welcome to United Methodist seminaries, where what has historically been called paganism is now celebrated as diversity and multi-culturalism. From these campuses, students are sent forth to be the spiritual leaders of United Methodist churches.
Is there any hope? That question is frequently asked. Is there hope that the disintegration of faith within the mainline churches might eventually be reversed, or that seminaries might some day be known for their defense of the faith rather than their questioning of the faith? Is there hope that the seminaries might sometime be associated with clear teaching on the authority of Scripture, the uniqueness of Jesus Christ, and the importance of holy living? Is there hope that the evangelical perspective on Christian faith might have an honest hearing on the seminary campuses, or that commitment to Jesus Christ might not have to be sacrificed in the pursuit of academic excellence?
Whither the seminaries? Is there any hope? To understand the present situation it is helpful to reflect upon early Methodism in America.
Methodists originally came from among the common people. A good percentage were black, most were poor. Until 1784 they were little more than a sect, existing without benefit of clergy. Their leaders, such as they were, were hardly from America’s aristocracy—no graduates of Yale, Princeton, or Harvard. Francis Asbury had only a few years of formal training, and many of his preachers had less.
Nevertheless, what Methodists lacked in wealth, education, and refinement they made up with zeal. The story of Methodism is the story of revival, church planting, and a willingness to sacrifice all for the sake of Christ. From a handful of followers at the time of the first Christmas conference in 1784, the Methodist movement exploded with such power and growth that by the time of the Civil War it is estimated that one-third of all Americans identified themselves as part of one of the Methodist bodies. The movement was optimistic, reformist, and creative, taking on issues of temperance, women’s rights, and the abolition of slavery. It contributed to a positive sense of values in American culture and helped define the nature of American evangelism.
With success came respectability, and respectability brought a desire for learning; hence colleges, books, and ever more stringent ministerial qualifications. While many Methodists applauded the increased emphasis on education, others expressed concern that head knowledge might be substituted for heart knowledge. The wrong kind of education would open the door to worldly and skeptical influences which would undermine rather than strengthen the church in the long run.
It was in this context that the first “Biblical Institutes” were founded. They were called Biblical Institutes because the phrase suggested Bible training rather than the stuffiness, formalism, and spiritual coldness associated with some of the existing seminaries. The Evangelical Association and the United Brethren Churches rejected all efforts to establish seminaries before the Civil War. When the idea of seminaries finally gained acceptance, Methodist bishops were given limited oversight, including the approval of faculty hiring, in order to safeguard the integrity of the faith. However, seminaries then, as now, did not wish to be safeguarded. They were much more attracted to German “higher criticism” than to camp meeting preaching. They preferred the distinction of impressing the academic world over the ministry of encouraging the Wednesday night prayer meeting. It was a time of the emerging social gospel, Darwinism, and the thoughts of William James.
The inevitable calls for accountability, investigations, and heresy trials soon followed. Several professors were actually removed from positions, thus becoming martyrs in the sacred cause of academic freedom. The momentum at the turn of the century was, however, hardly on the side of orthodox Christian faith. The surge of Methodist respectability and liberalism in the 1890s had already led to the exodus of numbers of populist preachers and camp meeting evangelists into the newly forming Holiness denominations. There were no major orthodox intellectuals to stem the tide.
At the 1908 General Conference of the northern Methodist Church, the responsibility for approving professors at seminaries was taken away from bishops. Ever since that time the seminaries have pursued their own direction without control from the bishops, the General Conference, doctrinal or confessional standards, public outcry, or, presumably, the angels themselves. Professor Otto Baab assessed the situation: “At last we have been emancipated from the literalism and fundamentalism of our fathers, set free from bondage to bibliolatry and proof text theology.”
What had always been known simply as Christianity was now negatively labeled: fundamentalism, literalism, and bibliolatry. Within the period of a very few years there was a quick and complete capitulation to modernism—a movement to preserve the respectability of the faith by accommodation to modem thinking. In a study of the theological commitment of Protestant seminaries conducted by Ministers Monthly in 1925 it was revealed that every Methodist seminary of both the southern and northern churches viewed its orientation as modernist. Of all the major denominations, only Methodism could identify none of its seminaries as orthodox or even “mixed.” (United Brethren and Evangelicals combined, listed three seminaries as orthodox.)
With the wholesale commitment to modernism in its seminaries, Methodism was poised to make its claim as the major religious force in America. In the Methodist seminary communities it was the day for kingdom building, for extolling the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man.
It was about this time that the number of Baptist churches in America surpassed the number of Methodist churches.
Methodist seminaries between the 1930s and the 1950s found themselves caught up in whatever theological or cultural fad emerged on the scene. Personalism, pacifism, socialism, process philosophy, neo-orthodoxy, existentialism, situation ethics, or Freudian psychology—all were pursued with breathless enthusiasm. Evangelical theology, usually translated as fundamentalism or literalism (terms of derision), was viewed as an indication of cultural lag, soon to be eclipsed by cultural and academic progress. As one of my seminary professors explained, “In another generation we won’t have to worry about it.” When some students asked if Billy Graham might be invited to speak on campus, Dr. Dwight Loder, then president of Garrett-Evangelical Seminary, dismissed the request with the remark, “We don’t wish to be identified with that brand of Christianity.”
About this same time, membership in the Baptist churches in America surpassed membership in the Methodist churches.
It was in part because of the frustration with the seminaries that Good News was founded in 1967. The trigger for the beginning of Good News was an article by Charles Keysor in the Christian Advocate which asserted, among other things, that despite everything the seminaries were about, and despite the stifling brand of liberalism that prevailed among the boards and agencies of the church, there were a great number of Methodists—Keysor used the term “The Silent Minority”—who believed the Bible and held to the historic doctrines of the church. Furthermore, this group wanted to be a part of Methodism’s future.
In their more grandiose dreams, the leaders of Good News hoped to steer the giant ship called Methodism away from a course set toward apostasy and disaster. There were danger signs that Methodism was facing the future with a hollow core, even when membership was at its high point. It was becoming evident that widespread reform was needed in the seminaries and in other places of power. At more realistic moments, Good News leaders hoped at least to be a rallying point for those evangelical Methodists who sometimes felt like aliens in their own churches. They hoped also to provide a forum where spiritual and theological issues might be discussed honestly and openly, implying that such forums did not otherwise exist.
The seminaries and the denomination in the late 1960s had plenty of problems to deal with (not to mention Good News, which they characterized as a movement of right-wing reactionism motivated by fear): the supposed “Death of God,” the secular city, Black Power, Viet Nam, nuclear proliferation. This was a time of anti-establishment sentiment and mistrust of institutions.
Seminaries, in their zeal to be relevant, were attracted to the avant garde faddishness of the day. “Let the world set the agenda,” was a frequently heard slogan. And so the world did. Student activism at the seminaries differed little from student activism at major secular universities. After a series of demonstrations, sit-ins, and an invasion by the Weatherman—a radical student group—Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary literally shut down. In many schools, chapels were largely unattended, or became opportunities for political maneuvering, rather than for worship.
About this time, despite the increased United Methodist membership resulting from the Methodist merger with the Evangelical United Brethren, the number of members in just one Baptist denomination, the Southern Baptists, surpassed the number of United Methodists.
In the 1970s and 1980s it became increasingly apparent that, despite all the emphasis on relevance on the part of the seminaries and denominational leaders, Americans were abandoning the mainline denominations in droves. One often-given reason: seminary trained pastors were biblically illiterate, couldn’t preach, couldn’t relate to youth, and didn’t believe anything!
Seminaries wanted to study culture and public policy, not theology and the Bible. The pressure on students and faculty to conform to politically correct ways of speaking and thinking (no male pronouns for God) were a betrayal of the spirit of openness, liberalism, and academic freedom the seminaries supposedly sought to project. The causes of the cultural left: women’s issues, mysticism, Native American spirituality, peace programs, Marxist analysis, environmental ideology, and liberal politics—were advanced, often with unrestrained zeal. But there were few takers in the churches. Those groups that seminaries viewed as their special burden: ethnics, the poor, and the intellectually elite, were particularly disinterested in what the seminaries had to offer.
What about the 1990s? The story is not totally discouraging. The resurgence of evangelical faith in America and the world over has led to the enrollment of more conservative students in seminaries. A sprinkling of evangelical professors has now taken place in several seminaries. A Fund for Theological Education, an organization funding evangelicals for advanced academic degrees has prepared a number of persons for teaching. Chairs of evangelism have been funded for several seminaries.
Serious problems still exist however. Seminaries worship at the altar of academic freedom, and seem to be proud that no religious tests are required of any professor hired to teach. The University Senate, the agency in the UM Church responsible for church-institution relationships, is noted for its aggressive policies of affirmative action, which translates into legalistic requirements about the number of female professors, but not the first question about whether anybody believes in God. Values esteemed by the seminaries—inclusiveness, relevance, relativity, tolerance, and modernity—are advanced in such a way that evangelical faith with its strong assertions of truth is viewed as exclusivistic, irrelevant, absolutist, intolerant, and antediluvian.
Despite the continued claims by seminary spokespersons that evangelical faith is affirmed, treated with respect, and heard with integrity, the testimony of evangelicals is otherwise. Not only is evangelical faith rarely advanced, frequently it is not even understood.
What can be done? The Ministerial Education Fund (MEF) pours hundreds of thousands of apportionment dollars, with no strings attached, into the seminaries. One suggestion is to give the funds directly to students in the form of vouchers which can be used at any accredited seminary. This would not only provide freedom of choice for students, it would produce a market-driven situation where seminaries would need to offer balanced, quality education to attract students.
In addition, the church might insist that the seminaries be accountable to the doctrinal perspective as outlined in the Book of Discipline, paragraphs 67-69 (the doctrinal standards). At every General Conference for the past 20 years a number of petitions from individuals, churches, and annual conferences have made this or a similar request. To most ordinary people in the church, it seems only logical that seminaries funded by the church and entrusted with the responsibility to train the church’s ministers would be committed in some way to the doctrine of the church. Without exception, these petitions are opposed by persons connected with the seminaries. They warn darkly of witch hunts and heresy trials. One individual at the 1992 General Conference expressed it this way: “If the church were to control the seminaries in this way we might end up with the same tragic situation that exists in the Southern Baptist Church.”
Within a few years, the Southern Baptists will have doubled the membership of the United Methodists.
Riley B. Case is pastor of St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Kokomo, Indiana. He is also a Good News board member and a contributing editor to Good News magazine.
by Steve | Jan 9, 1994 | Archive - 1994
Archive: Confessions of a Grieving Seminary Professor
By Thomas C. Oden
January/February 1994
Lay persons are increasingly demanding the right to know why their parish pastors are so often going astray like lost sheep — with political indiscretions, sexual escapades, and ideological binges. I hate to be the bearer of rotten news, but after a lifetime of teaching in a tradition-deprived seminary ethos, I am nearly convinced that its present system is practically irreformable.
My hypothesis is: That form of education for ministry which has attached itself like a leech to modernity is dying as modernity dies. The seminary that weds itself to modernity is already a widow as we enter the era of post-modernity. Here is the dreary list of characteristic symptoms of rapid depreciation:
1. The tenure principle which was designed to protect academic freedom has become so exploited that it now protects academic license, absenteeism, incompetence, and at times moral turpitude. Once tenure is offered, it is virtually impossible to dismiss a professor. It requires many strata of grievance procedures before the tenured professor can even begin to be challenged, regardless of the offense.
Whenever the seminary faculty feels or imagines that it is being subjected to review by anyone, the battle-cry goes out: Safeguard academic freedom! Yes, the seminary has a duty to defend its faculty from unjust challenges that would inordinately invade the sanctuary of the classroom and dictate to faculty what they are to teach. I do not want the KKK or the neo-Nazi party to tell me what I should be teaching and the textbooks I should be using. But neither do I want liberal dogmatists or ideological advocates of someone’s ideas of political correctness to be dictating what textbooks I should be using.
It simply will no longer do for seminaries to continue avoiding dialogue with church constituencies by claiming that professors have the freedom to teach whatever they please. If they teach apostasy, the believing church has no moral obligation to give them support or to bless their follies.
When academic freedom becomes a strategy by which the seminary sidesteps every critic, then academic freedom itself has been prostituted. When the Wesleyan tradition and doctrinal standards – standards clearly defined in every Book of Discipline since Wesley – can no longer be implement in the seminaries, then the United Methodist governing bodies do not have a responsibility to protect the freedom of a faculty to disavow that solemnly pledged doctrinal tradition.
2. Once a tradition-deprived faculty has been fully tenured, its members have the unique privilege of cloning themselves with look-alike colleagues in the future. The tenured f acuity has learned well the fine art of cloning itself politically, repeating ever anew its own ideological biases, making sure that no one comes in who might upset the prevailing ideological momentum.
3. The wall-to-wall redefinition of an entire field of study and its subsequent renovation is the fervent dream of many tenured radicals, whose chief peer group is the professional society that meets once a year in an elegant hotel to talk about oppression.
4. It is a common practice to offer teaching appointments in counter-traditional seminaries without reference to any experience whatever in the actual practice of ministry. If those who had extensive church experience applied, it might even tend to be a negative factor in their selection. Candidates are preferred who have not been contaminated by a strong church tradition. This is analogous to someone who had never drawn up a contract for a client teaching about contracts in a law school.
5. Seminarians ordinarily do not become angry until their last year, as they belatedly realize that they are leaving seminary with heavy debts; yet may not be deemed by their annual conferences as ready to preach, administer sacraments, or take on actual tasks of pastoral care. When they are appointed to a parish, they recognize how little of their theological education they can use, and how much of it they must hide.
6. The disciplines of the seminary have become a playground of competing methodologies thar bicker constantly for recognition, sanction, and approval, especially through scientific methods of inquiry. It is as if the disciplines were constantly combatting for higher status in a rigid pecking order. In the evaluation-methods employed at the higher end of the pecking order, there is little or no room to accept Scripture as the Word of God or divine revelation as a serious intellectual premise.
7. Each discipline of theological education, now awash in anti-supernatural assumptions, finds itself desperately seeking an alternative to the premises of orthodox Christian reasoning: incarnation, resurrection, and scriptural revelation. Each discipline feels compelled to legitimize its teaching by some form of empirical data-gathering that would only grudgingly be acceptable in a chemistry laboratory. The so-called scientific study of religion has gradually flooded the seminary.
8. Under these conditions, theological inquiry may pretend to proceed, but almost entirely without reference to the worshipping community, its laity, its historic apostolic mission, its classical texts. The critics who mean most to modern scholars are only those who have written during the last 20 years, or 50 at most. They often do not include the theologians of the previous 1900 years. The serious study of Christian thought is assumed to begin with Paul Tillich or, at the earliest, with Friedrich Schleiermacher, the father of theological liberalism. It is easy to see how this premise affects the study of classical Christi.an texts. Its modem chauvinism constitutes an attack on premodern wisdom.
9. The fact that their theology has no grass roots support or lies with a worshipping community is considered a badge of honor.
Now you see why I have trouble even accurately describing the depth of the problems of the liberated seminary. My leading hypothesis: Modernity has belatedly triumphed in the seminary just as it was dying out in the real world. The triumph of modernity is most decisively felt in the special hothouse arena of a fully tenured and fully liberated seminary faculty.
The Consequent Moral Dilemma
This problem presents me with serious moral difficulties: Should I even remain in a seminary system that I think has gone so far toward corruption? The major reason for staying is: if I leave, along with others who are like me, doesn’t that simply risk abandoning the seminary tradition into the hands of its most creative deconstructers and articulate detractors?
My personal dilemma: If I stay, I cooperate with a corrupted and corrupting system. Yet, if the few remaining classic Christians in leadership positions leave the present seminary system, they leave behind the legacy, the bequests, the institutions, the resources that have been many generations in the building. Walking away may have stickier moral impediments than hanging in.
I am pouring out my heart about a broken love affair. This is so difficult because, on the one hand, I love the people who suffer in the institutions served by prodigal theological education, and in many ways I love the institutions – like loving the feel of an old shoe. This, after all, is where I have spent my life. Modern theological education has given me a home, defended my right to teach according to my conscience, paid me well for my labors, given me enviable job security, protected me against critics who would limit my range of operation, given me guarantees that my life and livelihood would not be threatened by capricious charges – how could I now be so irascibly ungrateful as to bring the troubles of telling the truth to my own community?
I have been a serious defender of the tenure principle during most of my adult life, on the grounds that this is the best way to underwrite academic freedom has been challenged, the system shielded me. But now I wonder if I can in good conscience accept any longer its safety, defense and smug invulnerability.
It seems absurd for me to probe the vulnerabilities of an institution – one that I love – that has put bread on my table, a university with an enviable reputation and colleagues with whom I have worked amiably for many years. I do not want to be read as implying that there is nothing good left in liberated theological education. But there remains a question of proportionality. Do its present corruptions outweigh its potential promise?
The Temptation to Jump Ship
So what is ahead for the next generation of seminarians? Is the seminary as it now stands virtually irreformable? Probably.
Should we then abandon the present seminary structure? I doubt it, even though that may seem inconsistent with the premise of irreformability. Why not vacate the premises, concede defeat, and capitulate to inevitability?
It seems unthinkable to abandon, without further prayers for special grace, an institution to which so many of the faithful have both committed themselves and provided support from their personal and often sparse resources over so long a time. The libraries and endowments and alumni cannot simply be abdicated. But can the institution be significantly reshaped? Not without an elementary reversal of tenure abuses. I see no way both to continue the present tenure system and reform the tradition-impaired seminary. And there is virtually no hope for reforming the tenure system. I wish it were otherwise. The dilemma: A clean sweep seems both necessary and impossible.
But can the tenure system be even slightly or moderately or gradually amended? Realistically, it cannot be abruptly abandoned; except by a strongly organized and intentional laity who, with astute leadership, enters directly into and dismantles the present abuses with determination. Might tenure be incrementally redefined? In a reasonable world that is what one might think ought to happen, but during the course of a multi-decade attempt at the gradual amendment of tenure policies, what would be happening to the suffering church? Who, but the laity, would have to abide faithful during those slow decades – the laity who have trusted the clergy for the transmission of the apostolic tradition and for sufficient remedies when that does not occur. A cruel hand as been dealt the long-suffering laity.
Those who love the church, but have endured its undermining by permissiveness, would like to see some reform in their institutions before the millennium ends. If you approach the reform of seminary education by the slight or incremental modification of tenure, then you are talking about the hundred years that it might take the present institutions to die, and the present theological faculties to redesign themselves into an academic society which would, in turn, study the collapse of Christianity. This is why the prognosis is dismal.
The Lust for Academic Takeovers
Well-educated, innovation-addicted young Ph.D.s lust after fiscally healthy institutions to swarm and take over, because they offer job security, even if they do not have Princeton-like prestige. This is why relatively well-funded United Methodist institutions of higher education have been special targets of shrewd, liberated Machiavellians who couldn’t make it at Harvard or Yale. Since these United Methodist institutions were desperately seeking upward academic mobility and lusting to join the Ivy-League look-alike elite, they have been willing to pay for academic stars, and have suffered most from the academic version of statutory rape.
Where tenured faculties have been formed so as to systematically block out ancient ecumenical teaching, they cannot expect evangelical or moderate support. Funds may need to be withdrawn if the pattern persists. That may be the only available mechanism by which defiant faculties can be taught that they must become accountable to their actual constituencies and to the apostolic faith.
The Complete Absence of Heresy
It seems worth noting that the modern seminary has finally achieved a condition that has never before prevailed in Christian history: heresy simply does not exist. Church teaching, after long centuries of struggle against heresy, has finally found a way of overcoming heterodoxy altogether, by banishing it as a concept legitimately taught within the walls of the institution.
Doing entirely away with the concepts of apostasy and infidelity is a triumphal achievement of latitudinarianism, a term Wesley used to describe those who were so broad-minded that they lacked a firm commitment to Christian essentials. This is an unexcelled accomplishment in all the annals of Christian history. It seems to give final expression to the quest for the flawless community.
No heresy of any kind exists any longer. You cannot find one anywhere in the liberated seminary – unless, perhaps, you might consider offenses against inclusiveness. There can be absolutely no corruption of Christian teaching because, under the present rules, all notions of corruption are radically relativized. There is not only no concept of heresy, but also no way to raise the question of boundaries for legitimate or correct Christian belief where absolute relativism holds sway.
The very thought of asking about heresy has itself become the new arch-heresy. The arch-heretic is the one who hints that some distinction is required between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, good and evil. Such a person, if untenured, is subject to suspicion and abrupt termination by a cloned faculty-majority magnanimously composed of both absolute relativists and relative relativists.
And yes, all this was accomplished by modernity. But what an untimely event it is; because modernity is dead, and now they have post-modernity to deal with.
Surely I must be exaggerating! But if you doubt my accuracy, ask any recent seminary graduate who still defiantly holds on to belief in the incarnation and resurrection. Far from exaggerating, I have been holding back my fire concerning certain vulnerabilities that are even more difficult to talk about publicly – especially sexual experimentation and ideological harassment.
How do institutional processes guarantee that the next generation will not systematically destroy everything they have fought and worked for? That is precisely the dilemma of apostolic Christians. That is the reason why a serious view of the transmission of the apostolic tradition has always been a prime concern of the church and its laity-and an unresolved problem for Protestant liberalism.
Author’s note: This article, which is a brief abstract of a portion from a book-length argument, is not rightly interpreted if directed to my own Seminary or its leadership. It is directed rather to the problems of seminary education generally, of which my institution is only an incidental example, and by no means the worst.
