by Steve | Nov 29, 1985 | Archive - 1985
Archive: ‘Seven Churches of Methodism’ Attacked, Defended
By James S. Robb
“We contend that the United Methodist Church is not one church, but seven.” With that bold assertion, two professors from Duke Divinity School put forward a new theory on regional tension in the church that has set off a blaze of media publicity—and church controversy.
The theory, released this fall in a study entitled “The Seven Churches of Methodism,” was formulated by Dr. Robert L. Wilson and Dr. William H. Willimon. The “seven churches” to which the professors refer describe the different styles and substance of United Methodism in different sections of the country, such a s the South and the Northeast.
The professors’ argument is simple enough. “Regional differences are rarely discussed openly because the church’s leaders want to maintain unity,” they wrote in the study. “The quadrennial General Conference maintains a facade of togetherness. National church leaders and bureaucrats tend to perceive regionalism as a threat to church-wide funds and programs.”
Continuing regionalism
Yet, despite the wish of many to the contrary, Wilson and Willimon state, “We believe that the evidences for continuing regionalism can be seen by anyone who is willing to probe beneath the surface.”
Viewing the denomination as a collection of unique regional “churches” instead of a giant unified body is a new idea. The theory has attracted impressive publicity. The Washington Post, for example, ran a half-page on the matter. Numerous other papers, such as The Los Angeles Times and The Cincinnati Inquirer, ran stories.
But not everyone is impressed. An official UM commission and an unofficial caucus are up in arms about the study.
Wilson’s and Willimon’s study contains “implicit and subtle racism and sexism,” according to the official Commission on the Status and Role of Women. The commission charged that the study was poorly done and is inaccurate. Further, the commission is planning to discuss the matter with Duke University.
Black Methodists for Church Renewal, the unofficial black caucus, also criticized the study. They said it “completely overlooks the uniqueness of the black church and the importance of race as an issue in United Methodism.” The caucus took the step of setting up a task force to respond to the study.
What the two groups are apparently reacting to is a section in the study that explains why regionalism needs to be looked at: “During the past quarter of a century Methodism has increasingly organized itself on the basis of racial, language, and sexual criteria as if these were the only significant differences within the denomination. … The failure to identify and to take account of our very real differences has resulted in an inability to mobilize to serve regional issues.”
In an interview with Good News, study co-author Robert Wilson said he was puzzled by the heated opposition from the two groups.
“We thought we were writing about regionalism, not racism and sexism,” Wilson said. While he said he doesn’t have any objection to the caucus and commission in general, “There are other things in the world besides issues based on gender and race. And that’s not to denigrate those two items.”
Wilson said, “By and large, the response has been positive.” Since the study’s publication he has gotten about five letters on it every day. One West Coast pastor who wrote agreeing with the study’s findings had transferred from the Midwest to the Far West, and he said United Methodism in the two areas is indeed very different.
Yet, many church officials evidently feel threatened by any mention of nonnational loyalties. One church-agency staff member told a secular newspaper reporter, “It’s clear the authors [of the study] are still fighting the Civil War.”
According to the study, the “seven churches of Methodism” and their major characteristics are as follows:
- The Yankee Church: New England Methodism, which has never been a strong area for the church. The church there is traditionally liberal, recently pessimistic, and rapidly shrinking.
- The Industrial Northeastern Church: New York and the mid-Atlantic area, where Methodism has lost 22 percent of its members and where it is in danger of extinction in the major cities. Gives much attention to social issues.
- The Church South: One of the areas where the church hasn’t lost strength. Conservative in theology and practice. But the church there is not keeping up with the rapidly expanding population.
- The Midwest Church: Heartland of Methodism, the church there is still strong despite a 10½ percent drop in membership. Tension is caused by the contrast between a conservative laity and a more liberal clergy.
- The Southwest Church: Optimism and growth prevail in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. The biggest churches are there, but failure in reaching the ever-growing Hispanic population is a problem.
- The Frontier Church: The church in the Rocky Mountains is declining, but is hardy and sometimes innovative.
- The Western Church: In America’s Far West, Methodism is fairly weak and sinking (23 percent membership loss in 12 years). Liberal leadership doesn’t reflect the views of the many conservative clergy and laypeople.
To the commission and caucus criticizing the study, co-author Wilson says, “Hey, friends, there’s another agenda in the world besides yours.”
by Steve | Nov 29, 1985 | Archive - 1985
Archive: Beyond Self-Improvement
It’s time America’s new religious upsurge went beyond spiritual self-indulgence, says renewal specialist Richard Lovelace
Developing the spiritual life is a growth industry today.
- Popular religious literature would displace other forms of non-fiction if it were allowed on best-seller lists.
- Lay people who have heard about personal commitment to Christ and the fulness of the Holy Spirit on television are urging their pastors to speak on these subjects.
- Scholars probing the roots of denominations are studying how to recover the spiritual strength of these movements which began in a blaze of religious experience.
- Even futurologists, scientists, and business leaders are admitting that the moral dilemmas created by technology force us back to religion, both for ethical guidance and for November/December 1985 courage to face the future.
In the church, the zealous activism of the 1960s has been overtaken by a new interest in evangelism, worship, prayer, and contemplation. Since the Jesus Movement of the late ’60s, young converts have been pouring into seminaries, tripling the size of some evangelical schools. The number of Protestant candidates for the ministry is up 30 percent.
The influence of evangelical students and the apparent conservative shift toward Protestant orthodoxy have begun to affect the shape of American seminaries. Many have begun to hire evangelical faculty, academic deans, and presidents.
Harvard Divinity School, a bellwether of American intellectual life which has been pointed to the left for almost three centuries, is now trying to endow a Chair of Evangelical Studies to be occupied by an evangelical. No wonder New York Times editor Kenneth Briggs has suggested that the theological leadership of the American church in the late 20th century, once occupied by neo-orthodox figures such as Reinhold Niebuhr, is shifting now to progressive evangelicals.
The effect of all this ferment in the life of the church has been no less startling. A recent Presbyterian moderator, Dr. Howard Rice, devoted his moderatorial year to the theme of prayer and spiritual renewal. A zealous activist in the Civil Rights struggle and other justice issues in the 1960s, Dr. Rice had to reorder his priorities when illness halted his movements, put him in a wheelchair, and forced him to center on his relationship with God.
In a series of prayer retreats across the country, Dr. Rice drew church leaders back into Scripture-reading, meditation, and prayer. A denominational mission paper reported the results with baffled respect: “Nothing happened. God was worshipped.”
But this headline has ironic overtones. In Scripture and in past religious awakenings, when God was truly worshipped, plenty happened! Not only did thousands become converted and spiritually concerned; society was powerfully changed for the better. But while some leaders of the electronic church have become activistic enough to frighten their political opponents, most of those involved in the new wave of spiritual interest seem passive and introverted. The Wall Street Journal put it this way:
Old Time Religion: An Evangelical Revival Is Sweeping the Nations, But with Little Effect Millions Quit Mainline Churches for Born-Again Sects that Focus on Inner Self, Shunning the Sinful World.
The article continued: “The spirit of religious awakening is once again moving across the land, but unlike a similar great religious awakening two-and-a-half centuries ago that helped sow the seeds of the American Revolution, the current evangelical revival has so far sowed little except curiosity among unbelievers and self-doubt among many faithful. ‘I heard on one of those TV evangelism shows that 33 percent of all Americans are born again,’ says Douglas Gallagher, pastor of the Broomfield Baptist Church, near Detroit, and an evangelical. ‘But if that is true, why is the crime rate still so high? Why is there still so much use of narcotics? Where is our impact?’ ”
Some of the apparent passivity in the new religious surge may really be constructive action focused on setting one’s own house in order. Bill Enright, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Glen Ellyn, Illinois, comments in the same Wall Street Journal article:
“Two years ago I went on a retreat with the officers from my church and they all said they wanted more sermons that would give them a practical guide on how to live the Christian life in their families, their business, their friendships. Too often the church in the past has been esoteric, talking above the people rather than at their level.”
Whatever the reasons, even the conservative revivalists who are said to have influenced the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections have had trouble mobilizing troops for activities outside the church. “Robert Billings, [a] leader of Moral Majority,” according to the Journal, “says it is difficult to get people steadily involved in anything but their own spiritual lives. ‘We get all excited about an issue and go out and organize, and then three weeks later we are back inside the four walls singing Amazing Grace.’ ”
One of my students wrote recently praising Charles Colson’s second book, Life Sentence: “Colson’s realization that the Christian faith goes beyond mere self-improvement … proves that spiritual rebirth is not only possible and true but that it is the key to effective social action … I feel that too many evangelicals have become unwitting victims of the societal trademark they so vehemently decry, the ‘me generation.’
“It seems they get so wrapped up in this and that course, and that method, tape series, etc., on how to be a better Christian that it becomes the end rather than the means. Their concern seems mostly to center around self, although they hope that their spiritual growth will automatically osmose into those around them.”
This is not a new problem. And its presence does not discredit the reality of the current religious upsurge. Previous evangelical awakenings also went through growing pains and spiritual adolescence. John of the Cross, one of the great doctors of Christian spirituality, said that worldly self-interest constantly tries to re-enter the experience of the new convert, masking itself in impressively “spiritual” forms of pride, avarice, envy, and gluttony.
Nevertheless, the goal of authentic spirituality is a life which escapes from the closed circle of spiritual self-indulgence, or even self-improvement, to become absorbed in the love of God and other persons. The essence of spiritual renewal is “the love of God … poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:5). “My love,” said St. Augustine, “is my weight.”
The substance of real spirituality is love. It is God’s love moving into our consciousness in warm affirmation that He values and cares for us with infinite concern. But His is a love which also sweeps us away from self-preoccupation into a delight in the unlimited beauty and transcendent glory of God himself, and moves us to obey Him. It is a love which awakens us to cherish the gifts and graces of others and labor to perfect these.
Paul tells us that this love is a far more reliable measure of spirituality than our gifts or works or theological comprehension, and that this love is one of the few things which lasts forever (I Corinthians 13:8, 13). And Jesus said that the highest fulfillment of the will of God in our lives is to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength, and to care for others as we care for ourselves (Mark 12:30-31).
Obnoxiously self-assertive
In the nonreligious world, self-knowledge and self-fulfillment are considered to be the core of human achievement. The classical Greek counsel was “know thyself.” Humanistic psychology and the human-potential movement, forces which helped create what Tom Wolfe called “The Me Decade,” have stressed the creative force in each individual which must be set free. Yet, the search for these goals has produced a lot of people who are at best self-preoccupied and at worst obnoxiously self-assertive.
Religious forms of self-improvement can also generate nervous self-concern and spiritual pride. If spiritual growth is built on repressed guilt, or if the means of growth is a set of laws to be followed or an intricate and arduous path to be mastered, spiritual self-centeredness will result.
Biblical self-knowledge and self-fulfillment have their focus outside the self. As John Calvin said, we can only discover ourselves by discovering God.
Realistic self-examination leads to an awareness of our limits, which also drives us to consider God. “Our poverty, ” Calvin wrote, “conduces to a clearer display of the infinite fullness of God. … Thus a sense of our ignorance, vanity, poverty, infirmity, depravity, and corruption leads us to perceive and acknowledge that in the Lord alone are to be found true wisdom, solid strength, perfect goodness, and unspotted righteousness. … Nor can we really aspire toward Him till we have begun to be displeased with ourselves.”
“Feeling good about yourself’ is a primary goal of much popular psychology. But for Biblical religion such a goal is, at best, only a way station on the road to knowing God and, at worst, a deceptive trap. Only by fixing our attention on God can we accurately know ourselves-both the graces He has given us and the depth of our needs.
If we compare our lives with those of other human beings, it may be November/December 1985 easy for us to say, ‘Tm OK.” But if we measure our goodness by the holiness of God, that is another story.
Encountering the God of the Bible can be a deeply unsettling experience. The holiness of God is, as Rudolf Otto says, mysterium tremendum et fascinans—a tremendous and fascinating mystery.
God may be comfortably known and worshipped at a distance. But a more direct vision of His glory produces holy fear and awe, not so much of His power as of His purity.
This was Job’s experience when God spoke to him out of the whirlwind: “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5-6, NIV).
Isaiah reports the same result of his vision of God’s holiness: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” (Isaiah 6:5, RSV).
Even though self-despising is often pathological, and self-acceptance is surely a proper goal of both psychological stability and personal renewal, the Bible proclaims that self-fulfillment cannot be found apart from encounter with God. And, as Johann Tauler put it, “The pathway to God lies across the track of your own nothingness.”
Those who are traveling on that path, and find themselves undergoing “the dark night of the soul ” as God purges them from sin in the furnace of conviction, cannot be reassured by easy flattery about their gifts and potential or the quick-fix offer of cheap grace. And rightly so. For faith in Jesus which is not built upon a deep hunger and thirst after righteousness is shallow and fruitless.
The Great Awakening, that tremendous spiritual upsurge of the 18th century, motivated an explosion of activity which remade American society and led to the birth of a new nation infused with Christian principles. But there were deep roots to this activity which are often lacking in modern activism, both among evangelicals and socially concerned liberals. Much religious life in the 20th century seems to lose track of the One who is supposedly at its center: God.
In the 1960s, for example, God became so peripheral to much religious activity that it came as no surprise when some theologians announced that He was dead. Religious social activism not rooted in love for God is driven by love for idols. It pretends to come from concern for others or for God’s kingdom, but actually it is motivated by the worship of humanity or disguised forms of self-glorification.
Health and wealth
On the other hand, evangelical religion as an aid to self-assurance, health, or wealth short-circuits the soul’s path toward contact with God, which is the heart’s deepest desire. As Augustine observes, “Many cry to the Lord to avoid losses or to acquire riches, for the safety of their friends or the security of their homes, for temporal felicity or worldly distinction, yes, even for mere physical health which is the sole inheritance of the poor man. … Alas, it is easy to want things from God and not want God himself, as though the gift could ever be preferable to the giver.”
Only in the truly God-centered way of life will we find authentic spiritual renewal. If God is the ultimate reality of our lives, and if our main purpose in living is “to glorify Him and to enjoy Him forever,” then it is only realistic for us to live our lives increasingly with God at the center.
Richard Lovelace is professor of church history at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and is a regular columnist for Charisma magazine. He has authored several books including Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal and Renewal as a Way of Life from which this article is excerpted (© 1985 by Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship of the USA and used by permission of lnterVarsity Press).
by Steve | Nov 28, 1985 | Archive - 1985
Archive: UM Missions: Which Way to the Future?
By James S. Robb
Good News talks to leaders of the official mission board and the new Mission Society
For years the debate raged.
On one side towered the denomination’s official mission agency, the General Board of Global Ministries. Armed with a glorious history of spreading the Gospel and a multimillion dollar budget, the board had come under fire over a number of its recent policies. Global Ministries officials maintained the board had merely changed to meet a changing world. It was faithful to its mission, they said.
On the other side arose disgruntled evangelicals and traditionalists. Upset by steady erosion in the number of UM missionaries overseas and by the mission board’s perceived commitment to political causes, the evangelicals missed few chances to petition the board for policy changes. Send out more missionaries, they requested. Concentrate on winning persons to Christ. But Global Ministries officials generally countered that they were concerned about the whole person, not just the soul.
In 1974 concerned evangelicals organized themselves into the Evangelical Missions Council to lobby for reform (EMC was part of Good News from 1976 to mid-1984). A separate group of ministers from large “tall steeple” congregations beyond the EMC circle also attempted to bring change. Regularly since the mid-’70s, the mission board and the evangelicals got together for “dialog,” usually at the Global Ministries headquarters at 475 Riverside Drive in New York City. Yet, after many years of meetings, neither side had substantially changed its views. It looked like a permanent stalemate.
Then suddenly a quiet revolution ignited. Deciding they could wait for change no longer, a group of 29 large-church pastors and 4 missions professors met in November, 1983. They announced they were forming a “supplemental” mission board, the Mission Society for United Methodists. The new society would send out more United Methodist missionaries, they pledged.
The Mission Society wasted no time in gearing up for action. It hired Rev. H. T. Maclin, Southeastern Jurisdiction representative for Global Ministries, to be chief executive. Rev. Virgil Maybray, head of the now-disbanded Evangelical Missions Council, was chosen for the number two staff slot. Headquarters was set up in Decatur, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta.
In its first year of existence, the Mission Society raised several hundred thousand dollars and survived considerable opposition from Global Ministries and others who insisted that the official agency have the field to itself. Then this May, the society “sent forth” its first 10 missionaries. Dozens more may depart next year, and hundreds may be sent within a decade.
Meanwhile, Global Ministries isn’t sitting by quietly. Led by Dr. Randolph Nugent, general secretary, and Miss Peggy Billings, head of the board’s international work, the board denies that it is uninterested in converting persons to Christ. It’s also responding to many of the charges leveled against it and attempting to limit the success of the Mission Society.
Many United Methodist pastors and laypersons find themselves bewildered by the new situation. Questions abound. Was a second mission board necessary? What are the goals of both boards? Who is going to send how many missionaries? Do churches have to choose sides?
To help United Methodists find the path to the future, Good News recently interviewed top executives from the Mission Society for United Methodists and the official Board of Global Ministries at their respective headquarters.
Why was the Mission Society formed?
“The policy of the Board of Global Ministries is to support programs and not the sending of personnel,” flatly states Mission Society Vice President Virgil Maybray. “That wasn’t the basis on which God operated. He believed in sending people. He sent his Son—a person. Ultimately that’s what we have to do, send a person.”
According to Mission Society officials, the United Methodist Church simply has too few career overseas missionaries. From more than 1,500 in 1968, Global Ministries now claims just 460; this does not include short-term missionaries or foreign nationals. The drop disturbs Maclin and Maybray.
They say many smaller denominations are sending more. For example, the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination, with less than three percent of the membership of the United Methodist Church, manages to field 1,099 overseas missionaries.
“The Board of Global Ministries’ policy, as they have said many times, is the empowerment of the indigenous church and enabling it to stand on its feet,” explains Maclin. “There is an element of truth in that. We do want the church overseas to stand on its own feet, to be autonomous and to be the church.
“But what about the 300-million-plus people in the world who do not yet have even the first verse of Scripture translated into a language that is understandable to them? Or how about the one to one-and-a-half billion that have yet to have reasonable opportunity to hear and heed the Gospel message?”
Global Ministries leaders deny they aren’t interested in sending missionaries. Peggy Billings, head of the board’s World Division, states, “There is and always will be, as long as there is a Board of Global Ministries, the need for people from the United States to be in mission in other places.”
But although Global Ministries says it would like to send more overseas missionaries, there is no talk of a major expansion. Mission Society people believe the need is so great they could not wait any longer while asking Global Ministries to send more missionaries.
Why doesn’t the Board of Global Ministries send more missionaries?
According to Nugent and Billings, the board is sending as many missionaries as it can on its income.
“Sometimes the church doesn’t understand the economic cost of its mission,” Nugent says. “God does some amazing things with the resources that are there. But at the same time, people are expensive.”
Global Ministries spent $86 million in 1984. The World Division, which is responsible for overseas missionaries, was allocated $29 million of that, or about a third of the total.
Of the $29 million, $13.9 million underwrote overseas missionaries. In addition to career overseas missionaries, this amount covered funding of short-term missionaries, foreign nationals directly on the payroll of Global Ministries, and brief overseas mission experiences by Americans, plus some increased funding for missionary pensions.
Billings says she realizes the World Division’s overall budget “really sounds incredible. But when you break it down, and you find out it now costs $18,000 a year to support one U.S. person in mission abroad (and that includes travel, education, and so forth), then how many folk can you get?”
In fact, she says, the increases in income the board has gotten haven’t kept up with rising costs. Under normal circumstances the present financial situation would have caused the board to further reduce the missionary force. “But we had made a decision that we don’t believe that should happen,” Billings states. “So we will maintain what we call the ‘present level,’ the 1985 level, on into the future.”
In addition to the $13.9 million that subsidized missionaries, the board’s World Division made cash grants of $12.7 million in 1984. Much of these funds went as block grants to Third World Methodist churches. Global Ministries officials say these grants, and not just missionaries, are necessary.
Mission Society leaders see a different explanation for Global Ministries not sending more missionaries. “Their philosophy of missions is such that it does not provide for the sending of more missionaries from the United States,” ventures Maclin. “They see missions in terms of [sending] a few from here, but also to enable people all over the world to be in mission [through cash grants]. There is a degree of validity in that.
“But at the same time,” he says, “a great deal of their effort has gone into funding programs of wide varieties, some of which have been highly questionable.”
Critics have pointed to a number of Global Ministries’ programs as being unacceptable. For example, last year the board gave more than $50,000 to an organization known as the World Student Christian Federation. Although the name makes the group sound quite religious, its own literature eschews discussion of God in favor of various far-left political causes. As reported in a 1983 article in Good News, resolutions passed by WSCF at a 1980 meeting elicited this response from Lutheran Bishop James Crumley: “As I look at these resolutions, I’m wondering whether this is even a Christian organization.” Ruth Harris, a Global Ministries staffer, defended WSCF in this way: “Their work is rooted in the conviction that Christian young people must be involved in the crucial issues and frontiers of the world’s life.”
Also in this vein, complaints have been made by Good News and others that the board spends excessive amounts on its headquarters operations. In 1984, Global Ministries spent just over $15 million to pay the salaries, fringe benefits, and travel for its more than 473 non-missionary employees. Board officials point out that many of these staff members are involved in such laudable activities as managing hunger relief efforts, missions education, and raising money to build U.S. churches.
What are the goals of the Mission Society?
Very simply, the Mission Society for United Methodists is in the business of sending Missionaries—long-term, short-term, foreign, and domestic. Consequently, the society is determined to send as many as possible as soon as they responsibly can.
“Before the office ever opened,” reminisces Maclin, “I had thought that if we were rolling and beginning to send people out after a three-year start-up, it would be a very reasonable time. We have actually done it in less than half that time, which is to my way of thinking almost nothing short of a miracle.”
The first 10 Mission Society missionaries were “sent forth” in Dallas in a May consecration service. The five missionary couples were assigned to: the Ghanaian Methodist Church, the Colombian Methodist Church, Scripture translation work in Indonesia and the Solomon Islands, and to the Four Corners Native American Ministry in New Mexico. Four of the couples are already on the field.
The formation of a new organization interested in sending more United Methodist missionaries has obviously struck a nerve in the church. In its 1984 maiden year the Mission Society managed to raise $289,000. Furthermore, the society has received an astounding 458 inquiries about missionary service. Of those, 158 have actually applied. Moreover, 29 of these are near acceptance. If the Mission Society can find enough places of service, the 29 could join the 10 already in place within a year.
The variety and quality of those who have inquired about missionary service has the Mission Society leaders amazed. There are 77 pastors and spouses, 12 agriculturalists, 10 medical doctors, 10 nurses, 14 teachers, and 4 psychologists, among others.
While Maclin is pleased that 10 missionaries are already commissioned. he mentioned that a research committee of his board had set some ambitious goals.
“They envision by 1992, somewhere in that era, we could have 200-300 missionaries serving,” he reports.
To those who consider their goals impossible, the Mission Society officials point to the new Presbyterian Church in America, An evangelical spin-off of the main Presbyterian denomination, the PCA has just 170,000 members and is less than a decade old. But the new denomination already supports more than 430 missionaries.
Is the Mission Society finding places to send its missionaries?
The key to their success, Mission Society leaders agree, is finding places to send their missionaries. “We’ve got several places that are opening now,” says Maclin, “but because of the past difficulties that we have encountered in announcing beforehand, from now on we are saying nothing about these areas until such persons have been sent forth and have actually arrived on the field.”
By “past difficulties” Maclin is referring to a major controversy that erupted this summer. The society “sent forth” its first 10 missionaries in a May service, and publicly announced where they were headed. One of the couples, Max and Patricia Borah, were invited to work with the autonomous Methodist Church of Ghana, West Africa, by the church’s president, Rev. Jacob Stevens.
In June, Stevens got a letter from Rev. James Lyles, of the Board of Global Ministries’ Africa section, telling Stevens that inviting missionaries from other groups “ruptures relationships and does violence to the structure and connectionalism of the United Methodist Church.”
Stevens took the letter as a threat. He told The United Methodist Reporter, “I said in the letter [responding to the board’s letter] I have tried the Board of Global Ministries for many years, asking for doctors, teachers and many others, and it didn’t work. So now the Mission Society comes along and breaks things open. I ask you, if Global Ministries can’t help and somebody else in the United States can, why shouldn’t we take it?”
A similar situation erupted concerning Florencio and Maria Guzman who were assigned by the Mission Society to help the tiny Methodist church in Colombia, South America. After it was announced where they were headed, a Global Ministries official met with the Methodist bishops of Latin America. The bishops, in turn, strongly advised the Colombians to revoke its invitation to the Guzmans. One of the Latin American bishops, Bishop Roberto Diaz of Costa Rica, said their statement was due to pressure from Global Ministries. The charge was denied.
“You have to recognize just how independent [the Latin American bishops] are,” Peggy Billings told the Reporter. “We can’t tell them anything.” As in the case of the Ghana church, the Colombians held firm.
The perceived interference from Global Ministries especially irritated Mission Society leaders because Global Ministries has no work in either Ghana or Colombia. In any case, the incidents made the society decide to keep destinations of future missionaries secret until they actually arrive.
Although Maclin and Maybray indicate other overseas Methodist churches will be asking for Mission Society personnel, they admit that the opposition from Global Ministries has had a chilling effect on many foreign church leaders. “That’s part of the reason why the Mission Society made it [our] number-one policy to send missionaries to unreached people groups,” explains Maclin.
The society hopes to send its first missionary to one of these “frontier” areas in 1986.
How is Global Ministries answering the criticism it has received?
The Board of Global Ministries is trying to explain itself better to the denomination and actually to adjust some of its policies in response to criticism. Directed by the 1984 General Conference, board officials are conducting a series of dialog sessions with Mission Society representatives moderated by the UM bishops. The dialog has so far failed to bring the two sides much closer together. Global Ministries officials won’t discuss the Mission Society directly while the talks are continuing. Yet, they are anxious to discuss some of the criticisms leveled by the Mission Society and others.
One of the most frequent criticisms deals with a perceived leftist tilt to the board’s theology. Especially criticized has been the board’s admiration for liberation theology (a Latin American theology which weaves together Christian teaching and radical political ideas). Last year the Mission Society circulated a pamphlet attacking liberation theology. In January of this year Bishop Roy Sano, president of Global Ministries’ World Division, called the brochure an “act of blasphemy.” Liberation theology has to be seen as the work of the Holy Spirit, he stated.
Following this line of thinking, the board has made dozens, or even hundreds, of large cash grants to radical political organizations. In 1981, for example, Global Ministries gave $25,000 to the African National Congress, a revolutionary group trying to overthrow the South African government. Last year the board gave Clergy and Laity Concerned $15,000 to protest the placement of U.S. cruise missiles in Italy.
Those and similar incidents have led many United Methodists, especially evangelicals, to worry that Global Ministries has forsaken traditional Wesleyan theology.
Explains H. T. Maclin: “Many people have been aware, bishops included, of the drift of our church, particularly in the area of mission, in the direction of a kind of theology that borders on universalism. But they’ve not really done anything [about it].”
Global Ministries staffers deny they are universalist (the belief that everyone will be saved no matter what their faith or practice).
“That is not true,” emphatically states Global Ministries head Randy Nugent. He claims the board is “very Christ centered.” He says the board is “absolutely” committed to personal evangelism. “I mean, you know God calls us to have changed lives, so all of that is who we are.”
Betty Thompson, who heads Global Ministries’ Education and Cultivation division, points out that the board itself wrote the denomination’s current mission statement, which has an evangelical ring to it. “In the midst of a sinful world, through the grace of God, we are brought to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. … We call persons into discipleship,” the statement reads (paragraph 103, 1984 Book of Discipline).
Global Ministries is now in the process of drafting a new mission statement, which should make its theology clearer.
In their defense of the board, Nugent and Peggy Billings implicitly acknowledge that the board’s style in the past has opened it up to criticism. “If you, for example, [ were just] looking in, you wouldn’t know that we have testimonies,” says Nugent. “You wouldn’t know that people talk about the effect of God in their lives daily. That doesn’t come through—that’s hard. [But] that is the reality.”
Yet, Nugent realizes the board has seemed almost indifferent to spiritual concerns at times. He wants to correct this impression. “There was a great deal of clarity in the early days when we talked about [salvation], about ‘the hell from which people were being saved,’” he says. “I think there’s still a lot of hell out there—I mean hell. But I think in this whole area of appeal, I think we are clearer, and we need to be more clear about what it is from which people are being saved.”
Nugent also agrees that the board needs to stress more holiness of lifestyle. “There is a wholeness and a wholesomeness that I think traditionalists and evangelicals might want to see, and yes, we understand that.”
Billings, in a clarifying statement, adds, “I think that people are not overtly trying to be more pietistic. If so, that would be a charade. And it would be simply a cosmetic response to the criticism that we are not evangelical.”
Yet the Mission Society’s Maclin is highly skeptical about how Global Ministries people use words like “salvation” and “hell.” He charges, “There are those who have taken the classic and the historic words of the faith and, without telling their listeners, have changed their meaning and are using them in ways which were certainly not inherent in the understanding we’ve had. … ”
Maclin was echoing a charge made by Council of Bishops president Ole Borgen at the 1983 Good News convocation. Bishop Borgen said one example of new meanings being put to old words was “Salvation, which no longer indicates a new relationship with God, but just as much any kind of ‘salvation’ within the socio-political realm, such as ‘liberation,’ ‘justice,’ political power, etc.” The Global Ministries leaders agree that in the past couple of decades the board sometimes got caught up with an emphasis on social change. Peggy Billings underlines the impact the decades of the 1960s and 1970s made on the board, as well as the whole nation. She specifically refers to the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam struggle, and the women’s movement. “The deep theological issues that were underneath those social events meant that we can’t continue to live our lives the way we have always lived our lives,” Billings says.
“I think that we have gone though virtual revolutions in terms of society. And the church was caught up in that. What is now happening is an integration [of social and spiritual concerns],” she explains. Adds Nugent, “In our working out of [social and spiritual concerns], there were times when they were not as integrated as they are coming to be.”
While now agreeing that the board has to re-emphasize spiritual matters, Billings says, the board won’t retreat from its social emphasis. “It’s a real world. And it’s not neat; it’s not absolute. Your mission and your theology of mission has got to respond to the real world.”
In answer to other, more concrete criticisms, the board is trying to respond. For example, a common complaint has been that persons applying to be missionaries have been treated carelessly. The board has added a number of safeguards, including a complaints desk, to ensure that applicants are not ignored. Billings says they are also reconsidering their policy of writing such narrow job descriptions for missionaries, which have convinced many would-be missionary hopefuls that they could never qualify.
Even the Mission Society leaders feel the board has made progress in adjusting some attitudes. “Correspondence with missionaries indicates that they are benefiting from the existence of the Mission Society,” states Virgil Maybray, “just because of the change of attitude at the Board of Global Ministries. [Global Ministries] has done some things that some missionaries can’t remember [happening recently], such as coming to the field and saying, ‘What do you think?’ ”
The Global Ministries leaders are excited about some of the new thrusts they are pursuing. For one thing, they hope to do much more within the United States to reach groups of people that the church can’t seem to attract, such as working class persons migrating to the South from the North. Another new program is cooperating with the Christian church within communist China in sending Christian teachers into the country.
Will Global Ministries and the bishops ever accept the Mission Society?
Speculation about how long denominational officials will try to freeze out the Missions Society has to be sketchy. That’s because Global Ministries staffers won’t talk to the press about the Mission Society while the dialog sessions with the society are continuing. But Maclin and Maybray have some thoughts on the matter.
The Mission Society leaders are frustrated, but not shocked, by the opposition they have faced. “I don’t know that it caught me by surprise,” states Maclin, “I think I came into this fully aware of what might happen, and what indeed has happened.
“I recall before I left, I shared my thoughts with a staff member of the board. His statement to me has been borne out 100 percent when he said to me, ‘You know you’re going to be up against a bunch of street fighters. They’re guerrillas here.’ Exactly right,” Maclin agrees in retrospect. “Dead on!” The opposition has been intense. Besides the Ghana/Colombia controversy, Global Ministries enlisted the help of the Council of Bishops early last year in an attempt to stop the Mission Society from getting off the ground. Bishop Jesse DeWitt, then-president of Global Ministries, wrote the bishops, saying the new society “discredits the entire system” and calling for help in opposing it. Although four out of the five regional “colleges of bishops” stated opposition to the Mission Society, the effort partially backfired. Bishops from the North Central, South Central, and Southeastern jurisdictions spent much of their statements criticizing Global Ministries for being narrow and unresponsive.
At the 1984 General Conference, held some months later, the bishops’ official address criticized the formation of the Missions Society and urged Global Ministries to stress evangelism. The bishops also released a report discussing the church’s ecumenical relations which criticized Global Ministries, noting a “reluctance to deal constructively with concerns of a large segment of the United Methodist constituency.”
Later, the entire General Conference voted to disapprove the organization of the Mission Society. Yet, the delegates also authorized the two mission agencies to engage in talks; so the Mission Society was not considered entirely illegitimate. Furthermore, a move to order an investigation of Global Ministries failed by just 67 votes. The General Conference actions left both sides feeling partially affirmed.
Maclin and Maybray point to the quiet support they have received from bishops. “The bishops have two opinions,” states Maclin. “They have a private opinion, then they have a public opinion. And the two are seldom ever one and the same. I think a number of bishops privately support the basic goals and aims of the Mission Society.” Yet publicly, he says, the bishops feel obligated to affirm only the institutional line.
Mission Society officials are distressed that many bishops don’t treat them as well as they do entirely non-Methodist groups like OMS and Wycliffe. A big issue, say society officials, “may boil down perhaps in part to the famous seven last words of the church, ‘We never did it that way before.’ ” Maclin and Maybray also realize that “there are some bishops and certainly many pastors who feel we weaken ourselves by being divided.” In answer, Maclin states, “Yet the fact remains, we are divided.”
Church history shows a pattern of upstart church organizations being fought for a couple of decades, then finally made an official part of the denomination. In the church of England, the Church Missionary Society was founded, much like the Mission Society for United Methodists, as a supplement to the official Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The new Anglican society was bitterly opposed at first, but within two decades it became larger than the older organization and was accepted.
Within the United Methodist Church itself, the group that has become United Methodist Women began unofficially as a supplemental missions organization. Though opposed when first organized in 1869, within a dozen years it was accepted and acclaimed. Today the UMW is at the very center of the UM missions establishment. But still, the Mission Society leaders aren’t counting on anything.
“We live from day to day,” says Maclin, “month to month, and just trust that God will eventually make what we’re attempting to do, in a supplementary way, a major undertaking of the church at some point in the future. I don’t see this as a short-term effort. I think it will probably go well beyond the time that Virgil and I are here. I’m sure we would both like to see an acceptance. But given the state of things at the present time, I’m not greatly encouraged.”
For now, although Global Ministries leaders are refusing public comment, the word in the halls of their New York headquarters is that they already realize the Mission Society can’t be stopped. Staff members appear to be resigned to, though still unhappy about, the society’s ability to raise funds and place its personnel overseas.
Must United Methodists choose between the two mission agencies?
No, say Mission Society leaders. Maclin and Maybray realize they can’t win if it comes to choosing sides. They say United Methodists can, and many do, support both agencies.
Maybray amplifies the point further. “One of the bishops [told] his preachers that they were to look upon the Mission Society as a third option. I wrote to him and thanked him. I said we’d be happy. Now obviously first is World Service, next are Advance Specials [second-mile missions giving through Global Ministries], and then us. Fine! We’ll settle for that.”
James S. Robb is the executive editor of Good News.
by Steve | Nov 28, 1985 | Archive - 1985
Archive: Let’s Admit That Prison is for Punishment
By Charles Colson
After I addressed a state legislature, advocating alternatives to prison for non-violent offenders, a bewildered representative accosted me. “As a fellow conservative, Mr. Colson, how can you be against punishment?”
It’s a question I’m often asked—and a telling commentary on the attitudes of so many who consider prison and punishment synonymous. This serious confusion can undermine our most basic concepts of justice.
As a Christian, I most certainly believe in punishment. Biblical justice demands that individuals be held accountable. Throughout the history of ancient Israel, to break God’s law was to invite swift, specific, and certain punishment. When a law was broken, the resulting imbalance could be righted only when the transgressor was punished, and thus made to “pay” for his wrong.
Though modern sociologists take offense at this elemental concept of retribution, it is essential: If justice means getting one’s due, then justice is denied when deserved punishment is not received. And ultimately this undermines one’s role as a moral, responsible human being.
C. S. Lewis summed this up in his brilliant essay, “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” which assails the view that lawbreakers should be “cured” or “treated” rather than punished. “To be punished, however severely, because we have deserved it, because we ‘ought to have known better,’ is to be treated as a human person made in God’s image,” says Lewis. In this Biblical sense, punishment is not only just, it is very often redemptive—to the offender, the victim, and society at large.
This is why the distinction between prison and punishment is so crucial. Prisons, though necessary to confine violent offenders, can hardly be considered redemptive.
And while punishment is clearly Biblical, American penal philosophy is not based on the Biblical principle of just desserts that Lewis cited; it is founded on a humanistic view that crime is an illness to be cured.
The pattern for American prisons was established two centuries ago when well-meaning Quakers converted Philadelphia’s Walnut Street jail into a facility where offenders were confined in order to repent and be rehabilitated.
Though a number of those early “penitents” simply went mad, the idea caught on and flourished. Soothed by the comforting illusion that these miscreants were in reality being “treated,” the public conscience could ignore the harsh conditions of their confinement. In keeping with this philosophy, such places came to be called, not prisons, but penitentiaries, reformatories, and correctional institutions.
This illusion was reinforced in the 20th century when a school of liberal sociologists argued that crime was not the individual’s fault, but society’s. Societal failures like poverty, racism, and unemployment were to blame.
Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark summed up this fashionable view when he asserted unequivocally that poverty is “the cause of crime.” President Carter echoed it when he blamed ghetto conditions for widespread looting during New York’s 1977 power blackout.
If the criminal was but a victim of the system, prisons were therefore places for him or her to be vocationally trained, “socialized,” and educated. Society, which had caused the disease of crime, would now cure it—and so ever-increasing thousands were packed into institutions as wards of the state.
Thus two centuries of the “humanitarian tradition ” left America with more than one-half million of its citizens incarcerated—the third largest per capita prison population in the world—as well as the staggering recidivism statistics of the 1970s: 74 percent of ex-prisoners re-arrested within four years of release. Prisons proved themselves not places of rehabilitation, but breeding grounds for further crime.
It’s a travesty that in this so-called Christian nation, we consistently ignore the most basic of Christ’s teaching: sin comes from within the individual (Mark 7:20). It can’t be foisted off on germs, genes, a bad neighborhood, or some impersonal entity called society.
Crime is the result of morally responsible people making wrong moral decisions, for which they must be held accountable. The just and necessary response to such behavior is redemptive punishment, which may include, as the Bible prescribes, restitution or community service, stiff fines, loss of rights, or in cases where the offender is dangerous, prison. But let’s not kid ourselves any longer. Prison isn’t to cure the individual. It’s to lock him or her up.
President Reagan got to the heart of the issue in his 1981 speech to police chiefs of the nation:
“Controlling crime … is … ultimately a moral dilemma—one that calls for moral, or if you will, a spiritual solution. … The war on crime will be won only when our attitude of mind and a change of heart takes place in America, when certain truths take hold again and plant their roots deep in our national consciousness, truths like: right and wrong matters; individuals are responsible for their actions; retribution should be swift and sure for those who prey on the innocent.”
But we continue building more prisons and filling them up. Why? Because public passions discern no difference between prisons and punishment. As long as that mindset flourishes, the Biblical concept of justice cannot. And it will be society which will suffer the real punishment: $80,000 per cell for new prison construction, and spiraling crime and recidivism rates as well.
Charles Colson is the director of Prison Fellowship and the author of Born Again, Life Sentence, and Loving God. The preceding was reprinted by permission from Jubilee, the monthly newsletter of Prison Fellowship Ministries, © August 1985.
by Steve | Sep 28, 1985 | Archive - 1985
Roman Catholics are forming Bible studies, being born again, and sending out traveling evangelists…What’s going on?
Archive: Here Come the Catholic Evangelicals
by Nick Cavnar
Some months ago I attended a meeting of church renewal leaders representing several denominations. The only Roman Catholic present, I listened as evangelical and charismatic leaders from the Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and United Church of Christ spoke of their struggles to bring renewal to the churches. I was moved by the commitment I heard in their voices, moved also by the sense of common purpose that united us despite our many differences. But when it came my turn to speak about renewal in the Catholic Church, I found myself in a quandary. For how can any one person hope to sum up the course of Catholic renewal?
When the Second Vatican Council opened in 1962, it set renewal as the official agenda for the entire Catholic Church. Pope John XXIII, who called the council, encouraged the highest possible expectations when he said, “It will be a new Pentecost indeed, which will cause the church to renew her interior riches.” By the time the council closed in 1966, it had opened every facet of Catholic life for renewal and change.
Today, 20 years after Vatican II, renewal remains the rallying cry of the Catholic community. Liberal theologians claim the mantle of renewal as they pick apart traditional morality and basic doctrine. Traditionalists calling for return of the Latin mass also peak of renewal—authentic renewal, they say. Catholics have liturgical renewal, charismatic renewal, parish renewal, marriage renewal, the renewal of Biblical studies, renewal through social action, renewal in religious orders—to name only a few varieties. One popular parish program sums up the present climate by just calling itself “Renew.”
I would not dare claim to identify the Catholic renewal movement from among so many claimants. Yet, among the many, sometimes conflicting cries of renewal, I do hear certain voices that—to my ear, at least—blend together. What is more, they resonate with what I hear from Protestant leaders of evangelical renewal. Indeed, I believe this particular strain of Catholic renewal could eventually prove as significant for evangelicals as for Catholics, for it can really be called Roman Catholic evangelicalism.
On the face of it Catholic evangelicalism seems a contradiction in terms. Within many denominations the evangelical or low-church wing represents the opposite pole from the catholic, high-church types. Within the wider Christian body no gulf has been deeper than that dividing evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics. Many evangelicals do not even consider the Catholic Church to be Christian, while Catholics generally dismiss evangelicals as benighted fundamentalists.
Yet, today you can find people throughout the Catholic Church whose faith can only be called evangelical. These Catholic evangelical emphasize conversion to Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior; indeed, many will point to a specific moment when they “came to the Lord.” They look to the Bible as their basic rule and guide for living. They evangelize others and believe evangelism should be the first priority for the church. You can even find traveling Catholic lay evangelists who sound like Baptists on the revival circuit.
Like their Protestant counterparts, Catholic evangelicals also generally stand on the conservative side of debates over basic Christian doctrine, morality, and social policy. Yet not every conservative Catholic could be called an evangelical. It is something in one’s basic approach to faith—specifically the emphasis on personal conversion, the Bible, and evangelism—that I consider the hallmark of Catholic evangelicalism.
Much of this new evangelicalism traces its roots back to the Catholic charismatic renewal. The charismatic movement swept through the Catholic Church in the United States like wildfire during the 1970s. According to some polls, as many as 8 million Catholics attended at least one charismatic prayer meeting. Today the renewal has lost some of the early momentum, yet it remains the largest lay movement in the Catholic Church.
In the Catholic charismatic renewal, tongues-speaking and other gifts never became a major issue in themselves as often happened among Protestants. For one thing, there was never much controversy over these gifts; Catholic theology had always accepted miracles and mystical phenomena. What amazed Catholics was not that charismatics spoke in tongues, but that they talked about God as if they knew Him personally.
Traveling evangelists
Personal conversion and a personal relationship with Jesus quickly became the major focus of the Catholic charismatic message. Today a whole new movement of Catholic lay evangelism has appeared as an outgrowth of the renewal, with evangelists who travel from parish to parish around the country speaking to Catholics about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Other Catholic lay movements have also emphasized evangelism and personal commitment. The Cursillo movement, which originated in Spain, centers upon a special retreat designed to lead people to a conversion to Jesus. Twenty years ago my older brother sent our staunchly Catholic parents into shock when he came home from his sophomore year at Notre Dame saying he had met Christ for the first time on a Cursillo. Focolare, Marriage Encounter, the neocatechumanate, even the Legion of Mary—these and other Catholic movements all brought something of an evangelical spirit to their participants.
At the same time, Catholics have also had more contact than ever before with Protestant evangelical and charismatic ministries. The 1970s was the “born-again” decade, when evangelicalism rose to national prominence. With the greater ecumenical openness created by Vatican II, more Catholics felt free to read Protestant books, listen to Protestant preachers, attend Protestant revivals. Who knows how many Catholic evangelicals made their commitment to Christ at a Billy Graham crusade or prayed the sinner’s prayer with Pat Robertson of the 700 Club?
Yet, some observers question just how many Catholics have been touched by all this evangelical ferment, and it is probably true that they remain a small minority within the total Catholic Church. For example, the Gallup polls indicate that very few Catholics practice an evangelical-style faith. Only 6 percent of American Catholics say they evangelize others, compared with 15 percent or Protestants. Only 7 percent of Catholics say they read the Bible daily, compared to 21 percent or all Protestants and 48 percent of evangelicals.
Small minorities can have influence far beyond their numbers, however. And one reason I believe the new Catholic evangelicalism will have a growing influence and impact on church renewal is that I hear it echoed at some of the highest levels of the church.
Since the Vatican Council there has been a growing awareness in the Catholic hierarchy that the church’s strategy for Christian formation no longer works. Catholics had always put their main focus simply on getting people into the church. As long as you had gone through the sacraments and some basic doctrinal instruction, the depth of your personal conversion was rarely questioned. People were catechized and sacramentalized, but often never evangelized.
In other times and places, where the church could count on a strong surrounding Catholic culture, this strategy worked quite well. People grew up in an atmosphere that encouraged and fostered faith in Christ; they did not necessarily need a more deliberate evangelism. But in today’s highly secularized society, the old system has broken down. The turbulent 1960s and ’70s, when young people in particular deserted the church in droves, forced the Catholic hierarchy to admit that many who had gone through years of catechesis and all the sacraments had nevertheless failed to develop a deep personal faith.
Consequently, the Catholic hierarchy is placing more emphasis on personal conversion and on evangelism. The late Pope Paul VI issued an encyclical letter “On Evangelization in the Modern World” that declared, “the church must evangelize herself by a constant conversion and renewal if she is convincingly to evangelize the world.”
Pope John Paul II, especially, has emerged as a force for evangelical renewal in Catholicism. His first encyclical letter focused on Christ as “the Redeemer of Man,” declaring that “the only direction for our intellect, will, and heart is toward Christ, the Redeemer of man, because there is salvation in no one but Him, the Son of God.”
In his travels throughout the world, Pope John Paul has constantly sounded the invitation, “Throw open your doors to Christ.” In statement after statement, he has emphasized that personal repentance and conversion are the key ingredients of church renewal, and he has specifically encouraged lay movements that focus on evangelism.
John Paul has appointed many bishops in the same mold. Here in the United States, the new Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston is one example. Cardinal Law has given his support to several key segments of what I call Catholic evangelicalism, and has shown great interest in fostering cooperation with Protestant evangelicals as well.
Moving into ministry
With the support of many other bishops like Bernard Law, Catholic evangelicals are now moving into a wide range of ministries within the church. Last year, for example. I attended a meeting in Florida to organize a new network of Catholic lay evangelists. The small group of perhaps 25 people represented a striking variety of ministries. Some were publishing tracts for Catholics, others were involved with a magazine called The Catholic Evangelist, others traveled the country to speak in Catholic parishes, others sponsored evangelistic retreats. There were ministries devoted to family life. ministries that served the poor, ministries that trained others to evangelize.
Small ministries of that type—and some not so small—are springing up among Catholics throughout the country. When you look to see who is behind them you always find the same people: Catholics who come from the charismatic renewal or a similar movement, Catholics who emphasize personal conversion, the Bible, and evangelism.
When you examine the more institutional church programs—the new permanent diaconate. for example, or the Renew parish program mentioned earlier—you find the same people involved. When you look at the fast-growing field of Catholic television, they are there again. And now even in Catholic seminaries. A recent study shows that some 30 percent of the seminarians were involved in a charismatic prayer group before entering seminary!
These developments in the Catholic Church convince me that the Catholic evangelical renewal is here to stay. I am not sure what will happen to some of the individual movements within it. The charismatic renewal. for example. shows some signs of entering a new stage of growth and other signs of continued decline. Yet, I believe we will see the continuing presence and influence of a Roman Catholic evangelicalism that emphasizes persona I conversion, personal commitment, and the preaching of the Gospel.
Protestant evangelicals are not always quite sure what to make of their counterparts in Roman Catholicism. Some evangelicals can accept the idea of a Roman Catholic becoming a born-again Christian, but don’t understand how a born-again Christian can remain a Roman Catholic. They may be glad to hear John Paul II proclaim. “Open the doors to Christ!” But they shake their heads when he calls for greater devotion to Mary or reasserts papal authority.
Clearly, the theological issues that divide Catholics and Protestants are still with us. Nor do they seem likely to vanish soon—even among those who consider themselves evangelicals. Nevertheless, I find among many Protestant evangelicals, especially those from the mainline denominations, a new sense of unity with Catholics based on the fundamental beliefs we do share.
The battles evangelicals face in the United Methodist Church or United Church of Christ have now shifted to those points which unite Catholics and Protestants rather than those that divide us—the nature of Christ, the inspiration of Scripture, the morality of homosexuality and abortion. As more than one Protestant leader has said to me. “I feel I have far more in common with sincere Catholics who believe that Jesus is the Son of God, believe in the Virgin Birth. and believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. than with some liberals in my own denomination who don’t seem to believe in much of anything.” The appearance of a Catholic evangelicalism can only serve to increase this sense of unity.
Yes, Catholic evangelicals remain convinced Catholics, who fully accept Marian devotion, the mass, papal infallibility, and all the other doctrines of their church. But because they also share the evangelical desire for a truly Scriptural, Christ-centered faith, these Catholics are concerned to understand and express their beliefs in Biblical terms that may, in the long run, prove more comprehensible to Protestants.
Even then we are unlikely to find ourselves anywhere near agreement, but we may at least better understand each other’s positions. And possibly, in the light of that understanding, some of our barriers will prove smaller than we have thought.
It may seem self-serving for me to say it, but I believe Protestant evangelicals have every reason to welcome the appearance of a Catholic evangelical renewal. An evangelically revitalized Catholicism could prove a powerful ally in our common struggle against secularism within and without the Church. But more importantly, Catholic evangelicalism offers hope for a Christian unity based not on a watering down of our deepest convictions, but on a common faith in the one Savior, Jesus Christ.
Nick Cavnar is the executive editor of New Covenant, the magazine of The Catholic charismatic renewal. Residing in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he is also a freelance writer and has been published in God’s Word Today, Catholic Digest, and Charisma.
