by Steve | Jul 23, 2010 | Magazine Articles
By Elizabeth Glass Turner
The Los Angeles Times ran a photo depicting a bloodied corpse lying prone on the ground, a victim of the infamous drug cartel violence in Juárez, Mexico. The caption described Tierra Nueva, the area where the shooting occurred, as “a graffiti-stained neighborhood of dirt streets and concrete shacks in south Ciudad Juárez.”
But that’s only part of the story.
Juárez, commonly known as one of the deadliest cities in the world, has mourned 4,900 of its citizens killed in just the last two years. Nestled at the crux of New Mexico, Texas, and the Mexican state of Chihuahua, its sister city across the U.S. border is El Paso, Texas. Two prominent drug cartels fight for control of Juárez, leaving thousands dead—often innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire. According to The El Paso Times, the FBI fears that El Paso gangs may, “join the cartel power struggle”—bringing the war onto U.S. soil.
A frequently overlooked subplot in the violence, Juárez is what author Daniela Paniagua calls the “city of femicide of the western hemisphere.” She continues, “the people of Juárez set about constructing their own monument—a series of pink crosses memorializing ‘the Labyrinth of Silence,’ a desolate area where hundreds of women have been ‘disposed’ of over the last decade. Gazing across the Labyrinth, a ‘massive monument of Christ on the Cross’ stands erect, symbolizing faith and protection. Locals question if the victims have looked up toward that depiction of Christ’s suffering that towers above their brutally beaten bodies and pleaded for His mercy. This Mexican border-town, founded on prosperity and faith, is estranged from its original principles and has become known as the City of Lost Women.”
In addition to the stark number of dead men and women, the systematic intimidation of citizens and law enforcement officers alike includes burning houses in the Valley of Juárez, and—early this April—a Catholic church.
One source explains that the “drug war in Mexico has its roots in many of Mexico’s other problems—lack of economic development, Mexico’s authoritarian past, its celebration of machismo, and its weak civil society and compromised rule of law.”
Bridges & Rites of passage
Plenty of contributing factors complicate the gritty violence that plagues Juárez, but one factor that propels the violence exchanged among drug cartels continues to be machismo—the sense of one’s own exaggerated manhood. Machismo is often affirmed by gang acceptance through rites of passage that frequently include violent crime.
A year ago, CNN reported that, “the violence involves beheadings, running gunbattles, and discoveries of mass graves and huge arms caches. Police and public officials have been gunned down in broad daylight. The cartels’ enforcers boldly display recruitment banners in the streets.” The report further elaborated that, “the beheadings started at the same time the beheading videos started coming out of Iraq. It was simple machismo. The Sinaloa [cartel] guys started putting up videos on YouTube of them torturing….”
While gangs actively recruit young men in Juárez and other border towns, other high school students attempt to cross the bridge daily from Juárez to El Paso, where they study. Parents pray for their children’s safety and hope they will be spared a life of violence.
A couple of decades ago, one such boy was Jose Luis Portillo, one of ten children raised in Juárez. He earned enough money selling cigarettes on the streets to attend a United Methodist high school in El Paso, where he learned English and felt called to ministry. After he graduated from John Wesley Seminary in Monterrey, Mexico, Portillo worked at a church in Juárez. Volunteers helping to build the church saw people living in cardboard houses. When they asked how they could help, Portillo partnered with Volunteers in Mission to build concrete block houses for the families.
While the murder rate in Juárez escalated, Jose Luis Portillo established Proyecto Abrigo (“project shelter”) in the southern Juárez neighborhood of Tierra Nueva—the same “graffiti-stained” neighborhood where the Times photographed a casualty of the drug cartel violence. Since 1992, Portillo has been responsible for the construction of more than 1,000 small block houses for the poorest citizens.
The bridge Jose had taken to school every day, back and forth across the U.S./Mexico border, helped to steer him away from becoming another faceless cartel foot soldier.
From Juárez to The Woodlands
Eleven hours east, the Rev. Rob Renfroe had a conversation with a man at his church—a congregation Rob had served for about a year at the time. “He told me a story about a man who was in our church. The man was vice president of a bank in downtown Houston,” recalls Renfroe, the Pastor of Adult Discipleship at The Woodlands United Methodist Church, as well as President and Publisher of Good News. “He’d been in church for a number of years and had never really connected deeply spiritually, was driven to succeed, and used alcohol to help him cope with life. He ended up losing his job, his family, and then finally ended up living on the streets, and died disconnected from everyone who had ever cared about him because of his alcoholism.”
“Rob, we had this guy in our church and nothing ever really grabbed him spiritually and changed his life,” the man said to Renfroe. “And we’ve got other guys sitting in the pews, they come and do their Sunday morning duty, but the rest of their life is disconnected from their spirituality, and we need to do something.”
The result of this conversation was the initiation of the men’s ministry “Quest,” designed to engage men who were marginally involved in church—at best. This exploration of manhood and faith isn’t as simple as it might appear at first.
“Part of the challenge is to be able to talk to guys in a way that makes them feel comfortable as men,” Renfroe explains, “that doesn’t make them feel like they have to fit in to some stereotype of the good little Sunday school boy, but that lets them be real men and enjoy things that men enjoy in a way that honors God.”
Renfroe is the first to acknowledge that he might not be the typical “guy’s guy.” He says he doesn’t hunt or fish or fix anything around the house, but he has discovered that “if you challenge guys and treat them as if they are real people with heart hungers and deep needs and a desire to be better—if you let them be men, then God is able to do great things.”
In stark contrast to the bloody streets of Juárez, Quest addresses men’s need to be both godly and masculine through an eclectic array of hands-on ministries, meetings, and conferences. While Quest has convened twice a year for eight years—holding meetings for eight weeks in the fall and eight weeks in the spring—small groups allow men to continue to grow their practices.
Additionally, a ministry called “Destination Manhood” pairs volunteer mentors with at-risk youth. Although the original commitment for mentors was to spend an hour a week with a young man, activities have expanded to include camping, fishing, and trips to college sporting events so that young people can imagine themselves pursuing a college education. In a haunting reminder of the young men targeted by drug cartels, Renfroe explains, “one of the boys has even spent time in jail during the time that one of our men has mentored him, and really does need someone there with him. These are boys who would be lost if one of the guys in our church wasn’t taking a real, active role in his life.”
The men of Quest also participate in “Rehab for Humanity,” a service to the elderly and poor in which volunteers provide home repairs. After one Quest meeting in which 58 groups of men were given $100 to “invest in the Kingdom,” one group that had decided to provide home repairs instead felt called to partner with a community organization to build an entire new home for the recipient.
The best gift
But it’s the trips to Juárez that connect the men from The Woodlands UM Church to Jose Luis Portillo and Proyecto Abrigo. Mission trips are not new to The Woodlands. Under the leadership of Dr. John Hull, the church’s missions pastor, the congregation sends more than a dozen teams annually all over the world. But Renfroe and Hull felt that the trip to Juárez could have a huge impact on the men of the church. The first 100 men from The Woodlands UM Church went on the four-day excursion in 2007.
Renfroe describes Tierra Nueva as a place where “thousands of people live in little hovels outside the city in desert slums. They live out there and the government sells them a little piece of land for $4000. Interestingly, they pay per square foot, with no electricity, water, or sewage, the very same amount we pay here in The Woodlands per square foot. Yet The Woodlands is a high-end, planned community. Most of the people who come there are from southern Mexico. They come to Juárez for the ‘opportunity’ to work for a dollar an hour in the factories there on the border. That is a step up for them, so they save their money to make a down payment on this land. Then they build shelters—from cardboard, pallets, plywood.”
The men from Quest are aware of the urgency behind the work trips: they have heard about the dangers to the residents, not only of Juárez cartel violence, but also of the extreme desert temperatures. Because so many shelters are patched together with wood and other flammable material, open flame fires are not allowed to heat the homes during the frigid desert nights. Renfroe recounts learning that a baby froze to death one night because the family could not heat their dwelling. With the construction of a rudimentary concrete block house, however, residents are able to use propane to ward off the freezing temperatures.
The Proyecto Abrigo houses, built by teams like the one from The Woodlands, measure 12’ by 24’. When the 100 men arrive, they are organized into teams, which are aided by maestros, who show the team how to mix mortar and cement, and how to lay the blocks. Often, when able, the family assists the team with the construction of their new home. When the project is complete, the team and the family celebrate a house dedication.
More than 350 men from Quest have been a part of four trips to Juárez where the work teams have built 30 houses, in addition to working on a school.
“Many guys express their spirituality by doing with their hands, and often churches have a hard time of finding a way for men to serve God in a way that feels natural, that uses their masculinity. This trip has been very beneficial to our guys, in addition to meaning a lot to the people who live there. It helps fulfill that natural desire to provide and protect that’s kind of built into men. They’re really grateful for the opportunity.”
Whatever distance exists between Juárez and The Woodlands has evaporated for Bob Leilich. “This is the first time I’ve been on a mission trip like this,” he says. “I’ve been all over the world and I have seen poverty. There’s always been a disconnect to me to see poverty—there’s so much of it you tend to ignore it. Well, I found out on this trip that these are real people. They are happy people.”
One experience continues to haunt the volunteers. “There was a family who’d been living in a cave before they got their little shack. Their home had been flooded when a river flooded its banks,” reports Renfroe. “They got enough money together to buy this little piece of land. So we built this concrete block house for them. One of the great things is that they can now have a propane fire to stay warm at night. At the dedication, we gave them gifts, finished praying, and this old man is standing there. And his kids are having a house built next to him, and he held up his Bible, and said, ‘This—this is the best. Out of all God’s gifts, this is the best.’ That really spoke to us; it reminded us that for people who don’t have anything, what gets them through is the sense that God is with them, that God loves them.”
Providing shelter
In the midst of the valuable outreach that Quest teams and others provide for Juárez residents caught in the crossfire, a new issue has emerged. Recently, the State Department renewed a travel warning to U.S. citizens bound for Mexico, especially for the northern states like Chihuahua. The recent murders of Americans working at a U.S. Consulate in Mexico have only fueled fears. An article by Mallory McCall in The United Methodist Reporter describes the growing problem faced by churches that have sent work teams in the past.
“In light of [the] violence, some churches are rethinking their south-of-the-border mission projects, and some have eliminated trips to the Juárez area altogether… Flower Mound United Methodist Church in Texas, for instance, has not taken its annual family mission trip to Juárez in two years. ‘It breaks my heart not to go back, but we just don’t think it’s safe,’ said Mike Farmer, a member who has been to Juárez 10 times and helped build 25 houses.”
The Woodlands United Methodist Church is still considering whether to continue sending the Quest work teams to Juárez. “The terrible thing with all this violence is not just that drug dealers are killing drug dealers, but that innocent people get killed. But what’s happened to the people who live in these little hovels is that groups like ours are not going down there,” says Renfroe. “Many, many churches cancelled last year. They’re not getting homes because of this kind of violence. It really shows you how violence spreads out and hurts and creates victims who aren’t in any way connected with the drug trade.”
Janet Hunt, director of community ministries at Suncreek UM Church in Allen, Texas, told The United Methodist Reporter that “it’s the joy and gratitude of the people that make the risks worth it. ‘They live around this fear and violence that they hear about every day on their news, but yet they’re just worshiping the Lord,’ she said. ‘It humbles you and makes you realize what’s important in life.’ She’s concerned that peoples’ needs will go unmet as volunteers back out. In 2009 Proyecto Abrigo set a goal to build 200 cinderblock homes; instead they built just 21.”
Juárez has proven to be a cataclysmic training ground both for the machismo of drug cartel soldiers and for the deepening appreciation of masculinity as a unique gift of God to the men of Quest. As for the families of Tierra Nueva? For the time being, they, along with the rest of Juárez, will have to continue trusting that God will be their shelter in the midst of the cartel chaos.
Elizabeth Glass-Turner is a freelance writer. Passionate about robust, sacramental faith and avid reader of murder mysteries, she resides in central Kentucky with her husband, newborn baby, and two dogs.
Quest, the men’s ministry at The Woodlands, is now in its eighth year. All of the Quest materials can be found at www.thewoodlandsumc.org/content/quest-message-archive.
by Steve | Jul 23, 2010 | Magazine Articles
Good News statement on the health care bill
Commentary by Rob Renfroe and Walter Fenton
Good News believes faithful United Methodists are people passionately committed to Scriptural holiness, and that most assuredly includes our founder John Wesley’s emphasis on “social holiness.” Rank and file United Methodists care deeply about the health and welfare of people throughout this country, and in deeds large and small, find many ways to demonstrate that care. Certainly all United Methodists look forward to a time when all Americans possess adequate health care.
However, some have confused support of the specific plan recently passed by Congress as evidence of an individual’s true commitment to health care for all. While some United Methodists consider the health care reform bill signed into law by President Barack Obama as a political triumph, others find the legislation disconcerting and disappointing.
First, we are disappointed that a number of pro-life members of Congress abandoned their commitment to language they themselves insisted upon in the House bill approved this past November. The promise of an executive order that no public funds will be used to pay for abortions simply does not have the same force as a law duly debated and passed by the legislative branch, and signed by the President. As Wall Street Journal columnist Bill McGurn recently wrote, “all that has to happen for…federal dollars to start flowing for abortion is for NARAL Pro-Choice America to sponsor a woman demanding an abortion. The center will initially deny funding, citing the executive order. The woman will then sue, arguing that abortion is a part of health care. Given the legal precedents, and the lack of a specific ban in the actual legislation, the courts will likely agree.”
Second, we regret that a bipartisan approach to health care reform was not adopted. When a bill of this magnitude is passed with the slimmest of majorities and only single party support, it appears that doing business as usual has not changed. In short, the way this bill was passed only feeds the current distrust and low regard many Americans have for Washington.
Third, we find it very difficult to support legislation that does not deal forthrightly about the costs involved. What kind of crushing debt will future generations have to bear? It appears that those who promoted the bill and voted for it either postponed to another day many of the tax increases necessary to fund the massive plan, or they naively—we hope not cynically—convinced themselves that future congressional representatives will have the integrity and courage to tell the American people the truth about the plan’s actual costs. Politically speaking, it is easy to vote for health care for all, but it is far more difficult to honestly explain how we will pay for it.
Finally, we are deeply disappoint-ed with the United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church and Society (GBCS). Rather than engage the issue of health care reform in a manner representing the hopes and concerns of all United Methodists, it has once again embraced and advocated for the most partisan and polemical position. Unfortunately, the Board chose to feverishly work for a particular plan that divided United Methodists. A more thoughtful board would have simply promoted the goal of health care for all, but would not have sided with one particular party’s plan. By so publicly making common cause with a partisan plan, many church members will view GBCS more as an agent of a particular political party, and less as an agent of the kingdom of God.
Throughout the debate, GBCS failed to seriously acknowledge or fairly represent other proposals for meeting the health care needs of Americans. Once again, GBCS alienated thousands of United Methodists, and caused many to wonder whether the Board can ever fairly represent them in the public square, even going so far as to advocate for the most extreme iterations of the bill that included federal funding for abortion.
Indeed, despite GBCS’s self-congratulations, it actually failed to convince most United Methodist congressional representatives to support the bill. Forty-four United Methodists currently serve in the House of Representatives, 26 voted in opposition to the bill, and only 18 voted for it. In other words, nearly 60 percent of United Methodist representatives opposed the bill. We are confident that split is far more representative of United Methodists than the far-left views advocated by GBCS throughout the 14-month debate over health care reform.
Rob Renfroe is the President and Publisher of Good News. Walter Fenton is the Chief Operating Officer of Good News.
by Steve | Jul 23, 2010 | Magazine Articles
By B.J. Funk
Could anything good possibly come out of the horrible nightmare of the Bubonic Plague in the 1600s? Well, actually it did. The origin of the Oberammergau Passion Play gives validity to the verse in Romans 28, which claims all things can work together for the good of those who love the Lord and are called according to his purposes.
The Bubonic Plague was also referred to as Black Death because the skin of the diseased person turned a dark gray color. The plague spread through rats and fleas and moved easily in Europe because of poor sanitary conditions. Death was swift. Someone wrote that the victims often “ate lunch with their friends, and ate dinner with their ancestors in paradise.” The disease caused enormous pain and brought on a grotesque appearance.
In 1633, after months of suffering from the Bubonic Plague, the people of Oberammergau, a Bavarian village in Germany, vowed that if spared they would perform the story of Jesus every 10 years. True to their vow, the first performance was held in 1634 and continues today.
As the bubonic plague lessened, the Passion Play grew in popularity, with the theater being modernized through the years. Today, the theater can seat over 4700 people. For the past four centuries, this play has been staged every ten years. In 2010, audiences from around the world will once again flock to Oberammergau to see the performance. Lord willing, I plan to be one of those making that trip.
Sometimes, the “all things working together” aren’t revealed so easily, and we don’t always see the good. Faith can put glasses on our skeptical vision, reminding us that the verse does not say “some things” but indeed “all things.” Oberammergau gives credence to Romans 8:28; yet, each new tragedy or challenge brings us once again to examine this verse.
My daddy’s stroke at the age of 88 took away the movement of his left leg and arm, his bright mind, and his ability to reason. The medical expenses were enormous. The cost for in-home care was astronomical. For many years, I could not see the “all things” principle. Then, it happened. My daddy always had an aversion to taking Holy Communion. I never knew why. It worried my mother, whose relationship with Jesus was personal. For her, partaking in the Eucharist was a natural outgrowth of her life in God.
One Sunday, about five years after his stroke, daddy’s helper pushed his wheelchair toward the front of the church. My daddy allowed the elements to be served. My mother was shocked, yet thrilled! You might question God using a stroke to answer a wife’s lifelong prayers to get her husband to the altar. I don’t.
All things…the good, the bad, and the ugly…are working together, not separately….for ultimate good…for those who love the Lord and are called according to his purposes. It is this belief that catapults the Christian into a faith that sees beyond circumstances.
Author Elisabeth Elliott has written, “When things happen which dismay or appall, we ought to look to God for his meaning, remembering that he is not taken by surprise nor can his purposes be thwarted in the end. What God looks for is those who will worship him in the midst of every circumstance. Our look of inquiring trust glorifies him. This is our first responsibility: to glorify God in the face of life’s worst reversals and tragedies. The response of a faithful Christian is praise—not for the wrong itself, certainly, but for who God is and for the ultimate assurance that there is a pattern being worked out for those who love him.”
A pattern being worked out for those who love him. When we glorify God and praise him, not for the difficulty, but in the difficulty, then all things will work together (in God’s time) for our good.
William Moon of Brighton, England, became blind in early manhood, thus giving up his idea to be a priest. He said to the Lord, “I accept this talent of blindness from Thee. Help me to use it for Thy glory.”
I pondered a long time his thought, “I accept this talent of blindness.” Those words challenge my walk with Christ. They come from a man who could see God at work, even in the darkness, a man who trusted that God could use the darkness for his purposes. He devoted himself to the blind. Since Braille was difficult to learn, William Moon invented another embossed type, which became known as Moon type. He printed his first sheet of raised characters on a wooden hand-press in his house at Brighton in 1847. The next year he began stereotyping the New Testament, and the Bible was completed ten years later. Did William Moon turn the difficulty of blindness into a talent of blindness? Definitely.
Can good really come out of bad? It seems to happen over and over when faith places glasses on our limited vision. God is not finished with the situation. We can trust him to complete what he has started in us.
by Steve | Jul 23, 2010 | Magazine Articles
By George Mitrovich
Barbara Brown Taylor, a priest of the Episcopal Church and a gifted preacher and writer, sent me an email saying she had gone on a walk one afternoon near her Georgia home when I came to mind. She said she wondered, “How’s my Arminian friend?” I was pleased to receive her note. It’s nice to be thought of, especially by someone I admire as greatly as Barbara.
A few years back she was in San Diego to speak to a national convention of Puritans, more than 2,000 of them (no, really, Puritans). I had the privilege of having lunch with Barbara and during our time together I brought up James Arminius, the Dutch theologian and ultimate contra- Calvinist. I have a habit of doing that, of asking others if they know Arminius.
For 400 years Arminius has been overlooked in Western history. Am I alone in thinking that? No, but the number of those who share that view, weighed against Martin Luther and John Calvin, is small. But, in this context, numbers do not impress me. I am confident of the debt owed by the West to Arminius, who dared to declare, despite the fierceness of his Calvinist foes, that God loves every man, not an elect few. That belief would shake the foundations of both church and state in the Netherlands and, in time, would impact the life of John Wesley, who in turn as a priest in the Church of England would begin a spiritual and social revolution resulting in sweeping changes in English society. As Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli said, “The Wesleyan Revival saved England from the blood bath that engulfed the French.”
John Wesley’s remarkable leadership would also bring about the Methodist Church in America, whose origins in 1784 at Lovely Lane Chapel in Baltimore, would give rise to the nation’s most important Protestant denomination—and in all of this the influence of James Arminius cannot be overstated (although understated it remains).
There are 11 million websites about John Calvin on Google, 98,000 for Arminius. When the 400th anniversary of Arminius’ birth took place (1559) it was barely noted, but during the 500th anniversary of Calvin’s birth (July 10, 1509), he was remembered worldwide. In America, for good or ill, you cannot escape Calvin—and his influence has been hugely consequential.
As the historian Richard Hooker put it: “Perhaps even more so than Martin Luther, Calvin created the patterns and thought that would dominate Western culture throughout the modern period. American culture, in particular, is thoroughly Calvinist in some form or another; at the heart of the way Americans think and act, you’ll find this fierce and imposing reformer.”
Magisterial study
All of which I note to report I finally read Dr. Carl Bangs’ magisterial study, Arminius: A Study in the Dutch Reformation (Abingdon, 1971), an engrossing read of 380 pages (bibliography and index included). It’s embarrassing to think how long the book sat on my shelf. Occasionally I would take it down and read chapters here or there, but never the whole of it, until now. True, I’ve read many articles about Arminius, but never the definitive study of his life—as Dr. Bangs’ book assuredly is.
It is not an easy read, but how could it be? The time Dr. Bangs was writing about differs dramatically from ours, as much as horse-drawn carriages differ from Stealth bombers. (If you read it, forget about trying to pronounce Dutch names, it will only slow you down. Unless, of course, Cornelis Cornelisz Heemskerck, rolls easily off your tongue.)
During Arminius’ life, the people of the Netherlands were focused on the war against Spain and the establishment of trade with the East Indies, but a theological conflict between the followers of Calvin and those of Arminius also drew their attention, for it threatened the nation’s stability. The States General repeatedly sought to broker peace between the disputants, but to no avail. It beggars the mind of modernity that a nation’s well-being might depend upon resolving theological differences, that such matters were referred to the civil authorities and not the church, but it did—and by such a clash the distinction between past and present is measured. (In this I may err, since theology drives the abortion/gay marriage debate, but for me it doesn’t rise to the same level.)
Dr. Bangs introduced me to a Latin phrase, Libertas Voluntatia, which means the liberty of the will. It is a phrase that shall mark my days, as it marked Arminius’.
Being Arminian
From the time I became a Christian in my mid-teens under the preaching and influence of Nicholas A. Hull at University Avenue Church of the Nazarene in San Diego, Arminius has loomed large in my life. Reverend Hull, an FDR Democrat from Arkansas, would say to the men in his congregation that to be a “Christian you should vote Democrat and carry a pocketknife.” (I think he was teasing about the pocketknife.) The Nazarenes, unlike most Methodists of my experience, were seriously Arminian/Wesleyan in their theology, and members were expected to know what it meant to be an “Arminian.” (That judgment is a reflection on the fact that I am a United Methodist in the Western Jurisdiction of our church, one overwhelmingly liberal in theology.)
Whether that emphasis among Nazarenes remains true I can’t say, because I’ve been a Methodist for 48 years, but in terms of the theological influences in my life the Nazarenes, by virtue of their fidelity to Arminius, win out.
The great theological divide between denominations today is not over free will and predestination, but between liberal and conservative theology. People join churches for many reasons, but despite a renewed interest in Calvinism, it is unlikely either Calvin of Geneva or Arminius of Leiden factor in their decision. The church world some of us knew growing up is largely over (thanks be to God).
To cite but one example of how Protestantism is different today, I referenced Mt. Pleasant Christian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana, a large independent evangelical church. I’ve read their “What we believe” statement. It consists of seven faith affirmations consisting of 174 words, including Scripture references. By contrast the writings of Arminius alone fill three volumes, and it was not uncommon for him to write 200-page letters in Latin to affirm a theological point. Which is why Bruce Gordon, professor of Reformation history at Yale Divinity School, tells us in his new biography of Calvin, that to understand a time 500 or 400 years distant calls for the suspension of “modern sensibilities.” No doubt.
Studying Calvin
I gave a talk recently on John Calvin to the Koinonia adult Bible class at San Diego’s First United Methodist Church, where I am a member. I did my due diligence, as I wanted to be fair to Calvin.
I read part of Dr. Gordon’s biography, which has been critically acclaimed. I read critiques of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin’s magnum opus. I read The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England (adopted in 1563), which in Article 17 endorses predestination (reflecting Calvin’s curious hold on the Anglicans). I read again about the Synod of Dort, which occurred in 1618-19, and whose delegates, from church and state, ruled for Calvin and against Arminius, resulting in a pogrom against Arminius’ followers, including clergy and citizens who were banned by the States General—from both church and civil employment. But it didn’t end there, as some were executed for their heresy for sharing Arminius’ belief that when Christ died on the cross he died for all.
Most notable among those tried for the crime of “heresy” was van Oldenbarnevelt, who for 33 years had faithfully served Holland as the state’s Grand Pensionary, but was beheaded at The Hague for his Arminian sympathies. Still others were hounded from the Netherlands and found refuge across the English Channel in Lincolnshire County—where on June 28, 1703,
John Wesley was born (the juxtaposition of which is critical).
If the responsibility of someone “teaching” an adult Sunday school class is to enlighten his or her hearers, to broaden their knowledge, I’m afraid in this instance I failed. I simply got too caught up in too many synods and confessions and controversies. I sought fairness in outlining Calvin’s life, but this whole history is complicated, and some have given their lives in study to unravel its complexities, as Dr. Bangs did with Arminius.
The greater man
Nothing that I read, either from John Calvin or about John Calvin, including Dr. Gordon’s mostly sympathetic biography, changed my mind on the merits of Arminius vs. Calvin. To the contrary, I came away more certain than ever that James Arminius was by far the greater man—and, because one’s humanity toward one’s fellow humans matters greatly to me, that Arminius was by far a better person than Calvin. There was about Calvin an arrogance that found its greatest manifestation in his theological certainty (you decide which preceded which, arrogance before certainty or certainty before arrogance?). His habits of life demanded of others conformity of thought and contrasted dramatically with Arminius’ gentleness of spirit and acceptance of others.
I concede in advance that it may be unfair to say that Calvin’s only display of humanity and tolerance was allowing his congregants in Geneva to sing during night services (Calvin believed music had no place in the church). But, in a spirit of Christian charity, I should allow that his arrogance and certainties were God’s doing and therefore we should hold God accountable for Calvin being Calvin not Calvin for being Calvin. Why? By Calvin’s own reasoning God predestined all things and thus Calvin was in consequence innocent of his actions and helpless to do otherwise (so he gets a pass on his role in the burning of Michael Servetus at the stake).
If Calvin was right, then all that’s transpired since Adam’s transgression is God’s doing. Think of all the terrible acts committed by humans against humans, from Auschwitz to Afghanistan; of all the terrible acts of nature, from Pompey to Katrina, and tell me how God gets a pass if Calvin is right? This goes to the fundamentals of Calvin’s theology, which places God as first cause and thereby the causation of all things—both good and ill.
Arminius believed Calvin was wrong and that God’s love is all encompassing. You may deconstruct John 3:16 any way you choose, but in the end it either affirms what it says or it doesn’t; either Jesus died on the cross for all or he didn’t; either he came to save the world or Calvary was a hoax. Even Jacques Derrida, the late great French deconstructionist, could not have interpreted John 3:16 otherwise. (It should be noted, however, that one of the major disputes between Arminius and the Calvinists, was over Romans 7, not John 3:16.)
Sovereignty of God
Am I saying then that those who embrace Calvin, who hold tightly to his doctrine of predestination, who count themselves eternally saved and others eternally dammed, have believed a lie? No. They believe and believe sincerely, as did Calvin, but they like him believe in error. I do not judge them harshly for their beliefs. Their state of grace is wholly God’s and they are by Arminius’ reckoning no less worthy of God’s love in Christ than we. The contrary edicts of Calvin are not true, but ultimately they are inconsequential because our one shared certainty, whether Arminian or Calvinist, is the sovereignty of God, and by his decree all else is secondary, including the most overly wrought and expansive of theological disputations—and such disputations were dominant in the world of ideas for 1,000 years and more (there was a reason why theology is known as the “Queen of the sciences”).
But to concede the last point is not to overlook what I deem, in the context of history, the damning consequences of Calvinism. It goes to the very core of why Arminius’ belief in free will (Libertas Voluntatia) and Calvin’s denial of it reverberates down the years. The former affirms liberty and God’s free grace and the latter rejects such sentiments—not in part but the whole thereof.
If those anxious as to their state of grace under Calvin’s teachings wondered if they fit in God’s plan, those in places of authority had the benefit of knowing they ruled by God’s will. How reassuring to kings and queens, to princes and magistrates, to lords and ladies of the realm, to bishops and vicars, that they had God’s favor. And if that was true, so too then was the opposite equally true. If you were numbered among the masses whose sole reason for existence was to bow your knee before your betters and serve their needs while denying your own, then that too was God’s will.
How comforting to believe that while you dined in splendor and others fought for scraps from your table, that it was all God’s doing. How liberating to know whatever the fate of others it is not your fate. How reassuring to believe God had worked it out before the foundation of the world—and you were the beneficiary of his favor.
The gifted preacher
James Arminius (the Latinized name of Jakob Harmenszoon) was born in 1569 in Oudewater, the Netherlands. In his early life, he experienced more than his share of hardship, beginning with his father’s death, when James was but an infant. His mother struggled mightily to raise and care for her children. While a student in Germany, Arminius lost his mother and siblings, who were murdered in 1575, when the Spaniards overran Oudewater, massacred its inhabitants, and destroyed the town.
Even as a child, many saw Arminius as possessing extraordinary intelligence. After completing his studies, he entered the ministry and would later become Amsterdam’s favorite and most gifted preacher. He would close out his life a highly respected and affectionately revered member of the theological faculty at Leiden, where his academic colleagues elected him Rector Magnificus in 1605.
He was highly respected and revered, that is, save for his fierce Calvinist critics, who were unrelenting in their attacks and continued to savage his reputation beyond the grave. They said he was a papist and in league with the Jesuits. They said he did not believe in the Trinity. But those were merely attacks upon his theology and church sentiments. The attacks upon his person and character were infinitely more outrageous and no less baseless in their lies. Why? For one reason and one alone—because Arminius believed contrary to Calvin.
It should be here noted that Arminius himself held a very high view of John Calvin. Of the Genevan, Arminius would write: “For I affirm that in the interpretation of Scriptures Calvin is incomparable, and that his commentaries are more to be valued than anything handed down to us in the writings of the Fathers—so much so that I concede to him a certain spirit of prophecy in which he stands distinguished above others, above most, indeed, above all.”
In this instance, as in many others, we see Arminius’ soul and character at work, the ability to rise above even the most profound theological differences and to otherwise “concede” to Calvin his due. This entry by Dr. Bangs speaks to Arminius’ deeply admirable traits of character, of his transcendent decency and caring for others.
Remembering a giant
James Arminius died on October 19, 1609 in the university town of Leiden. His funeral took place three days later in the Pieterskerk across the way from his home and near the university. At the service were his grieving admirers, friends, and family (Lijsbet Reael Arminius bore her husband many children, nine of whom survived childbirth and were living when their father passed).
Later that day in the Great Auditorium of the university, Petrus Bertius delivered the principal eulogy before faculty, students, curators, and burgomasters from The Hague, as well as friends and relatives from Amsterdam and Oudewater, who had journeyed to pay tribute to their greatest son. Of Arminius, Bertius would say near the end of his eulogy:
“There lived in Holland a man / whom they who did not know / could not sufficiently esteem / whom they who did not esteem / had never sufficiently known.”
Bertius then closed with the words from John’s Gospel, “Beloved, let us love one another.”
As I endeavor to understand my life, to account for my views, both as a person of faith and as a person who believes in a citizen’s duty to practice the ethic of civic engagement and to recognize the equality of every person, I do with gratitude allow that James Arminius, a man who lived more than 400 years ago, has immensely influenced my life and thinking—in ways beyond my accounting.
As a Christian and a Methodist, I cannot forget that absent Arminius the life and great deeds done by John Wesley would never have evolved as they did—and England and America would surely have been the lesser for it. This is an incontrovertible fact of our shared histories and the ignorance of it by secularists and non-believers in both Britain and America neither alters, changes, nor diminishes its undeniable truth.
George Mitrovich, a member of First United Methodist Church in San Diego and active in Wesleyan renewal efforts, is president of The City Club of San Diego and The Denver Forum, two leading American public forums.
by Steve | Jul 23, 2010 | Magazine Articles
By Rob Renfroe
The bad news, as you know, is that the United Methodist Church is declining. Membership, attendance, and giving have all decreased. In fact, membership in the United States is at its lowest point since The Evangelical United Brethren and The Methodist Church merged in 1968.
The good news is that many of our denominational leaders are now talking about the decline openly and honestly—and it seems they are committed to doing something about it. They are to be commended. Of course the question is: What is to be done?
Several groups have been commissioned to address the issue, most notably the World Wide Nature of the Church task force and The Call to Action Committee. The WWN team has focused primarily on renewing the church through structural change. The CTA, which has only met twice and is still determining its direction, seems inclined to work on structural issues and to determine a list of metrics by which churches and pastors will be held accountable for being vital and vibrant congregations.
We are grateful for all who love our church enough to care about its vitality and its future. No doubt the structure of the church needs to be re-thought and reformed to be effective in reaching a changing world for Christ. John Wesley took the structure of the early Methodist movement seriously, as did Francis Asbury when he came to the American colonies. Because of their organizational genius, Methodism became more than a powerful but brief revival. It became an enduring force for spiritual renewal and social holiness on both sides of the Atlantic.
Believing that churches should grow and developing criteria by which congregations and pastors can be held accountable is not only justifiable—it’s important. Too much emphasis can be placed on numbers. But in the 8,200-member congregation I serve, we look at numbers all the time. Our senior pastor Ed Robb often says, “We count people because people count.” And we count how many people join every year; how many attend church, Sunday school, and small groups; how many are going on mission trips and serving the poor in our own community; and how many give regularly to God’s work, because all of those markers provide some indication of whether people are growing in their faith.
Structural change—certainly necessary. Markers to determine growth—important. But the United Methodist Church and its future will not be transformed by either.
What is required for United Methodism to become a powerful movement of God again cannot be engineered by task forces, boards and agencies, or denominational leaders. They can remove some barriers to growth and they can hold local churches accountable for growth. But they cannot produce the movement of God that will produce real growth and they cannot create the dynamic spiritual leaders who will lead local congregations in effective ministry.
The United Methodist Church will never see dynamic growth again until our pastors and our congregations:
Believe that people are lost without a saving faith in Jesus Christ. John Wesley instructed his preachers that they had nothing to do but to save souls. Of course, he was committed to helping the poor and transforming his culture. But his primary task for his preachers was to bring people to faith in Christ so that their souls could be saved from judgment and hell. I once sat in a meeting of 30 UM preachers who were asked why we need to take the gospel to people outside the church. Many answers were given but they all had a common theme—so people can have a better, more meaningful life. Not one said because their sins have separated them from a holy God and unless they come to faith in Christ they will spend eternity apart from his love. When the pastors believe that the main reason people need Christ is a quality of life issue—it does not create the passion or the urgency found in Wesley’s early preachers who believed that eternal souls were at stake.
Experience the anointing of the Holy Spirit. The work of the church is spiritual work. In fact, it is spiritual warfare. It will not be won in the flesh, no matter how well-meaning or how well-structured or how well-measured we are. When Jesus began his public ministry, in Luke chapter 4, he proclaimed, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me….” He did not begin his ministry until he was empowered by the Holy Spirit. Likewise, after his resurrection he told his disciples not to begin their ministry until the Holy Spirit had come upon them and they had received his power (Acts 1:8). God is free to anoint his preachers and his churches with the Spirit whenever he chooses. But the pattern we see in Scripture is that the power of the Holy Spirit most often comes when persons have committed themselves to times of prayer, worship, and fasting. Personal revival among our pastors, I believe, will be required before we see a revival in the true effectiveness of the church.
Increase their vision for ministry. Some of us by our inherent nature are more visionary than others. But all of us can become more visionary than we are at present. How do we do this? First and foremost, we get our eyes off ourselves and spend time contemplating a God who is sovereign, omnipotent, and passionate about lost people. He is a God who can overcome every obstacle we face and inadequacy we possess. Second, we must spend time looking at a world that is lost. When local congregations focus on themselves and their needs and their problems, they die. When they look at the world God loves and Christ died for, when they care about the lost and the hurting, and when they believe that others are more important than themselves (Philippians 2:3), their hearts and their vision are enlarged. And as a result, their mission increases in impact and effectiveness.
What can our leaders do to help the United Methodist Church grow? Yes, address structural concerns and the issue of accountability. But every bit as important, if not more so, they need to speak to us as if people without Christ are lost and souls matter; call us to prayer and worship and fasting—that we might experience the anointing of the Holy Spirit; use the resources of the church to bring us in contact with the most effective pastors in the country, men and women who are passionate visionaries whose love for God and the lost is inspiring and infectious.
Our leaders also need to pray for us. I’m sure they do already. But they need to pray for our pastors and our churches. This battle for an effective United Methodist Church that reaches the lost and impacts our culture will not be won by power or might, but by his Spirit.
Rob Renfroe is the President and Publisher of Good News.
by Steve | Apr 23, 2010 | Magazine Articles
By N.T. Wright
The whole New Testament assumes that Israel was chosen to be the people through whom the creator God would address and solve the problems of the whole world. Salvation is of the Jews. The early Christians believed that the one true God had been faithful to that promise and had brought salvation through the king of the Jews, Jesus himself. Israel was called to be the light of the world; Israel’s history and vocation had devolved on to Jesus, solo. He was the true Israel, the true light of the whole world.
But what did it mean to be the light of the world? It meant, according to John, that Jesus would be lifted up to draw all people to himself. On the cross, Jesus would reveal the true God in action as the lover and savior of the world. It was because Israel’s history with God and God’s history with Israel came to its climax in Jesus, and because Jesus’ story reached its climax on Calvary and with the empty tomb, that we can say: here is the light of the world. The Creator has done what he promised. From now on we are living in the new age, the already-begun new world. The light is now shining in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
This means that the church, the followers of Jesus Christ, live in the bright interval between Easter and the final great consummation. Let’s make no mistake either way. The reason the early Christians were so joyful was because they knew themselves to be living not so much in the last days (though that was true too) as in the first days—the opening days of God’s new creation. What Jesus did was not a mere example of something else, not a mere manifestation of some larger truth; it was itself the climactic event and fact of cosmic history. From then on everything is different.
But it would be equally mistaken to forget that after Easter, after Pentecost, after the fall of Jerusalem, the final great consummation is still to come. Paul speaks of this in Romans 8 and 1 Corinthians 15: the creation itself will receive its exodus, will be set free from its slavery to corruption, death itself will be defeated, and God will be all in all. Revelation 21 speaks of it in terms of new heavens and new earth.
In all of these scenarios, the most glorious thing is of course the personal, royal, loving presence of Jesus himself. I still find that among the most moving words I ever sing in church are those in the old Christmas carol “Once in Royal David’s City”: And our eyes at last shall see him, Through his own redeeming love.
Blessed, says Jesus, are those who have not seen yet believe; yes, indeed, but one day we shall see him as he is and share the completed new creation that he is even now in the process of planning and making. We live, therefore, between Easter and the consummation, following Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit and commissioned to be for the world what he was for Israel, bringing God’s redemptive reshaping to our world.
Christians have always found it difficult to understand and articulate this, and have regularly distorted the picture in one direction or the other. Some suppose God will simply throw the present world in the trash can and leave us in a totally different sphere altogether. There is then really no point in attempting to reshape the present world by the light of Jesus Christ. Armageddon is coming, so who cares about acid rain or third-world debt?
That is the way of dualism; it is a radically anti-creation viewpoint and hence is challenged head on by (among many other things) John’s emphasis on Easter as the first day of the new week, the start of God’s new creation.
On the other hand, some have imagined we can actually build the kingdom of God by our own hard work. This is sorely mistaken. When God does what God intends to do, this will be an act of fresh grace, of radical newness. At one level it will be quite unexpected, like a surprise party with guests we never thought we would meet and delicious food we never thought we would taste. But at the same time there will be a rightness about it, a rich continuity with what has gone before so that in the midst of our surprise and delight we will say, “Of course! This is how it had to be, even though we’d never imagined it.”
So I send you.
Right at the end of 1 Corinthians 15, in verse 58, Paul says something that could seem like an anticlimax. Rather than a shout of praise at the glorious future that awaits us, which would be appropriate, Paul writes: “Therefore, my beloved family, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, inasmuch as you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
What is he saying? Just this: that part of the point of bodily resurrection is that there is vital and important continuity as well as discontinuity between this world and that which is to be, precisely because the new world has already begun with Easter and Pentecost, and because everything done on the basis of Jesus’ resurrection and in the power of the Spirit already belongs to that new world. It is already part of the kingdom-building that God is now setting forward in this new week of new creation.
That is why Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 3:10-15 of Jesus as the foundation and of people building on that foundation with gold, silver, or precious stones, or as it may be, with wood, hay, and stubble. If you build on the foundation in the present time with gold, silver, and precious stones, your work will last. In the Lord your labor is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that is soon going over a cliff.
Nor, however, are you constructing the kingdom of God by your own efforts. You are following Jesus and shaping our world in the power of the Spirit. And when the final consummation comes, the work that you have done—whether in Bible study or biochemistry, whether in preaching or in pure mathematics, whether in digging ditches or in composing symphonies—will stand, will last.
The fact that we live between, so to speak, the beginning of the End and the end of the End, should enable us to come to terms with our vocation to be for the world what Jesus was for Israel, and in the power of the Spirit to forgive and retain sins. The foundation Paul writes of in 1 Corinthians 3 is unique and unrepeatable. If you try to lay a foundation again, you are committing apostasy.
The church has so often read the Gospels as the teaching of timeless truths that it has supposed that Jesus did something for his own day, and that we simply have to do the same—to teach the same truths or to live the same way for our own day. Jesus, on this model, gave a great example; our task is simply to imitate him. By itself that is a radical denial of the Israel-centered plan of God and of the fact that what God did in Jesus the Messiah was unique, climactic, and decisive. People who think like that sometimes end up making the cross simply the great example of self-sacrificial love instead of the moment within history when the loving God defeated the powers of evil and dealt with the sin of the world, with our sin, once and for all. That is, once more, to make the gospel good advice rather than good news.
Before you can say “as Jesus to Israel, so the church to the world,” you have to say “because Jesus to Israel, therefore the church to the world.” What Jesus did was unique, climactic, decisive.
Receive the Spirit.
But once the foundation is laid, it does indeed provide the pattern, the shape, the basis for a building to be constructed. Our task is to implement Jesus’ unique achievement. We are like the musicians called to play and sing the unique and once-only-written musical score. We don’t have to write it again, but we have to play it. Or, in the image Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 3, we are now in the position of young architects discovering a wonderful foundation already laid by a master architect and having to work out what sort of a building was intended. Clearly he intended the main entrance to be here; the main rooms to be on this side, with this view; a tower at this end; and so on. When you study the Gospels, looking at the unique and unrepeatable message, challenge, warning, and summons of Jesus to Israel, you are looking at the unique foundation upon which Jesus’ followers must now construct the kingdom-building, the house of God, the dwelling place for God’s Spirit.
In case anyone should think this is all too arbitrary, too chancy, we are promised at every turn that the Spirit of the master architect will dwell in us, nudging and guiding us, correcting mistakes, warning of danger ahead, enabling us to build—if only we will obey—with what will turn out to have been gold, silver, and precious stones. “As the Father sent me, so I send you…receive the Holy Spirit.” These two go together. Just as in Genesis, so now in the new Genesis, the new creation, God breathes into human nostrils his own breath, and we become living stewards, looking after the garden, shaping God’s world as his obedient image-bearers. Paul, indeed, uses the image of the gardener alongside that of the builder in 1 Corinthians 3. We are to implement Jesus’ unique achievement. This perspective should open the Gospels for us in a whole new way. Everything that we read there tells us something about the foundation upon which we are called to build. Everything, therefore, gives us hints about what sort of a building it is to be. As Jesus was to Israel, so the church is to be for the world.
But, you say, the people we minister to, the people we work with in the laboratory or the fine arts department, the people who serve us in the grocery store or who work in the power station, are not first-century Jews. How can we summon them as Jesus summoned his contemporaries? How can we challenge them in the same way? What is the equivalent? What is the key to help us to translate Jesus’ message into our own?
The key is that humans are made in the image of God. That is the equivalent, on the wider canvas, of Israel’s unique position and vocation. And bearing God’s image is not just a fact, it is a vocation. It means being called to reflect into the world the creative and redemptive love of God. It means being made for relationship, for stewardship, for worship—or, to put it more vividly, for sex, gardening, and God.
Human beings know in their bones that they are made for each other, made to look after and shape this world, made to worship the one in whose image they are made. But like Israel with her vocation, we get it wrong. We worship other gods and start to reflect their likeness instead. We distort our vocation to stewardship into the will to power, treating God’s world as either a gold mine or an ashtray. And we distort our calling to beautiful, healing, creative, many-sided human relationships into exploitation and abuse.
Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud described a fallen world in which money, power, and sex have become the norm, displacing relationship, stewardship, and worship. Part of the point of postmodernity under the strange providence of God is to preach the Fall to arrogant modernity. What we are faced with in our culture is the post-Christian version of the doctrine of original sin: all human endeavor is radically flawed, and the journalists who take delight in pointing this out are simply telling over and over again the story of Genesis 3 as applied to today’s leaders, politicians, royalty, and rock stars. Our task, as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to the world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to the world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to the world that knows only exploitation, fear, and suspicion.
Humans were made to reflect God’s creative stewardship into the world. Israel was made to bring God’s rescuing love to bear upon the world. Jesus came as the true Israel, the world’s true light, and as the true image of the invisible God. He was the true Jew, the true human. He has laid the foundation, and we must build upon it. We are to be the bearers both of his redeeming love and of his creative stewardship: to celebrate it, to model it, to proclaim it, to dance to it.
N.T. Wright is the Bishop of Durham for the Church of England, and the author of dozens of books on New Testament scholarship. This article was taken from The Challenge of Easter. Originally found in The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was & Is by N. T. Wright. Copyright (c) 1999 by N. T. Wright. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515. www.ivpress.com.
