Five and Counting

First, I was listening to the news this morning and I was yanked out of my semi-sleep state of mind by one report. This week denotes the 5 year mark of the beginning of the war in Iraq. The swell of emotion that accompanied the mere mention of that fact lingered in me for the rest of the morning. Five years… It has been a long time!

I remember the time preceding the war very well. I had moved to Germany a half year after 9/11 and spent the first year of my acclimation to Europe in the charged context of the build up to the war in Iraq. I remember it being a very difficult period for me. On the one hand, I was dealing with all the outrage and emotion leveraged against the US by my European friends and then on the other hand trying to sort out my own reaction and outrage at what my country was doing. I felt helpless to do anything and yet I felt the brunt end of the raw frustration directed towards US geo-politics. I was deeply distressed by the decisions being made, but at the same time felt defensive at the wholesale criticism of the US. In the end, I think I experienced what many US ex-pats, who were opposed to the war: I was confused.

Since having moved back to the US in 2006, it has been remarkable how far off and distant the Iraq War has become. My work with the Military Counseling Network in Germany had me dealing first hand with US soldiers returning from, going to or deployed in Iraq. I was very close to the gravity and intensity of the war. Here it seems so very far away, neatly tucked away in intermittent news reports.

The nature of this war is that the domestic experience is disconnected with what is directly happening overseas. Yet the subtext of this war is that it is directly shaping our society. The current war in Iraq is the major world issue of our time and it is having a profound influence on our lives in the US from economics, culture, politics, to religion. Although this war is disconnected with most American’s immediate lives and lifestyles (other than those serving in the armed forces or military families), the war is producing a strong undercurrent of change, particularly in the younger generations.

I am studying at a Christian seminary. We talk a lot about the changing nature of Christianity in our society. If there is one thing that hardly gets mentioned at all, it is the war in Iraq. It strikes me how very little it comes up in conversation or in class. I understand it is a scary and explosive topic. I know that people here have passionate opinions about the war that go either way and include all the in-between. However, five years ago Christians were at the center of the debate about the war. Today it is hard to talk about.

I find it interesting, form all the stuff I am learning at seminary, that the church is undergoing a period of tremendous change as the centrality and role of the church is being re-evaluated and marginalized. From what I can tell, there are seismic shifts in the way young Christians understand church. For my generation, the landscape of American Christianity is changing, particularly in the case of how Christians understand their role in society and in the world. It seems to me like there are more young people interested in engaging and taking holistic responsibility for the problems of the world beyond their own countries international policy and involvement. (Politically, there are more young adults voting and involved in political campaigns than ever before.)

The funny thing is that I hardly hear Christians in my context tangibly connect the situation in Iraq to the changing conception of the church and its role. Of course it is more complicated than reducing it to politics. However, I feel the confusion of the debacle of Iraq has permeated the consciousness of young Christians and they are not taking the role of American civil religion, consciously or unconsciously, for granted in the same way as they did five years ago.

A lot has changed in five years.

Second, in regards to attaining a resolution to the conflict, why have we not deployed Chuck Norris yet?

Early Church History Rant: Part Deux

My friend, Matt Krabill, and I spent about an hour last night rehashing our Early Church History course. We became fairly immersed in the subject, that we about missed out on the fondue meal with a group of friends. As we stood in the kitchen, people kept beckoning us to come and partake of the gooey, cheesy goodness before it disappeared.

This engrossment has become common nature recently. Early Church History has held me in a trance now for the past few weeks. I tend to go off about it whenever I get the chance, which many of my friends can attest to. Since I am running out of people who will humor my fixation, I need to resort to blogging. In continuance of my previous post, here goes rant two on Early Church History...

The main critique I have is not of my professor or of my class that I took. Like I mentioned Yesterday, I felt like I have learned heaps. Part of that learning involves being taught a historical perspective that is fairly normative in its approach. This is the story of how church and Christianity developed in the West and how the West tends to remember that story. That normative approach offers me a conversation partner as I sift out my thoughts on the historical narrative of Christianity.

The main critique I have is that this history is taught with the same absence of consciousness of the culture question that was lacking in what developed into the Christendom understanding of Christianity. Christendom was a cheery place where the Christian faith became equated with society and culture. Of course it is more complex than this, but the fundamental issues remain. The engagement of the gospel in culture ceased to cause tension and a society, with a healthy homogeneity of absolute Christianity, tended to view the need for engagement, or mission, as moot.

Christendom rendered the cultural interaction with Christianity as a neutral encounter, which lead to the perception that truth is also neutrally intelligible apart from culture and contains universal application. This was evident, especially, as Christianity expanded from the West to other parts of the world. As Christianity became firmly grounded in a territorial conceptualization, expansion of the church piggybacked the whim of empire. Christianity became to be understood as universally normative according to the Western experience and perspective, much to the eternal joy of the world’s “unreached” peoples.

A good example of the culture question being being overlooked is the American context. American Christians tend to neglect the way our culture informs our understanding of Christianity. Coupled with the Christendom legacy of Christianity being somehow culturally neutral, American Christians often face a double whammy, in that we assume our cultural narrative is neutral as well. Part of the way we understand that neutrality is that our values are espoused to be universally normative. Think of our civil religion of liberty, freedom and democracy. We see those issues as either disembodied from our culture as universal truths or the other way around, as universal truths embodied in our culture.

Another example of the culture informing the context of church history is the impact of German nationality as the catalyst for the Reformation. I would argue that the Reformation was not absent of political or cultural influence. Of course the theological confrontation was the heart of the issue, but German nationality became a major rallying point behind the emergence of a major change in the church. Rome was exercising dominion, politically and religiously, over the German people. The translation of the Bible into German, Luther's theological challenge to the religious status quo of Rome, the German princes chaffing under foreign rule, all led to the convergence of political, religious, cultural, and social factors uniting against papal authority. The Reformation did not take place in a theological vacuum.

Granted, we all approach history from where we stand. My professor comes out of the reform tradition. For him, the reform becomes the definitive event in the trajectory of Christian history. Therefore, the doctrinal development of the Early Church becomes paramount to the theological clash of the Reformation. For me as an Anabaptist, it is easy to see the course of Christian history resulting in the need for a restoration. This of course informs my historical understanding. However, when we approach history without asking the culture question, I believe it can result in the blindsides of Christendom.

The world is changing and the gospel is becoming couched in cultures all over the world. Today it is absolutely impossible to avoid the cultural question. As the church expands, the integration and re-translation of the gospel is automatically present. There is no ambiguity about culture shaping and informing Christianity today. In fact, in a post-Christian west we are becoming more keenly aware of the non-Western Christian influence on the global church. In a post-Christendom West, we are finally asking the culture question of how the gospel can engage our contexts missionally.

This is my beef. It is apparent to me that no time in Christian history is it somehow removed from the culture question. Church does not take place in a vacuum. There is always the variable of culture.

See, what started with a simple discourse on Early Christian History, turned into a seriously long rant on what is wrong with the world... People like me shouldn't be allowed to blog.

Early Church History Rant

Now that the quarter has come to a close and life has taken on less of a shrill tone, I can finally take the time to rant about my class, Early Church History.

First of all, the class should really be called Early Church History of Theology, NOT Early Church History. An abundance of time was dedicated to learning about hermits, monks, ascetics, bishops, theologians, and councils. The church history material on the 1^st – 5^th Century world felt as removed from the social, political, cultural, historical contexts as the monasteries of the early church were from the life outside of their abbey walls! Granted, we learned about the development of doctrine, the trajectory of Christian thought, the debate around the trinitarian controversy and initial ventures in methods of biblical interpretation. Ok! Christian historical material was covered. I admit that. However, it is a history that is taught disembodied from its context. For example, we spent maybe 5 minutes on the rift between East and West in the church. On the other hand, we spent over 2 hours on the Blessed Virgin Mary and way too much time in purgatory (pun intended).

In regards to my nervousness about the final exam, a friend of mine said “what's there to know about church history other than you had Jesus and the Apostles, than the fall of Constantine happened, and later the restoration of the Anabaptists came along? Seem pretty simple to me.” (He is Mennonite and not being sarcastic.) I had to remind my friend that there exists a vast array of unimportant stuff that happened in between those points on his time line. Apparently they are significant enough that my professor has made a livelihood out of teaching that stuff. In fact, he did cover Constantine for almost 10 whole minutes. Come to think of it, my friend’s comments are the completely opposite to what was covered in our class material. The apostles were briefly mentioned. Constantine was a "major transitional historical figure" where after "nominalism became an issue in the church" and nothing apparently needed to be "restored," only reformed. Basically, my professor comes out of the reform tradition and is keeping the major theological encounter of the reformation in mind as he develops the trajectory of Christian history.

In my mind we could have spent less time on monks who buried themselves up to their necks in sand at night, theologians who cut off their junk to remove the temptation of lust and bishops who endlessly bickered about the substance/essence/humanity/divinity/spirit of Jesus. I would have appreciated more time on the persecuted church in tension with the empire and Greco-Roman culture, the way communities of Christians formed and practiced their faith, the story of how the gospel movement spread throughout the Mediterranean and Europe, how conversion was understood, the impact of imperial patronage of the church after Constantine and the rise of institutionalization of religion in the church.

Am I being a typical Anabaptist?

To end, I want to make sure that I note the quality of the course and the professor. He was a great lecturer and knew his material inside out. The course, even if it had a typical Western perspective on the advancement of the church, was extremely helpful in understanding the way Christianity developed in the West.

And on a serious note, Monks did learn how to brew some good beer.