12/29/13

Just in Time for New Years: Christians and "Drink"

I recently read a piece at Christianity Today about prominent conservative Evangelical Christian colleges relaxing their rules about alcohol for staff and students.  I think this is basically a good development but, perhaps from spending too much time with members of my own generation who are probably more permissive than our elders as a general rule, I was rather surprised to read the accompanying research that only 22% of all Protestant pastors and 39% of all Protestant laity say they drink alcohol.  This reminded me of a recent conversation with an older (early 60s) clergy colleague who said he thought it was inappropriate for a pastor or a church volunteer to keep lots of alcohol at home.     

When I attended LSU we were rated (according to the Princeton Review) the #1 "Party School" in America the preceding year.  The word on campus was that we got this distinction because a student and drunk himself to death (i.e. died as a result of acute alcohol poisoning) that year.  That is probably just hear-say, but it does tell you a bit of the attitude that then existed (and no doubt does today) among many college students: the party is "better" if people drink more so as to engage in more extreme and dangerous behavior.  This attitude is both common and also morally deplorable. 

As a young evangelical Christian on LSU's campus who wanted to be a good example to others and who wanted nothing to do with the death-dealing party culture of the modern college campus (and as someone who was under the legal drinking age for much of my college experience), I resolved never to drink any alcohol while in school and, apart from the Communion wine at St. Alban's, I never did.  

I had good Biblical reasons too: the Scripture clearly tells us that drunkenness (and "getting smashed" seemed the only purpose in drinking among my fellow undergraduates) is the behavior of a fool (Proverbs 20:1) and, if one thinks about it a bit it should be clear that God created humans in particular as rational creatures - creatures capable of reflection and creativity - and this aspect of what it means to "bear God's image" is precisely what is inhibited by alcohol intoxication.  More pointedly, God's Word commands us not to be drunk, and implies that our doing so can hinder our openness to the Holy Spirit (Eph. 5:18).  So, due to over-consumption of alcohol, there is the danger of potentially missing our full human potential as divine image-bearers and vessels of the Holy Spirit and (connected to this) we also have a positive command to abstain from intoxication (and breaking God's commands is sinful - though we are obviously not at this point talking about medical scenarios wherein alcohol intoxication is used in lieu of anesthesia).


There are also common-sense reasons, social/family cohesion reasons, and good medical reasons to avoid excessive drink, that I'll not list here, beyond saying that everyone who looks can see that drinking too much is bad for your body, bad for your family, bad for your business, and bad for your community.  Because of excess drink women and children are abused, cycles of poverty are perpetuated, crimes are committed. 

But avoiding excess drink is not the same as total abstinence from alcohol (or "tee-totalism" as it is called).  Many Christians have insisted that total abstinence is the only right way to go, and I think they are quite wrong (a classic case of avoiding one extreme by running straight into its opposite). 

When I got to seminary, I did take up drinking a beer (and later, a glass of wine) on occasion.  Now some might attribute this simply to the deleterious effects of a liberal mainline seminary on my soul. But in reality my context had changed.  My classes were now filled with mostly older students (30s-50s) who had no interest in "the party scene" (both by reason of their season in life and also their commitment to Christian discipleship).  Of course, I was now legally old enough to drink, so breaking the law or encouraging others to do so by my example were no longer considerations.  Plus we had a great, and really classy, Irish Pub called Trinity Hall (named for God himself?) within easy walking distance of the seminary, so this was a natural place for some of us to get together over fish-and-chips and a pint to talk about (as we in fact did) the nature of the baptismal vows or the nuances of Trinitarian theology.  This was, indeed, a very life-giving experience; a celebration of fellowship among brethren and indeed of God himself. 

It is said that Martin Luther once told his scrupulous friend, Philip Melanchthon, "You can worship God, even while drinking beer."  And that is true.

So today you will often (but not always) find beer and wine at the parsonage.  I do not drink every day, or even every week, but I do enjoy a glass of beer or wine and am coming to appreciate the some of cultural traditions associated with these drinks.  I never drink liquor - only beer and wine (more wine lately as it offers greater health-benefits).  I am very aware that my own position as a pastor does indeed mean that I am an example to others and this is one reason that I generally limit myself to a single drink and I do not serve alcohol at events that have been promoted from the pulpit (like the meals we served in our first year here).   

For me the question is still one of what promotes "Scriptural Holiness" both in myself and in others - a holiness that avoids Pharisaical legalism on the one side or self-indulgence and excess on the other (both of which the New Testament repeatedly warns against).  Indeed, I believe that my being open about my drinking occasionally yet within certain boundaries and never to the point of intoxication provides me an opportunity to model the true (and original) meaning of "temperance."  I respect that other Christians (a great many US Protestants, if CT's statistics are accurate) prefer total abstinence for themselves (the official position of The United Methodist Church applauds, but does not require, this); and I myself sometimes choose to abstain for particular time periods as a type of fast.

How do some of you approach this issue?  

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12/15/13

Doing theology with Wesley

"Scripture and indubitable antiquity are the authority we appeal to; thither we refer our cause; and can heartily conclude with that [saying] of Vincent of Lerins, 'That is to be held, which hath been believed everywhere, always, and by all.'"

- Rev. John Wesley; final line of his "Reply to the Roman Catechism" (Works v. X, p. 128)

Methodist theologian Thomas Oden, following the example of John Wesley here, has made this saying of Vincent of Lerins something of a rallying cry for what is being called "paleo-orthodoxy" (or just plain "orthodoxy").  There really is a great historic and ecumenical consensus of the faith that is shared across denominational lines and cultural boundaries and across the ages.  You can find this faith expressed in the creeds and hymns, the liturgical practices and teachers which have been most widely embraced across the whole church across time.  It is in holding to this faith, this "Mere Christianity," that Christians find unity with one another and with the great communion of saints across time. 

Oden is quick to point out that he fears 'theological revisionism' leads us away from this great consensus of faith, and so his ongoing project to call fellow Methodists and Christians of all stripes back to the consensus of the early church (what Wesley above calls "indubitable antiquity" - that which was held without doubt by the ancient church) to help us rightly interpret sacred Scripture. 

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12/6/13

Protestant or Reformational Catholic?

I've said before that there are two ways to think of the word "Protestant."  One is "Protest against" - as in we are in continual protest against Roman Catholicism; whatever they do, we Protestants must do something different and eventual unity is out of the question since Roman Catholicism as such is seen as corrupt-by-definition.  On this view a Protestant is by definition a "non-Catholic" ("Catholic" is assumed by these folks always to mean "Roman Catholic" instead of the original meaning: "universal").

The other way to think of the word Protestant is "pro-testament" (pro= "for" in Latin) - as in giving a testimony for something, in this case the Good News of Christ Jesus.  On this view one might even be Protestant and Catholic at the same time, since we are no longer talking about denominational affiliation (or lack thereof) but giving testimony for the Good News of Jesus Christ.

First Things recently ran a good piece called The End of Protestantism  ("end" in the sense of "purpose" and also "end point") in which being Protestant (in the first sense mentioned above, "not-catholic") is contrasted with being a Reformational Catholic.  A Reformational Catholic is truly "reformed" because he embraces the major teachings of the Reformers (salvation by grace alone through faith in Christ alone; a rejection of universal papal authority; the embrace of married priests & vernacular liturgy; rejection or prayers to saints, etc.) while also embracing the universal (or "catholic") Christian tradition, the ecumenical creeds, the liturgical and sacramental piety, and the whole communion of saints.  A Reformational Catholic can also allow that Roman Catholicism is not corrupt "by definition" and that the Roman Church is capable of change, and has in fact changed a great deal since the Medieval Period and has brought on board many of the very reforms sought by the original Protestant Reformers (and may indeed accept more of those reforms - such as married clergy - in the future).

Upon reading this description of 'Reformational catholicism' (at least some) Anglicans might be scratching their heads and exclaiming "That is what we've been saying for centuries!" and now it seems others are catching up to ideas that the Protestant Reformers themselves actually held.  Indeed the Book of Discipline describes United Methodist theology as catholic and reformed and evangelical all at the same time, and I am proud to be what this essay calls a "Reformational Catholic."  I have long since found the idea that we should not do something in church because "that is too Catholic" ridiculous since Roman Catholics also believe in prayer, reading the Bible, preaching the cross, and worshiping the Trinity.  Taken to its logical extreme this "don't do anything catholic" approach would have us all convert to Islam or something very near to it.  As a bit of a "high-church Methodist," I have at times run into this "don't do it if it's Catholic" attitude serving in Louisiana, though not as frequently as I might have expected.

It must also be pointed out that any 'Protestantism' that defines itself based on what some other group is doing ("We are the people who are not Catholic") has no positive substantial identity of its own but only a derivative identity that relies for its very existence upon Roman Catholicism.  In other words, if "Protestant" simply means "not Catholic" then you can never know what a Protestant is until you find out what a Catholic is first.  Yet surely no church that is dependent for its very existence upon some other (and supposedly false) church can truly claim to be the one holy church founded by Jesus Christ that is united to him in eternity; surely Jesus did not have to set up a false church first before he could establish the true one.  This is why it makes no sense to define a church's whole ecclesial identity as a contrast to what some other church is doing (Protestant as "protest against" whatever Rome happens to be doing).

Instead there must have been a substantial identity for the early church long before the Medieval corruptions crept in that created a need for Reform.  Church as bearer of the apostolic message (Protestant as giving testimony for the Gospel) is a substantial identity all its own.  Since it is not by definition contrary to whatever Roman Catholics are doing, then there always remains the possibility of future reunion with the Roman Church in keeping with Jesus' own desire that his followers should all be one (John 17), if in fact such Protestants/Reformational Catholics were to find that the Roman Catholics were also clearly bearers of the same apostolic message.

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12/1/13

Study theology (even if you don't believe?)

Interesting post a few weeks ago from The Atlantic: why Theology (and not just Religious Studies) should have a core place in the Humanities at major Universities.  Here is a good bit of it:
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When I first told my mother—a liberal, secular New Yorker—that I wanted to cross an ocean to study for a bachelor’s degree in theology, she was equal parts aghast and concerned. Was I going to become a nun, she asked in horror, or else one of “those” wingnuts who picketed outside abortion clinics? Was I going to spend hours in the Bodleian Library agonizing over the number of angels that could fit on the head of a pin? Theology, she insisted, was a subject by the devout, for the devout; it had no place in a typical liberal arts education.

Her view of the study of theology is far from uncommon. While elite universities like Harvard and Yale offer vocational courses at their divinity schools, and nearly all universities offer undergraduate majors in the comparative study of religions, few schools (with the exceptions of historically Catholic institutions like Georgetown and Boston College) offer theology as a major, let alone mandate courses in theology alongside other “core” liberal arts subjects like English or history. Indeed, the study of theology has often run afoul of the legal separation of church and state. Thirty-seven U.S. states have laws limiting the spending of public funds on religious training. In 2006, the Supreme Court case Locke v. Davey upheld the decision of a Washington State scholarship program to withhold promised funding from an otherwise qualified student after learning that he had decided to major in theology at a local Bible College.

Even in the United Kingdom, where secular bachelor's programs in theology are more common, prominent New Atheists like Richard Dawkins have questioned their validity in the university sphere. In a 2007 letter to the editor of The Independent, Dawkins argues for the abolishment of theology in academia, insisting that “a positive case now needs to be made that [theology] has any real content at all, or that it has any place whatsoever in today's university culture.”


Such a shift, of course, is relatively recent in the history of secondary education. Several of the great Medieval universities, among them Oxford, Bologna, and Paris, developed in large part as training grounds for men of the Church. Theology, far from being anathema to the academic life, was indeed its central purpose: It was the “Queen of the Sciences” the field of inquiry which gave meaning to all others. So, too, several of the great American universities. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton alike were founded with the express purpose of teaching theology—one early anonymous account of Harvard's founding speaks of John Harvard's “dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches”, and his dream of creating an institution to train future clergymen to “read the original of the Old and New Testament into the Latin tongue, and resolve them logically.”

Universities like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton no longer exist, in part or in whole, to train future clergymen. Their purpose now is far broader. But the dwindling role of theology among the liberal arts is a paradigmatic example of dispensing with the baby along with the bathwater.
Richard Dawkins would do well to look at the skills imparted by the Theology department of his own alma mater, Oxford (also my own)....

Read the whole story here.

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