The Salem Witch Trials
For the past few years, I’ve been considered a leader in the emerging church. I’ve read as much in articles, mostly attacking the theology of the emerging church. I’ve even sat in a room where they talked about me being a leader in this church. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to embarrass them. There were only about ten people at the panel discussion, in a room without more than 500 chairs. I’ve normally laughed, because whoever wrote these articles clearly didn’t do their research (and by the way, they have never called to verify their facts) because I don’t attend an emerging church, and for that matter have never used the phrase in any of my books. So I am not sure how you lead something without talking about it, but this doesn’t seem to matter to the critics!
But my question is this: Why don’t these people go after the Pope? Whatever the emerging church is (and I’m not pretending not to know. I really don’t know, because conversations about it bore me and I’ve never read a single book on the subject).
Do they agree with the theology of the Catholic church? If not, why don’t they ever attack it? Aren’t they leading billions astray, when the emerging church is only leading a few? Are they scared of the Catholic church?
I’m not asking the question to be sarcastic. I’ve actually been curious. It’s kind of like pulling a guy over for running a stop sign when there’s a holdup at a bank happening a few yards away. At least that’s the case in my understanding of theology.
My only thought is that this attack community is a small, insular community that really doesn’t know about “the world” outside the more conservative evangelical church. This is their fort, and they have an entire ecosystem wtihin it that is the world God created, and everything else is Mars (God didn’t create Mars, science created Mars, and science is outside the fort.)
Another thought is that the Catholic church tends to agree with the Evangelical church on political issues, so who really cares about their theology, right? The theological attack may really be about something else, the threat of the loss of power in another sphere, an earthly sphere.
Is this a fair assessment? Is it too critical? I am wondering why the leaders of fundamentalist evangelical Christianity don’t attack Catholics. Thoughts?
I think you have to be careful when you call on a specific denomination to attack another. We are called to unity. We don’t hear Theological attacks against the Catholic church because anything placed under the umbrella of an attack will divide not unite. Those who are truly called to minister to others don’t attack, they love. Secondly, anti-Catholicism has been a main-stay of protestant-American culture since the inception of the country. Just take a quick glance at wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Catholicism_in_the_United_States#1990_-_21st_century). This countries only Catholic president was assassinated. I wouldn’t place anti-Catholic sentiment as far as racism or anti-Semitism,but it draws many parallels. Secondly, I think that theological arguments against the Catholic church are much more difficult to justify than personal attacks. It’s easy to peg one of the largest Churches into a specific hole based on personal experiences and biases towards individuals or media covered events. It is a much more challenging feat to argue against the Catholic church. Their theology is quite beautiful, complete, and encompassing. On a personal note, as a Catholic and someone who enjoys your writing, I find these remarks to be almost bigoted. The Catholic church is just as broken as any other church you will ever experience, but it doesn’t count them out.
Donald: I too share your concerns and reservations regarding the emerging church. In years previous to this, I too shared your (possible) suspicions regarding the Catholic Church. I am, however, unclear as to what you have written above regarding the emerging church attacking the Catholic Church. Are you suggesting that they ought to attack the Pope and the Church, or are you simply wondering why they have yet to do so? Years ago when I was living in Portland we met at an Imago Dei community dinner at your place. We spoke briefly. We encounetered a mutual resonance in our distaste for the inauthenticity, lack of intellectual and historical depth, and distessing privation of sacramentality and mystery found in so many evangelical/Protestant communities. I did not know it at the time, but I was embarking upon a hidden journey entailing a dark night of the soul culminated in my returning to Catholicism, the “starchy” and “stuffy” faith which I loathed as a boy, eagerly and enthusistically jettisoned in high school, railed againstand robbed from after college as a youth minister, combatted as a theology graduate student, and pronounced dead and irrelevant (perhaps worse than death) as church planter and Hill-hopper in Washington D.C. What I had been searching for all those years in various forms of Evangelicalism/Protestantism had been awaiting me in the breast of She in whom I had been baptized and sacramentally bound to: The Holy Roman Catholic Church. What was it I was for which I was so deeply yearning all those years? That for which man was brought into being: Divine Union. Divinization. Fullness of being. Beauty. Mystery. Wonder. These terms, once cosmic abstractions eluding definition to me, became realities. A new realm of being emerged, and what I discovered was it was not the Church that I hated but what I believed the Church to be that I hated. I was the problem. It was not her but I that had distorted the truth. I found a family, in the deepest understanding of family, because we no longer divided Christians but united in one Faith, the Faith of Jesus’ apostles, the Faith of our fathers fathers fathers. I met young Catholics (which I previously thought was an oxymoron). We attended Mass together. We went to Adoration together. We smoked cigarettes and drank whiskey and danced in pubs to Irish music. We burned incense and discussed Aristotle, Dostoevsky, Flannery O’Connor, the Coens Brothers, St. Thomas Aquinas and My Morning Jacket. We knelt. We contemplated the mysteries of truth, beauty and goodness. We found priests as earthly fathers. We lived the Liturgical calendar. And I found a community so deep and rich and united and real that I blessed God and His angels and His Holy Mother. Forgive me for my ranting but the thing is this: The Church, though full of sinners, is Jesus – Jesus’s Sacred Body. In Her is experienced the fullness of Our Lord. Very few hate the Catholic Church; many hate what they believe to be the Catholic Church. And those rare and intrepid souls who dare explore Her teachings, sacraments and saints, truly delve and plumb and experience Her? They are transformed.
May you seek the truth whatever the cost. dear brother. And if you are ever in Washington D.C., a whiskey on me. May God continue to bless your important work.
See Matthew Lickona’s website for a Catholic parallel to your book Blue Like Jazz entitled Swimming with Scapular: Confessions of a Young Catholic
I would be delighted if you all, as ardent Truth seekers (and finders) would visit my site. I think you’re my kinda people.
http://scripturallyspeaking.org/archive/about-this-emerging-church-thing/
It is interesting that we(as the protestant church)are existing peacefully with the catholic church, considering the years of reformation that had a great deal to do with the eventual settling of this country. And also, thought -provoking is the whole emergent church thing.
Could it be that it is right that the church is not a building, or a systematic method for doing things, but rather a group of people whose very real experience is to be in a sincere relationship with Truth? Could it be that the relationship actually creates and defines the man, resulting in a brand new person who is committed only to what it true? Glory, Hallelujah! Could it be?
Bonnie Shelton
I’ve never read anything you’ve written, but since you seem to be sincere in wondering why someone would attack you and not the Catholic church, I’ll tell you what I think. I have seen your book in the hands of kids at church and I’ve not seen books written by Catholic thinkers in the hands of kids at church. So, if I thought that you and Catholicism were both teaching error, I would speak against you before I spoke against Catholicism.
Whatever you do, follow Jesus – his teaching and person. John, one of the apostles, said if we say we know him and don’t keep his commandments, something is wrong (my paraphrase). But, if we keep his commandments, God’s love is completed in us. I hope this is the path you will keep pursuing and don’t get sidetracked.
Actually there are MANY protestants who have come out to expose the false doctrine of catholicism. Jack Chick has books and tracts on his website exposing the false doctrines in catholicism. The Best book I’ve is Charles Chinquiy’s “50 Years in the Church of Rome” , he was a a priest and the book shares his wonderful testimony , it was written in 1886 , there is an abridged version on Chick.com. Dave Hunt wrote “A Woman rides the beast”. Jimmy Swaggart and his wife Frances both wrote books about the error of the Catholic Church. There are so many more , but I just wanted to let you know that there ARE people out there who are not afraid of the Catholic Church or afraid to stand up for the truth of the gospel , Jesus Christ and Him Crucified. Either what Jesus did at the cross paid for all of my sins and place me in right standing before God or it didn’t. I believe that there is no amount of good works that I could do to make me holy – only the Blood of Jesus shed at Calvary makes me Holy , because it places me in Chirst. Galatians 2:21 (KJV) says “I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.” and Ephesians 2:8-9(KJV) says “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” Hope that helps!
- Your Sister in Christ -
I know this exactly is not on the subject but I would just like to add this thought to my above comments, lest anyone thinking i hate people- that i love everyone catholics, buddhists , whatever! If i didnt love them and tell them about what Jesus did for them , and i let them go to hell without ever stopping to love them and help them and share that Jesus died for their sins , would that be love? If hell is a real place , and the bible says it is , than would it be love for me to let them go to hell?