One Account of a Baptist Way of Following Jesus

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One summer Friday afternoon in 1978 a teenage boy named David Gushee wandered uninvited into a Southern Baptist church in Tysons Corner, Virginia. I had never attended worship at that church but my then-girlfriend attended there with her family — though they were out of town. I was on my own, a total stranger to that congregation and whoever might have been in the building that day.

I walked into the church in something of a spiritual crisis. Two years before, I had left the Catholic Church of my mother and heritage but had not been able to shake, or to slake, an abiding spiritual hunger. The afternoon that I walked into that building I was looking for something that I did not know how to name.

That Friday afternoon I accepted the invitation from the youth minister to a youth mini-golf and ice cream outing that evening. It was fun. There was another activity on Saturday night, which I therefore attended. The next day I came to that church on a Sunday morning for the first time. I returned for Sunday night service. That night, a youthful drama group from California offered sketches about Jesus and Christianity that to me were compelling.

I said Yes to yet one more activity — a Monday night home Bible study.

At that event, the teacher asked us to break into groups to discuss these questions:

  1. What was your life like before you met Jesus?
  2. How did you meet Jesus and commit your life to him?
  3. How has your life changed?
  4. What are you doing now to tell others about Jesus?

It was during this discussion that it became decisively clear to me that on the terms of this paradigm, I was not a Christian. I had not had a personal meeting with Jesus. There was no commitment, no before and after. My life had not changed. I had never told anyone about this Jesus that I did not know. This all came to me as shocking revelation.

I was hungry that night, asking questions, trying to sort it out — an obvious evangelistic prospect. One of the drama group leaders, still in town because their van (mysteriously) wouldn’t start, asked if we could hang out after the Bible study. We drove around in my car, while I asked him all kinds of questions. By the end of that night, I was ready to “invite Jesus into my heart to become my Savior and Lord.” I did that, in a rush of excitement, relief, and tears, and became a Christian on the terms that were presented to me that day.

Two weeks later I was baptized by full immersion. I immediately began the intensive round of personal and church activities that were expected in the version of the faith that the Southern Baptists of Providence Baptist Church were offering. That version “took,” and I became a full-on born-again Bible-reading friend-evangelizing Baptist Christian. Within six months I felt sure I was called to become a Baptist pastor. My life had an entirely new direction.

That little congregation was hardly the idyllic haven of true Christianity that I thought it was at first appearance. They had their share of fissures and fractures, of divergent visions and fired ministers. But at that ur-moment in my spiritual journey, they offered what I needed and was ready to hear. They taught me that being a “born-again,” “Baptist” “Christian” “disciple of Jesus” meant something like this: aided by the Holy Spirit, to accept that Jesus had died on the Cross to atone for my and the world’s sins (e.g., “accepting Jesus Christ as my Savior”) and to “commit my life to serving Jesus as Lord,” that is, the one in charge of me.

Thus the way of Jesus in this first primitive introduction involved both gift and task — the gift of a staggering sacrifice to atone and forgive me for my sins (I was aware that they were abundant), and the task of learning how to become a faithful servant of a new Lord — no longer my wretched self-curved-in-on-itself, but Jesus Christ. This latter project, it was soon clear, was demanding, open-ended, and lifelong — one never arrived, one was always on the way, there was always more to learn, more growing to do, more sin to repent, more Bible to read and (better and better) understand, more people to (better and better) love, more millions to evangelize… and of course more Sunday School classes, church services, youth choirs, Bible studies, and mission seminars to attend.

I would not hesitate to put forward this basic paradigm of what it means to follow Jesus as foundational for me and far preferable to many available alternatives even today. Christianity as receiving the ultimate gift (of God’s saving love in Christ) and undertaking the ultimate task (of reorienting one’s life to serve Christ with everything). If one wants as close to a near-consensus Baptist vision of discipleship as might exist, I think that is it. I think it tracks with centuries of Baptist history, would be recognizable in most parts of the global Baptist world, and still deeply inspires the vision of many Baptist churches and Christians today.

By now, of course, in the year of our Lord 2022 (!), many more complexities could be named, and much has changed in Baptistland.

Complexities: The good news, God’s good gift, should not simply be reduced to Christ’s atoning sacrifice for our sins. The mission of God in the world should be broadened to include a cosmic redemption that goes beyond individual souls, and therefore the mission of the church must go beyond discipleship training, personal evangelism and world missions. The conversionist paradigm fits badly with a developmental-staged faith that often better reflects people’s life experiences. Personal discipleship training needs to watch out for perfectionism and guilt-mongering. A social, ethical, political vision is needed and not just a personal one. Theology matters and not just a few scripture nuggets and lots of personal-experiential religion. A historical sensibility is needed to compare and contrast Baptist ways with other ways and to understand the ebb and flow of Baptist patterns over time. Such awareness would lead, among other things, to seeing that the churches as covenanted communities of disciples, and not just earnestly striving individuals, is the longer Baptist heritage.

Changes: Southern Baptists, in particular, fractured not long after I entered the community. For one thing, a Calvinist vision surged. Such was entirely absent from my primal Baptist congregation, though admittedly a large part of Baptist history. Southern Baptist conservatives and fundamentalists (some but not all of them hardcore Calvinists) prevailed over moderates and liberals, and three denominations formed where once there had been one. Eventually, you could tell where you were in Baptist life by social-ethical-political symbols and nudges from the platform or program within an hour of walking into most any Baptist congregation in the US. Southern Baptists in particular became part of the Religious Right from the 1980s forward and a huge part of what became #MAGATrumpvangelicalChristianity, which has little if any family resemblance to the serious Jesus-as-Savior-and-Lord Baptist Christianity that I cut my teeth on in 1978.

I find greater health and hope these days in global Baptist circles. I supervise Ph.D. students from around the world and am an integral part of the educational efforts of the International Baptist Theological Study Centre in Amsterdam. I like conversations that are not dominated by the scorched-earth wounds and stuck arguments of forty years of US religio-political warfare.

Imagine the young people today who are just as fired by spiritual hunger as that young man who walked into that church on a lovely afternoon in July 1978. Today they have so much more to navigate: exactly which flavor of Baptist is this congregation? Do I vote the wrong way to be accepted here? Does this church offer a vision for following Jesus worth building a life on, and people who actually model it?

At the risk of hopeless anachronism, I yearn for Baptists to return to that long-ago message. God’s love to human beings has been expressed in Jesus Christ. The best possible human life is to serve him as Lord.

 

On Relationality in Reformed Christian Faith

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Dr. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson writes with such clarity, humility, and tenderness about his adopted Reformed tradition that in reading the post I thought, for a second, maybe this is the way to follow Jesus.  After all, conversion – taking up a different Christian expression – has emerged as a leitmotiv in these Respectful Conversations.  Quite a few of us have ventured away from a faith nurtured in childhood to embrace, as adults, another way of being Christian.  Whatever else our respective conversions suggest, this code-switching is a feature of being an American Christian.  Where else in the world are these leaps of faith such a marked reality?

Granberg-Michaelson made a college-age move from an “Evangelical, Independent and Nondenominational” church into the Reformed tradition – in particular, the Reformed Church in America.  As his narrative suggests, Dr. Granberg-Michaelson has traveled a distance from the Jesus-centered piety he learned at his mother’s knee.  Since the early 19th century, most American Protestant expressions have been pietistic and Jesus-centered, yet Granberg-Michaelson takes off that lens to put on another.

Reading this post is the first time in the “Following Jesus” thread that I’ve been acutely aware of a Jesus enfolded in the company of the Trinity. Although Grandberg-Michaelson doesn’t say it directly, I sense the Trinity’s First Person is front and center, as it is in many Reformed expressions.  Here the integrated mantra of “grace, God, and the world” points to an inherent relationality – between God and the human, to be sure, and maybe also a relationality at work within God?  The Trinity can serve as a model for our own dynamic relationality – our relation to God and to each other, expressed through covenant.  As Granberg-Michaelson puts it so beautifully, “Christian faith is carried communally; it’s personal but not individualistic.”

Another alluring aspect of the Reformed tradition as explained here is the insistence that humans are flawed, fallen creatures, and God is sovereign and at work in every arena of human endeavor.  So many Pentecostals draw a red line between we and the world that I find this integrative insight a blessing. No longer is the world simply Satan’s realm, an arena of evil.  Reformed faith as Granberg-Michaelson explains it, is a movement from “guilt to grace and gratitude.” This insight invites me to feel more at home in the world, more trusting. In short, this understanding of God’s sovereignty makes the world less frightening. I feel the attraction of this orientation to God and the world.

If deeper trust, expressed through gratitude, is one effect of embracing God’s sovereignty, might openness to change be another?   That’s a note I hear in Granberg-Michaelson’s testimony, and it challenges my biased view of Reformed faith and practice as set in stone.   Granberg-Michaelson’s lived experience on the Camino de Santiago – “in the end, we walk our way into faith” – is one example of change, an embrace of practices that first-generation of Reformers tossed out in favor of right-thinking.

For Granberg-Michaelson, practices such as contemplative prayer and pilgrimage blunt the hard edges of the Reformed emphasis on confessions, while insisting that the 16th and 17th century confessions are authoritative because they carry “enduring truths” – and, I suppose, tie us Reformed Christians together across generations.  Some Reformed bodies express a dynamic relationship to their confessions, others not so much.

Take, for example, the case of the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), probably the premier confession within the Reformed tradition.  In 1986, the Church of Scotland declared parts of the confession no longer binding – the parts that described monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience as “superstitious and sinful snares” and declared the Pope to be an Anti-Christ.  Some Reformed bodies in the U.S. have also removed such degrading and offensive ideas and language, yet often with intense blowback from their in-house conservative kindred.  Why do some bodies embrace an openness to change, and others do not?  Who and what speaks for the Reformed tradition?

Finally, Granberg-Michaelson, to highlight the ecumenical aspect of the Reformed tradition, unearths an old idea from Calvin’s time, “a free and universal council to put an end to the divisions of Christendom.”  Grandberg-Michaelson sees such an ecumenical endeavor to be a step toward ending Christian divisions that inhibit the Gospel message.  (Maybe something similar is what Harold Heie had in mind, gathering us for this respectful conversation to consider what it means to follow Jesus?)

It’s an understandable impulse, this desire for one Lord, one faith, one baptism. Yet unity at what price? Whose voices would we hear at such a council?  Whose are excluded? No doubt Calvin imagined learned theologians and church leaders as presiders. I say, bring on the global cacophony of Christian voices, mirrored in the Acts experience of Pentecostal tongues.  Oh, what new things we would learn about what it means – and what it does not mean – to follow Jesus!

I stand with John Robinson (1576-1625), the English Puritan and Reformed pastor and theologian who, in a sacred charge to the Pilgrims departing on the Mayflower, reflected on ways forward in an ever-unfinished reformation.  Robinson criticized all church bodies, while setting forth the hope for a Christian faith that presses past our limited imagination of church re-formation.  He asked the passengers, his flock, “that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow the Lord Jesus Christ.  If God reveals anything to you by any other instrument of His, be as ready to receive it as you were to receive any truth by my ministry.”  And then the stirring words that express Robinson’s openness to the possibilities of a present- and future-oriented faith: “I am verily persuaded the Lord hath more light and truth yet to break forth out of His Holy Word.”

Well, amen to that, and on we go.

 

 

“Let the Children Come Unto Me”

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Dear Wesley,

I’m so glad you mentioned children, saying, “When I sit with my two grandchildren on my lap, my Reformed theology gets undone.  The last thing in the world I want them to hear about is total depravity.  Rather, I want them to begin knowing how much they are loved, and that in their inner being, they carry the image of God.”

May I suggest that, in the Orthodox Tradition, even young children can experience God’s love for them very profoundly as they participate in the celebration of the Divine Liturgy, in which they are fully included, and during which there is so much for them to see and do.  Colorful icons of Jesus and His Mother, and of Saints and Angels, are all around to look at, and to kiss instinctively; watching the flickering candles, smelling the melting beeswax, feeling the warmth of their burning, and “helping” Dad or Mom to light one; touching and kissing the cross on the stand in the center of the church, close to the floor within easy reach; watching the deacon or priest, dressed in gleaming, beautiful vestments, walking around the whole church, swinging a censor with little bells jingling and pouring out a sweet aroma of incense and mysterious twirling wisps of smoke wafting higher and higher; making the sign of the cross with the right hand across one’s chest, just like the grown-ups do; and in general, sensing that being in church is very different from being anywhere else—and rightly so, since every church is meant to be an embassy of Heaven!

The beginning of the Divine Liturgy is dramatic for children, as the curtain in the middle of the iconostasis opens, the royal doors there also open, and everyone looks, and through the opening the priest or deacon comes out and begins the Liturgy with a loud, ringing proclamation: “Blessed is the Kingdom, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!”  And all the lights in the church come on all at once!  Back and forth goes the chanting of the prayers, alternating between the priest and the choir and anyone else who wants to join in.  It may be a bit difficult for the younger ones to stay attentive, but without pews in the way (the traditional practice), they can sit on the floor, and feel a lot less constricted, with a better view of everything.

The reading of the Gospel is also dramatic, as the priest, and those serving with him, all come into the main part of the church, and the priest holds a glittering golden book (the book of the Four Gospels) above his head, and then he stops and opens it and reads from it loudly in a chanting voice, while altar-servers stand before him with lit candles.  The procession with the holy gifts for the Eucharist is attention-getting as well, as the priest and attendants all come out of the altar area again, through another door in the iconostasis, each one carrying something: a big golden cup covered with an embroidered cloth, a little loaf of bread on a gold plate, a golden cross, and other things.  And then the priest takes the cup and the bread up to the altar that’s covered with more beautiful cloth, and he places them there.

When the moment comes for partaking of the Eucharist, the priest comes out with the cup in his hand, and he calls out, “With fear of God, and faith and love, draw near!”  And the people, adults and children intermixed, walk up, with reverence and dignity, in single file to the priest standing with the cup in front of the iconostasis—even the infants are brought up if they’ve been baptized—to receive the Body and Blood of our Savior, offered on a spoon from that cup, to share in the mysteries of the Lord’s grace that’s far beyond all human calculation and comprehension!  How eager the children usually are to be part of this, to receive the same holy gifts in the same way all the adults do!

Most assuredly, it would seem, God’s love has indeed been conveyed to the children during such an experience as this!  They may not have any words to describe it, but surely they feel welcomed, embraced, affirmed, respected—even honored—and loved.  All their senses have been involved, appealed to, and indeed, ministered unto during the service.  And what greater gift of love could their Creator and Savior, the Lord Jesus Himself, ever give them than His own Body and Blood, to strengthen them with His very life in this way?

Of course, as they grow older, the full expectation is that within the nurture of both their family and their church community, they will learn so much more about what happens during every Divine Liturgy through their ongoing participation in this ancient, unchanging (in all essentials) communal worship—the very same pattern of worship in which countless holy people, Saints known and unknown, have participated through so many centuries and in so many different cultures across the globe!

They will learn more about the limitless love of the Lord Jesus, Who loved them enough to bring them into existence, fashioning them with His own image indeed embedded in them—the same image which it was impossible for Satan, one of God’s creatures, to totally efface when Adam and Eve fell, since this image of God in them was the pinnacle of all the work of the Uncreated God in creating the universe.

Yes, as Eastern Christianity has always taught, the image of God in humanity was severely tarnished at the Fall; people became mortal, and prone to sin.  But their inner nature was still inherently, innately good, so they did not have to sin; they indeed did not become totally depraved.  Each person still retains the freedom of will to freely choose to worship and follow God and obey His commandments, responding personally to His love by loving Him in return.

But even as there remains so much to learn, is it possible that even before they can articulate anything about it, children may sense, in their own way, more about what occurs during the Divine Liturgy and God’s love suffusing it than many of us who have not preserved the innocence and purity of soul of childhood enough to perceive something of the mysterious depths of the divine grace that’s poured forth during the Liturgy?

And also, most assuredly, it would seem, the same Creator and Savior Who has healed, restored, and sanctified all of human nature through His Incarnation; Who has borne and atoned for the sins of all of humanity in His Crucifixion; Who has reopened the entranceway into Paradise, for all who desire to enter, through His conquest of death by His Resurrection from the dead; and Who lavishes His love upon humanity perhaps to the highest degree in this world during the Divine Liturgy—surely He, Who also said, “Let the children come unto Me,” will never turn away any who ever freely come to Him.

And for children who experience from their earliest memories such all-encompassing love—and such a vivid foretaste of the liturgical life in Heaven (described in Revelation, chapters 4 and 5; cf. Heb. 12:22-24)—bestowed upon them by God in the worship of His Church, it would seem that they would be more apt to continue to cling to Him in love during all the rest of their days on this earth, remaining in trusting expectation of ever closer communion with Him, in love, for all eternity.

Sincerely yours,

David Ford

 

P.S.  If I may add, from the Orthodox perspective, the shift in preeminent emphasis in Western Christianity from God’s love to His power, which began in the late Middle Ages through the influence of Nominalism, and which raised severe doubts about God’s unconditional love and His unfathomable, unalloyed goodness, was one of the most tragic turns in the history of Western Christianity.  It’s our understanding that this turn has much to do with why, in reference to God’s dealings with humanity, Reformed theology seems to be more concerned with vindicating God’s sovereignty and power, as seen in the doctrine of unconditional election (placing the mystery of why all are not saved in God’s heart), than with proclaiming His unconditional love for humanity and His desire for all to be saved (placing the mystery of why all are not saved in the human heart), as Orthodox theology does.

And it may be helpful for me to add that my wife, Dr. Mary Ford, carefully traces these developments in her book, The Soul’s Longing: An Orthodox Perspective on Biblical Interpretation.

Covenantal Relationships In An Individualistic & Multiracial Society

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Dr. Granberg-Michaelson’s reflection on what it means to follow Jesus from the Reformed tradition challenges me to reimagine what it means to be in “covenant” with God. On the one hand, I appreciate his articulation of how the Reformed tradition emphasizes the communal nature of covenant with God; in a world that is so focused on having a “personal” relationship with Jesus, it is encouraging to hear how following Jesus, in some traditions, still means being concerned with the health and well-being of others. On the other hand, I struggle with Dr. Granberg-Michaelson’s words on covenant because I do not see a path forward for harmed parties in his understanding. Because those in the Black Church tradition have often been harmed or taken advantage of in the covenantal relationships in which we have found ourselves (Dr. Granberg-Michaelson even notes how covenant and Reformed interaction with culture can breed violence), I wonder: how might we hold in tension the Reformed tradition’s commitment to covenant with the reality that in many covenantal bonds, some people suffer while attempting to follow Jesus?

Dr. Granberg-Michaelson’s point that the Reformed tradition is covenantal is helpful as I think through how the modern Black Church tradition might embrace that following Jesus means being concerned with our neighbors’ needs. To be sure, the Black Church, since its inception, has emphasized that being a follower of Jesus means taking care of and supporting sisters and brothers both in and outside of the faith. For Black congregations during the late 19th – early 20th century, they had no choice but to focus on the spiritual and emotional well-being of Black people because it was the only place where the humanity of African-Americans was affirmed. The earliest Black churches were, by their very existence, living representations of covenant – Black members committed to embodying the life of Jesus through their work with each other, which in turn strengthened Black churches’ power and influence while Black churches provided a haven for Black Americans to fully and authentically be themselves. In fact, I believe the idea of covenant could be nuanced even further by examining it in the relationship between the earliest Black congregations and their members.

However, like other contemporary institutions, many Black churches frame following Jesus from an individualistic perspective. When someone professes belief in Jesus and a desire to follow Him, the language around such profession centers on accepting Jesus as one’s personal Lord and Savior, rather than how said profession connects one to the community of believers intent on living into the words and ministry of Jesus. Even the act of walking to the front and making a public declaration of one’s decision to follow Jesus can be interpreted as an emphasis on the individual instead of the communal.

I realize the concept of covenant appears in scripture in ways that seem to emphasize the personal connection between God and an individual. One of our first examples of covenant in the Hebrew Bible, in fact, is between a singular man (Abraham) & God. In other words, to follow Jesus does indeed mean that there is some level of individual commitment each one of us must make to follow Jesus. But as Dr. Granberg-Michaelson notes in his reflection, our modern Western culture is defined by hyper-individualism, a reality that has seeped into what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. We have over indexed on approaching Jesus for what we need personally rather than understanding that, as Dr. Granberg-Michaelson writes, “Christian faith is carried communally.” He offers a helpful corrective that should lead us to re-interpret our understanding of covenant – what would the narratives of Noah and Abraham’s relationship with God tell us about the shared nature of faith if we examined them through the lens of Dr. Granberg-Michaelson’s definition of covenant?

However, while I appreciated Dr. Granberg-Michaelson’s work on covenant, I also struggled to see how it might be instructive for parties in a covenant who are on the receiving end of violence and trauma. If following Jesus in the Reformed tradition means that we are to be in covenantal relationships with one another that can be “a vehicle for the initiative of God’s grace,” it also means there is the possibility that one group in the covenant can be harmed. So, while these covenantal relationships, in theory, should be bonds of love that allow God’s covenantal grace to keep expanding “relentlessly and inclusively,” the reality is that human selfishness leads to outcomes in which some people are taken advantage of for the benefit of others. Sin abounds, even in what should be relationships of grace, peace, and love. As Dr. Granberg-Michaelson even notes in his reflection, “by nature [we] [are] prone to hate God and [our] neighbor.” Even when we believe we are pursuing community, we tend to be overly concerned with our desires at the expense of the well-being of others, which leads to damaging and deleterious consequences for particular populations.

These realities of harm in what should be covenantal relationships have come to define the Black Christian experience for many African-Americans that choose to worship in multiracial churches. When Black Christians are invited to come and worship in “multiethnic” spaces under the pretense that following Jesus means that racial classification is second to shared identity in Christ, these institutions often offer a white, Eurocentric worship environment that ignores the lived experience of Black Christians. Black pastors are invited to co-lead multiracial congregations with the promise that their voices will be heard, but the data shows that by and large, “multiracial” churches default to the desires, perspectives, and opinions of their white leadership. Countless Black Christians enter these covenantal opportunities excited about the possibility of following Jesus with people different from them, only to be disappointed by the lack of attention to their needs in the process.

What redress, then, do the negatively impacted parties have in these covenantal connections gone wrong? Dr. Granberg-Michaelson does write about the issue of sin in the Reformed tradition (for what I have named above is a sin problem), but I wonder how he might think about reconciliation when these covenantal bonds are broken. Too often, there are few, if any, avenues for Black Christians to articulate their concerns in these multiethnic institutions. It makes sense then why there was somewhat of an exodus of Black Christians from these multiracial congregations to Black churches after the 2016 election and beyond; Black Christians lamented the fact that their supposedly racially progressive church was unable to speak out against the racism that seemed to be more present than ever before (an issue that most Black churches have no issue addressing). For those that left, the covenant had been broken, and many began to ask the question: how can we follow Jesus alongside our peers if our peers cannot see and admit that we are hurting? I realize there are some multiracial congregations doing tremendous racial justice and reconciliation work. But I have seen too many Black Christians who are suffering because their belief in the possibility of covenantal relationships with Christians of other races was shattered by the realities of silence on issues of racism in these multiracial spaces. How then do we understand and process through the idea of covenant in these circumstances?

Walking the Way Into Faith

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There is so much to love about Dr. Granberg-Michaelson’s posting on the Reformed Tradition.  First and foremost, I think he really exemplifies the spirit of Harold Heie’s project on Respectful Conversation, laying out with great humility the strengths and weaknesses of his tradition, with a real openness in his tone.  One can hear he is a man on a journey, seeking after our Lord.  There are so many foundational things that Roman Catholics and folks in the Reformed tradition flatly disagree upon (many key examples of which Dr. Granberg-Michaelson lays out succinctly in his response to my original posting, including: transubstantiation, the role of the priest, the sacrificial nature of what goes on at the altar etc.  I would add total depravity and issues around free will to the list).  And yet, this posting, and his earlier response to my own, read far more like an invitation to bracket and set aside those differences in order to focus on and even celebrate those places we can agree.  I am delighted to do that here.  I am also eager to describe how some of the assertions Dr. Granberg-Michaelson makes take on flesh in my tradition.  In my postings I have made references to ‘Catholic piety’ without often being specific, (which a few CPs have inquired about) and interestingly this posting by Dr. Granberg-Michaelson seems to most open the door to talk about some of what piety looks like for our family as representative of ‘traditional Catholics.’ 

It seems both strength and weakness to Dr. Granberg-Michaelson that the Reformed tradition can be confession-centric.  I can see this possibility in my tradition as well.  The various confessions in his tradition could perhaps be compared to the catechisms in mine.  These are many, from some earlier than even Trent and right on up to the Catechism of the Catholic Church published in 1992 under Pope St. John Paul II.  They all provide interesting looks into the core of Catholic belief, and are very important to our faith in the way Dr. Granberg-Michaelson holds the confessions are for his.  I completely agree with him, however, that without lived experience and practice, our catechisms fall flat as mere intellectual exercises.  He puts this so well: “Focusing on defining faith by correct propositions can imprison belief in rationalism and mistake “correct” thoughts for faithful practice. Faith then becomes detached from the whole person, and spiritual experience is suspect, subjugated to right thinking.”  While Catholics certainly value ‘right thinking’ in our doctrine, there is a lot of room for the practice of the faith to help bring one to that place, and to temper self-righteous attitudes.  

I love that Dr. Granberg-Michaelson has found solace in one of the great faith pilgrimages of the West, the Camino de Santiago.  I hope to walk it myself one day!  I find his insight here excellent: “My time on the Camino de Santiago, and other paths unfolding from my contemplative journey, have persuaded me that while what we think and confess carries importance, in the end we walk our way into faith.”  This certainly resonates with my experience.  While my conversion to Catholicism was certainly rooted in a kind of theological search and assent, it was things like praying the Rosary, sitting silently in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, or living into the liturgical year in our fasting, feasting, praying and singing in the home that fed my faith in a new way, and fueled our quest for ‘right belief.’  

As a Roman Catholic it is easy to affirm Dr. Granberg-Michaelson’s beautiful thoughts on infant baptism.  He writes: “When an infant is baptized in a Reformed (or other) congregation, theological critics will complain that he or she has no choice in the matter. But that is precisely the point. Christian faith is carried communally; it’s personal but not individualistic. A Christian community’s covenantal promises can be a vehicle for the initiative of God’s grace.” I heartily agree!  I was so pleased to spend some time looking at the joint statement on Baptism made by our two traditions that Dr. Granberg-Michaelson linked to in his response to my posting: These Living Waters: Common Agreement on Mutual Recognition of Baptism [A Report of the Catholic Reformed Dialogue in United States 2003 – 2007].  In no way does this document attempt to sort out all of the differences between the two traditions, but what it does do very eloquently is to affirm how baptism is a wonderful starting point for healing the breach. 

This is just a taste of the document’s stated purpose:“Ultimately our unity is not something we create but is a gift given us by God. Its visible manifestation is something for which our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ prayed (John 17), and we know that the earliest witnesses to the Christian faith proclaimed both the present reality and the eschatological hope of one Lord, one faith, and one baptism (Ephesians 4). Where we have fallen short of answering the call to that full visible unity, we confess our culpability and the enduring scandal of division within the body of Christ.”  This statement required both humility and courage from both parties, and I see these qualities in the tone and approach Dr. Granberg Michaelson takes in his posting for this project.  May God grant his Church this unity someday soon!

I can also deeply appreciate the statement made in Dr. Granberg-Michaelson’s posting about the seriousness of sin, and the tension between that reality and the ample, overabundance of the Love that flows out from the Lord for each one of us, including the mystery that we are made in His image.  This topic is a bit sticky between our traditions.  I certainly cannot affirm Total Depravity (and indeed, I can’t even really makes sense of it in my mind in light of Scripture, for example see Matthew 12:37, James 2:24, Luke 18: 13,14), but the seriousness around sin in my tradition is undeniable.  On the ground, there is much Catholic piety that centers on the gravity of sin.  The title of his posting, “From Guilt, to Grace, to Gratitude” reminded me of jokes Catholics and others often make about “Catholic Guilt.”  But as Dr. Granberg-Michaelson articulated so beautifully in his posting about the Reformed tradition,  authentic Catholicism never stops at sin and guilt.  It is only a starting place, even though some seem to get ‘stuck there.’  

The reality of sin is made manifest in many seasons and practices in my tradition.  The penitential seasons of Advent and Lent invite particular concentration on sin and its consequences, inviting repentance. The practice of praying through the Stations of the Cross on Fridays (especially in Lent) communally (in parishes or families) helps participants to connect these events of Christ’s passion to our own culpability and role in putting Christ through His agony.  The daily examen which many families and individuals use certainly helps us to take stock of our trespasses regularly, so as not to lose sight of the daily battle for virtue and the necessity of asking forgiveness of God and others as we fail.  The regular use of the sacrament of Confession means (at least) the roughly monthly chance to recognize and repent of our sin with the help of the priest, who bestows absolution.  Even within the Rosary, which is not particularly focused on sin, the Fatima prayer is repeated in each decade every day of the week: Oh my Jesus! Forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell.  Lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of thy mercy.  The reality of sin and the battle against it is daily on the minds of pious Catholics, and this is just a taste of the way our family uses these gifts of the Church to ponder sin, and to learn to avoid it (little-by-little!).

Thankfully, there are just as many counterbalances to this focus on sin!  Each penitential season has its glorious opposite of feasting and celebration.  Every day there are invitations to dwell on the mystery of God’s grace.  In our family’s rule of life we say the Angelus three times each day (this was once an entirely normal practice and church bells would ring publicly on schedule to remind everyone when it was time).  This quick but powerful form of prayer brings the angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary to our minds, and reminds us thrice each day of the mystery of the incarnation and this joyful moment.  God is with us, and so very near!  The mysteries of the Rosary cycle through the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious on the various days of the week, so there is a regular focus on the amazing works of salvation God has done.  When a family prays the Rosary daily, in about a half hour they dwell on 5 of these sequential mysteries as they say the words of the Hail Mary and Our Father together, making the Rosary a powerful tool for mental prayer (so far from the idea Protestants have that it is a fruitless, mindless ritual of saying a bunch of prayers a million times).  Notice there are twice as many mysteries (the Joyful 5 and the Glorious 5) that focus on the remedies for sin as those that focus on the role of sin in this fallen world (the 5 Sorrowful).  The various sacramentals we use all the time (holy water, salt, or oil, medals, crucifixes, even the sign of the cross which we make so often) remind us of how many tools and gifts the Church has given to help us guard against sin, if we will only reach for them when the moment comes!   All of this doesn’t even begin to attempt to describe the joy of receiving our Lord in the Eucharist, to so thoroughly cleanse, heal and fill us.  What is sin compared to this?!  It is a sweetness that knows no bounds. So, while I can affirm with Dr. Granberg-Michaelson that my tradition does have a kind of focus on sin, it also, in the fullness of what the Church offers, never leaves us there, but rather offers a tenfold host of remedies and guards against sin that help to move us toward the grace and gratitude that Dr. Granberg-Michaelson also describes.  These gifts of God taste so much sweeter when sin is taken seriously.

I will end by quickly responding to one aspect of the gracious response Dr. Granberg-Michaelson gave to my posting, which was to wonder about the role that teaching and discipleship has in living out the traditional Roman Catholic faith, as my posting perhaps gave the impression that receiving our Lord in the Eucharist at Mass “results in such a mystical infusion of Christ’s presence that ‘following Jesus’ simply flows naturally.”  A fair critique!  I find it so difficult to squeeze all of what happens into these postings!  I agree with him (because of friends that I have who share his tradition) that teaching and discipleship are most certainly a commendable strength for Reformed believers.  Our experience outside of the Latin Mass was certainly that teaching the basics of the faith is a serious challenge and often a failing in average Catholic parishes, and there is much the Catholic church at large could learn from the practices of study and teaching from our Reformed friends.  We are grateful that this kind of serious study of the faith is far more present in our parish life with the FSSP.   Even the ‘normal practice’ of families in the Traditional Rite to use Saturday evening as a time to prepare for Mass the next day (to study and discuss the readings of the Mass before they are proclaimed liturgically), has brought a new kind of vigor to our family’s experience of the liturgy, and has deepened not only our knowledge but our faith. 

I hope I am conveying a little here, by sharing just a few bits of the practice of Catholic piety we’ve come to know about, of what Dr. Granberg-Michaelson hints at when he speaks of practices like pilgrimage.  Our Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivendi is so akin to his statement that “we walk our way into faith.”  All of these traditional Catholic practices of piety are a way to walk closer to Jesus each day, throughout the day.  The things we do to pray (lex Orandi)  are in their very nature and patterns instructive, and inform our belief (lex Credendi), perhaps even as much as our serious study and ‘right thinking’ can. And praise the Lord, this affects our lives (lex Vivendi) directly in a glorious spilling-over into every day, hopefully touching those around us who have yet to know His love and grace.  

A Restorationist Reflects on a Reformed Perspective

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Growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana allowed me to come in contact with people of many different religious persuasions. While my father was raised as a Latter-day Saint, my mother was brought up in the Methodist church, but neither she nor her parents were very active or involved in the local church. Even before she married Dad, she began attending the local branch of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with him. She was formally baptized into the Church and quickly was caught up into mid-week activities, attendance at Relief Society meetings (the Church’s organization for women), and in Sunday meetings, both the main worship service (called the Sacrament meeting) and Sunday school.

There was appreciable religious variety within my extended family. My paternal grandparents lived in Reserve, Louisiana (just outside New Orleans) and were very devoted Roman Catholics. Most of my uncles and aunts were staunch Baptists, while one family were committed Pentecostals. One of my Pentecostal cousins became so involved in worship and church functions that he eventually became, for short time, an associate pastor to a man in that area whose popularity and influence were quickly spreading beyond the city and state—Jimmy Swaggert. As I was about to enter the sixth grade, my family moved about thirty miles southwest of Baton Rouge to a small  community that I discovered was about 90% Catholic.

I take the time to mention this much about my own past in order to point out that I had never encountered a man or woman who belonged to a Calvinist or Reformed tradition until I served as a 19-year old full-time missionary in the Eastern United States (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts). And even during that period the conversations were brief and quite shallow. I didn’t really get beyond a slight introduction to the Reformed tradition until I was working on my doctorate in religious studies at Florida State University. I recall especially one semester reading Martin Luther’s The Bondage of the Will and selected portions of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. It was then that I was introduced to both the doctrine of human depravity and unconditional election. I have since had the opportunity to read the works of several Reformed thinkers, and while I do not agree on all theological points, I am fascinated with the Reformed worldview and focus.

In May of 2000 the Latter-day Saint/Evangelical dialogue met for the first time on the BYU campus I Provo, Utah (this dialogue will be formally ended in Spring 2022). Some of the Evangelicals who have taken part through the years include Gregory Johnson (an Evangelical pastor in Utah), David Neff (at the time editor of Christianity Today), James Bradley (Fuller Seminary), Craig Blomberg (Denver Seminary), Craig Hazen (Biola University), Gerald McDermott (Roanoke College and later Beeson Divinity School), Cory Willson (Calvin Seminary), and Richard Mouw (Fuller Seminary). Richard became the head of the Evangelical contingent, while I became the convener of the Latter-day Saint group.

Because Rich Mouw is a devoted Calvinist and a serious student of Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck, he and I have had extended discussions about Reformed theology. Of the Evangelical group mentioned above, four were very committed Calvinists. It would have been impossible through a period of two decades not to have become more conversant with and even appreciative of the Reformed traditions.

In Wesley’s article, paragraph 6, he mentions two doctrinal lessons that he learned early at Hope College. The first is that Grace “comes solely as God’s initiative, as pure gift. Faith is never an achievement or personal accomplishment.” A Latter-day Saint who knows his or her religion very well would echo a quiet “Amen.” There is no question but that grace cannot be earned or bartered for, since it is a gift; otherwise it would a reward or a wage that one had earned.

The second lesson that Wesley learned at Hope College is that “Following Jesus can’t remain individualized. It’s more than ‘Jesus and me.’ It involves God and the world.” This is a matter on which I have reflected a great deal in my twenty-five year association with my Evangelical friends. I have encountered the “Jesus and me” mindset on scores of occasions. The problem with that perspective and lifestyle is that Christianity can only be worked out fully in community, since how we deal with, speak to and speak of, and associate with others is a fairly accurate sign of what kind of Christian we are. The Apostle Paul had something to say about that when he wrote of the “fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22-25).

One Christian teacher, D. Steven Long, explained that “when we so emphasize Christ’s benefits that he becomes nothing more than what his significance is ‘for me’ we are in danger. . . . Evangelism that says ‘come on, it’s good for you’; discipleship that concentrates on the benefits package; sermons that ‘use’ Jesus as the means to a better life or marriage or job or attitude—these all turn Jesus into an expression of that nice god who always meets my spiritual needs. And this is why I am increasingly hesitant to speak of Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior. As Ken Woodward (former editor of Newsweek and an Evangelical himself) put it in a 1994 essay: ‘Now I think we all need to be converted—over and over again, but having a personal savior has always struck me as, well, elitist, like having a personal tailor. I’m satisfied to have the same Lord and Savior as everyone else.’ Jesus is not a personal savior who only seeks to meet my needs. He is the risen, crucified Lord of all creation who seeks to guide me back into the truth.” (Cited in D. Brent Latham, God is Not. . . . [2004], 49-50.)

When followers of Jesus begin to see our Lord as no more than the solver of my problems, the one who always hastens to meet my needs, the one who ensures that I am continually basking in a state of bliss, they come hauntingly close to how sociologist Christian Smith at Notre Dame characterized a surprising number of today’s youth—moralistic therapeutic deists. (See Christian Smith and Melissa Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers [2005], 162-70.)

I appreciate the way Dr. Granberg-Michaelson put it: “Christian faith is carried communally; it’s personal but not individualistic . . . a vehicle for the initiative of God’s grace.”

In paragraph 9 of Wesley’s article, he begins to describe how the Reformed Tradition is confessional. I can certainly appreciate the value of creeds and confessions in terms of delineating and defining orthodoxy and thereby avoiding heresy. There must be a way to avoid or at least manage what might be called “doctrinal drift.” On the other hand, I am one who senses that God is much less concerned with how accurately and precisely we define the faith than He is with whether we are living the faith, particularly how we love and reach out to all the children of God. Occasionally, when in our dialogue some of our Evangelical friends would, in a kind and rather respectful manner, point out the flaws of Latter-day Saint theology, one of the members of our group would raise the question: “How much bad doctrine do you suppose the saving work of Jesus Christ can cover?”

My specific concern with creeds is that too often through the Christian centuries creeds have created distance between the children of God—separated and divided people on the basis of belief; have built walls and drawn strict lines in the sand between what is “orthodox” and what is “heretical”; have fostered pride and antagonism on the part of those who wear their beliefs like a badge of belonging. Given the division, animosity, suspicion, and incivility within today’s America, I am haunted by the Savior’s plea, uttered in His great Intercessory Prayer: “That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:21; English Standard Version).

The longer I live and the more God-fearing and Christ-affirming people I encounter, the more I see the Almighty working through noble people throughout the earth. Rich Mouw wrote: “[W]hile I am no universalist, my own inclination is to emphasize the ‘wideness of God’s mercy’ rather than the ‘small number of the elect’ motif that has often dominated the Calvinist outlook. I take seriously the Bible’s vision of the final gathering-in of the elect, of that ‘great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages,’ who shout the victory cry, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb’ (Revelation 7:9-10).” Now note these words from Mouw: “For all I know—and for all any of us can know—much of what we now think of as common grace may in the end time be revealed to be saving grace. But in the meantime, we are obligated to serve the Lord in accordance to patterns he has made clear to us.” (He Shines in All That’s Fair [2001], 100; emphasis added.)

 

 

 

 

 

Doesn’t Grace Compel Us to Traverse the Reformed Path of Following Jesus?

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     When a Lutheran like me dialogues with a Reformed theologian like Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, at least to this Lutheran it feels like a conversation among kin.  In no other part of Christendom do Lutherans find the celebration of God’s grace more strongly and compellingly articulated than among the heirs of Calvin.  How wonderful to live with the assurance and joy that follows from the awareness that when it comes to salvation and following Jesus, God in Christ does the heavy lifting.  Your comment about “in the end we walk our way into faith” does not force me to take back that comment, does it Wes?     

     The title of Granberg-Michaelson’s posting seems to reflect the emphasis on grace that I am seeking and want to celebrate in his work.  In fact, his idea of moving from guilt to grace sounds precisely like the Lutheran Law-Gospel dialectic (the Word as Law condemning our sin setting the stage for our receiving the Gospel of grace) (Apology of The Augsburg Confession, IV.5).   And then when the claim is made that grace leads to gratitude, that resonates with my Lutheran celebration of joy and celebration in the Christian life.  Of course, Wes and “Calvin the lawyer” might want to be a little more serious and structured in their gratitude than that spontaneous Luther, but are we not still kin in this movement from guilt to grace to gratitude?  

     Now I turn to the five distinctives of being Reformed that Wes presents.  Again I think that the Lutheran heritage exhibits these distinctives in its own way, and I just want to find out if Dr.  Granberg-Michaelson agrees that we are kin on these points as well.  And my hope is that we can formulate these commitments in such a way that our other ecumenical partners in this dialogue might sense that in their own unique ways they embody those commitments with us.       

     First there is the Confessional character of the Reformed tradition.  Music to my Lutheran ears!  The whole reason for a Confessional fidelity is to ensure that faith and our work with Jesus are not done alone.  The Confessions make our faith communal, as we embrace what our ancestors in the faith and those to come have and will affirm.  And the Confessions are safeguards, a check-and-balance system, against false interpretations.  Is this an adequate ode to a Confessional perspective from a Reformed point of view?  Perhaps colleagues from liturgically oriented traditions or those with authoritative Articles of Religion would want to join us in these sentiments. 

     Regarding the Covenental character of the Reformed tradition, again Lutherans are on board with an awareness that faith is not a private matter, that it is communal.  This fits our Confessional commitments.  And although Lutherans do not make use of this theme of covenant as explicitly as the Reformed tradition does, Luther did refer to the Sacrament of Baptism as a covenant (Luther’s Works, Vol.1, p.228) and the Gospel, indeed Christ Himself as a covenant (Luther’s Works, Vol.17, p.69).  We do not encounter Christ alone and we do not join the Church alone.  (This way of construing the Sacraments logically critiques a symbolic view of the rites, which I gather from private conversation that Dr. Granberg-Michaelson joins me in critiquing.)                  

     Understanding the world as belonging to God is a wonderful critique of modernity and Greek philosophical dualism.  Lutherans can wholeheartedly join the Reformed heritage in this unless it entails that the practice of a distinctively Christian politic is possible.  The Lutheran Two-Kingdom Ethic is suspicious of efforts to derive public policy from Christian teaching (Apology of The Augsburg Confession, XVI).  But the very fact that there has been room for the free-market dispositions of Calvin (Commentary On Exodus, 16:7; 11:2) and the calls for government intervention in the market by Kuyper (“The Social Question and the Christian Religion”, in English, The Problem of Poverty) gives me hope that the Reformed tradition allows for a diversity in our politics which so as to chasten dispositions to claim a “Christian” viewpoint on most political issues.       

     This call for humility about our politics fits Wesley’s fourth Reformed distinctive – taking sin very seriously.  Like Calvin, Lutherans are the offspring of Augustine on that score (Apology of The Augsburg Confession, II.24).   An awareness that we sin in everything we do entails that no purely Christian state or law can ever be established.  This awareness is also what makes the Reformed and followers of Luther grace-freaks.   

     Wesley also talks about the Reformed tradition as ecumenical.  In all the writing I have done for our conversations, and in this contribution, I’ve tried to show that Lutheranism is ecumenical, evidenced in its ability to endorse the characteristic commitments of all its discussion partners.  Does the Reformed tradition reflect this sort of endorsement of theological diversity?  The sticky-wickets here are whether the Reformed tradition really is catholic, in allowing for the legitimacy oof teachings and practices which have stood the test of time, such as liturgical worship and ancient church architecture?  Can a faith tradition which posits that the Church must always be in Reform allow for the possibility that some existing church practices and teachings might not require reform in the final analysis?          

      In the same vein, it must be asked if Reformed commitment to the “solas” of the Reformation, can allow place to accommodate, as Lutheranism does (Formula of Concord SD II. 90), the validity of those Christians asserting a role of works in salvation?  If not, are Reformed Christians really as ecumenical as they say they want to be?   

     It is evident how Lutherans and Reformed Christians share so many commonalities.  Can Christians really endorse prevenient grace and not end up following Jesus in ways compatible with the Reformed path?  The only remaining sticky-wicket is whether there is place in Reformed thinking and living the faith for the Lutheran commitment to freedom from the Law, spontaneity, and a Situational Ethic (Galatians 3:13; 5:1; Ephesians 2:10; Luther’s Works, Vol.31, 333-377).  Wes and my dialogue indicated a possible openness from his Reformed viewpoint towards something like Lutheran spontaneity and freedom in certain particular settings, so I am now totally at home with the formal agreements between our denominations.  I wonder if Calvin himself might provide a way to make sense of how Reformed Christians can endorse at times the spontaneity of good works.  For at some points, though not characteristically, like Luther, Calvin did speak of Justification in terms of Intimate Union with Christ (Institutes, III.I.1; III.XI.9ff).  And as the human love in marriage leads to spontaneous good deeds, so marriage to Jesus cannot but create joyful even ecstatic good works sometimes.  Yes, Calvin himself provides his followers with a framework for making sense of joyful spontaneity in following Jesus.          

 

Following Jesus is “More Than ‘Jesus and Me'”

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I’ll come to my real topic in a moment, but permit me to start with an observation about how our conversation has carried us from the end of 2021 into the beginning of 2022. For I found it fascinating to read Wes Granberg-Michaelson’s reflection just a month after Randall Balmer’s. Neither man was born into his tradition, but instead came to Reformed Protestantism and Anglicanism, respectively, by way of leaving evangelicalism. Both appreciated the ecumenical impulses in their new religious homes, but it was striking to see the differences in how they narrate their journeys out of evangelical Christianity and into older traditions. Balmer was drawn by worship; Granberg-Michaelson only mentions worship in the troubling context of Calvinist participation in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Balmer emphasizes the Anglican “deemphasis of theology,” while Granberg-Michaelson starts with doctrinal confessions and then reflects on theological categories like covenant, sovereignty, and sin.

So while I said last month that it may seem surprising that I would resonate so strongly with the story of someone’s trip along the Canterbury Trail, it may be even more surprising that a Pietist nodded along so often with a version of following Jesus that deemphasizes personal religious experience and takes very seriously the intellectual side of belief.

In part, that’s because I simply appreciate the irenic, open-minded, and self-critical tone of Granberg-Michaelson’s essay, which defies the most common stereotypes of what it means to be “Reformed” in American Christianity. He was neither “raised as a ‘child of the covenant’” in an ethnic enclave sometimes marked by “exclusivity and corporate self-righteousness,” nor does he identify with a particularly combative strain of conservative Protestantism.

Until recently, my own experience was almost exclusively of the latter variety of Calvinists: not the “frozen chosen,” but the “young, restless, and Reformed.” Having been raised in a Swedish-American family and church only a little less insular than any historically Dutch community in western Michigan or northwestern Iowa, I didn’t even encounter Reformed Christianity until graduate school, when I inadvertently stumbled into the praise band for a church pastored by a Jonathan Edwards scholar who featured prominently in Collin Hansen’s book about “the New Calvinists.” Then I came to Bethel not long after former Bethel professor John Piper had leveled heresy charges at a member of the same faculty, Greg Boyd. One of Boyd’s staunchest defenders was history and political science professor G.W. Carlson, who founded a journal called The Baptist Pietist Clarion as part of his campaign to defend Bethel’s distinctively irenic heritage against the threat of what he called “authoritarian Calvinism.”

Having been introduced to Pietism in that way, I’m afraid that I initially tended to see the Reformed tradition as the antithesis of my own. (It didn’t help that I soon realized that, in certain Reformed settings, “pietism” functioned as a synonym for legalism or anti-intellectualism.) But Granberg-Michaelson’s reflection reminded me how far I’ve come in learning to appreciate the strengths of the Reformed tradition — even as his assessment of its pitfalls reminded me of some reasons for my older wariness.

Most powerful for me was his wrestling with how Reformed Protestants understand sin. Even as I join Granberg-Michaelson in rejecting any idea of human depravity that eradicates God’s image in us, I appreciate how “the Reformed tradition refuses to see the world through naïve, superficial lens, and confronts the empirical evidence of its harsh realities.” That does mean that we need to be honest about our personal iniquity. But the history of Pietism illustrates how that focus can go awry. Not only can the kind of agonizing process of repentance (Bußkampf) that A.H. Francke modeled for Pietists obscure the joy and delight that’s more central to, say, Nikolaus von Zinzendorf’s understanding of conversion, but Pietism’s typical emphasis on personal sin can blind us to our participation in injustice at the level of systems and structures. “We are born into the web of everyone else’s sinful choices,” explains Reformed theologian Suzanne McDonald, “and our own inclination away from God means that we will inevitably contribute to that web.”

(One particularly prominent example of that theme from the past year: Reformed historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s bestselling book, Jesus and John Wayne, which tracks the development of “militant masculinity” within white evangelicalism since World War II.)

So I’m particularly glad that Granberg-Michaelson emphasized an example of Reformed confessionalism written during the struggle against the apartheid system of South Africa. When I talk about the Reformed understanding of human sinfulness in our first-year church history survey at Bethel, I always start with the Heidelberg Catechism, then move to this excerpt from the Belhar Confession:

We believe… that God’s lifegiving Word and Spirit has conquered the powers of sin and death, and therefore also of irreconciliation and hatred, bitterness and enmity, that God’s lifegiving Word and Spirit will enable the church to live in a new obedience which can open new possibilities of life for society and the world… We believe that the church must witness against and strive against any form of injustice, so that justice may roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

But the reading we actually assign students that week comes from my favorite writing by John Calvin: a passage from The Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life that illustrates Granberg-Michaelson’s claim that “The Reformed tradition stresses that all in the world is intended to be redeemed and brought under God’s sovereignty.” “We belong to God,” begins the Geneva reformer (as paraphrased by one of my Dutch Calvinist predecessors on our faculty), “let all the parts of our life strive toward him as our only appropriate goal.” He then shares advice for how Christians might best use the good gifts of God: with moderation, when it comes to the “earthly blessings” that he made “for our benefit, and not for our harm”; and faithfulness, when it comes to discerning our vocation and living it out in the world. “If we follow our divine calling,” Calvin concludes, “we shall receive this special comfort: there is no job so simple, dull, or dirty that God does not consider it truly respectable and highly important!”

That’s such a useful corrective to the impulses within Pietism that helped inspire an evangelical culture that brought Granberg-Michaelson up to believe “that we were saved from the world, both eternally and through daily measures to resist its contaminating influences.” And for all my own attempts to describe distinctly Pietist models of Christian higher education, I recognize how much my career benefits from the influence of Reformed understandings of Christian scholarship. Indeed, I’m sure that evangelical colleges like Bethel have the robust intellectual life and commitment to cultural engagement that that they do precisely because the Reformed understanding of our role in God’s redemption and restoration of a fallen creation has so often served “an invitation to creative engagement between faith and culture, art, politics, science, economics, etc.”

Pietists would still insist that if following Jesus is “more than ‘Jesus and me,’” it’s never less than that relationship. So I’d like to have read more reflection on personal piety within the Reformed tradition. Nevertheless, I’m sure Granberg-Michaelson is right that “faith can’t remain individualized… It involves God and the world.”

Within a hair’s breadth

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The title “From Guilt to Grace to Gratitude” that Wesley Granberg-Michaelson uses is one I could almost borrow to talk about the Wesleyan tradition, although there are some subtle differences (John Wesley once said he came within a “hair’s breadth” of Calvinism).  I will follow the headings Dr. Granberg-Michaelson uses to bring out those differences.

 

Confessional: Wesley’s Methodism was not organized around doctrinal differences. As I explained in my response to Randall Balmer, the Methodist societies were meant to function within the Church of England, and when Methodism took ecclesial form in North America it accepted a version of the Articles of Religion revised by Wesley. These Articles have been preserved and protected by the constitution as essential doctrinal identity. Later in merger with the Evangelical United Brethren, The United Methodist Church also accepted a Confession of Faith as doctrine. Wesleyan Methodists in North America, then, are not without written beliefs.

 

Although Wesley himself argued vigorously with Calvinists (especially Calvinist Methodists) over predestination and what he feared was antinomianism (disregard for holiness), Wesleyans have not been preoccupied with “defining faith by correct propositions.” In fact the guidance Wesley left in his carefully argued sermons was that faith is not “assent” to right belief but is rather an evidence and conviction of Christ’s work of love in our lives (in “The Scripture Way of Salvation” II.3). Wesley could describe such faith as “recumbency,” a kind of leaning on Christ in trust (in “Salvation by Faith” I.5). So Wesleyans have doctrine and care about understanding it and expressing it well, but faith is lived more than defined.

 

Covenantal: Most Wesleyans practice infant baptism, and with that practice we understand our communal commitment to “carry” this child into the faith. We see infant baptism as a sign of God’s gracious initiative to save (prevenient grace). Beyond this, we have a history of using small groups to continue to “carry” believers through times that test their faith. These practices do not inoculate us against individualism or corporate exclusivity, but they do offer the possibility of accountability.

 

John Wesley left to us a Covenant Service that is still used (usually with updated language) by conferences and congregations, often at the beginning of a new year. This service is a recommitment to the covenant made in our baptism and to commit ourselves to being used by God in whatever way God needs us. When prayed in the company of others, is also a reminder of how we are connected to each other through our baptism.

 

The World Belongs to God: Amen. Although language of God’s sovereignty is not as characteristic as language of God’s grace for Wesleyans, we mean by grace that God’s power and presence are at work in the world, and this grace calls forth our response. Wesleyans can capitulate to culture, but our theology intends to call us back to God when we do.

 

John Wesley consistently called Methodists to keep a “single eye” on God in order to know how to live properly in the world–to keep our priorities in order, to recognize how God is working in our lives and in the lives of others, to make good decisions about how to use our resources (including spending money). Even during his lifetime, Methodists largely failed to learn in full his lesson about money. Keeping a single eye requires ongoing attention, especially in the presence of competing values. The Wesleyan tradition, though, does call people to see the world as God’s and to act accordingly.

 

Taking sin seriously: Wesleyans typically stress grace more than sin, but our understanding of grace comes from an understanding of a serious problem that needs to be overcome by God. In the face of Enlightenment optimism, John Wesley insisted on retaining an understanding of original sin. In the face of predestination, though, he also insisted that God had already begun healing through prevenient grace. His concern about predestination was never to “control” God’s grace but rather to preserve the possibility of salvation for all. Human nature has been restored enough for us to be able to cooperate with the work of God. God’s healing can be effective enough (here is an exercise of sovereignty!) that some measure of our original capacity (Wesley talked about humans as capax dei, capable of God) can be returned. No one is totally bereft of the power and presence of God in their lives. This makes it possible for us to really followJesus.

 

Wesley found himself in disagreement with some other evangelicals of his time over holiness. The language used at the time was “inherent” righteousness. Wesley never thought “inherent” meant we could be righteous on our own. We need the help and healing of God to have our broken human nature repaired, but he did think God could really repair. As God heals us, we become really different, not just regarded as different. For that reason his theology stressed sanctification as much as justification. Holiness is not a quality that humans possess or gain as if our nature is not in desperate need of salvation, but it is rather a gift from God. So he took sin seriously, but he also took God’s healing grace just as seriously.

 

Ecumenical: Although Wesleyans know the pain of divided churches, we have also contributed figures such as John R. Mott, Albert Outler, and John Deschner to the work of ecumenism.

 

Wesley’s own example on this point is mixed. He urged Methodists to have a “catholic spirit,” in other words to “take the hand” of those whom we see to have a heart right with God even if we differ over “opinions” or modes of worship (in “Catholic Spirit”). Wesley warned against “bigotry” (or too strong an attachment to one’s own party, opinion, or Church) and he urged that we not hinder any who were clearly doing God’s work (in “A Caution Against Bigotry”). At the same time, he could argue theological points vigorously when he understood there to be serious consequences at stake (for instance regarding predestination and antinomianism). He never himself broke with the Church of England, but he did break with George Whitefield’s Methodism. Even so, he preached at Whitefield’s funeral and lauded not only Whitefield’s character but also the way God had used him.

 

Wesleyans generally have open hearts toward other Christians and easily join in common work with them. Not having been born in doctrinal dispute, we have sometimes given the impression that we have no doctrine that we care about. As Wesleyans entered into ecumenical dialogue with others, we learned that we needed a better sense of what our own tradition stands for. Recent years have brought an increased interest in helping people value the theological and doctrinal heritage we have received. Just as Wesley found, ideas have consequences and caring about them can lead to difficult disagreement. We do not always do as well with our internal disagreements as we do with our relationships with other churches.

 

Dr. Granberg-Michaelson’s summary that “we are held by God’s uncontrollable grace, and that God invites us as disciples of Christ to serve and act out of gratitude for the sake of a world so loved by God” is a way of following Jesus that Wesleyans also embrace, with the different nuances I have outlined above.

 

 

A Man Better Than His Tradition’s Noisiest Voices

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I have never really seen the appeal of at least the main versions of Reformed Christianity that I have encountered in the US, though I have great respect for many Christians who were raised in this tradition, and seem to like them better in the Netherlands than here!

The hypercognitive confessionalism of some Reformed Christians is intellectually rigorous but feels arid and lacking in heart — indeed, in grace.

The same could be said of many of the uber-Reformed Christian leaders one meets in today’s conservative white North American Christianity. As a Baptist, I especially resent the impact on our community by hardline Calvinists.

Doctrinaire Calvinists seem especially unable to process themselves or their movement as socially located rather than theologically driven. If they believe they have gotten somewhere by thinking it theologically, they cannot hear the critique that their ideas are probably more a reflection of their social location, such as whiteness, maleness, and political conservatism, than of the Gospel. This speaks to Wes Granberg-Michaelson’s searing, and accurate critique of Dutch Reformed involvement in the slave trade. All of our traditions need humility about how we know and what we think we know. And all need the ability to repent.

I love Wes, and have known him primarily through the progressive, social-justice-oriented Christianity of a group he and I have both been a part of — the Sojourners community in Washington. But his essay also helps me see him as a representative of the best version of the Reformed tradition, which I also have encountered at great schools like Hope (and Calvin College) and great publishing houses like Eerdmans. Grand Rapids, Michigan is the Vatican City of the Dutch Reformed community in the US, and it is full of smart, wonderful, devout Christian people.

Every tradition in the US appears to be producing and reproducing the same fissures. Wes Granberg-Michaelson is not responsible for  John Piper and his ilk. The fact that they come from the same confessional tradition means little. One of the interesting things about our religious landscape today continues to be the fact that the left/right binary seems to mean more than Rome, Geneva, Wittenberg, or Zurich.