Monday, November 20, 2006
The Brother I've Never Met???
Evey now and then, you read something and you think, "WAIT! - I should have written that." Then there are times somehow beyond that - sometimes it's just spooky. That was how I felt when I read this post at Common Grounds Online by Timothy P. McConnell. Let's just start with biography:
Tim's post is about bona fides as an "evangelical Presbyterian" specifically a PC(USA) Presbyterian.
I also think it is, if the word "evangelicalism" is to be saved, a meaning that we need to return to for the word. As "evangelicals" like James Dobson continue to rant and posture and demand, I am struck by how we would be served by coming to understand the word in the terms Tim describes. Indeed the traditon he describes is intellectual, but it is also activist - and not the naked power play activist we see these days, but activist in the best sense of the word, breeding good Christians and good Evangelicals to do the hard work of civil engagement.
I need to meet this guy someday, that is for sure. But all of us need to consider the tradition and understanding of evangelicalism that he describes - more than consider, we need to grab hold and clutch for dear life.
Related Tags: brother, Presbyterian, evengelical, understanding
I became a Christian through Young Life. The challenge for Young Life was to get kids to go to church once they had accepted Christ! We never wanted to, and for all their official party statements at fundraisers that they wanted to fill the churches with new believers, they always start their talks with lines like, ?You?ll never see a teenager come to Christ in a musty old church basement.? As a Young Life grad, I needed a tradition. I needed a past for my faith as much as a present and a future. I found it in the Presbyterian Church (First Pres., Evanston, Illinois, to be exact), and in the intellectual tradition I have just outlined.I actually became a Christian through my local congregation, but I was so active in Young Life that it is fair to say it is the most formative influence in my early faith. And I have resonated with few statements I have ever read in blogging like "As a Young Life grad, I needed a tradition. I needed a past for my faith as much as a present and a future." My departure from Young Life was very complex, but reviewing it in retrospect, that may the best summation of what underlied it as I have ever encountered. -- And then there is First Pres. in Evanston -- I was baptised in that church! My mother grew up there. Well, enough of the weird parallels (remind me to tell you sometime about the guy I met with my same name down to middle initial and parents of the same full names)...
Tim's post is about bona fides as an "evangelical Presbyterian" specifically a PC(USA) Presbyterian.
So when I think of the word "evangelical", I am thinking of a very different group of blokes than when Tim Russert uses the word. I'm thinking of Torrance, and McGrath, and John Stott, and J.I. Packer, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton and the Baillie brothers have to fit in there somewhere - and Bruce McCormack and how they aligned themselves with Calvin and Luther, and even Aquinas, and even Augustine, and even deeper in the history of theology until I find myself sharing thoughts of Jesus with the earliest thinkers of our faith. It is also telling (and some of you will think I am already lost to intellectualism) that I don't list theological precepts to explain my evangelicalism, nor do I recount how I voted yesterday, I name an intellectual tradition. It?s a tradition that is faithful to the call to love the Lord with your mind, as well as your heart and soul and strength. It is an intellectual tradition that helped me fill in the blanks.Like the statement about being out of Young Life, this is exactly what I thought of when I heard "evangelical" until it became a political word more associated with independent mega-churches than a school of thought about the very heart of the gospel and an approach to its spread.
I also think it is, if the word "evangelicalism" is to be saved, a meaning that we need to return to for the word. As "evangelicals" like James Dobson continue to rant and posture and demand, I am struck by how we would be served by coming to understand the word in the terms Tim describes. Indeed the traditon he describes is intellectual, but it is also activist - and not the naked power play activist we see these days, but activist in the best sense of the word, breeding good Christians and good Evangelicals to do the hard work of civil engagement.
I need to meet this guy someday, that is for sure. But all of us need to consider the tradition and understanding of evangelicalism that he describes - more than consider, we need to grab hold and clutch for dear life.
Related Tags: brother, Presbyterian, evengelical, understanding
