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My Pastoral Letter shared with our church community this week

Dear Friends,

Many of us first heard the story of Jonah in Sunday School. If you’re older you’ll know the chorus, “Listen to my tale, of Jonah and the whale, way down in the middle of the ocean.” The story of Jonah is so familiar. It’s about the compassion and undeserved grace of God. The very idea that God would forgive Nineveh, the sworn enemy of Jonah’s people, is a scandal. What’s scandalous is that God chooses to have mercy on the world’s worst sinners, and Jonah resents it, and God has to talk him round.

Jonah is usually called the disobedient prophet. But it’s always worth asking why people do what they do. God said go to Nineveh. Jonah went to Tarshish, the exact opposite direction. He’s asleep in the bottom of the boat in the midst of a deadly storm. But he’s found out. He admits to the sailors he’s defying God’s command, and to save themselves they throw Jonah overboard. He’s swallowed by a great fish, prays a Psalm in which he promises to do as he’s told, and is spat out on the shoreline.

Jonah goes to Nineveh, but preaches the worst sermon ever. Nothing about God, repentance or mercy. “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.” That’s it. Five Hebrew words. Bad news. No hope. Countdown to the city’s destruction and Jonah has a seat in the front row. Then the whole city repents, from the king to the cows, and call urgently on God, God has compassion, and spared them and their city.

So Jonah goes in the huff. He paid his ticket for the best seat in the theatre of God’s judgement, and finds that the original programme is cancelled and there’s a new production called compassion and forgiveness.

But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.” (4.1-3)

If our view of the world is that everyone should get what they deserve, then we will have trouble understanding forgiveness. If we’ve been hurt time and again, and have come to wish harm on those who harm us, then forgiveness will seem like weakness. And if we think the world should be a place where life is fair, where wrong is always punished and goodness always rewarded, then we’ll be disappointed, and even resentful that life isn’t the way we think it should be.

All of this is the Jonah mind-set. And it still survives whenever God doesn’t do what we want God to do. Imagine giving God a row because he is “a gracious and compassionate God”! It’s OK for God to forgive us our sins, but the idea that forgiveness is God’s gracious decision, and he shows mercy on all who call on his name, sometimes just doesn’t seem fair. Especially when they have done much worse than we have. That too is the Jonah mind-set.

And God’s answer to the angry Jonah, sitting on a hillside in the heat of the noonday sun, is to make a plant grow up to give him shade. The next morning the plant dies and Jonah is exposed to the dehydrating heat and is angry that the plant has died, blames God, and even wishes the precious God-given gift of life should be taken away. That would teach God! Truth is, Jonah would rather die than have Nineveh spared.

At that point this story comes crashing into the world we now live in. Think of the politics of hate. Reflect on how we ourselves, our politicians, and the wider world, view asylum seekers, refugees, migrant and displaced peoples. As we think about what attitude we should have to those ‘others’, whoever they happen to be, what does it mean to have faith in the gracious and compassionate God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? How does my faith in Jesus, and in God’s justice and grace, God’s mercy and forgiveness, His care for all peoples, – how does that way of looking on God’s world, through God’s eyes, change my heart towards others?

The last two verses of Jonah are amongst the most moving words in the whole Bible. Go read them. This is God, God mind you, trying to convert Jonah’s heart from resentment to compassion, from hatred to mercy, from enmity to reconciliation. There’s a lot of hating going on in our world. The divisions are deep, damaging and hard edged. Instead of finding ways to work with and for each other, the style is to be over and against. It’s almost as if, like Jonah, people find their identity in decrying those they hate, oppose, and who disagree with them.

The book of Jonah is a brilliant sermon, preached by God, to closed hearts. For us as Christians, the faithful witness of the Church in our world at this time, will be as witnesses to Christ the Reconciler who heals enmities by the blood of the Cross, to Christ the Prince of Peace whose ambassadors we are, to Christ the preacher of the Kingdom of God whose outstretched arms on the cross welcome all who will come.

We are called to echo the very words of Jonah, not from hearts angry against others, but from hearts that have felt the healing flows of God’s grace, known the touch of God’s compassion and been transformed by the gift of forgiveness: “We know that you are a compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.” (4.2)

Those words, about compassion, slow to anger and abounding in love; not a bad strap line to guide the way we think about others. They call us to learn to live amongst others as the presence of Christ, and the voice of God’s grace, and in Jesus’ name.

Matthew 25 is a parable that describes and defines how we see people. In this one parable Jesus illustrates the contrast between a lifestyle of compassionate welcome and a lifestyle of uncaring self-concern.

One of the additional losses but necessary consequences of our current situation is that wearing masks obscures faces. For public health reasons, care and consideration of others, and the common good, a face covering in public closed spaces is, in my view, a moral duty and an act of responsible care. But face coverings have a major impact on social interaction – they cover faces. That is, they hide or obscure facial expressions of welcome, smiling, recognition, uncertainty, and much else. They make recognition, interpretation and communication more difficult.

The face is an outward expression of the inner person, and often seeing a facial expression enables us to interpret, communicate and interact with those amongst whom we live and move and have our being. Abraham Joshua Heschel (pictured) wrote with profound understanding about the importance of seeing and interpreting the face. To him the human face is a miracle of meaning, a mirror of the self, a road map of your life, or as Heschel put it, "an incarnation of uniqueness".

As one whose own face was known internationally and was remarkably expressive, he affirmed of all human beings, "no face is a commonplace".

Which brings us back to Matthew 25. Christ's extraordinary words are well known; "Insofar as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me."

Did what? When?

"Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me."

If someone is hungry, thirsty, lonely, destitute, sick, in any and every kind of need, what makes it worse is if it is unnoticed, if no one cares, helps or recognises their need. Jesus is illustrating the welcoming mindset of the Kingdom of God, welcome as a worldview, compassion as a lifestyle, care for others as an habituated disposition. And that comes from seeing faces, recognising our shared humanity in every face, and from welcoming the presence of each 'other'. That in turn means caring for the humanity of every 'other' whose face we see, and whose life we encounter as we go about the daily routines of every day.

Welcome is to look at someone’s face and know, here is a God-loved person, one for whom Christ died. Welcome isn’t being in someone’s face; it is to accept, receive and rejoice in a person’s presence, uniqueness and value. “Welcome others as Christ welcomed you…” Welcome means seeing in the face of each person the Christ who was the Eternal Word become flesh. In Jesus, we see God with a human face, and in each person we encounter one who is created in the image of God.

In that powerful and often astringent book, Life Together, Bonhoeffer wrote of prayer for others as a way of recovering an attitude of welcome to those we'd rather weren't around, or at least not around us! 

"I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me. His face, that hitherto may have been strange and intolerable to me, is transformed in intercession into the countenance of a brother for whom Christ died, the face of a forgiven sinner." 

I've always been intrigued by the way Bonhoeffer writes this. He clearly understands the importance of facial recognition, seeing Christ in the other person, and also seeing the infinite value of each human being as one for whom Christ died. That puts Jesus' words into even clearer focus – "Insofar as you did it for one of these, you did it for me." Brian Wren's hymn, 'When Christ was lifted from the earth', describes the generous, inclusive and welcoming love of Christ that his followers are called to embody:

1 When Christ was lifted from the earth,
his arms stretched out above
through every culture, every birth,
to draw an answering love.

2 Still east and west his love extends
and always, near or far,
he calls and claims us as his friends
and loves us as we are.

3 Where generation, class, or race
divide us to our shame,
he sees not labels but a face,
a person, and a name.

4 Thus freely loved, though fully known,
may I in Christ be free
to welcome and accept his own
as Christ accepted me.  

There is an inescapable logic in Christians as people of welcome. If you love Christ it’s because you are loved by Christ; we love because he first loved us. We are called to "see not labels but a face, a person and a name. AS those loved by God ourselves, we know that the face of every person is unique and no commonplace, the face of one for whom Christ died. And each time we meet someone, the Lord puts a question to us. In the face of this person I am now encountering, do I see the face of one for whom Christ died, and whom God loves? And will I "welcome and accept his own, as Christ accepted me". 

Sometimes radical Christian discipleship requires us to push routine courtesy beyond the limits opf what is socially acceptable. Jesus shared a table, food and conversation with "the wrong people", those who didn't deserve to have their place at a table reserved for good people. Jesus didn't sit at tables reserved only for those good enough, socially powerful enough, respectable enough. If you wanted to be in Jesus' company, that was enough.

So Paul urged those early Christian house groups to "welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, in order to bring praise to God." Paul was echoing some of Jesus words, and recalling many of Jesus actions. To welcome someone is to rejoice in another’s presence. Welcome carries with it the presumption of friendship. Remember the insult and nickname, "the friend of sinners." 

William Barclay called Christian love indefatigable goodwill; as a West of Scotland voice he could just as easily have said love is not easily scunnered! Welcome is not self-assertion but respectful consideration of others, attentiveness to their presence, care for their welfare, alertness to who they are. And we do this in order to bring praise to God. Welcoming brings praise to God. Who'd have thought it? Not our barriers; not our sound theology that defines who's in or out; not our cherished viewpoints we dare to call biblical, Christian, orthodox, sound, or any other exclusionary mindset; but welcoming others as Christ welcomes us. That brings praise to God.

So. Welcome is Christ-like acceptance. A welcoming community is a gathering of those who seek to embody, faithfully practice and consistently demonstrate the welcome of Christ. Welcome is a habit of the heart, a lifestyle of acceptance of others, respect for persons, indefatigable goodwill. In our personal, out-there, ordinary everyday lives, in our shared life together in the local body of Christ we call the church, there’s us and there’s others – and every person we encounter we welcome as Christ welcomed us. To welcome is to refuse to 'other' the other person.

In Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead the elderly 3^rd generation pastor is trying to make sense of the Gospel, of what God demands in a world changed and strange:

"This is an important thing, which I have told many people, and which my father told me and which his father told him. When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation."

Welcome one another as Christ welcomed you – in the same way as, to the extent that, on the conditions that, with the grace that, Christ welcomed, and welcomes you. Welcome for Christians is rooted in who Christ is, and how Christ welcomed, accepted, received, forgave, made room for.

Some years ago in St Johann on the Austrian Tirol, we discovered a small tea room that served English tea, home baking, and did so from rose garden china cups and saucers. As we entered the shop the lady proprietor with gentle firmness met us. smiling, and asked us to take off our walking boots, as they scratched the furniture and marked the floor. It was done with such grace. Then when we were seated, she asked, "Now. How may I serve you?" 

We were entirely disarmed by the hospitable warmth and obvious pleasure she took in the making and serving of that afternoon cup of tea, turning an encounter into an occasion. Welcome is when someone else feels that meeting us, talking with us, and being in our presence, is an occasion. "So you must think. What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation."

Welcome is a presumption of friendship, enjoyment of another's presence, and is confirmed by words like, "Now. How may I serve you."  

 

Amongst my favourite images is the drystane dyke. As a boy growing up in Ayrshire farms they were as familiar as our own living room. I climbed over them, hid behind them, peeked through the holes, and always, always, replaced any stones that had fallen into the field.

Jimmy Welsh was one of the older farm workers, and to me he was as ancient as some of the drystane dykes he repaired and occasionally built. He had an old and huge bicycle on which I learned to go a bike, by putting a leg through the frame because the seat and the bar were far too high for me to even reach the pedals – let alone the ground.

Jimmy used to work on the dykes around our house and I sometimes helped him. The way he weighed up a stone, visualised its shape, found the right way to position it, then repeat with the next stone, and gradually the dyke was repaired. Ever since I have loved the workmanship and the aesthetic functionality of a wall built without cement, each stone fitting with and supporting the others. Over years the lichen gently invades and in the right places moss creeps across the edges and gaps, and the colours weather and blend.

A well built dyke is like a brushstroke across a landscape; an old and overgrown dyke is for me, a thing of beauty. Walking on the edge of an Aberdeenshire wood I stopped and admired the layers of colour, texture, light and form. The photo is of a retaining wall beside an old estate forest, I guess going back at least to the end of the 19th Cenutry, possibly much earlier. It stands there as evidence of durability in the midst of change. Softened by moss, framed in purple heather and contrasting sunlit green branches, this is a venerable dyke. The word is chosen with some care; 'venerable' means "accorded a great deal of respect, especially because of age, wisdom, or character."

I guess it seems odd and even daft to think of an ancient hand built dyke as embodying wisdom and character. But as old Jimmy Welsh might have said, "Haud oan a meenit!" Think of the wisdom and character of the builder being built into his work. Think of the years of experience, the trained eye, the calloused hands, and the pride in building something that uses what is there to good purpose.

Then consider what the dyke is for, to separate boundaries, as a retaining wall, or to enclose a field for animal grazing. For none of these purposes does it need to look attractive, but a well built dyke is craftsmanship in stone, and is built to last, and over years takes on the look of something that belongs where it has always been. Hence, a venerable dyke.

Allow me to quote one of my favourite poems by Wendell Berry, who sits on the easiest to reach bookshelf of my personal canon:

              Sabbath Poems

                     2002 

                       X

Teach me work that honours thy work,

the true economies of goods and words,

to make my arts compatible

with the songs of the local birds.

 

Teach me patience beyond work –

and, beyond patience, the blest

Sabbath of thy unresting love

which lights all things and gives rest.

What I learned from Jimmy Welsh was the importance of loving the work you do, doing "work that honours work." I learned that lesson by watching it happening; I was a child witness to patient thoughtfulness informed by an experienced eye, and implemented with hands that knew the shape and heft and fittingness of each stone. Coming across this old Aberdeenshire drystane dyke, I felt an inner vindication of such memories. Not so much sentimental nostalgia; more an inner recalling of a lesson I saw performed with quiet contentment and ease of confidence, one I have never forgotten.

When you build the form of your life, as we all have to do, using well what is there, shaping and forming heart and mind by discovering the fittingness of things, honour that work with patience, and love the work. It is an art form, a skill and discipline honed over the years of our living, and a calling to build something that will last. Venerable is not a bad description of a well built dyke, or a well lived life: "accorded a great deal of respect, especially because of age, wisdom, or character." Aye. That.  

Dear Friends

We were on holiday in Exeter, and decided to go to Evensong in the Cathedral. We were shown in and told to sit where we pleased. Since we wanted to be near the Choir we sat in some side seats near the front, facing where we thought the Choir would be.

I put it down to being an uncultured Nonconformist and long term Baptist! The Dean (we learned afterwards) came forward and said, ever so courteously, that these too were choir seats. But we could sit ‘over there’, which meant gathering our bits and pieces and, heads down, relocating to the nave, like everyone else!

Jesus was right. It’s embarrassing to be in the best seats and be told to move. Time and again Jesus’ words teach us about meekness, humility, not always wanting to be first, best and loudest.

Then there was that disciples’ dressing room argument about who was the most important, the one that matters most, or the one that gets to make the big decisions. Mark tells the story in his Gospel. Big argument amongst the disciples; Who would have the honour of sitting on Jesus’ right and left hand in the Kingdom of God?

Jesus’ answer is the first and last word about leadership, the gift of service and the call to mutual care for one another within the community of His followers.

Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”   (Mark 10. 42-45)

If service is beneath you, leadership is beyond you. That, in a nutshell, is a Christian theology of leadership. Imagine the ill feeling, resentment and division amongst Jesus’ carefully chosen disciples. This was the kind of division that makes people want to walk away. That’s why Mark begins by saying “Jesus called them together.” This isn’t about them. Their individual self-interest is irrelevant, their ambitions are misplaced, and their over-confidence in their own importance are just selfish reasons to argue. So Jesus calls them together.

The way of the world is domination, the way of the Kingdom is service. Authority is all about power and pride, service is all about compassion and humility. Mark makes that point too. “Even the Son of Man did not come to be served…” If we are following Jesus then we follow a Servant King. Unless we serve each other we are not exercising Christ-like leadership. The Christian criterion of all devotion to Jesus is the cross, the hallmark of genuine Christ-like service is the self-giving love of God in Christ. The Christian who wants to be first for Jesus’ sake, will not wait till someone else picks up the basin and the towel. In washing each other’s feet, in that at least, they will be first.

All of this becomes very important to us as a church community during these days of separation. And the longer our time without meeting goes on the more important it is to hear again Jesus words about his ministry, and the ministry to which he calls each of us. We are called together by Jesus, to be with Him, to be with each other, and to discover the joy and the cost and the fulfilment of being His servants.

Graham Kendrick has written a lot of hymns, probably like Charles Wesley, too many hymns. And like Charles Wesley, there are a few masterpieces, quite a lot of good ones, and quite a few that only bear singing now and again and maybe then best forgotten. But The Servant King is one of the great hymns of the past 40 years. The last verse distils into lovely simplicity the essential teaching of Jesus about leadership, service, fellowship and being called together by Jesus, to serve him, and each other:

So let us learn how to serve
And in our lives enthrone Him
Each other's needs to prefer
For it is Christ we're serving.

This is our God, The Servant King,
He calls us now to follow Him;
To bring our lives as a daily offering
Of worship to The Servant King.

Your friend and pastor,

Jim Gordon

By the time we come to Part III, of After Evangelicalism, readers are already aware of the nexus of moral dilemmas and human suffering around three key ethical challenges: Sexuality and Gender, Politics, and Race. Given his own life story, Gushee speaks with considerable authority about the lived experience within and outside evangelicalism, and as one whose track record of ethical reflection and intellectual engagement is recognised and acknowledged far beyond Christian academic circles. Those who have read his previous work will know where Gushee is coming from, and going to. 

On sexuality and gender his previous books Changing Our Mind, and Still Christian, give a clear exposition of Gushee’s theology and ecclesiology of inclusion and welcome of LGBTQ people. This book reaffirms that conviction, while also offering a critique of the attitudes and assumptions of white and patriarchal evangelicalism which underlie rejection of, and moral judgement of LGBTQ people. There are no easy answers, neither an ethic of sexual perfectionism, nor an ethic of libertinism. Instead Gushee urges a humble discerning of what human love is, and the call on Christian communities to search for ways in which all humans can flourish in a covenanted community called together in the name of Jesus.

The chapter on Politics is an unsparing exposé of white evangelicalism’s embrace of Trumpism. The writer tells of the watershed moment when Trump’s election was confirmed, aided by 81 per cent of white evangelical voters. His own words are unsparing: “The worst parts of Trumpism track closely with the worst parts of the long evangelical heritage: racism, sexism, nationalism, xenophobia, and indifference to ecology and the poor.” (144). Gushee urges a Christian faithfulness that maintains a critical distance  from all earthly powers, an ethical discipline provided by Christian social teaching tradition, a global perspective on concerns for the poor, the ecology of the planet, and peace issues, and a thoroughgoing repentance of racism, xenophobia or nationalism.

The closing chapter on race and racism is a cry of the heart. Rooted in a history of slavery and slave ownership in America, Gushee argues that enculturated and institutionalised racism are powerful strains in the DNA of American evangelicalism, and that racism is, in fact, doctrinal heresy. Racism in attitude, action and social structures is a doctrinal aberration that denies the imago dei, and rejects the full consequences of Jesus as the Word made human flesh, for our understanding of both humanity and God.

A painful section recounts the missed opportunities for evangelicalism to repent, to own the wrong and to change direction. Perhaps Gushee will have to write another book, devoted to the deconstruction of white supremacy, and challenging cultural and institutional racism with the full force of the Kingdom ethics of Jesus. Such a book would require a theology strong and wide and deep enough to make possible reconciliation and peaceful racial healing. In turn, such a theology would also require to be substantial and durable, radical and prophetic, sacrificially repentant and costly, if it is to awaken hope for an end to systemic racism. Gushee has no time for virtue signalling; as a theologian and ethicist he is calling exvangelicals to form communities which in their performative practices, ethical activism and public rhetoric of reconciliation and welcome are the living contradiction of racism, exclusion and discrimination.

I finished this book with a heavy heart; not because it was finished but because it had to be written, and has to be read. On my reading, it is a sustained effort at two things. An honest and personal critique of the white evangelical tradition in the United States, and a courageous attempt at reconstructing a basis for Christian obedience in following Jesus and living the ethics of the Kingdom. White evangelicalism is on the decline in the United States; it may well be that its embrace of Trumpism will both hasten and harden the trajectory of its decline. Gushee’s book is a long time insider’s analysis of that weakening and decline, and of what he sees as a fundamentalist hegemony fixated on power and holding on to white privilege, in recent years, apparently at any cost.

This is a book by an ex evangelical writing primarily about white American evangelicalism in its evolution and current manifestations, and out of his personal knowledge, experience and perspective of that context. The book combines personal testimony, ethical critique, reconstructive theology, and pastoral guidance to those who are ex-evangelicals. He is not writing to comfort evangelicals. He is deeply concerned to offer ex evangelicals like himself, some foundations on which to build a more inclusive community of faith that flourishes as the soil in which the seeds of the Kingdom can grow. The book is both personal search and public manifesto. His last sentence in the book has its own poignancy, and latent hopefulness:

“If I have helped to provide, even for a few people, a way out of this lost place and a way ahead in the direction of Jesus, then all I can say is: thanks be to God. (170) 

 

Part II, titled Theology: Believing and Belonging, continues the critique and deconstruction of American white evangelicalism by examining the doctrines of God, Jesus and Church. Gushee’s theology of God has six woven strands: Kingdom of God theology, social gospel theology, Holocaust theology, liberation theologies, Catholic social tradition, and progressive evangelical social ethics. Gushee is profoundly aware of the dangers attaching to claims of divine sovereignty, linked to biblical inerrancy infallibly interpreted within a closed doctrinal framework, and reflecting the agendas of male white power at the centre of a faith tradition. He has lived through the negative consequences of that mix.

As a scholar immersed in Holocaust history and reflection he insists that any Christian theology of God must stand questioned before Auschwitz, and the story of the Jewish people. He understands God in terms of the story of Israel, from which he draws this conclusion: the Hebrew Bible tells the narrative of “divine love for covenant peoplehood and mission on behalf of humanity.”(Italics original) Out of such reflection comes this: “The idea of a God who risks trusting us with freedom, and suffers from the choices we make, is critically important in moving us away from theologically problematic and morally disempowering understandings of divine sovereignty.” (80)

Using Jesus According to the New Testament by J D G Dunn as a starting point, the chapter on Jesus critiques ‘Jesus according to white evangelicalism’, as a pietistic, sentimentalised, prosperity Jesus, kept at a safe distance from the ‘apocalyptic prophet, lynched God-man and risen Lord’ of the New Testament. Gushee, like many of us, recognises the neglect and even silencing of Jesus in such an understanding of the Bible, God, and the Gospel. Those who suggest Gushee caricatures white evangelical portrayals of Jesus, may need to reflect more critically and honestly on the massive evangelical industry that lies behind the current dominance of the evangelical presence in current American politics.

Here again, Gushee blends testimony with critique, and his own past experience with his current thinking. Referring to the meaning of the Cross today:

 ”We kill one another. We killed our best. We killed God who came to save us. When we kill another, we kill the God who made them and loved them, who was in them and who came to save us. This is what I see these days when I look at the cross.” (99)

These words are fuelled by a lifetime spent within a tradition in which the cross is central to individual salvation but less prominent in discussions about injustice, poverty, racism, and environmental catastrophe. They are written by a Christian thinker steeped in Holocaust history and reflection, scarred by what he sees as the co-option of Jesus and the Christian Gospel for political ends, and in particular, a white supremacist understanding of human society and political vision; and these embodied in a Presidency and Administration given uncritical legitimacy by court Evangelical leaders.

The chapter on the Church gives a clear definition of what is needed: “The church is the community of people who stand in covenant relationship with God through Jesus Christ and seek to fulfil his kingdom mission.” (104, emphasis original) This description is some distance from what Gushee and other ethicists, social analysts and theologians see as the characteristic forms and goals of American white evangelical churches, their leaders and their political spokespersons.

“Evangelicalism is a consumer culture…What many heavily consumerized evangelicals understand church to mean has been taught to them through the most successfully marketed musicians, authors, trinket salesmen, and parachurch groups. Evangelicalism is also a brand, a kind of proprietary product that those at the top defend for a variety of reasons, including the fact that they and their institutions have vested financial interests in doing so.” (108)

As a contrasting alternative, Gushee describes two church contexts with which he is familiar and within which he currently flourishes. In First Baptist Church, Decatur, he is a class teacher to a group of people who opt to meet every Sunday to explore, discuss and study the meaning and implication of Jesus and his teaching of the Kingdom of God. Then he tells of his regular attendance at Holy Cross Catholic Church, and his perception that in the United States the Catholic Church has so much more awareness of the multiracial and multi-cultural society of a country significantly populated by immigrants, and is itself ‘richly global’.

The balance and tension between these two regular encounters with people of faith, have in common a sense of covenant love for all humanity as the base line of Christian activism and ethical behaviour. For Gushee, ecclesiology is about being a people focused on following Jesus, held together in covenant and mutual commitment, their common life expressed in Christlike compassion, the basis of that life being relational rather than contractual, Kingdom oriented in worship and obedience, and including all whom others reject; in effect being to others what Jesus was, friends of sinners.

(Part III of the review, titled Ethics: Being and Behaving will appear tomorrow.)

This is Part I of 3, an extended review of After Evangelicalism. 

After Evangelicalism. The Path to a New Christianity, David P. Gushee. (Louisville: WJKP, 2020) 225pp.

This book is written under what the author sees as emergency conditions. Evangelicalism in its United States version is no longer a viable expression of morally responsible Christianity. White Evangelicalism has finally sold its soul by its uncritical support for all that the Trump administration and the Republican Party now stand for. What is more, the causes of Trumpism and evangelical collusion with its tactics, policies and goals, go back far and deep in American Christianity. In that sense this is a very American book, and some aspects of the arguments have less purchase in the British evangelical context. The history of American Evangelicalism, Gushee argues, holds within its DNA, certain attitudes, convictions, prejudices and social goals that are inimical to the teaching and person of Jesus of Nazareth.

For those reasons white Evangelicalism is on the decline. The last lines of any book are often worth pondering as possibly the most important final thoughts of an author:

“This I know: many millions of young people got lost in that evangelical maze. They couldn’t get past inerrancy, indifference to the environment, deterministic Calvinism, purity culture, divine violence, Hallmark-Christmas-Movie Jesus, rejection of gay people, male dominance, racism, God = GOP, or whatever else…I want to live for Jesus till I die. And I want to help other people find a way to do that too, if they are willing.  (page 170)

David Gushee has spent 40 years teaching, preaching, and writing from within an American Evangelical context, much of that time within the orbit of the Southern Baptist Convention. He writes out of a personal journey in which his mind has changed on a number of the key doctrinal and ethical issues he exposes and explores. Now a Distinguished Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University, this book is a long reflection on his relationship with the evangelical culture within which he came to faith, at times in the form of personal testimony.

But the driving impetus comes from his search for faith and practice that is consistent with the Jesus of the Gospels and the Kingdom ethics presupposed in the life and teaching of Jesus. He seeks to offer those who count themselves as post-evangelicals, and who are looking for a new direction in which to follow Jesus,
"a manifesto, a love letter, and game plan for fellow exvangelicals." 

The book has three main parts. Part I examines the origins and later developments of Evangelicalism in America culminating in its current alignment with Republican political agendas. One of the pillars of that alignment is an insistence on biblical inerrancy as fundamental to all else, and chapter 2 examines, deconstructs and critiques those claims, and the power games that underlie them. Chapter 3 is a reconstruction of authority, indeed authorities, in Christian faith and practice. What ‘the Bible says’ requires responsible interpretation,  humble listening, communal discernment and an openness to the Holy Spirit leading into new or newly understood truth.

Gushee acknowledges he is virtually commending the Wesleyan Quadrilateral of Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience. But he is arguing for something even more nuanced, a Christian Humanism which has the qualities of Reason, Experience, Intuition, Relationships and Community. This is both a searching and a generous invitation to followers of Jesus to move beyond a narrow ‘sola scriptura’. “Given human limits – even as humans with Jesus in front of us, the Bible open before us, and the Spirit within us – I am rejecting any inerrant path to infallible doctrine.” (45)

To listen to God’s voice, and discern God’s will, requires the hard work of humble listening, open-ended risk taking in the presence of God, and communal responsibility in moral decision-making and lived by convictions. In that sense an inerrant text, infallibly interpreted by 'sound' or 'authoritative' teachers, is a short circuiting of a process that requires an interpreting community engaged in communal discernment, and open to the truth as it is in Jesus and as it is prompted by the Spirit of God moving once again on the waters to bring forth life.   

Dear Friends

It was a year or two ago. Stevie was having a hard day. The previous day and through the night the wind had been ‘blawin’ a hoolie’. The West end of Aberdeen is a leafy suburb, and Stevie was a road sweeper. Through the night the wind had whipped through the trees, blown over the odd wheelie bin, and the pavement was a mess.

I was walking along Carden Place and stopped to say hello. Stevie wasn’t happy. It was obvious from the way he used his brush, like a defensive weapon pushing back the forces of chaos. You can say a lot about someone’s emotional inner climate by the way they use a brush!

It wasn’t just the litter; it was the carpet of green leaves, twigs and occasional branches that obviously annoyed him. “It’s July”, he said. Stevie poured so much heartfelt complaint into that two word answer. And I could see where he was coming from. Leaves are for October, when they have the blowing machines and extra folk to do the tidying up. And it was his day to do the streets that were tree lined – he even showed me the highlighted map of his day’s work.

I thought then, and I’ve thought a lot about it since. The wind of the Spirit of God blows where and when God pleases. The Holy Spirit takes us by surprise, inconveniences us, propels us from behind and pushes us forward, blows in our faces and wakes us up. “You hear its sound but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with those who are born of the Spirit” (John 3.8)

And sometimes the Holy Spirit gets in the way of our tidiness, tears up our wee roadmaps of what we plan to do with our day. Other times the Spirit blows when we don’t expect it, and is not required to explain or apologise for any inconvenience caused. It is one of the pivotal moments in the history of the church of Jesus’ followers, that the sign of the Spirit’s arrival was the sound of a rushing mighty wind. The result for that scared group of disciples, hiding away and silenced by their fears, was a regenerated hopefulness, a reckless boldness, and an overwhelming need to throw open the doors and follow Jesus out into a world where the wind blows and new languages of love, grace and hope are spoken.

I wonder sometimes if we occasionally have a Stevie attitude to the disruptive, creative, unpredictability of the presence and power and purposes of the Holy Spirit, blowing through our comfort zones, upsetting our set ways, tugging at us and even pushing us from behind with the latent energy of the Spirit of Life.

The work of the Holy Spirit, especially in the book of Acts, is the creation of the community of Jesus. Sure there is the miracle of the Gospel preached in whatever languages were understood by all the people in the busy cosmopolitan city of Jerusalem. The list of ethnic diversity in Acts 2.9-11 is always fun to read out loud. Healing and preaching, boldness and joy, grace and generosity, hopefulness and fellowship, compassion and courage – these and more were the gathering evidence that God was at work. The Holy Spirit was let loose on the world, a world which crucified Jesus and in which resurrection had negated the worst the world could do.

The stable centre of all this is described in Acts 2.42, and this too is the work of the Holy Spirit. “They devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching, and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayers.” Christian community is not something we create; it is the gift of the Holy Spirit who takes of the things of Jesus, explains them to our hearts and minds, draws us together, and orchestrates our gifts.

Quite understandably, the continuing disruption of our church life by the pandemic has deprived us of much that we have previously known and experienced together as a church. We don’t know how the future will look. What we do know is:

1. i) Jesus our risen Lord, will build his church just as he promised.
2. ii) The wind of the Holy Spirit blows where God pleases and will mean changes, disruption, and the hard work of being the people of God right here and right now.

iii) It is the work of the Holy Spirit to equip us, sustain us, guide us, energise us, and impel us forward to God’s future.

Yes, I too have a lot of sympathy with Stevie. Sometimes in the plans and purposes of God there are more leaves in July than in October! But don’t look at the leaves; listen to the sound of the wind, the loud, rushing movements of the Holy Spirit in the world.

   Spirit of holiness, wisdom and faithfulness,
   wind of the Lord, blowing strongly and free:
   strength of our serving and joy of our worshipping
   Spirit of God bring your fullness to me, to us, to your people.

Your friend and pastor,    

Jim Gordon

There is beauty in stones thrown together randomly over who know how long. The lapidary motion of the waves works a slow and relentless friction, and produces over time a softness of line and tone out of all proportion to the hardness and resistance of the material. I've often thought a human mind can be just as intransigent to the changes and influences of the forces around us. Or that the human heart likewise is capable of being moulded and shaped if it is exposed to those same environmental forces and movements.

Some years ago I wrote several Haiku expressing the delight and satisfaction of looking closely at the cobbles on the beach, and simply wondering at the randomness of relentlessness; or, to put it otherwise, being amazed at the results of millions upon millions of accidental collisions of stone with stone. Inevitably I pondered the parallel, or contrast, with how human community works.

A friendship over time begins to shape and form attitudes, affections, opinions and thought. I think of several of my closest friends and know that long conversations, time spent in each other's company, outbursts of laughter and sadness shared, and all those gestures of kindness, gift and affection that turn a relationship into a sacrament, these have shaped and formed who I am. That same friendship will have survived disagreement, disappointment, lengths of time when one or other has struggled and hurt, or been worried and uncertain, but always, always, the shaping of human character and relationships by those encounters by which something of our love, respect and commitment rubs off on them, or they on us, and we are again nudged towards inner change.

Or so it seems to me. The Haiku is a form that I have come to use as a way of reducing the amount of words needed to distil truth. There is a discipline in the self-constraint that sharpens the truth, and therefore makes the point. At the same time, in writing Haiku, there is a recognition of the necessary limitations of words to convey our deep and complex selves to others, who are similarly deep and complex selves.

That yearning for communication, community and communion, is one of the mysteries of those friendships that endure and grow through the lengths of our days, with their tidal rhythms shaping and enhancing who we are becoming. Of such rich encounters, these words try to speak.

    

       Remorseless friction,

      waves lapidary tumbling,                                 Tones in harmony

      the beauty of grey.                                            well rounded community

                                                                                     of shaped difference. 

      Cobbled together,

      aeons of geology,                                                 Pebbles of friendship

      placed by time and tide.                                     in easy togetherness;

                                                                                       colour and contrast.