One of the things we repeat often at GLC is that we want to be a church for skeptics. That is to say, one of our desires is to meaningfully and relationally engage with those who are skeptical of the claims of Christianity. At least one of the reasons we feel drawn to skeptics is because of the emergence of skepticism in urban areas like the one in which we are planted. The people who live in this area of the city tend to be skeptical of the claims of Christianity. And we love the people in our neighborhood and so of course we desire to extend support by way of friendship along with a challenge to the way people view the world around them.
The Usefulness of Skepticism
But at least one other reason we’re drawn to skeptics is because we can (and should) find commonality with skeptics. That is to say, we understand skepticism to be an often good and valuable posture when examining various claims. There are certainly claims that people make about which we should be skeptical. Broadly speaking, you could call me a pretty big skeptic of the claim that Bigfoot exists. If he did exist, I would have expected him to be found by at least season three of the many reality TV shows dedicated to finding him. I tend to be skeptical of the vast conspiracy theories that are claimed to have been covered up for decades or even centuries without any evidence (because the conspirators obviously destroyed the evidence, conveniently enough). And I’m certainly skeptical of religious claims that appear to be disjointed from reasonable grounds for belief, whether in failing to line up with the way the world operates or in making claims that are historically or scientifically out of line with reality.
Now, I recognize that there’s a lot tied up in what I just said and I won’t have the opportunity to expand on it here. But I bring all of that up simply to say that, like most millennials (born 1980 until about 1996, depending on the reference point), I have an inherent posture of skepticism. But there does seem to be a big distinction. The way that my skepticism has worked itself out over the years has often found itself on the opposite end of the spectrum from many of my millennial (and even younger Gen-X) brethren, especially with regard to claims about the nature of the Christian faith. Interestingly enough, the dividing line appears to be this: While many find themselves skeptical of older, historical claims, I tend to find myself deeply skeptical of relatively new, novel claims.
“Wait. So You Don’t Like the Teaching of Jesus?”
One of the more commonly stated objections to that as I’ve talked with people has been something along the lines of, “well if you don’t like new or novel claims about religion, you certainly wouldn’t have loved the teachings of Jesus, because he repeatedly says things like ‘you have heard it said, but now I say to you,’ giving new and fresh revelation to those who are stuck in antiquated interpretations of Scripture.” But while it’s absolutely true that Jesus did at several points use that phrase, his concern is clearly not to make a new, novel claim about the Scriptures but rather to direct people to the original claim of the Old Testament text.
Jesus wasn’t saying, “you’ve heard the Hebrew Scriptures say, but now I say to you something brand new.” He was saying, “you’ve heard people attempt to replace the authority of the Hebrew Scriptures with their own authority, but now I say to you what the Scriptures say.” As D.A. Carson notes, Jesus “does not begin these contrasts by telling them what the Old Testament said, but what they had heard it said. This is an important observation, because Jesus is not negating something from the Old Testament, but from their understanding of it” (emphasis mine). In fact, when correcting Nicodemus, Jesus expects that he should know better because of what the Scriptures actually say. He goes as far as to ask him, “are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” That would be an odd question to ask if Jesus was saying something brand new. And so these are not new or novel claims Jesus is making, but he is rather pointing everyone away from newer claims and back to what the Scriptures have said all along.
This is an important point, because new and novel claims about the Christian faith have a tendency to find themselves on the outside of what the earliest Christians claimed about the nature of the Scriptures. As a result, I find myself puzzled as to why the majority of emerging skepticism seems to fall on older, more established interpretation while giving a pass to newer claims that haven’t stood the test of time and interpretation in the same way. One of the more obvious contemporary examples of this can be seen in examining the phenomenon I’ll refer to here as post-evangelicalism.
Post-Evangelicalism: What Is It, Exactly?
I’ll acknowledge at the outset that from within the “movement” of post-evangelicalism, as with any movement, there are different understandings of what drives it/where it’s going. In a sense, post-evangelicalism is simply a way of saying that one has moved beyond evangelicalism to something else.
Having said that, there does seem to be a few shared characteristics of post-evangelicalism that are helpful to summarize. In fact, this is one of the big differences I see between the emerging church from a couple of decades ago and the post-evangelical movement today. Whereas the emerging church didn’t really seem to have much of a unified voice in a number of specific areas, and defining their movement often felt like nailing Jell-o to the wall, post-evangelicalism has succeeded in advancing some uniting principles via many of the movement’s proponents.
More popular voices like Jonathan Merritt, Brandan Robertson, and the late Rachel Held Evans, along with scholarly voices like Pete Enns, have been very effective at communicating these common features in something of a unified voice. My intention is to respond to these common features and share some of the reasons behind my skepticism of each one. I very much want to avoid this being simply my own “hot take.” This post isn’t a quick reaction to anything. This is a subject with which I’ve wrestled to understand for years, and this is what I’ve come to observe. These stand not only as some of the guiding principles of what I’ve seen in post-evangelicalism but also the primary reasons that I find myself so skeptical.
In Post-Evangelicalism We Commonly Find…
Rebuke of Certainty/Embrace of Doubt
Distrust in Orthodoxy/Embrace of (an Historically Unorthodox) New Orthodoxy
Rejection of Biblical Clarity & Inerrancy/Embrace a Different Kind of Authority
Distrust of Historical Biblical Ethics/Embrace of Modern Progressive Ethics
Suspicion of Scriptural Means for Ministry/Embrace of the Pragmatic or Post-Modern
The difficulty I have in believing these features to be a positive corrective for the church has come about in attempting to understand the claims underneath them. As I’ve stated above, I’m already more naturally skeptical of newer claims as it relates to Christian doctrine. But even as new claims go, I find the claims underneath each of these features to be particularly bad ones and plagued by serious problems.
So, for the next several posts, I’ll confess some of my own deep skepticism with each one of these features and highlight some of the problems that, from my vantage point, remain unanswered and continue to therefore guide people away from the gospel at the heart of the Scriptures. As we do this, I think it’s possible that we will come to see that often times our skepticism, though a valid tool, can be pointed in the wrong direction.
On a Pastoral Note
My reason for posting this series is out of concern that many of these claims that we’ll be looking at don’t really get examined the way they should. Often times we can assume what is popularly stated to be true simply because the loudest voices in the room are expressing them. My hope is to challenge us to think through these things well and to be willing to ask the hard questions in all directions. My sense is that many post-evangelicals have moved in that direction because the churches they grew up in perhaps weren’t open to answering hard questions. I’ve commonly heard stories in which church leaders would just get upset that the questions were asked or brush them off entirely as immature “gotcha” reactions instead of sincere questions from people struggling in their faith. I also sense that something of the same thing can absolutely happen from within post-evangelicalism. Sincere questions can be dismissed so easily as overly-combative “gotcha” reactions in much the same way. So my hope is that relaying my own skepticisms here will be helpful to those who are processing all of this. It can be easy in our current climate to feel a certain pressure to “arrive” at popular claims. I’m hoping to slow our roll and get us asking the tough questions. I hope you find it helpful, too.
