Take 2: An Evangelical Manifesto

Good discussion here.  Just a few follow-up thoughts in response, and as I've mulled the document a little more:

1. I think I see now that the burden of the document was to rescue "evangelical" from its Colorado-Springs-captivity.  Fair enough; a good project.  I would have thought that Jim Wallis had made that point, but I suppose some of these folks wanted to rescue "evangelical" but not let it thereby be held captive to just a leftish version of Colorado Springs.  Fair enough, too.  But if that's the case, then why all the preamble about theologically defining "Evangelical?"    It's the section of theological boundary marking that made me most uncomfortable because I think such a project is inherently Protestant (though they claim that "Evangelical" is pre-Protestant [!]).  In sum, such boundary marking always seems tainted with a sort of anti-Catholic stance.  I'm not saying they're going to trot out remarks about the whore of Babylon (though it might be interesting to do a little archive search on some of these signatories and their views of Catholicism), but I wonder if a certain anti-Catholicism is just part of the warp and woof of this "Evangelical" identity.

2. As I've thought about this further, and the general weirdness of the moniker "evangelical," I think I've begun to be able to name what makes me uncomfortable: these "theological" definitions are always quite heady affairs.  They're top-heavy; they define evangelicalism largely by doctrines.  Sure, there might be correlate emphases on hymns (that's Mouw and Noll, talking), or on the centrality of evangelism--but such definitions always see these things growing out of doctrines. 

What that means, though, is that you can never really "see" evangelicalism, in a way.  Or let me put it this way: such definitions define "Evangelical" by what evangelicals THINK and BELIEVE, rather than what they DO.  That, I think, reflects just the sort of modernism that gives us evangelicalism (and fundamentalism) in the first place.  In contrast, what defines Orthodoxy or Catholicism is liturgy, the practices of the faith.  And lest this seem like some sort of high-church condescension to bumpkin evangelicals, I would say exactly the same thing about Pentecostalism.  You will know them by their worship.  When it comes to this elusive thing called "evangelicalism" it seems like you can only know them by their documents.  I think this reflects a modernist conception of doctrine as prior to liturgy, whereas I think the wisdom of tradition points to the priority of liturgy to doctrine.

3. So, no, I didn't sign it and won't.  Not because I think it's a terrible document, but because I think it reflects just the sorts of ambiguities and presuppositions that make me most uncomfortable with being an "evangelical" (which, ironically, I admit I am and ever will be, despite all my attempts and protests to the contrary).  And there's still this nagging issue of timing for me: I completely understand the election year concern.  But why a "manifesto" rolled at a Press Club in Washington, DC?  In my most cynical moments, I think one can understand this in terms of a certain class ressentiment; or perhaps better, in evangelicalism's uneasy relationship to celebrity.  Because we've always felt marginal to the halls of power (in many cases, evangelicals have not been the WASPs running the show--that's been left to mainstream Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and later, East Coast Catholics).  Having now gotten attention--which is why evangelicals are just giddy about Lindsay's book, Faith in the Halls of Power--evangelicals crave the opportunity to feel like East Coast big shots.  (Again, this is a very cynical self talking here.)  The idea of signing onto a Manifesto that would be unveiled at the Press Club in Washington would feel so New Yorker, so culturally elite, that you can understand why evangelical theologians would be eager to hitch their humble, midwest wagons to this cart making its way into the halls of power. 

I better stop there.

Comments

[AJ]

Dr. Smith,
Thank you for your analysis of this manifesto. It has been most helpful. Since your fellow-contributor to this forum,M. Daniel Carroll R., is listed among the signatories of the EVM it would be nice to see the two of you enter into some kind of dialog over your differences concerning this. Thanks again.

[KH]

I agree that the document comes up short in certain respects, but I think your criticisms lack substance. You seem to be grasping for a reason to discredit this document, when in the end your feelings may be only visceral.

In your first point you assume that evangelical boundary marking is inherently anti-Catholic. How would you describe boundary marking that attempts to distinguish evangelical Christianity from Mormonism without referencing the latter per se? I have a tough time seeing how that could be anti-Catholic in and of itself, so it seems that boundary marking is not inherently anti-Catholic. In order to support the claim that this particular instance of boundary marking is anti-Catholic, one would have to appeal to evidence from the document. I see no direct evidence in the document, and I think that researching the personal beliefs of the individual signatories does not necessarily reveal the overall pro/contra-Catholic sentiment of authors. The steering committee members come from widely different backgrounds, and more than likely embrace Catholicism to widely varying degrees. Who would we count as representative of the document as a whole?

I agree much more with your second point, but I also believe that you may have revealed a certain irony. One of the defining liturgical practices of the evangelicals is to proclaim what they believe. The contents of their beliefs may vary, but the practice of proclamation is widely held. I didn't think the doctrine proclaimed in this piece was much deeper than "mere" Christianity, so to me the document seemed to be aimed at "letting other people know what we believe" rather than defining what evangelicals had to believe in order to be evangelical.

Your third point has the most substance, but I still think you're projecting your own impressions onto the signatories' intentions. In my mind, the signatories were symbolically expressing the content of the EM. They were acting in a political arena under standard political procedures while at the same time asserting their essential theological identity (an activity which seems particularly inappropriate for the political arena). The activity suggests that Christian involvement in politics should always seem peculiarly inappropriate if one's theological identity is not being sacrificed for political maneuvering.

All that being said, I have my own worries. If Jim Wallis and the president of Liberty University both feel comfortable signing this document, one wonders if signing the document has any real-world value at all.

[James K.A. Smith]

Hmmmm, KH, I'm not sure what gets to count as "substantial" or "substantive," then. Perhaps you can offer an account of why you think I'm "grasping for a reason to discredit the document?" I'm not sure what that would be, except that--for reasons I've stated--I find the term "evangelical" both unhelpful and ambiguous, and tinged with an agenda that I find more and more disconcerting. Do you think there's something important about being "identified" as "Evangelical?"

As for my attribution of intentions, I think many people find the release, timing, and occasion at least unclear--i.e., what's the "hook" for this document? As for "acting in a political arena under standard political procedures," I'll leave that to the drafters and signatories to explain. I'm not sure what constitutes a "political arena" except in quite vague categories. I wonder whether the drafters and signers would construe it as a primarily "political" act as you seem to suggest here.

But perhaps this could all be clarified if you wanted to just explain what you like about it.

[Keith DeRose]

One dimension of my confusion over what an evangelical is: What, if anything, are the requirements for what positions one must take on abortion and gay marriage to be qualified as an evangelical? So that's one thing I was checking this manifesto for. A priori, I wouldn't have been all that surprised if the manifesto treated this as inessential to evangelicalism, in a "well, most evangelicals think ..., but having such views on these issues isn't essential to being an evangelical" vein. (So, though they'd be somewhat unusual evangelicals, mainstream democrats can be evangelicals.) But I also wasn't going to be surprised if they treated positions on these issues as part of what it is to be an evangelical. And I think the manifesto took the latter of these two options, but they're not very precise about just what's required. At least that's how I read the paragraph on pp. 13-14. They want evangelicals to start being concerned about other issues, too, but they seem to hold that certain positions on abortion and gay marriage are requirements in this part:

Although we cannot back away from our biblically rooted commitment to the sanctity of every human life, including those unborn, nor can we deny the holiness of marriage as instituted by God between one man and one woman, ...

But I wonder: What's enough of these fronts to make one eligible for evangelicality? On abortion, does one have to favor criminalization? If someone believes in the sanctity of human life, including the unborn, but has views about the proper role of government which, despite the sanctity of the lives taken by abortion, makes one oppose the criminalization of abortion, is one thereby disqualified from being an evangelical? To be an evangelical, must one oppose gay marriage? Civil unions? Must one oppose the granting to gay couples who would like to married any of the rights of married couples? Just what, even approximately, are the boundaries here?

I don't mean to be criticizing the manifesto for not being precise here. Maybe such precision would be a mistake in this particular document. But I am interested in understanding what, if anything, the requirements are on these fronts.

[Christian Collins Winn]

Jamie,

Great post. The document is clearly historically confused and thus theologically confused, and will therefore be politically/ethically confused.

It's all well and good to suggest that "Evangelicalism" ought to be defined theologically, but theology does not exist in some realm of disembodied thought. It holds in concrete historical manifestations, even if only imperfectly [One of the really glaring weaknesses in my mind is that there is zero ecclesiology in the document].

This means that getting a somewhat coherent historical narrative is pretty important, but this is exactly what the document muddles up. To say that "Evangelicals" hold to the historic creeds and "adhere fully" to the great affirmations of the Protestant Reformation is the height of confusion, given that one of the key roots of later evangelicalism is Pietism which in its heart is a revolt against the creeds and credalism of the later Reformation [not to mention the anti-confessional/anti-creedalism of Baptists and Anabaptists]. If we take seriously that a large portion of "evangelicals" are Arminian of some stripe or other (quite apart from whether one affirms such a view), then it is again a simple falsehood to say that such "evangelicals" "adhere fully" to the affirmations of the Protestant Reformation, given that those affirmations include such documents as the Westminster Confession, the Canons of Dort, etc, many of which represent the very "calvinism" that the Remonstrats protested against [never mind that one has to deal with the Lutheran confessions; and what does one do with the Schleitheim Confession?]. In addition, Wesley's preference for the Apostle's Creed over Nicea and Chalcedon would also seem to add a wrinkle in such a description given his place in any story of 19th century revivalism, not to mention the passage that you pointed out (e.g. that "Evangelicals are pre-Reformation"; how are we to make sense of such a claim? or the statement, "We do not claim that the 'Evangelcal principle' is unique to us"? Then why claim it as somehow unique? And why, if you are going to be "evangelical", would you quote figures like Richard of Chichester? At least give us something historically coherent to work with!).

One of the things that drives me crazy about such attempts to define or identify "evangelicalism" is that after they point out that many movements have been described by such a label, they simply gloss over the profound theological, ecclesiological, historical and political differences that those movements embodied and go on to just lump together such diverse historical phenomenon as the protestant reformation, 19th century revivalism, and post-fundamentalist neo-evangelicalism.

I guess my feeling after reading through this and trying to think about it in the light of the collapse that occurred after the Chicago Declaration of 1973, is that "Evangelical" as a term really cannot be understood theologically because it finally is a political-sociological identifier. That is, "evangelical" was the preferred term for a group of mostly reformed, post-fundamentalist intellectuals located in the northeast within mainline churches who wanted to create a series of ecclesial-political alliances to take back the mainline institutions. In other words, theologically, "evangelicalism" is either a fiction or at the very least, an essentially contested concept. One doesn't have to think very hard to realize that creating an ethic on such a shifting sand will not go very far.

[Samuel]

Dr. Smith,

I appreciate your thoughts here, but find your second point problematic. To call "modernist" a conception of faith that views doctrine as somehow prior to practice seem anachronistic and unfair. Scriptural exhortations and commands seem to almost invariably flow from affirmation of theological truth, particularly in the writings of Saint Paul, in which he frequently moves from a statement about something God has done (e.g. in Col. God's triumphing over our sins and Satanic forces) to a "therefore do such and such."

Depending on how one construes "privileging," then, it seems that it is perfectly valid, in one sense, to privilege doctrine or theological affirmations over practice. Practice flows from belief in and commitment to a view of the world as described by God and the acts of that same God in the world.

Those acts of God in the world must necessarily move us to live and act in certain ways in the world, but the idea that such action or practice could exist apart from our affirmations of theological truth seems difficult to reconcile with Scripture's own injunctions to act "because" certain things have happened and the world is the way God has described it. Moreover, besides the creeds themselves, in which the crucial issue was doctrine and its relation to Christian identity, John's First Epistle seems to also emphasize the deep connection between right belief and right practice.
I would not dispute the right God has given the world to critique Christians by their practice, but I view those practices as the necessary outcome of genuine faith in God's revelation.

In sum, perhaps it is true that other traditions define themselves by their practices, but I am confident that many Orthodox or Catholic believers would not be comfortable with someone who attempted to participate in the practices of the Church yet deny the reality which those practices symbolize and are grounded in.

But perhaps I am reflecting a naive perspective. Either way, I do not think it is accurate or fair to label such a view "modernist." Christians have been deeply concerned about doctrinal identity since the inception of Christianity, so such concern alone seems an insufficient basis for a pejorative label.

Cordially,

Samuel

[Samuel]

P.S.

As I should have made clear, the implicit thrust of my response was that one can indeed "see" Evangelicalism; one sees it in its missionary activities, its good works, its treatment of the poor and oppressed, etc. When one fails to see such fruit, one can legitimately accuse Evangelicals of denying the faith they profess (just as Saint Paul infers from a person's failure to take care of their family the fact that such a person has denied the faith).

Cordially,

Samuel

[James K.A. Smith]

I'm afraid I just disagree, Samuel, and I don't think my take is anachronistic--though I was perhaps a bit unclear and cryptic. My point--and indeed, I'm willing to venture this as a historical claim, too--is that _before_ we have doctrine, we have worship; before we have creeds, we have baptism; before we have theological propositions, we sing hymns. So practices don't "express" or "symbolize" or "translate" doctrine. Rather, I'm suggesting that directional arrow is exactly inverse: that before the church "knew" what it believed about the hypostatic union, she hymned his praise (Phil 2:5-11). Before the councils worked about the specifics of Trinitarian doctrine, believer's made baptismal professions which function on a different register. So I think historically that preaching, prayer, and worship preceded doctrinal formulation; and I also think that normatively speaking, we are the sorts of animals who pray before we know. (This assumes a whole of set of analyses about why I think prayer and propositional assertion are different modes of discourse, which I can't do within this space.)

My claim does not at all entail some kind of non-realist understanding of doctrine, either. It just qualifies, positions, and somewhat relativizes (in a good sense) doctrine vis-a-vis the lived practices of worship and discipleship. So my claim is not meant to be anti-doctrine, but it is anti-propositionalISM, or anti-doctrinalISM (though that sounds like a dumb way of putting it, I admit).

I actually think you're right that perhaps a top-heavy propositionalISM actually does constitute a widespread evangelical "practice" (3 didactic hymns + 55 minute lecture + 2 minute prayer of "application", all aimed at making disciples by giving them more information). But I think my concerns might still hold; I'll have to think further about that.

[Samuel]

Dr. Smith,

Thanks for your response.

I will end simply by noting that I didn't appeal so much to doctrinal formulations as to the logic of Scripture. I would probably agree with you about doctrinal formulations expressing what has already existed in liturgy and hymns (I believe Jaroslav Pelikan, among others, has made a point of noting this), but I don't see how that is an argument against what I noted about Scripture.

Thanks again for the original comments and interaction.

Cordially,

Samuel

[Ninja Clement]

James Smith wrote:

What that means, though, is that you can never really "see" evangelicalism, in a way. Or let me put it this way: such definitions define "Evangelical" by what evangelicals THINK and BELIEVE, rather than what they DO. That, I think, reflects just the sort of modernism that gives us evangelicalism (and fundamentalism) in the first place. In contrast, what defines Orthodoxy or Catholicism is liturgy, the practices of the faith."

I recently crossed the Tiber, in part because I realized that the Church is an extension of the Incarnation. If our Lord was visible to humanity during his ministry, then it follows that His Body, the Church, ought to be visible too. Such visibility is not expressed only by our liturgy, though. What makes Catholicism ultimatel visible is its centripetal pull. One can literally see the centre of Catholicism - the Holy See (no pun intended). The same cannot be said of evangelicalism.

I raise the matter of authority for I have found that the post-evangelical/Emerging Church critique of modernist evangelicalism only gets half the picture right when it looks to Catholicism (I know less about Orthodoxy) for examples of good theory and practice. Correct doctrine is, in fact, very much definitive of what it means to be Catholic. As we know, the Catholic Church regards herself as having the authority to pass judgments that bind the faithful. Thus, as a Catholic, I am not at all free to choose whether or not I can believe in the existence of purgatory, the intercession of the saints, the Assumption and the Immaculate Conception, and the other doctrinal points that set us apart from other Christian bodies. My acceptance of these dogmas is a necessary condition for full communion with the Bishop of Rome, period. Right belief always goes hand in hand with right liturgy. This is why, for example, a communion celebrated by ministers not under the authority of the Holy See is never valid for a Catholic. For they do not believe as we believe.

[KH]

In response to your comment, it's not that I am particularly thrilled with this document. I have plenty of issues with evangelicals, but I'm willing to take this document on its own terms. By lack of "substance" I mean your reasons for discrediting the document didn't seem to address the EM and what it set out to accomplish, but rather rehashed criticisms of evangelicals qua evangelicals. Granted you aren't sure what the "hook" is, but couldn't you at least assume on the basis of charity that decent intentions were behind the release of the document at this point in time? Your critique seemed akin to an anti-Catholic fundamentalist unwilling to praise the work of Vatican II because of a disdain for Catholicism in general. In my mind, there's more reason to praise the document for what it hopes to accomplish than to tear it apart for every little historical and theological misconception. Sure, it's an easy target and good fodder for blogging, but have some charity for Christ's sake.

[geoff holsclaw]

if i may skip from this conversation back to a previous point which is less about the identity politics of 'Evangelicals" and more about politics and privatization. We've gone round and round here over the last two years on what constitutes politics, the politicalization of the faith, and such matters...so we don't have to do that again.

but my problem was their stance against a
"two-tier global public square. This is a model of public life which reserves the top tier for cosmopolitan secular liberals, and the lower tier for local religious believers. Such an arrangement would be patronizing as well as severely restricting religious liberty and justice."

I recently attended a panel on "evangelical political theory" where the theme was really the "lack" of an evangelical political theory, and the above statement seems a perfect example. This makes for a nice assertion, but where is the support? The document makes an appeal to 'right', but does not turn toward the state for the protection of rights (too political) nor to natural law theory (too Catholic). But it certainly seems to underwrite a liberalism which has created the two-tiered system (if that is a good way to characterize it, which I don't think it is). It sounds like they are trying to be neither too politicized nor too sectarian, but end up sounding like good American Liberals (i.e. faithful to Locke)

See also their distinction between a 'civil public square' rather than a 'naked secular square' or a 'sacred public square.' Great rhetoric, but might not the liberal form of the State (and its retelling of the myth of religious violence) be the mechanism by which the sacred/naked distinction occurs, always in the favor of the naked square?

[James K.A. Smith]

Sorry to just catch up on some comments here, but let me respond in turn:

Ad Samuel: Yes, you emphasized Scripture, but it felt to me that you did so in a way that construed Scripture as if it were a sort of theological textbook, or what Charles Hodge (disastrously) described as a "storehouse of facts." I think appeals to Scripture are not just prima facie appeals to the priority of doctrinal formulations. It depends on how we think about the very nature of "Scripture" (we would do well to go way back to David Kelsey's earlier work on this). My point would be two-fold (well, maybe three-fold):

First, we'd need to think about what sort of "speech act" Scripture is. I'm not convinced that we should first of all think of Scripture as primarily an assertorial or propositional sort of phenomenon (please, please note the qualifier "primarily" just in case you're wont to think that this claim means that I think Scripture doesn't make truth claims!).

Second, we'd need to think carefully about the relationship between Scripture and worship. I'm a bit beyond my historical expertise here, but I think we do well to see Scripture as first and foremost the script of a worshiping community, not the textbook or manual of a thinking community.

Third, as I've pointed out on this site before (in noting Craig Allert's book on the canon), the Church's practice precedes the formation of Scripture as canon. So in some important sense, the church's practices are pre-Scriptural (it's much more complicated than that, of course, but you get the idea). I've always thought this is nicely embodied, on a microcosmic level, in Paul's adoption of an early hymn in Phil. 2:5-11, which is then taken up in his letter sent to a community seeking to live as faithful disciples of the risen Lord, which is then in turn taken up into a "canon" of Scripture a couple centuries later, which is then taken up in doctrinal formulations of creeds and councils.

Ad Ninja: First, I should clarify that I don't see myself as "Emergent" or "emerging" (though some of my best friends are!, as the joke goes). And I think your concern about eclectic selection from the tradition is a good one; indeed, I've suggested the same in my _Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?_ But that said, I'm not convinced that being "Catholic" requires being Roman Catholic (though I confess to real struggles along these lines), or even that being Roman Catholic requires being Roman Catholic in the way that you suggest--though I find it a common articulation of evangelical converts to Rome. Suffice it to say that these matters are very complicated, and I'm not at all comfortable as a Protestant, but neither am I (yet) willing to cross the Tiber, nor do I feel absolutely compelled that I have to. And even if I did, I'm afraid I'd never be a "good" Roman Catholic of the sort you suggest here. If Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh can be Roman Catholic, then perhaps there's hope for many who don't quite share your enthusiasm.

Ad KH: Well, I fear we're talking past each other a bit. I think if you read my comments again, you'll find a number of affirmations of what the documents says and what it's trying to accomplish. It was not the wholesale dismissal that you suggest.

[paul miller]

oops, I sent my last post too early and unfinished. As I was saying, while appreciating your hesitations about American Evangelicals claiming 2/3 world Pentecostal-charismatic advances as their own, as one who has worked muchly with these 2/3 world charismatic (and non-) Christians and is now working with Evangelical (charismatic and non-) who are working cooperatively with Catholics in European, Catholic cultures, I see that there is indeed a real commonality uniting the Evangelical and charismatic/Pentecostal. Both stress, as it is put, "convertive piety" which sets them apart from many a liturgical sort of Christianity and from, indeed, many of the modern expressions of the Reformation denominations, so that when it comes to their relating to Catholics, they are actually one group, a oneness, in this arena, I would hate to separate by a fruitless emphasis on the distinction between Evangelicals and Charismatics. Yes, for certain purposes, making the distincion is relevant; but at other times not. The question, of course, is whether in examing the world scene and the growth of global Christianity this distinction is helpful. I think, in fact, the Evangelical "convertive piety" aspect of global Christianity is a very important element both to its growth and identity, though it is also true that the additional charismatic element is also an important element to its growth and identity.
Paul Miller

[-kp-]

I was about to post this on the first post of yours on the subject, but you've basically made the point here in #3. Regarding how your #5 (in the first post) might be directly related to your #6 (ditto), consider RJNeuhaus' interpretation: "I have no doubt that some who signed the statement simply wanted to affirm the important truth that evangelical Christianity is defined by the lordship of Christ and not by political partisanship. Issuing what is inevitably perceived as a politically partisan manifesto is an ill-chosen means for achieving that purpose. Only the naive or disingenuous among the signers will express surprise that the media depicted the manifesto as an election-year effort to drive a wedge between conservatives and what is portrayed as a more authentic evangelicalism. Whatever the good intentions of some signers, the reporters got the story right."