Hey folks...long time no post, I know. I think we will try to be better about that starting this summer. yes, I've probably said that before.
Anyway, here is a link promoting John Piper's Desiring God conference this year. The emphasis is on how right thinking is very important to the Christian life. I agree with one point in the video, that American evangelicalism in the 20th century was sometimes characterized by anti-intellectualism. Its understandable in some ways because the intellectual community by and large have attacked Chrsitiantiy in the last couple of centuries. However, we cannot cede the fruits of disciplined thought and study over to the skeptics and atheists...and we as individuals cannot neglect to feed out intellects as well as our souls.
So this is a challenge...LET'S NOT BE LAZY INTELLECTUALLY! Let us worship God with our minds as well. It's much easier just to react to events and ideas with pre-supposed opnions on everything. Its much more difficult to challenge our own thinking, and to let revelation (the scriptures) challenge how we think. But we don't do this detached from faithful prayer and devotion. Thinking should be an act of worship...not something exercised apart from faith.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Worshipping with Our Minds
Posted by HomeBuilding Team at 12:17 PM
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3 comments:
Haven't watched the video yet, and am basing my comments more or less upon a perspective presented in the text. That perspective acknowledged anti-intellectualism of the the 20th century evangelical movement.
That perspective also suggested some of that anti-intellectualism is understandably in light of the anti-faith stances and argumentative attitudes of Academia - at least this is how it came across to me as a reader (and therein may be the big disconnect and problem: me as the reader).
I would like to repaint the picture, as it were. Now, knowing my medium is the blog, and my reader's attention span is relative to that medium, i likely will end up making broad claims that need un-couching in follow-up comments - lest this be a tome to long for folks to want to even sift through, let alone enjoy.
The Christian faith has always been intellectual, and pro-intellectual. From the Catholic church through the middle ages (Augustine through Aquinas, Boethius, Ockham, Anselm, ect.).
The Catholic leadership often subjegated its intelligensia (confining figures to house arrest or even torture and persecution, notably Galileo (not a believer)).
At a point loosely associated with the Renaissance passionate theists (at least deists, likely theists), were responding to the anti-rational persecution, and also passionately wanting to answer the ascendantly dominant Skeptics from that point of rational-backlash.
This effectively turned to answering Skeptics from a place of Reason alone - a move first made, and made most profoundly in Descartes, who was seeking to make a rationally unassailable argument for the existence of God (and not to put himself and his humanism in the center, as Christians of the 20th century have suggested) .
Many Christians thinkers resigned themselves to playing the game set before them - that is, using Reason to answer the Skeptics, in one form of another. But this was still a game that had that its genesis in a passion for Rationality, and Rationality birthed from reaction to anti-Rational persecution of the intellectual. This set Academia at odds with the Church (the Church which was frequently at odds with its own faith, as well as its newly found nemesis in Academia and intellectuals. Doubt this? Well what need was there for Luther and then for Calvin and then Wesley, on and on, and now the Emerging Church?)
The bifurcation of the intellect from worship was as much a result of the church's anti-rationality and anti-intellectualism as it was a response to anti-faith rhetoric. Can you say, "Hatfield and McCoys"?
With the advent of the 20th century and the two great wars, you have the ascendancy of Existentialism and Pragmatism and eventually Post Modernity to full force.
The anti-intellectualism and cultural stagnation within the church, driving it more and more insular, and seeming to grasp at the semblance of the baby boomer heyday (rife with consumerism and materialism) provided nothing for those intellectuals desperate for some answer to both their intellect and the prevailing sentiments of meaninglessness and relativism.
Yes, let me make this claim boldly: the evangelical church is anti-intellectual to a fault, as exclusive as Peter and the Jews were before Paul rebuked them.
Now the anti-rational Post Modern Emerging Church, and the Emergent Church both spring in reaction to that evangelical tradition, but also a-historically without appreciation or connection to the "original Christian intellectuals" of Augustine's ilk. Had those of his times not been persecuted by an anti-intellectual church, the attitudes of this Post Modern church to its predecessor in the "Modernity Church" may be less anti-rational.
Thanks, Rastus, for posting!
Pardon while I catch up to you to respond!
I'll give you my high level (and incomplete) understanding of the major movements that led to 20th century anti-intellectual movement in the US.
I'm sure there have always co-existed intellectual and anti-intellectual tendencies within the Church to one degree or another.
When theologians shortly after the Reformation began to appeal primarily to reason for their apologies, defenses, and theology it paved the way for liberal theology (scripture and orthodox theology couldn't be justified with reason as the ultimate judge).
These movements, liberal theology and the Enlightenment with its ultimate authority in reason, almost destoryed Christianity in Western Europe altogether.
In the States, Christianity continued to thrive through the Great Awakenings and missionary movements despite what was happnening in Europe. However, the effects of the Enlightenment eventually made their way into the States via academia and the intellegentia.
as serious challenges (like the new Darwinism) to conservative theology began to surface more and more, and stalwarts of Protestant institutions like Princeton and Yale fell to the liberals. Conservative Protestants began to retreat into fundamentalism, which for many threw the baby out with the bathwater...by that I mean a deep distrust of intellectualism and academia also led to an abandonment of intellectual pursits and integrity as well.
Protestantism has a storng historical legacy of intellectuals, but the events of 19th century in the States led many of those who held to the core ideals of Christianity to abandon the culture and intellectual engagement...and this is what I'm saying we need to reverse in the post.
Now, If I undertand you correctly, you are saying that the rationalist deists and atheists initially became so around the Renaissance due to the anti-rationalist behaviors of the Catholic church.
I think th ebig point I'm coming to is this:
1. We should avoid appealing to reason as the ultimate authority...because it isn't and doing so destroys faith.
2. But we should embrace reason as it was purposed...as a tool, not as an ultimate authority...and engage our faith and culture with it.
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