Archive for the 'Theology' Category

Published by Philip Clayton on 14 Mar 2010

SHOULD the church adapt to a post-Google world?

As the big “Theology After Google” event closes down, it finally strikes me: this major conference wasn’t really about Google. In one sense, it wasn’t even about technology. At a deeper level, it was about two questions: should the church adapt to the rapidly changing world around us? And, if so, what precisely should we do?

Should the church adapt? Well, imagine the alternative. Indeed, there’s an easy way to see it up close and personal: just go to the websites of the critics of the Theology After Google (TAG) conference. Ken Silva called the TAG conference a “heresy fest” and, later, “nothing more than a warped and toxic twisting of the actual Christian faith.” You — each of you, each reader — has to decide for himself or herself. I encourage you to go to Ken’s blog and read it with an open mind. In the same vein, I’d encourage you to watch the professors at Southern Baptist Theology Seminary tear apart Brian McLaren’s newest book, A New Kind of Christianity, in a panel discussion. Decide for yourself whether adapting to the world (and the people!) around us amounts to selling Christianity down the river.

You may agree with Ken and the irrate professors. Or you may even think that our TransformingTheology project — the call for the church to adapt to an emerging world and emerging technologies — is even worse than Ken thinks. Perhaps the TAG conference, and the present writer, should be put on his sidebar of dangerous leaders, alongside Rick Warren (and, if you follow the links on Rick, alongside “radical Roman Catholic apostates such as Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the militantly pro-Roman Catholic Church spiritual Gestapo Unit known as the Jesuits”).

On the other hand, you may endorse the motif that ran through every speaker and every workshop at the Theology After Google event: we best follow Jesus by attempting to be Christ-like to the people around us … by attempting to meet them where they are. Using new technologies, and thinking in new ways about our faith are part of that. The central Christian questions and concerns are still our concerns, but the answers can be affected by the new things we’re learning and the new conversations we’re having.

It really is a choice. Ken Silva and the Southern Baptist seminary professors really do embody a different attitude toward the world “after Google” than we do. Which way will you choose?

Religion, Theology

Published by Philip Clayton on 26 Jan 2010

Theology After Google Event in March

I’m excited to announce an important upcoming conference and to invite you to participate. On March 10-12th, Claremont will be home to a cutting-edge national meeting entitled, “Theology After Google.” The age of the internet, texting, and social networking has turned human existence upside down and raised questions about what human community is. This conference will identify what it means to live in this new “Google age” and how religion is changing as a result.

I very much hope that you’ll want to attend and would be honored to have you present.

Even if you’re unable to come, we still very much need your helping in getting the word out in all the ways open to you — whether that means reposting this message on your own outlets, blogging and twittering about it, announcing it in your churches or classes, and encouraging your pastor and congregation to bring a whole group (at the discounted rate, of course). You’ll find lots more information by clicking on the image above or going directly to TransformingTheology.org.

Thanks very much for spreading the word!

Events, Religion, Theology

Published by Philip Clayton on 04 Jun 2009

Denominational Leaders Meet at Claremont

Last week (May 27-29) leaders from across the denominations assembled at the Claremont School of Theology for a meeting on “Rekindling Theological Imagination,” the second in the series of TRANSFORMING THEOLOGY meetings that we are organizing.  You can find more information on the meeting, and the project as a whole, at TransformingTheology.org.

For a start, I attach below a list of the participants.  I will be blogging on both sites about the meeting over the coming weeks, and a variety of video materials from the conferences will be posted on the TT site.  The meetings with theologians and denominational leaders have also inspired a new book, TRANSFORMING THEOLOGY, which I will publish with Fortress in September, 2009.

– Philip Clayton

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Participants,

Transforming Theology, Conference #2, May 27-29, 2009

 

•  *Peg Chemberlin, President-Elect, National Council of Churches,

• * Michael Kinnamon, General Secretary, National Council of Churches

• * Phyllis Tickle, Senior Fellow of Cathedral College of the Washington National Cathedral and Founding editor of the Religion Department of Publishers Weekly

• * Dennis C. Dickerson, the James M. Lawson, Jr., Professor of History at Vanderbilt University (last-minute cancel)

 

ALLIANCE OF BAPTISTS

Chris Copeland, Minister for Leadership Formation

 

AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH

Daryl B. Ingram, Secretary-Treasurer of Christian Education

 

AMERICAN BAPTIST

Mary Hulst, President

 

CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN THE US (Disciples)

Sharon Watkins, General Minister and President

 

CHRISTIAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH

Thomas L. Hoyt, Bishop

 

EPISCOPAL CHURCH

C. K. Robertson, Canon to the Presiding Bishop and Primate

Thomas Ferguson, Office of Ecumenical and Inter-Faith Relations,

 

EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH OF AMERICA

Marcus Kunz, Executive for Discernment of Contextual & Theological Issues

 

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH (USA)

Lee Hinson-Hasty, Coordinator for Theological Education and Seminary Relations

Charles Wiley, Coordinator, Office of Theology and Worship

 

UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST ASSOCIATION

Beth Miller, Director of Ministry and Professional Leadership Staff Group

 

UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST

John Thomas, President and General Minister

 

UNITED METHODIST CHURCH

Gregory Vaughn Palmer, President of the Council of Bishops

Mary Ann Swenson, Bishop of the California-Pacific Annual Conference

Grant Hagiya, Bishop of the Pacific-Northwest Annual Conference

Jerome King del Pino, General Secretary of the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry

Mary Ann Moman, Associate General Secretary of the Division of Ordained Ministry

Religion, Theology, Uncategorized

Published by Philip Clayton on 03 Jun 2009

What challenges does the church face today?

Last week thirty denominational leaders met at Claremont School of Theology for the second major meeting in the “Transforming Theology” series (see here for details).  There will be various posts arising out of this fascinating meeting — stay tuned to this link for updates.

 

One thing the denominational leaders did agree on:  “mainline” churches have undergone a steady decline in membership for several decades, and the situation has now become critical for many of the mainline denominations.  (The situation in evangelical churches is different; I will address it in a separate post.) Huge numbers of congregations are now fighting for their survival, and many will close.  Some experts predict that as many as two-thirds of the mainline congregations that exist today will close their doors over the coming two decades.

 

Why?  What in the American situation has changed so radically that once prosperous churches and denominations would now be struggling in this way?  Of the many causes, nine in particular strike me as especially important.  (The first two points were suggested by my colleague and frequent co-author Steven Knapp, and I have quoted his words):

 

 

(1) “People no longer believe that church attendance is socially necessary, that is, necessary for the social health and perhaps even the economic survival of individuals and their family, either because churches provide the only context for social interaction or because they are necessary to the relationships on which careers and businesses depend.”

 

(2) “People no longer believe that church attendance provides the only or the most important means of establishing and maintaining a sufficiently strong connection with God, however such a connection is specifically understood (for example, in terms of salvation, spiritual health, a life of meaning, etc.).”

 

(3) Many of the institutions that once lay at the center of our society are equally endangered (Boy Scouts, Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West, Kiwanas, Masonic groups, etc.).  As a society, we generally don’t join institutions anymore; instead, we stay with family and friends, use electronic entertainment, shop, or go online.  For how many people today is church coffee hour the social highlight of their week?  Many people prefer to watch reality TV in order to see humans “as they really are.”

 

(4) The classic modes of church teaching — reciting language together and listening to a man talk for twenty minutes — are no longer effective modes of communication for Americans.  (Classroom teachers today show videos, or at least PowerPoint.)  For many, hymn-writing and hymn-singing no longer have the force they once did.

 

(5) The traditional church was a family unit.  It included not only mom and dad and the three (six?) kids, but also the grandparents, aunts and uncles, etc.  By contrast, today there are fissures even in the nuclear family.  No longer centered on multi-generational family units, mainline churches struggle to retain their members.

 

(6) Most of us do not live in one place long enough to put down real roots.  When three generations of your family were hatched, matched, and dispatched in your local church, that was a pretty strong magnet to keep you involved.  Now families may move seven times or more before the kids leave for college.

 

(7) Our communities are not only continually in flux but massively diverse in their beliefs, values, and social identities.  Church communities in the U.S. used to be highly homogenous; difference was dealt with by having a huge number of churches.  With fewer churches left, there will now be a greater variety of income, class, education, ethical conviction and political belief in a single congregation.  That makes people uncomfortable, and they are voting with their feet.

 

(8) Pastors today are generally not viewed as moral authorities in their communities, and theologians do not speak for and to the nation.  Paul Tillich’s Courage to Be was a bestseller, and Reinhold Niebuhr was on the cover of Newsweek.  Walter Rauschenbusch’s Christianity and the Social Crisis was a national bestseller for three years beginning in 1907.  Church leaders and theologians no longer play that prophetic role in today’s world.

 

(9) We are no longer blending powerful theologies with transformative ministries in the world.  Churches and denominations that are actively involved in “social justice ministries” are often unable to give a theological rationale for their actions that people find moving and compelling.  By contrast, the theologies that move people tend to be more privatistic, focusing more on individual salvation and individual religious experience, or more concerned with separating the church from the world and defending the superiority of Christian belief over its competitors.

 

In short, the beliefs and institutions that once motivated church attendance and involvement are now under attack, and many are crumbling.  Effective answers to the current situation will require us either to revivify the older beliefs and institutions or to invent radically new forms of Christian community.

 

More on this soon…

Religion, Theology

Published by Philip Clayton on 04 Apr 2009

Old Religious Walls Are Coming Down

Today one is finding a greater openness to a “big tent Christianity” than Americans have seen for some decades now. Some mainline church congregations are closing as memberships shrink below the sustainable level. But others are growing and vibrant; they are finding ways that Christianity can speak to contemporary needs and concerns.

A similar spirit of “pragmatic idealism,” as USA Today recently described it, is growing in many wings of the evangelical church. People are willing to form broader coalitions and partnerships not controlled by theological agendas.

Of course, theology is by no means irrelevant in recent evangelical activism in areas such as global warming, biodiversity, and peace initiatives. These evangelical leaders can give powerful theological reasons for their activism — indeed, in ways that I think are models for the mainline. What is exciting, though, is that the mission statements and rationales are not narrowly focused. No “us vs. them” mentality motivates the calls to action. Rather, the appeals are to core features of Jesus’ life and teaching, and to passages such as Matthew 25, which resonate powerfully across the entire spectrum from evangelical to the more liberal reaches of the mainline.

Could it be that we are seeing the rebirth of powerful theological justifications for progressive Christian involvement in the world?

I explore some of these ideas in a short video at: http://www.cgu.edu/pages/4546.asp?item=2807

Theology

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