Christopher Lasch Lives On

I have an affinity for hard-to-label figures in American history. I have written in the past about one of those figures, George Kennan. I am grateful for a wonderful reminder from American Conservative (AC) about another of my favorites, Christopher Lasch. Rather than watching any of the two party conventions, we should all spend some time reading Lasch and awakening a true populism in our nation. This essay is a great place to start. What Lasch does above all is show how many of the cultural maladies that conservatives rightly critique have their roots in a type of capitalism that levels traditions and the institutions that inculcate them. Here is a quote from the AC essay that gets at this aspect of Lasch nicely:

Lasch distinguishes his critique from that of conservatives, whom he faults for refusing to connect the social and personality changes described by Lasch with “the rise of monopoly capitalism.” To Lasch, therapeutic and consumer culture are intrinsically—and historically—related via their connection to the rise of corporate capitalism. “The same historical development that turned the citizen into a client transformed the worker from a producer into a consumer.” To struggle against the narcissistic dependence associated with the new therapeutic bureaucracy would mean to resist also the dependence created by corporate capitalism. Lasch therefore concluded his book by exhorting his readers to look to the “traditions of localism, self-help, and community action”—in other words, to resist the forces of narcissism by seeking “to create their own ‘communities of competence.’”

Responding to Hirsch & Catchim: Did I miss the point?

My essay in Books and Culture has resulted in a number of letters to the editor of the publication, two of which have been published and are now up online here. At that same link I have a 500-word response with particular attention being given to Alan Hirsch and Tim Catchim’s (from here on, “H & C”) lengthy letter. In my response I mention that I will be responding further at my blog to these three specific charges made against my essay by H & C:

1) They claim my article “engages in an injurious attempt of guilt by association” with respect to the New Apostolic Reformation.

2) They assert that I demonstrated “scholastic obfuscation” and “completely” miss “the point of their book” in order to defend “an outworn status quo” and ignore “the distinctively missional significance of our material”.

3) They label me a “reactionary” meaning someone who “opposes political or social liberalization or reform.”

I have responded to point #3 here, and in this post I will respond to point #2.

H & C worked very hard on The Permanent Revolution and it is a text brimming with ideas and interpretations on a variety of topics making it understandable that they would be frustrated by the choices a reviewer makes. Any essay engaging with their book is going to be incomplete and choices for focus are always debatable. But H & C claim that my choices are uniquely unfair because they miss the real point of their book and are a reflection of my predilection for defense of the “status quo.”

MISSIONAL FOCUS

H & C believe that I ignore “the distinctively missional significance” of their book, but anyone who reads the essay can see that I frame the entire essay around the missional movement and how significant it would be if the movement were to adopt H & C’s ecclesiological proposal. Here are the first three paragraphs of the essay:

The ecclesiological challenges facing the church in the West are the subject of intense debate across confessional and denominational lines. In what sense is there a crisis of church identity and leadership? What are the roots of the crisis? How do categories like "postmodern" and "post-Christian" affect Christian mission in the West? These are the kinds of questions being addressed in a steady stream of books and conferences. The missional church movement has made a major contribution to this discussion through leaders like Timothy Keller and scholars like Christopher Wright. In one of his reflections on the missional movement, Keller identified five key elements of the missional movement. One of these elements is to "practice Christian unity as much as possible on the local level."[1] This instinct for what John H. Armstrong has called "missional-ecumenism"[2] is part of what has made the missional movement such a strong influence on the church catholic—to be "missional" has meant, in part, to "not spend our time bashing and criticizing other kinds of churches," as Keller puts it. To put it another way, the missional movement has seen itself working within a number of ecclesiological contexts and helping to transform, not overturn, denominational structures. That is why missional organizations such as the Gospel and Our Culture Network[3] draw on membership from a wide range of Christian traditions—Catholic, Orthodox, Anabaptist, Mainline Protestant, Pentecostal, emergent, independent evangelical, and so on.

The humble ecclesiology of the missional movement is fitting given the ecclesial career of the man widely considered the father of the movement, Lesslie Newbigin. Newbigin served in a leadership capacity in a number of Protestant denominations and was a key figure in ecumenical organizations, including the World Council of Churches, which he served for a time as Associate General Secretary. Of course, Newbigin was not a "progressive" churchman in the sense evangelicals typically associate with the World Council of Churches, but he was a man steeped in the Great Tradition of the church, deeply conversant with it and profoundly respectful of those church bodies that were birthed by classical orthodox Christianity. Newbigin's profound critique of what are often called "Christendom models of ministry" was tempered by his respect for the ecclesial offices and structures of the historic Christian bodies.

Given the historically ecumenical character of the missional movement and the humble ecclesiological claims of its leading thinkers, it is surprising to see a number of missional leaders being drawn to the radical ecclesiology of Alan Hirsch. The center point of his proposal is the notion, increasingly popular in "third wave"[4] charismatic circles, that the five roles mentioned by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 4—"apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers (APEST)"—are all meant for the church in all places and times.

While it is true from these paragraphs, as well as the review as a whole, that I would think it would be a mistake for the missional movement to adopt H & C’s vision of and justification for 5-fold practice, I certainly do not miss the significance of their proposal for the missional movement.

THE POINT OF THEIR BOOK

On pages 4-5 of their book, H & C say something that I think well sums up the reason I focused my review the way that I did. Here is their words:

It stands to reason that to mess with the DNA of the church (that is, its original design and function) means to seriously damage our capacity to actually be ecclesia. In fact, this is exactly how all genetic mutations occur. If we believe that the New Testament codes are authoritative and function in the same way genetics does in biological systems, then we must be sure to align with those codes. We believe that the church’s lack of adherence to the teaching of Ephesians 4 is a clear case of how we have altered the genetic codes and paid the price. It is to time to correct this egregious flaw in our ecclesiology…

In presenting Ephesians 4:1-16, we are tempted to say that it is one of those rare things—a silver bullet: a simple, guaranteed solution for a difficult problem. Of course we do not believe that, but over time we have come to think that it is almost a silver bullet. We believe that a full appreciation and application of Ephesians 4 typology will unleash enormous energies that will awaken now-dormant potentials in the church that Jesus built.

It is in response to these extraordinarily strong claims that I spent the time in the review addressing the exegetical, historical and contemporary questions raised by their book’s explanation of and defense of the above paragraphs. What H & C view as “scholastic obfuscation” I see as analysis and reflection worthy of the serious claims they are making for their understandings of Scripture, Church history and contemporary trends. The questions is, “was my analysis correct” not “does it somehow or other ‘defend an outworn status quo’”? On that score, their letter indicates that they have nothing to say in response to my essay.

McKnight's "Jesus Creed" on Hirsch/5-fold

Scot McKnight’s influential blog, Jesus Creed, is up with a review of an earlier Alan Hirsch book The Forgotten Ways that, like his book The Permanent Revolution, deals in part with 5-fold ministry. The review, by John Frye, is somewhat disappointing to me because having read and reviewed Hirsch’s Permanent Revolution I was hoping to see Frye interact with it. Nonetheless, it is a helpful post and it raises some of the same questions I have attempted to raise in my piece for Books & Culture. Here is a key quote from Frye:

Because there is no one “pure” early church or historical template on how to do church at the pastoral leadership level, I have no problem with those who want to learn about and implement the five-fold ministry model. I cannot say that there is anything wrong with it. Hirsch offers very stimulating and pragmatic ideas around APEPT. Yet, I do push back on that model or any other model that allegedly trumps or replaces the traditional view of pastor.

I believe that Frye will find that in The Permanent Revolution Hirsch again “offers very stimulating and pragmatic ideas” but he also goes much further in putting forward the idea  that the APEPT model “trumps or replaces the traditional view.”

Responding to Hirsch and Catchim: Am I a "reactionary"?

My essay in Books and Culture reviewing the book The Permanent Revolution has resulted in a number of letters to the editor of the publication, two of which have been published and are now up online here. At that same link I have a 500-word response with particular attention being given to Alan Hirsch and Tim Catchim’s (from here on, “H & C”) lengthy letter. In my response I mention that I will be responding further at my blog to these three specific charges made against my essay by H & C:

1) They claim my article “engages in an injurious attempt of guilt by association” with respect to the New Apostolic Reformation.

2) They assert that I demonstrated “scholastic obfuscation” and “completely” miss “the point of their book” in order to defend “an outworn status quo” and ignore “the distinctively missional significance of our material”.

3) They label me a “reactionary” meaning someone who “opposes political or social liberalization or reform.”

In this post I will respond to point #3. It is interesting to me that the definition H & C chose for “reactionary” focuses on opposition to “political or social” reform. Here is the relevant part of the letter in full, with emphasis in their original:

It is reactionary and close-minded: “Reactionary” is defined as a person, organization, or ideology that opposes political or social liberalization or reform. This article is predictably traditionalist and takes a stand for the status quo, whereas we are calling readers to reassess the viability of the inherited ecclesiology in light of Scripture as well as the challenges presented by the 21st century.

I want to take up the suggestion that the views expressed in the essay somehow indicate opposition to “political or social liberalization or reform.” This seems to me to be a case of reducing biblical and theological discourse to the norms of political and social debate. I fail to see how my disagreements with H & C’s biblical exegesis, patristic interpretations, historical conclusions and contemporary church assessments in anyway prejudges my political or social views. In fact, I have absolutely no idea what political or social applications H & C make from their five-fold ecclesiology and I don’t know how they would discern mine from how I assess their five-fold defense. Furthermore, if H & C have spent the time at my website indicated by their judgment of it as “crusading” how could they fail to pick up on my explicitly anti-reactionary political views? Which one of these posts on healthcare, drone warfare, Muslim rights, or African-American Church history indicates opposition to liberalization or reform? In terms of theology or biblical interpretation, I don’t know myself where I fit on a reactionary/reform grid these days given my status as some sort of blend of a Commonweal Catholic/emergent evangelical/missional-ecumenist. What I think has happened is that my appreciation for solid reasoning, my hesitance to dismiss the consensus of Christian Tradition and my aversion to conspiracy-based critiques of people’s motivations has been confused with reactionary theological conservatism and mindless obedience to ecclesial norms which would then somehow indicate political and social retrenchment. I think it would have made more sense for H & C to just respond to the specific criticisms of their book.