Are Evangelicals Anti-intellectual? A Response to Tom Airey (Part 1 of 3)

Steven Wall and Randy Smart

    Are Evangelicals anti-intellectual?  Are we, as Tom Airey of California recently claimed, overly susceptible to cult-hero-worship?   Are we naïve thinkers content to follow the path of least resistance in a struggle to maintain backwards, redneck theologies and opinions?

    Both raised in traditional evangelical Mennonite (EMB), or Brüderthaler, communities and churches, Rev. Randy Smart, currently of Winkler, Manitoba, and I, originally of Lustre, Montana, hardly know where to begin in answer to Airey’s very simplified world of clean cut definitions and judgments.  Clearly, Airey finds little of value within the Mennonite Evangelical tradition.

    To review, Airey criticizes Evangelicals for being:  suburban, white, anti-big government, anti-crime, anti-gay, anti-abortion, etc., etc.  He quotes Cornel West that evangelical conservatism is a back-lash against Civil Rights and Dr. King.  Seemingly, Airey, a “post-evangelical church leader,” or Emergent, has it all figured out.

    Smart and I had difficulty determining whether to address the simple historical inaccuracy of Airey’s perspective or to focus on his charges of cult-hero worship, naïve thinking, and anti-intellectualism by indicating how current practice does not easily conform to Airey’s convenient definitions against Evangelicalism.

Burning Passions in Southern Africa

May we be willing reapers of the Word, not Sowers only!

(c) Matthew Wettlaufer, The Murder of Matthew Shepherd*

    Sometimes readers’ responses can take you a little bit by surprise.  In that potential readers have been fairly warned that these essays are exercises in free-style thinking rather than stated opinions, I find it pretty easy to not take things too personally, but once in a while a negative reaction forces you to delve a bit deeper in to a topic.  Such is the case with a short paragraph written on Ludovic-Mohamed Zaheb’s intention to found a gay and feminist-friendly mosque in Paris, France ( see:  French Mosques for Women and Gays? ).

    The phrase, or I will admit, paragraph in question is as follows:

Not that we can be too hard on them.  News coverage also indicates numerous Anglo-American Fundamentalist leaders stumbling over the question of whether or not practicing gays should face the Biblical death penalty – a situation American-backed “Christian” conservatives in Uganda seem too close to implanting.  (Try placing that one in the Minnesota constitution!)

    'Them' referring to violent anti-gay Islamic Fundamentalists in Europe and North Africa.  

    The point of contention being whether or not anti-gay, often border-line hate legislation in some of Africa’s more volatile nations is being generated and funded by Fundamentalist anti-gay Christian groups out of the United States.  In this case, the clear answer is yes – in fact, many of the more extreme anti-gay Evangelical groups in the United States openly brag about their activities in Africa on their websites.

Quaker Anabaptists?

American Quaker William Penn

    I was a bit startled a couple of weeks ago to read an essay about Evangelical Christianity’s “more progressive and more contemplative Anabaptist cousin, Quakerism.”  Stranger still, the author of the article was not only Quaker but a graduate of George Fox, a leading Quaker university.

    First the Southern Baptists are now Anabaptists and now the Quakers are coming home?  What’s going on here?  What’s next? – Will the Amish again admit to being kith and kin with the Mennonites?

    Consumed by debates between Mennonites and Amish on the traditional American side, and between traditional Mennonites and ethnic Mennonites amongst the Russländer, the Quakers have generally been pushed off the historic Anabaptist table. 

More Work on Definitions

Defining Oneself

    This past weekend, I have spent considerable time attempting to develop stronger, more universal definitions for many of the terms that I use in my essays and which I tend to encounter in my reading.  I also spent a fair amount of time writing an essaic criticism of the rhetorical argumentation in a recent series published in Fellowship Focus on the emergent churches.  The emergent church movement is a new concept to me, so I was able to approach the articles with an open mind.  However, the quality or organization of their particular line of argument was often inconsistent, non-linear, even self-contradictory, leaving me, the reader, confused and uncertain.  Note that one finds it much easier to criticize the work of another than to recognize the same deficiencies within oneself, which is why there is a certain intellectual strength to be found in the Scholastic or even consensus-building process -- and why most books and literary efforts shower such profuse praise on those who assisted in the editorial process.

Evangelicals, Mennonites and the Emergent Church

Response to Harvey Schultz’s Methodology in “What is the Emerging Church Movement?”

Note:  The tone of this essay is quite strong -- be advised in reading it that both authors are trying to critically engage a set of terms and ideas in an effort to advance teachings and understandings of these very important topics.

    Generally, one is excited to come across a hardcore, realistic engagement by a church leader of a leading, if not controversial, theological or philosophical issue.  All to often, we are spoon fed “talking points”, cozy “3-point Homilies”, and slickly packaged ethical and theological truths along with the supporting bumper sticker moralizing.  One of the great differences between Anabaptism and American-style Evangelicalism is the implied accountability the Anabaptist retains as a member of the congregation.  We do not achieve Salvation through the Church so we cannot blame the Church for our success or failure.  We are responsible to explore the scriptures and participate in the Spirit of Fellowship so as to be able to discern and recognize Truth and right doctrine.  We are to come forth in our true conscience and to participate in the consensual congregational fellowship of the believer found in the correct relationship to God, our fellow humankind, the Church, and God’s Creation.  The “Nuremberg Defence” is simply not available to the Anabaptist -- we cannot say that we believe this or that because we were told to, because that is what we have been taught, or that “it” made as good sense as anything.  Simply put, as Anabaptists, we have been called individually and congregationally to engage the Scriptures and the world in a Spiritually tuned manner.

Evangelicals, Mennonites and the MCC

Dialogue on Peace with Non-Mennonites   MCC World Report, 1976, p. 122 - 123

courtesy of Mennonite Church Historical Archives, Goshen, Indiana

    One of the striking phenomena of 1976 on the US church scene has been the rising visibility of Christians identifying themselves as Evangelical.  All of the evangelicals have in common an explicit emphasis on the Bible as the source of their authority and direction.  But with that the similarities cease.  One type of emerging evangelicalism is represented fairly typically by the Campus Crusade style of evangelistic activity.  This movement is characterized by ‘God and country’ mentality, an individualized and spiritualized definition of the Kingdom of God and more interest in doctrinal than discipleship questions.

  Another emerging form of evangelicalism is characterized by the Sojourners’ style with an emphasis on the church’s duty to stand outside of and critique the state, an understanding of the Kingdom of God which encompasses as well as individual aspects of life and an examination of the hard sayings of Jesus about discipleship.  Peace Section (US) has  maintained some dialog with representatives of this latter type of evangelicalism where it finds great interest in the Anabaptist point of view.  A cooperative adventure is emerging with Evangelicals for Social Action in Philadelphia where a VS couple will have a shared assignment under Evangelicals for Social Action and Peace Section (US).  The possibilities for extending a peace witness in this direction are great.

  Another striking development in 1976 has been the emergence of New Call to Peacemaking.  This is an initiative which comes from the evangelical Quakers who have been feeling they need to rediscover the peace testimony and base it solidly on a scriptural foundation.  They have taken steps during the past two years to dialog with other Quakers about this and in the spring of 1976 the Mennonites and Brethren were invited to join.  A Central Planning Committee made [up of] 15 persons -- five representatives from each of the three historic peace churches -- has been formed and has met twice.  A series of regional conferences across the United States during 1977 will be followed by a national conference in October 1978 at Great Lake, Wisconsin.  Each historic peace church will send 75 delegates to the national conference.  It is the goal of New Call to Peacemaking to articulate a united voice from the historic peace churches bearing testimony to the way of peace in a very militarized nation and world.

    We are in correspondence also with Christians from the more ecumenical perspective and consider it part of the opportunity and duty of MCC Peace Section (US) to be in dialog with Christians all across the confessional spectrum.