Isn't it interesting how some people masquerade as having a connection with people from the past, when they in fact have no connection to those people? Yet I'm not just talking about politicians in Washington claiming ties to Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. I am talking about church leaders claiming ties to Martin Luther or John Calvin. Reformation and revival have clearly happened in the past, when historical figures like those mentioned were alive. Yet is there really a present connection with that past? A very credible book title reads: The American Church in Crisis. That is a long way from revival and reformation.
Likewise, besides knowing about these relationships, we must have an explicit grasp of relationships, so that like the card player, we know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. In other words, when to connect and when to disconnect with others.
I would like to suggest is a way to see connections with others that seems to have been around around during times of revival. Two of my professors in college referred to it as the cultural processes of language. I would like to expand it into the cultural processes of the church and also compare it to the processes of our American political system.
The Protestant Reformation (or Evangelical Reformation) had a cultural process that perhaps needs to be made more clear or obvious, so that we know what connects us with our past rather than getting side-tracked by processes that claim lineage, but in fact have no such connection. Let's face it. Luther got things done. Calvin got things done. (Richard) Hooker got things done. John Wesley got things done. (Charles Haddon) Spurgeon got things done. They didn't produce crisis through the process they followed, rather they brought renewal. You know what I mean. You've read the history books or heard the stories.
Many church leaders today are not getting it done using the same process. So let me outline my professors' insights, then talk about what went awry and then talk about how the process applies to us.
My professors outlined things this way (with a few modifications by yours truly):
I. Connection and Disconnection (the Whole)
A. Continuity and Change (the Amount)
B. Bond and Liberty/Barrier (the Relationship)
C. Rule and Freedom (the Action)
D. Sense and Nonsense (the Thing)
In the universe of multiple languages these apparently are the cultural processes of language by which messages get communicated. Culture is primarily about relationships and connection. That is central. Processes are the means by which a message is communicated when we wish to connect. That is the next most important insight. If you don't follow these processes, you don't get the job of communication done. Instead, communication fails. By analogy, I think these rules can be applied to the Christian Church not providing the processes of revival, but instead of crisis.
I think there was a Christian cultural process that was whole and therefore healthy that allowed the Protestant Reformation to accomplish healthy things. They also where balanced in another sense, besides being whole. They were balanced in how they saw the process of doing actions that created connection and disconnection.
Their relational process was not all about change, or all about liberty (barrier), or all about freedom or all about nonsense (calling all present thinking that). It was instead a process that people like Luther saw as traveling a middle path between a rock on his right and a hard place on his left. So his process of Reformation also consisted of continuity, bond, rule and sense. He was no extreme radical demonstrating only disconnections by his own profession. He said this repeatedly and many separate times.
Likewise politically and in the United States, George Washington was no radical only demonstrating his disconnections from England. He was very upset with Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense, who later went to France and contributed to radicalness of the French Revolution and because of Paine's changes to later radical political processes that he supported in France.
Neither the Protestant Reformation nor the American Revolution were as radical in their cultural processes as they are sometimes portrayed in high school or college classes. Often you hear only the themes of change, liberty, freedom and non-sense ("that's hogwash") bantered about with no mention of the other aspects of the process that establish connections. You don't hear that Luther tried to establish continuity (with Augustine, etc.), bond (with the early church), rule (with his concept of law) and sense (with his views on science). He and other Protestants failed at times in both ways without a doubt. They weren't always as balanced as the process of connection and disconnection outlines. Yet they were intent on a whole and balanced process.
Our problem is that the middle path is often not crystal clear enough historically to avoid being mushy. I think my two professors must be creditted with making things clear. I simply add to what they say by further organizing it. Cultural processes needs to be whole to be healthy; and not just a middle path to be balanced. This is a big problem for Anglicans and Episcopals. Second, because it is not clear enough, the middle path has not been regularly strait or straight, but intermittedly distorted or windy. This has contributed to the feeling of crisis, because the process of connection and disconnection were unclear.
I think my professor's systematic approach is healthy, because it looks at the system of language as a whole. But it is not so much overarching as it is focused on relationships and actions. It is also clear compared to much of what is written. You see this because it is balanced in relationships and so it uses both of the parts of a process needed to establish connections or disconnections with others. It realizes that to be balanced, when it comes to relationships you have to be able to say equally who you are connected with and who you are disconnected from.
I think we are partly stuck and partly not getting things done, because some claimed connections are phantom only propping up the current processes with fumes from the connections and energy of the past. It is neither whole and healthy nor balanced and so not getting things done. I think the lack of a balanced system means not getting things done in the real world of relationships, just like the lack of a balanced process in language leads to no communication getting done.
If we are going to claim an historical legacy, we need to establish the process by which connection and disconnection can be clearly recognized. I think my twin professors did a lot toward showing how you or I can recognize true connection and disconnection.
Their work convinces me that traditional liberalism (modernism) and traditional conservativism (fundamentalism) in the context of the church, steer us away from a connection with our own healthy culture as historically grounded in the past. Be careful to use discernment here. You must separate those who are knowledgeable adherents of these camps and those who are ignorant adherents of these camps. While ignorance does not excuse the latter, it does lessen the severity of their error.
Liberalism (rooted in modernism) too often creates the following chart:
I. Disconnection
A. Change
B. Liberty
C. Freedom
D. Non-sense
They see the world of relationships primarily driven by these themes, yet not by the twin themes outlined by my two professors and the culture processes discovered in language. They give speeches that outline the changes needed, but have very little concern with what must also continue and showing connections that way. They stress the need for liberty, but not the need for bond. They stress freedom, yet too often without a sense of rule. They also send a very confusing message here, when it comes to economics, because they seem to play the opposite role. They also see that much of what passed for knowledge in the past is simply non-sense.
Conservativism (rooted in fundamentalism), on the other hand, too often creates the following chart:
I. Connection
A. Continuity
B. Bond
C. Rule
D. Sense
They see the world of relationships as primarily driven by these themes, yet not by the twin themes I outlined earlier. They outline their continuity with the Reformers, while they diminish the aspect of changes that the Reformers made. They live by a firm bond, while there is no room for an honest quest for truth that bring liberty. They live by a firm set of rules. Yet they also send a confusing message here, because they defend market freedom. It gets more confusing, because they prop up established versus entrepreneurial enterprise. They claim to be the big proponent of freedom, yet their rules are strictly to be observed. They claim common sense for themselves, while they obscure some real non-sense from the past and peddle it as knowledge. Why defend what was ignorance?
Let's find our footing and connections again and establish who is really connected with the past that is applauded, rather than listen to those, who claim such a connection and who have either an overly conventional or overly radical approach, that either heads us into a rock or into a hard place. The phantoms out there are in crisis and need your money to continue, so they claim a continuity that is not there. I can tell you from experience, neither the rock nor the hard place is pleasant.
Use my professors, insights and see if both the connection and the disconnection side of a balanced equation are used. Make sure someone is not just trying to dupe you into thinking they are like Luther, Calvin, Hooker, Wesley or Spurgeon. Use the chart above to examine whether you want to connect with this person or group and whether they connect with a time of revival or reformation you want to connect yourself with. I feel a strong bond with these past leaders and times of renewal rather than crisis, when I have been able to get past some current leaders, who claim to be like them. Healthy connections are vital to this life and so are the processes that build relationships.
Put these connection and disconnection processes to work in real life. Listen to what processes others are using. See, if they are in fact balanced. It is like this with relationships, you need to know when to hold 'em (connect) and when to fold 'em (disconnect). May God richly bless you.
In Christ,
Jon
