Also, here is a conversation I had with Doug Pagitt regarding the Emergent Village Theological Conversation.

“One Lord, One Church, One Baptism . . .”
The Christian church appeals back to a single teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, whom our tradition calls the Christ. The unity of una ecclesia, the one church, was counted among its most important features. But, frankly, we’ve never done a very good job at the unity thing. The earliest history of the church, “the Acts of the Apostles,” chronicles the rapid devolution from “they had all things in common” (Acts 2:44) to the acrimonious battle over whether circumcision should be required of all new (male) believers (Acts 15).

No one can take a church history course without being struck by how much of the church’s story is about debates and divisions. Sometimes it seems as though all they did was call each other heretics over ever more obscure matters. At its worst, in the “Great Schism,” popes excommunicated popes. On a bad day, it looks like everyone down river from them was working to imitate their example.

The American Church Today
The church in this country was no exception. We spawned new denominations like salmon spawn eggs during mating season. Then for about a hundred years, it didn’t seem to matter as much. Presbyterians preached predestination and Baptists practiced adult baptism, but (in good American fashion) most people didn’t get too worked up about the differences. Most people identified with a religious community. It might have its doctrines and its quirks. Still, it worked for them.

Over the last few decades, however, “church” stopped working for more and more Americans. The decline hit the Protestant mainline churches first. They’ve been bleeding members and funds for about fifty years. But it now looks like many are finally at that “tipping point” where it becomes impossible even to sustain the old structures. Churches are closing in great numbers. Now the malaise is beginning to spread to evangelical churches as well.

What Happened?
In a word: the old disputes stopped mattering. First, people just wanted religious community, good preaching, and a strong Sunday School program. They didn’t much care whether the historical source was Luther, Calvin, Wesley, or St. Thomas. Then things got worse. The younger generations, the Gen-Xers and Millennials, left their churches when they left home, and the vast majority of them never came back.

What are they saying? That churches have become irrelevant to their lives and concerns. That the old styles of church attendance and worship no longer draw them. That the vicious disputes about doctrines are a turn-off. “If that’s all that your religion stands for, I can do without it.” A staggering 72 percent of Americans between 18 and 29 now call themselves “spiritual but not religious.”

A Movement Outside the Old Institutions
This revolution in attitudes toward institutional religion is upsetting a lot of apple carts. But it is not ending the practice of religion. Across the country people are reading and blogging, meeting in homes and pubs, inventing new forms of religious community. They may write cynically about the hostile debates between evangelicals and liberals, but they also carry within themselves a new religious idealism. They find something revolutionary in the Jesus of the gospels. And they’re bold enough to ask what Christian communities would look like if they really sought to incarnate the Way that this Teacher lived and taught.

We call it “big tent” Christianity. It evokes the image of the revival tent that folks used to set up just outside of town. Here differences were (ideally) set aside while people sought transformation and a new direction in the Spirit. Today, likewise, vast numbers of people are seeking spiritual answers and communities outside of church buildings.

More boldly, “big tent” is also a prophetic challenge to the rancorous debates and condemnations that are the church’s public face today. Christians on the Left and on the Right look more and more like Washington: you are on one side or the other of that great aisle or chasm; everything you say and do plays to your own party. Unity hardly exists, even as a goal. Even Patheos has to offer separate “portals” so that evangelicals and mainliners don’t have to enter through the same door.

A Challenge
Our challenge is simple: if there is any core faith, any shared Way, in Christianity, let’s place it in the middle. Let’s gather on a single stage — from Pat Robertson to Bishop Spong, and everyone in between — to say that unifying love comes first and that the disputes are secondary.

Join us September 8-9 in Raleigh, if you can. But if you can’t, write, blog, and speak about unity over division. Remember that the “big tent” mindset begins at home; it’s not an ideology, it’s how you live. Perhaps what the church needs to hear is what Jesus said to his friend: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only a few things are necessary . . .” (Lk. 10:41f).

Also posted at patheos.com

– Philip

If you don’t see the video, click here.

Yet the responses to the Covenant have been as revealing as the Covenant itself. Shortly after the Covenant was signed, Dr. George O. Wood, general superintendent of the Assemblies of God, asked that his name be removed from the list of signatories. Juleen Turnage, spokesperson for the Assembles of God, explained Dr. Good’s reason for his action. In the process, she explicitly rejected the possibility of any “big tent” within which all Christians might stand:

“The problem is the tent that has grown so large on the signatures of this that are including people who are supportive of gay marriage and abortion rights,” Juleen Turnage, spokeswoman for the Assemblies of God told Religion News Service. “He (Wood) just felt that he could not become a part of a large tent.”

Daniel Schultz, a UCC pastor in Wisconsin, cites this response in today’s blog on ReligionDispatches.org. He uses it as the occasion to fire back a matching salvo:

“The long and the short of it is this: the Christian Century-mainline church crowd should really think twice before signing on to one of these wild goose chases. They always promise more than they can deliver. The fact of the matter is that the American right wing, religious or otherwise, is only interested in meeting you halfway insofar as ‘halfway’ is defined as you changing all your positions to match their own. It’s all very nice for them to be civil—as long as you give up on gays, lesbians, reproductive rights, and probably a whole laundry list of other positions.”

The symmetry between Rev. Schultz’s piece and those whom he’s attacking is perfect. Schultz rejects dialogue with evangelicals because they’re too far to the right. This drives him further to the left, and now he doesn’t want to be found in any tent they are in.

The whole exchange shows even more strongly how urgent it is to reclaim a Big Tent Christianity, a centrist return to “just Christian” in word and action. The two poles are driving each other ever further apart, spawning ever deeper hostilities. The solution — in American society as in the church — certainly is not to let the other’s anger fuel my own. As leaders it’s our task to help break the cycle of anger, of rejection leading to rejection, and to foster a radically different understanding of the heart of Christian faith.

Does the exchange make me worry that the public conference on “Big Tent Christianity” that we’re planning for Raleigh, NC on September 8-9 is a mistake? No, it seems even more urgent than before to invite the combatants to lay down their weapons and to look for something deeper and more enduring in Jesus’ call to the kingdom of God.

– Philip

In one sense, it’s enough that it happened. I don’t know of any place on the web where you can see Dan in dialogue with a moderate, reflective, religious person. But that’s only step one. The harder question is how to interpret what happened.

Dennett supporters are already posting on the web to say what they thought it was about. One points out that I do not share the assumptions of most analytic philosophers, and hence fail to pass the test for analytic orthodoxy. Both in the debate and in Mind and Emergence (chap. 4), for example, I use the work of analytic philosophers in ways different from what they intended. But surely that isn’t what was at stake in today’s discussion. Other bloggers may question whether I made any errors in describing evolutionary theory; perhaps they’re arguing that, if I did, that proves that evolution and theism are incompatible. But, again, surely that was not the real topic of the debate.

John Cobb comments, “[Dennett’s] view that worldviews have no practical importance expresses a provincialism that is really inexcusable. Surely comparative cultural studies are not wholly absent from the contemporary university.” That comment comes closer.

What was at stake today was not whether theism and atheism are finally identical; surely that much is beyond dispute. Instead, what most divided Dennett and me was the question whether in the end worldviews make any difference. Dan is prepared to call religion “benign” — which means: not outright malignant — when it supports values that he endorses. (His friend Richard Dawkins would not give as much ground.) Beyond that, however, religion is of little interest to him. For religious believers like me, by contrast, religious belief is never reducible to the moral convictions it supports or the behaviors it produces. It functions as a entire world- and life-view, permeating all that I do, affecting how I see, interpret, and evaluate everything I encounter. It’s that truth that I sought to communicate this afternoon.

Dan Dennett and I will probably never agree on whether it’s probable that God exists. But I hope that those who view today’s debate online will ask themselves why it matters that we were defending different understandings of what ultimately exists. If we can’t even agree on the significant difference between the two speakers, and how that difference is revealed in our different ways of approaching a whole host of philosophical questions, we won’t begin to be able to evaluate the competing arguments for our different positions.

Watch the debate online here.

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!

      • a meeting of leading theologians from around the country March 12^th-14^th;

• a meeting of leading executives from all the mainline denominations May 18^th-20^th;

• a meeting of seminary and divinity school presidents and academic deans from across the U.S. September 24^th-26^th.

 Our goal over the coming three years is ambitious.  We are seeking to form a broad alliance between theologians, seminary administrators, and church leaders and to rekindle the sense of a shared religious vision.  Of course there are theological movements, and significant work is being done.  But this work has not yet translated into a passionate sense of shared mission in the mainline churches comparable to what one finds among conservative Christians today.

 The kind of theological reflection that once motivated transformative action in the more liberal churches is now in crisis.  Studies show that religious believers still feel that they “ought to do something.”  But the organic connection between theology and action, between seminary and pew, has been lost.  The forms of reflection that once produced this kind of thought have fallen into disuse.  The progressive movement within American religion needs to have theoretical underpinning; it needs vision.  But — for reasons that we hope the grant will uncover — the ideologies and habits of mind that once produced a powerful sense of unity have been obscured.

Theology in the liberal wing of American religion is fundamentally pluralistic.  Here one is accustomed to using multiple models and telling multiple religious stories, utilizing sociological and cultural critiques as well as historical sources in formulating faith as the ground of action.  We are optimistic that a well-structured program can rekindle the kind of theology models that reach beyond seminary classrooms and that express the shared convictions of Christians who don’t consider themselves evangelical.

We are fortunate to be working with a Steering Committee of brilliant theologians and religious leaders.  Working with Marjorie and me are:

 • Victor Anderson (Vanderbilt)

• Joseph Bracken (Xavier)

• Ignacio Castuera (Trinity United MethodistChurch in Pomona)

• Gary Dorrien (Union in New York)

• Dwight Hopkins (University of Chicago)

• Catherine Keller (Drew)

• Ted Vial (Iliff)

 In addition to the research and publications that the grant will sponsor, we will also organize three major consultations in 2009:

 (a) March 12^th-14^th:  a meeting of leading theologians from across the U.S. to discuss the crisis in theology and how to rekindle forms of reflection that motivate transformative action.  We plan to discuss the symptoms of the crisis, its causes (historical, intellectual, social and political), and the potential solutions — the steps we can take to do something about it;

 (b) May 18^th-20^th:  a summit meeting of the leaders of the major mainline denominations to discuss the crisis in theological education and how to effectively relaunch such programs both for clergy and for laypersons.  Each denomination will send 4-6 of its top executives and the leaders of its programs in theological education;

 (c) September 24^th-26^th:  following the summit meeting, a major consultation to disseminate the results, to which the presidents and academic deans from all the major seminaries and divinity schools in the United States will be invited.  Here we will present the results to the people who actually have the power to put them into practice.  Our goal is to inspire them to action.

 In the past, progressive religion in America was able to move fluidly from theological models to transformative action, and from praxis in the world to new and richer theological models.  We believe it is possible again to rekindle the organic interplay of religious thought and action.  Renewing the sense of shared identity and mission should also have significant impact on local congregations, denominations, and a variety of progressive Christian networks.