Explaining Why Rob Bell No Longer Attends Church

In a 2014 interview with Religion Dispatches it was reported that the post-Evangelical author Rob Bell and his family are not part of a local church:

Now resettled near Los Angeles, the couple no longer belongs to a traditional church.  “We have a little tribe of friends,” Bell said. “We have a group that we are journeying with. There’s no building. We’re churching all the time. It’s more of a verb for us.”

Based on other interviews it seemed the Bells felt called to move to Los Angeles to pursue opportunities in television. Meanwhile Bell has refashioned his message into a psuedo-spiritual, Self-Help, Moralistic, Therapeutic, Deism much more inline with the other prophets in Oprah’s spiritual stockade.

What’s strange to me about the Bells move is that they have not found a church home.

Interfaith dialogue: Knowing God Exists

I was reading Summa Theologica the other day and couldn’t get his imagery out of my head. So I dreamt up this dialogue: 

Kathy:  I think you can know that God exists.

Carl:  What does it mean to say that God exists anyway? Whether God “exists” necessarily depends on your definition of God.  If there is only one God, can there be more than one correct definition, and if you don’t or can’t define God, how can you know he exists?  But, if you alone decide the definition of God, then “knowing God exists” is simply affirming a personal belief in a certain definition. Right?

Kathy: St. Thomas Aquinas tells us:

To know that God exists in a general and confused way is implanted in us by nature, inasmuch as God is man’s beatitude. For man naturally desires happiness, and what is naturally desired by man must be naturally known to him.

This, however, is not to know absolutely that God exists; just as to know that someone is approaching is not the same as to know that Peter is approaching, even though it is Peter who is approaching; for many there are who imagine that man’s perfect good which is happiness, consists in riches, and others in pleasures, and others in something else.

Norman:  In terms of that example, I know God exists because I have met Him in my personal experience. I can positively recognize Him every time as the same Spirit.  I define God by the doctrines and teachings that are spoken through the Spirit.

Chris: I have felt God as well, I know God as Christ, a historical person.  I have a lot of beliefs about God but I really only trust what comes from the Bible.  If you don’t believe the Bible, you can’t really know that God exists, because you won’t know who or what God is.

Kathy: But wait, in order to identify God you must be able to identify God’s interaction with humanity,   If you can’t identify God’s church—you can’t really know assuredly God exists, because whatever you call God will either be your interpretation of your experience, or your personal interpretation of the text.   And these subjective interpretations will always result in a morass of different definitions.  The Church provides the tangible basis for the existence of God and is the only reliable basis to define and identify God.

Carl: So does the entire question come down to whether your church is also part of God’s church?

What do you all think? 

The Curious Case of Sean McCraney (and the problem of church history)

Sean McCraney was a Mormon who openly put his faith in an Evangelical brand of Christianity and was born-again by most Evangelical measures. Yet, lately, he sounds like Joseph Smith or Brigham Young when he talks about the extant traditional Christian church.  This seems indicative of both his Mormon and Calvary Chapel roots, and his blatantly contrarian attitude.

Sean McCraney’s approach to theology seems common sense. To a modern liberal who answers to God alone, the church has clearly needed fixing over the years.  It does not represent the “good guys,” just “some guys” who happened to have attracted enough credentials and attention to make policy. Common sense tells people like McCraney that if you can fix something using Biblical interpretation, can’t you fix anything, including the Trinity?  Can’t you reject any doctrine of pagan origin if you can reasonably show it to be such?  McCraney’s refrain is as common as his sense. If “only God can judge us” it is clear to many that “we run things things don’t run we.”

While anarchy is not necessarily an irrational response to the corruption of the world, it is clearly a practically unreasonable one. Tim’s last post pointed out the firm, yet soft-spoken response to McCraney by Pastor Jason Wallace of Christ Presbyterian Church.  For the first time, perhaps, I recognized the complexities of positively explaining the historical church and its necessity for those who believe in the historical theology.

McCraney’s case might show Evangelicals something important about their brand of Christianity strikes people. It is easy for Mormons to pick up Evangelical views of salvation–and these views are also often quite spiritually effective–but it is very difficult to explain and swallow the historical Church. This is one of the seeds that sprouted into Mormonism. It’s far easier to reject the church as fundamentally corrupt or essentially irrelevant than to shoehorn its history  into a neat package that can appeal to modern sensibilities.  In a small way, the McCraney case shows that Evangelical Protestants have as big a problem with church history as do Mormons.

Review: Imaginary Jesus

A couple of months ago a friend recommended “Imaginary Jesus” to me.  Over my Christmas vacation I had the chance to read it.  With little information about the content I dove in and discovered that I love this book.  In many ways I felt the book was written just for me.

The author, Matt Mikalatos, is hilarious and he applies his sense of humor to his search for what it means to be in a personal relationship with Jesus, what to do with pain and dares to ask if prayer is anything more than sitting alone talking to himself.

At one point the story takes a break to interject the character Matt into a snow-tube race in which “Meticulous Providence Jesus”, “Free Will Jesus” and “Can’t-See-the-Future-Because-It’s-Unknowable Jesus” all compete for Matt’s devotion by attempting to offer him an explanation for the death of his child while speeding down a snowy mountain.  It’s situations such as this that make the book seem far-fetched and inappropriate for dealing with such tough issues and too irreverent for religious offering.  But it’s the farcical nature of Matt’s search that allows the book to touch on places in these issues that the reader may be unprepared to examine and grateful for the element of fun in exploring them.

Mormon readers may be concerned with his introduction of Elder Laurel and Elder Hardy. Mikalatos handles Mormonism the way you might expect an Evangelical to view it.  He dismisses the Book of Mormon because of well known anachronisms and by naming the missionaries Laurel and Hardy he’s clearly using them as a comic device.  But I don’t think these issues should dissuade Mormons from reading the book.  The humor in the book is much harsher on Evangelicalism than it is on Mormonism and the missionaries ultimately serve the purpose of causing Matt to question if he’s straining at a speck in Mormonism’s eye when he has a plank in his own. The larger message of the book is so powerful that I think Mormons can easily disregard or skip any passages about Mormonism and still find great value in the book.

The writing style is fast-paced and frenetic. As a result I was able to finish the book in two sittings. Afterwards I felt encouraged and re-invigorated to pursue Jesus in a way I desperately needed. I highly recommend this book. 

Sunday’s Coming

A hysterical and painful parody of Evangelical worship services

Is RockHarbor an Emergent Church?

The leadership of my church recently held a forum where they answered concerns about RockHarbor being an Emergent Church.  I think they did a great job of illuminating the topic and identifying a number of different camps in the always ambiguous Emerging/Emergent movement.

This is a bit of an “inside the family” conversation for Evangelicals.  But I think it will help Mormons understand more about where I am coming from theologically and it will help you understand more about this “hot topic” in Evangelicalism.

Direct link here or Video link here.  You can also read a position paper here.