Hide ya womens, y'all

So one of the sites documenting the Sitler/Wilson connection was hit with a court order to remove a video.  Another interesting post, while not documenting any criminal activity, but nonetheless creepy, is here. It raises the question over how widespread this mentality is in the CREC.  I suspect, while maybe not universal, is more widespread than one would wish.

What are some consequences for the larger Evangelical world on this?

1. I don't think this will bring Wilson down.  He's weathered storms before.  I do think it will further discredit the CREC in general.  
2. It took some steam about of the Reformed world's anti-abortion polemic.  A few months ago when the Daleiden videos were released, we were drunk with battle joy and Wilson was leading the charge. Praise God the witness will go on, but no one can rally behind him any more.  
3. I think the Evangelical egalitarian movement will get a shot in the arm.  It's really hard to lose a debate against Patriarchy at this moment.
4. I am finding it harder to argue against people converting to Eastern Orthodoxy.  Almost all of these "converts" are from the CREC.  Let that sink in.  And when I urge them not to, they could easily respond, "Yeah, well, I don't want my daughter to get raped and have the elders cover it up and threaten excommunication on the victim."  Admittedly, I can't really rebut that point.
5. It would help to have the NAPARC world formally identify and condemn the CREC.  Granted, it means nothing in day to day life, but it is official and would warn other families.

On not ossifying the fathers

I am trying to take a more positive, constructive role in theology.  This post is akin to an autobiographical manifesto.  Part of it is how I came to the church fathers and ultimately my critical-appreciation of them, and the other part is how to use the Fathers to kill souls.

I left seminary disillusioned.  While I had made a lot of intellectual mistakes there, academically it was not the best (in terms of actually doing scholarship).  I didn't want to say that the Reformed faith was wrong, despite RTS's best efforts to make it so, but I knew there was something more.

For reasons I don't entirely remember, I was reading Thomas Aquinas as I left seminary.  I had one foot in the door for medieval and patristic theology.  I am not sure how I first heard of John Milbank.  I do remember reading about him in James K. A. Smith's Introducing Radical Orthodoxy.  This was late 2006, early 2007.

There is a lot wrong with Radical Orthodoxy, but there is a lot right--and a lot that is just plain fun.  So what that they over-interpreted Aquinas as a Neo-Platonist?  They got all the right people in academia angry, and that is good.  For me they introduced me not only to a wider world of theology but also to ask different--deeper--questions of church history.

I dove right in.  And made mistakes.  But I also latched on to key points: how Christology shapes everything.  (Some Eastern Orthodox guys played that card as a front to justify going to Eastern Orthodoxy when in reality they wanted smells and bells, but that is another story).  Anyway, I realized that Systematic Theology didn't have to follow the outline of Berkhof (Berkhof is useful but limited to a certain context, namely a seminary classroom).

Before continuing on the RO line, I should probably address a common criticism:  Did RO read Reformation metaphysics correctly, namely that Western theology took a nominalist turn with Scotus and the Reformation crystallized it?  Obviously, anyone who advances that reading today will be laughed at. So we can say RO was definitely wrong on that point.  Further, not all of Milbank's criticisms in "Alternative Protestantism" hold water (or at least they might attack Reformation ontology but not where Milbank thinks they do).

This was around 2008-2009.  I was able to read the Father without pretending that the Fathers were a complete deposit who taught a unified, identifiable theology across time and space.  Moreover, I was able to honestly say, "St ______ is wrong here.  That's okay.  I can still benefit from what he says elsewhere."  Side note:  Remember that stupid facebook meme that has the Nicene Fathers pictured and the caption reads, "So these guys are right about the canon but wrong about everything else?"  The epistemological howlers in that statement are too painful to mention.

Back to the Fathers.  Since I didn't (at the time) believe the Fathers taught a unified, ahistorical body of truth, that meant I didn't have to play East and West against each other.  I could say guys like Anselm, Aquinas, and Wycliff were good guys.  And I could benefit from the modern John Wycliff, Oliver O'Donovan.  While some Ecumenist Orthodox guys will speak kindly of the aforementioned gentlemen, technically speaking they are heterodox (or heretics!), so good luck with that one.  The harder-line folks will say that they (and by extension, you and me) are deprived of grace.

Towards the end of 2010 I moved into a harder, Eastward direction.  I never officially became Orthodox.  It wasn't viable for a number of reasons.  While this meant I accepted Orthodox doctrines like anti-Filoque and icons, the main problem is I had to cut off my theological past.  Another problem is I had to place the Fathers within the received tradition of the church.  This implied a number of cognitively dissonant positions:

• The Fathers are part of Holy Tradition but I must interpret which Fathers are speaking Orthodoxically by Holy Tradition.  I couldn't square the circle.  All of the Orthodox problems with Sola Scriptura would come crashing down on Tradition.
• This meant that the Fathers probably didn't disagree about "big stuff."  
• So what was I supposed to do when I came to issues where the Fathers sounded "Western" or were plain wrong?  

The dissonance was building up.  Move on to the end of 2011. I was beginning to be more "Western" in terms of cultural outlook.  I just didn't feel right "negating" my Western heritage.  I know that no one was "making" me to do that, but the cultural enclave mentality among a certain denomination is just too overwhelming.  I was by no means Protestant, of course, but possibly Western.

My daughter was born in 2012.  My life was turned upside down and I really had to put theology on the side.  And life was hard--all of which made me reevaluate everything.

By May of 2012 I was firmly in the Protestant, even Reformed camp (again).  From 2012-2015 (now) I have been in the Protestant camp and plan to stay there.  There are problems with Reformed theology--some big ones actually.   But there are also key gains that outweigh the problems and the Reformed tradition can be the Reformational Tradition.

So how do we use the fathers?

1. Protestant liturgy is about to come to a crisis-point and the Fathers offer insight.
2. Obviously, you have to sit at the Fathers feet when it comes to triadology and Christology.
3. Some of the early church historians are quite fun.
4. Recent developments in Continental philosophy and phenomenology make Maximus, Pseudo-Dionysius (and stop pretending he was Paul's traveling companion) and to a lesser degree Origen quite relevant today.

How do we misuse the fathers?

1. Pretending that they are "infallible," either individually or corporately.
2. Pretending that they have good advice on married sexuality.
3. Pretending they exist outside of time and space.

Embryo Parson, Friend of the Orthodox

The new best post from one of the top 5 websites dealing with Protestant/Anchorite dialogue.

It's called "Buyer's Remorse."

The PEW studies should be taken with a grain of salt.  I realize that.  But, even if facts do require interpretation and are never neutral, they are still facts at the end of the day and can't be dismissed, either.

I realize the situation is equally grim for Protestants, too, but even then it means something like:

• Mainline churches are dying and will either merge or simply disappear. They are too old to spend all that money. No one except the executive offices in the PCUSA disputes that.
• While the PCA and SBC are dwindling, other conservative confessional denominations are holding steady (if not actually growing).
• I don't know how much stock to put into claims that rural churches are shrinking.  It's hard to have a growing church in a small population without a critical mass.  
• I think Megachurches have plateaued.  Even if they were biblical they would have to plateau at some point.  No entity can maintain such growth without an ever-increasing growth in a community.
• With that said, however, low-church traditions will continue to thrive for the simple reason that they allow charismatic (small "c") communicators and organizers a venue to use their gifts.  Granted, there is room for abuse but that's the cost of doing business in a fallen world.  It's in other denominations, too, but their restrictive structures slow down the process. 
• People say there is no organization in evangelicalism. That's not entirely true.  There might not be episcopalian denominational organization outwardly, but if you go into a sizable Evangelical church, they are highly organized and remarkably well-structured (far more than traditional Presbyterian or episcopalian traditions).  It's not rocket science:  incompetence simply doesn't grow churches.

Of course, none of that means a tradition is right or wrong.  It's simply giving a context.  Further, PEW notes that the percentage of Evangelicals has shrunk, but the overall numbers increased:

And evangelical Protestants, while declining slightly as a percentage of the U.S. public, probably have grown in absolute numbers as the overall U.S. population has continued to expand.

Orthodox Bridge has been running a narrative that there is an inexorable slide of Protestants into the Orthodox Church and that the 21st century is "The Orthodox Century."  Please keep in mind we are not arguing for the truthity or falsity of any particular tradition.  I am simply reporting the facts on the ground.

And while Orthodox Bridge has banned my commenting there, dear reader, if you are interested in Orthodoxy I owe you a favor.  When you read Convertskii blogs it's easy to pretend you are at Nicea, that you are seeing the ancient church as the ancient church (supposedly) was.  No doubt you are pretending to be with Aleksandr Nevsky slaughtering the Teutons at the Battle on the Ice. And if you convert to EO and find yourself living those realities, well-done I say.  You are luckier than most.

I think many, however, reading these narratives and then acting on them, suffer from buyer's remorse. It just isn't telling the story long-term.  If you jump ship, well...read on.  Is this the Orthodox Century?  I refer to the earlier-linked article.

• Orthodox Christians have one of the lowest rates of retention across Christian and non-Christian denominations.  Only 53% of adults who were raised in the Orthodox Church still identify themselves as Orthodox Christians.  Compare that to Hindus (80%), Jewish (75%), Mormon (64%) and Catholic (59%).

• Given the relative wealth and household income of Orthodox Christians, why do so many parishes struggle to meet their financial needs?  Communities in even the most affluent parts of the country are struggling to repair roofs, pay bills and keep the parishes fully staffed.

• Credible sources report that just in the past five years, stewardship membership nationwide has fallen from 250,000 families in 2009 to 159,000 families in 2014. That is a decline of 38% in just five years. Long term survival of any modern institution bearing such drastic decreases in the ranks of its adherents, stewards and members becomes questionable.

• if we continue to espouse the leadership’s mantra that the Greek Orthodox Church is on track to succeed in the changing religious landscape of today’s America, the reality could indeed be more than we can bear.

Outside observations on the front

I watched a number of EO guys go at it on whether or not we should "Americanize" the liturgy.  I won't link to the discussion or even copy/paste the conversations (I did that some years ago with bad backlash).

EDIT: The guy took the discussion down from Facebook. Part of it is relevant to the recent Pew findings on American religion. Also involved are the triumphalistic claims that Protestants are abandoning Protestantism by the droves to enter the Orthodox Church.  A certain website is notorious for that.

Person 1: Here is the truth. If you try to have adult education or serious young adult education in an average parish you are going to piss off the blue law crowd by trampling on some of society's sacred cows-moral relativism, agnosticism, abortion and homosexuality. Parents will complain and you will get judged by secret trial with no chance to explain yourself or face your accusers. Or you'll run into all sorts of kookaboo quackadox stuff, usually of the Dan Brown variety among the adults. If they breath, then they think they are experts in theology and philosophy. The average fundy knows more about Christianity than the average Greek. Zeus would be proud. From my limited experience, the Arab aren't better. Cypriots tho in my experience rock either in devotion or theological interest at least, almost to a fault. They are like the Greek version of Irish Catholics. But such is my experience.

• 
  
  Frankly, I have given up even trying. I am content to let people learn the hard way and educate my own children. People, clergy and laity are often more concerned with conveying moralism to their children rather than the Gospel, not to mention doing what is necessary for them to intellectually survive the onslaught that awaits them in college. How these parents think that such moralism can prepare their kids to survive as Christians in the face of David Hume, Kant, Russell and a host of other thinkers across practically every discipline is beyond me. If you object to the conveyance of such moralism or do anything that transgresses it, you are liable to find yourself excommunicated or at least removed from parish education. People do not understand that the task is to get their kids to see it for themselves and to inoculate them before they have a doxastic crisis. No one can see it for them. And because of this pervasive moralism, people think that everything will by and large stay as it is. Children will return to church after “sowing their oats” in college when they get married and have kids, and the culture will by and large stay as it is. Such is not the case and the unpaid bills of the church are coming due soon. But no one listens. So I continue to eat locusts and honey and wear a hair shirt.

  
  
•  Person 2: , for the GOA there has already been a painful consequence - shrinking membership and the loss of its generations.

  
  
• 
  

   Person 1: , oh not yet, but there will be. Give it another 5-10 yrs. I suspect then they will be in panic mode complete with all sorts of stupid gimmicks, everything, except offering Christianity as true, to get people to come back. You see the same panic currently in the UMC with their losses of 270k a year. pass the popcorn.
•  Person 1, every time I hear some Greek say that we need to try and get the Greek people to come back to the church I throw up a little bit in my mouth. Its beyond absurd. They are utterly clueless.

  
  The point about english language is not to Americanize the church, but to make it MORE Orthodox