Urban Theology Overview (FTS_MN520)

Today I began my first of two one-week intensives, Encountering the City: Introduction to Urban Mission with Professor Jude Tiersma Watson. In this class we will learn the basic framework and skills to "exegete" the city and the people that live there, which essentially means that we will observe and interact with the different facets of the city in order to better understand who and what the city is. The end goal is that we would know how to "learn" a city and its people, so that we can more effectively join God in bringing his kingdom to bear on the city.

From an introductory article by our professor:

• In 1900 only 10% of the world's population lived in cities, now 50% of the world's population live in cities, and in 20-30 years it will be 70% with most of the growth in Africa and Asia.
• Latin America is already 80% urbanized.
• Within in the U.S., poverty is now expanding to the suburbs as the affluent "gentry" are returning to the city center.
• Because of the rapid change of cities globally, "much of what we have learned about life in cities, and the theology of cities, may not be relevant for the cities of the future."
• "Urban is both a place and a process. Urbanization is the process of growth within the city. Urbanism is the cultural impact of urbanization."
• The terms "urban ministry" and "inner-city" have been used not so much to designate a location but a certain group of people, the poor and at-risk. With the expansion of poverty to the suburbs, will our language change to match reality?
• Anti-urbanism is deep within the fabric of our nation, especially in our majority culture, and especially in the church. The American Dream is not an urban dream. "The greatest barriers to urban mission are not within the city but wihin the church."
• There is a need for further development of urban theology that focuses on praxis, narrative communication of theology, issues of justice, power, exclusion, racial reconciliation, and how the city is interconnected with suburban and rural areas.
  

Throughout this class I will be especially interested in how to apply city research methods to the university campus and surrounding community as well as looking at how universities are interconnected with the city. This should prove fruitful for campus ministry, especially in urban-based, heavily commuter campuses.

Reflections on... Free Churches (FTS_MC500)

For our last class we took up the topic of the ecclesiological grouping known as the Free Churches, which includes everything from Baptist to Assembly of God, from Nazarene to Quaker. For the sake of ease of discussion, we covered the beginning of the Free Church from at the time of the Reformation, the Anabaptists. Their movement was referred to as the Radical Reformation, because not only did they take up the reforms of Luther and Calvin, but they also went even further to deconstruct the entire structure of the church as it existed. Whereas the Reformation continued to maintain the symbiotic partnership between church and state and the expression of the church as one visible institution, the Radical Reformation broke ties with both the government structures and the visible institution of the church. This movement began with a Bible study led by Ulrich Zwingli, from which many left to form independant communities of re-baptized adults. Zwingli, one of the leading Reformers, distanced himself from these Anabaptists ("ana" meaning "again"). Charactersitc of the Anabaptist and most Free Church movements is, of course, adult baptism, an emphasis on holiness, a central focus on the Scriptures, an understanding of the church as against the world, a more thorough emphasis on the priesthood of all believers, and an understanding of sacraments as merely symbols.

We finished the discussion on Free Churches with a brief overview of the modern global Pentecostal movement. Most Pentecostals would trace their roots to the Azusa street revival of 1906 in Los Angeles, and since then, according to Dr. Bolger, the Pentecostal movement has become the fastest growing social movement anywhere in the world and at any time of history. Pentecostalism is more appropriately described as a movement, since there are many different denominations within Pentecostalism, not to mention all the independant churches scattered throughout the world. The two striking characteristics of the early Pentecostal movement were, of course, the phenomena of speaking in tongues, but also, and perhaps more significantly, the radical racial and gender diversity within the same movement. From the very beginning the poor and rich, men and women, and people from all ethnicities and nationalities were in together in fellowship, in leadership even. According to Dr. Bolger, one could sum up the basic Gospel message of the Pentecostals as: Jesus is your savior, he will baptize you in the Spirit, God heals, and Jesus is coming again. With this basic foundation, Pentecostalism has swept the globe and become the second largest Christian movement next to Roman Catholicism.

This ends my reflection on lectures from my class, Church in Mission. This next week I will be starting a class called, Encountering the City. I plan on blogging through the daily lectures there as well. I hope it proves helpful for all of us!

Reflections on... Calvin and the Reformed Church (FTS_MC500)

Here's a few little interesting background bits about John Calvin: he studied law and philosophy before getting into theology, he was mild-mannered in contrast to Luther's hot-tempered nature, he wrote his first edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion before he was 30 and with no theological education, and he like to sing the Psalms.

What Calvin did in Geneva during his time there was to help create a fully Christian society where the government, society, and the church lived symbiotically together. Laws were in place such that everyone was required to go to church, take communion (provided they were not excommunicated), etc. To some it would seem that Calvin was a controlling and domineering religious figure. But, with respect to his context there's a few things to note.

Calvin did not view laws as producing Christians directly. He did not seek to legislate morality in that sense. Laws were in place because they expressed God's will for society, but the Gospel was preached because people could not keep the laws. The function of the law in Geneva was not to make people holy, it was to make them repentant. Calvin believed that in the context of law and the preaching of the Gospel, people would repent and believe Christ for salvation from the penalty and power of sin.

Calvin also emphasized that each person is endowed by God with something special, some gift, to be developed and employed for the worship of God. Among the many other ways in which Calvin impacted the Reformation, this was a unique contribution of his.

Where Calvin and Luther differed with respect to church traditions, Calvin moved away from Catholic teaching on the Eucharist by clarifying that it is not the "real presence" but the "true presence" of Christ that is mediated in Communion. By this he meant that Christ is not brought down to indwell the bread and wine but that by the bread and wine we are brought up into the presence of Christ at the right hand of the Father.

Reflections on... The Reformation and Luther's Eccelesiology (FTS_MC500)

Making our way through the centuries of the church in mission, we finished our general discussion of the church after Constantine. We noted that ecclesial authority and civil authority functioned more and more symbiotically until at last, under the new kings after the fall of Rome, the church and state were one and the same. The new kings, after having conquered and destroyed the Roman empire, had no civil structure for authority except for the institution of the church. The bishops became mayors and governors, so to speak, and the state effectively appropriated the church for civil, as well as, religious authority. The sacraments, as a result, become the property of the state, baptism, for example, being the entry into not only the kingdom of God, but also the entry into the kingdom of whichever king was ruling at the time. The church continues to serve as the social service arm of the government. The only true witness to the kingdom of God and the Gospel of Christ was the monastery, which became the primary educator in the empire. This mixture of empire and church created the cocktail in which Martin Luther and the Reformation would explode across Europe in the 16th century.

Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk and Bible teacher, reacted against the corruption and control of the Roman Church's hierarchy and doctrine, responding with two major themes: justification by grace through faith and the priesthood of all believers. For Luther, every single doctrine and practice of the church was reinterpreted and refashioned according to this doctrine of justification by grace through faith. Although many things changed in this reconstituting of the church around the doctrine of justification by grace, ecclesiology remained largely the same. Baptism was still the way by which infants were joined to the church and society, and the partnership between church and state remained central to society.

As we reflected on the work of Luther and the Reformation, especially with regards to ecclesiology, I was reminded of a few observations made by Luther in his The German Mass and Order of Divine Service (thanks to Alan Knox for the reference). It seems that there were both "seeker-sensitive" and "incarnational/organic church" models in Luther's mind as well! I will quote at length. First, Luther's "seeker-sensitive" model:

Next, there is the German Mass and Divine Service, of which we are now treating. This ought to be set up for the sake of the simple laymen. Both these kinds of Service then we must have held and publicly celebrated in church for the people in general. They are not yet believers or Christians. But the greater part stand there and gape, simply to see something new: and it is just as if we held Divine Service in an open square or field amongst Turks or heathen. So far it is no question yet of a regularly fixed assembly wherein to train Christians according to the Gospel: but rather of a public allurement to faith and Christianity.

But Luther would have preferred a more organic/incarnational model, had he had the leaders for it.

But the third sort [of Divine Service], which the true type of Evangelical Order should embrace, must not be celebrated so publicly in the square amongst all and sundry. Those, however, who are desirous of being Christians in earnest, and are ready to profess the Gospel with hand and mouth, should register their names and assemble by themselves in some house to pray, to read, to baptize and to receive the sacrament and practise other Christian works. In this Order, those whose conduct was not such as befits Christians could be recognized, reproved, reformed, rejected, or excommunicated, according to the rule of Christ in Matt. xviii. Here, too, a general giving of alms could be imposed on Christians, to be willingly given and divided among the poor, after the example of St. Paul in 2 Cor. ix. Here there would not be need of much fine singing. Here we could have baptism and the sacrament in short and simple fashion: and direct everything towards the Word and prayer and love. Here we should have a good short Catechism about the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer. In one word, if we only had people who longed to be Christians in earnest, Form and Order would soon shape itself. But I cannot and would not order or arrange such a community or congregation at present. I have not the requisite persons for it, nor do I see many who are urgent for it.

From the rest of his writings on the mass, it is clear that Luther was aware of issues of contextualization as well as some of ecumenism. How far he went with these is apparent in the history, but it is interesting, even encouraging, to see them in writing.