Tag Archives: evangelicalism

A conversation with Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, Eugene Peterson, and James Houston on the “ressourcement” movement in evangelical spirituality

Posted on June 6, 2010 | 8 comments

Reader Alex Tang posted to my “Ask Dr. Church History” page: “What is your current assessment of the ressourcement or spiritual formation movement? I believe you have written earlier that you think it is ‘stalled.'” The assessment Alex mentions is not mine–or to be exact, it is mine, but I take it from conversations I had with Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, Eugene Peterson, and James Houston.

I had those conversations while preparing the following article, “The Rise, Frustration, and Revival of Evangelical Spiritual Ressourcement” for the Journal of Spiritual Formation & Soul Care 2009, Vol. 2, No. 1, 113–121:

The Rise, Frustration, and Revival of Evangelical Spiritual Ressourcement

Chris Armstrong, Bethel Seminary (St. Paul, MN)

It started in the 1950s and 1960s. It “broke out” in 1978, with the publication of Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline. But today, evangelicalism’s recovery of spiritual traditions from past centuries—led by such popularizers as Richard Foster, Dallas Willard, Eugene Peterson, and James Houston—seems to have reached an impasse. What opened evangelicals to the riches of spiritual tradition? Why has this movement seemingly stalled out? Are there grounds for hope that it will soon move forward again?

There is no denying that by the time Foster’s Celebration hit bookstores in 1978, the conciliatory, culture-engaging “new evangelicals” (represented by the National Association of Evangelicals [NAE], Christianity Today, and Fuller and Gordon-Conwell) had already begun to initiate themselves into the world of traditional Christian spirituality. They were using contemplative prayer techniques, attending retreats, sitting under spiritual directors, and reading Catholic and Orthodox books.

This new openness emerged out of two decades of radical change and barrier-crossing within evangelicalism. The Age of Aquarius saw evangelicals hungering for genuine spiritual experience. If this meant breaking out from the narrow biblicism and constrictive intellectual boundaries of their fundamentalist roots, then so be it. They sought a deeper Christian wisdom both about what makes disciples truly Christ-like and, simply, about what makes people tick. Continue reading →

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Time magazine: How young evangelicals differ on social issues from older generations of evangelicals

Posted on June 5, 2010 | Leave a comment

One Time writer has described how young evangelicals differ from their parents and grandparents on social issues and compassionate ministry (h/t to Trevin Wax):

While their grandparents might have considered political and social engagement inappropriate and their parents may have spent their energies on culture-war issues such as abortion and school prayer, the members of the newest generation of Evangelicals are less interested in choosing sides. They focus on nonideological causes like fighting for clean water and poverty relief and fighting against sex trafficking.

and

When students at Wheaton and other Christian schools go on short-term missions during spring break or over the summer, they may expect to spend their time painting churches or handing out Bibles. But once on the ground, they’re faced with first-order problems like a lack of clean drinking water or safe housing, and they return with a sense of poverty’s scope that cannot be alleviated simply by prayer.

Read the full article at Time’s website. Does this ring true for you, dear readers?

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Sometimes ministry is war: The remarkable ministry of Charles Simeon

Posted on June 1, 2010 | Leave a comment

One of my favorite people from the Patron Saints for Postmoderns book is the early 19th-century Cambridge pastor and mentor Charles Simeon. A curmudgeon, perhaps, with evident character flaws (albeit softened by increasing humility as he grew older), Simeon is perhaps most praiseworthy for sticking out a very difficult ministry in a very difficult time to be a “gospel preacher” in the England’s Established Church:

Destined to Wage War

The timing was both auspicious and difficult. If John Newton’s time was the gawky adolescence of the evangelical church in England, then Charles Simeon’s time was the movement’s early manhood—but it was a challenging manhood. During the early 1800s the movement, begun nearly a century before, was sustaining heavy damage from political intrigue within England’s state church, from an apathetic and dwindling Anglican membership, and from a continuation of the same internal struggles that had marred Newton’s day—Arminian vs. Calvinist, Established Church vs. nonconformist. It was beginning to look as though “gospel Christianity” had seen its day in its birthplace, and the calmer, more reasonable and less activist faith of the Deists and their ilk would swallow up the movement in its very cradle.

But not if Charles Simeon could help it.

Striding resolutely from his rooms at Kings to preach at Holy Trinity, only five feet eight inches tall but “accustomed to ‘bearing himself so well he seemed taller,’” Simeon walked with a hint of a swagger. He wore an ensemble on the showy side of formal, including a “short black coat, breeches and gaiters, black gloves, white ruffled shirt and voluminous preaching gown trailing behind.” Under his arm he tucked a fancy umbrella. Continue reading →

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The “Bartenders’ Church”: Founded in the teeth of the temperance movement

Posted on May 30, 2010 | Leave a comment

Ever wonder what happened to evangelical Protestant bartenders during the late nineteenth-century heyday of the temperance movement? Because, yes, there were such people.

Turns out that in at least one case, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, they formed their own church.

During the 1870 to 1885 period, when the Prohibition movement was in force, many Lutheran churches considered the use of alcohol a sin, and serving alcohol or preparing drinks for others especially evil because it caused people to stumble in their walk of faith, said the Rev. Andi Wolf, pastor.”

These folks who felt turned away often found a home in Emmanuel Church of Christ. We gave them a voice,” Wolf said.

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Can the study of history have value for the church? Reflections after the Kalamazoo congress

Posted on May 24, 2010 | 2 comments

A few reflections on my experience at Medieval Congress 2010, dictated as I drove from Kalamazoo to Midway Airport (through Michigan Wine Country–and stopping at a few tastings!) to return to the Twin Cities:

Sitting in that last session [where I heard the paper “The Beauty of the Person in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas,” by Margaret I. Hughes of Fordham Univ] reminds me again of the apparent integrity and usefulness of Thomistic moral categories and moral analysis (this first came across me at the conference in Rebecca DeYoung’s session on vainglory).

I’m aware always of David Steinmetz’s off-handed dismissal, in a class one day, of virtue ethics as something, as I understood him, inherently Pelagian. But I think again that there’s a high value in an anatomizing of the heart as an ultimately spiritual as well as intellectual discipline, and I think Aquinas works in that mode do many other ethical thinkers in the medieval period . . . and as do the penitential manuals and so on and so forth.

Do they always do it well or in ways we can appropriate today? I’m sure they don’t. But to examine closely our personalities, who we are as moral beings, how we are tempted, how we sin, and how we recover from sins and become purified through a life-long process of sanctification—there is great value in this; it’s a value that was captured in the Methodist movement, has been captured by the Pietists, the Puritans . . . It seems it’s inherently and faithfully biblical and worthy of further study. Continue reading →

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The story of 20th-century evangelicalism–book note

Posted on May 18, 2010 | Leave a comment

The following appeared in Religious Studies Review a little while back:

The Surprising Work of God: Harold John Ockenga, Billy Graham, and the Rebirth of Evangelicalism. By Garth M. Rosell. Grand Rapids, MI, 2008. Pp. 268; plates. Paper, $19.99, ISBN 978-0-8010-3570-8.

To understand a past still so near that some of those involved are still alive, the best we may hope for is an “insider historian” who lived through the events, knew the players personally, and breathed in the mentalité—and also has the technical mastery and interpretive prudence to tell the story in a thorough, evenhanded way. In Garth Rosell, twentieth-century evangelicalism has just such a historian. His book narrates reliably and compellingly the emergence during the 1940s and 1950s of fundamentalism’s more irenic and culturally savvy child. Though this period has been discussed before in the context of Billy Graham’s life and ministry, this account draws also from a deep well of Ockenga material. From it, Rosell draws many insights on the ins, outs, and meanings of the evangelical movement in America. This is an insider account. It is marked by its author’s certainty that the growth of evangelicalism it describes was a good thing—that it was indeed “the surprising work of God.” It is also a model of critical history: meticulously researched, judiciously told, and gloriously footnoted. The generous bibliography only adds to its value for scholars and students of evangelicalism. An appropriate text for any course that deals with twentieth-century evangelicalism.

Chris R. Armstrong
Bethel Seminary, St. Paul, MN

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Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

Posted on May 10, 2010 | 4 comments

Here is a review of the new Diarmaid MacCulloch book, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (MacCulloch previously published an accessible survey of the Reformation period). The provocative title refers both to the future of the faith, and to the presence of certain proto-Christian ideas before Jesus.

A couple of clips from the review, which appears on the Philadelphia Inquirer‘s website, and is written by Margaret McGuiness, chair of the Religion Department at La Salle University:

No text purporting to trace the rise and development of a major world religion can do it all, and Christianity is no exception. MacCulloch does at least touch on many important representatives of events, movements, and doctrinal developments. Topics as diverse as the teaching on Purgatory, Eucharistic doctrine, and evangelicalism are explained and placed within the context of major events such as the Reformations (Protestant and Catholic), the Enlightenment, and the culture wars of the 20th and 21st centuries.

In addition, the author attempts to incorporate the role of Christian women into the larger history, and includes figures as diverse as the mystic Teresa of Avila; Angela Merici, foundress of the Ursuline nuns, the first active women’s religious community; and English Protestant feminist Mary Astell.

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Podcast on evangelical theology, globalization, postmodernism, and seminary education, with John Franke & friends

Posted on April 30, 2010 | 1 comment

This conversation was really fun to have. And maybe even has some light to cast on, as my colleague Kyle Roberts says, “the present and future of evangelical theology, the challenge of globalization and postmodernity, the prospects for the evangelical church in the days ahead, and the role of seminary education in all of this.”

Kyle (a rising theologian, like Christian Collins Winn, who also speaks out on this podcast) explains: “The dialogue participants were John Franke, of Biblical Seminary (on campus to lecture at Bethel University and Seminary), Chris Armstrong, church history professor at Bethel Seminary, Christian Collins Winn, historical theology professor at Bethel College of Arts and Sciences, and myself. Enjoy this discussion and please add any comments or questions of your own for further discussion.  We view this as the beginning of a conversation, not the end.”

Enjoy the podcast, and (we hope) many fascinating posts to come on Kyle’s blog.

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John Newton radio interview–web page and audiofile

Posted on April 27, 2010 | Leave a comment

Last week I gave a radio interview on the life of John Newton, author of the hymn “Amazing Grace,” on WNYG-1440 AM in New York and Connecticut. The show is hosted by Chris Arnzen and is called “Iron Sharpens Iron.” A web page with a nice brief write-up of Newton and a link to the audio file of the interview itself can now be found here. You’ll hear a brief segment of Spanish-language programming at the beginning of the file, then some introductory business, then I am introduced at 12:50 on the track, and the interview itself begins at about 13:50.

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“Wrightians” vs. “Neo-Reformed”–an interesting article about two parties in today’s evangelicalism

Posted on April 23, 2010 | 5 comments

This is an important article, though I think there are far more “parties” within evangelicalism today than the two mentioned. I’d be very interested to hear readers’ thoughts on this one, however brief. Y’all come back and post once you’ve read it!

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