Page 2816 – Christianity Today (2024)

Ship of Fools

This U.K.-based “magazine of Christian unrest” eschews cynicism in favor of gentler prodding from an orthodox vantage. Popular features include Signs and Blunders, Fruitcake Zone, and Mystery Worshipper, in which anonymous reviewers attend services around the world, reporting on sermon length, pew comfort, and coffee temperature.

Geez

Lives up to its billing as “holy mischief in an age of fast faith.” Both subversive and edifying, this Canada-based site offers voices from opposing beliefs to keep it fresh and unpredictable. They recently held a sermons-you’ll-never-hear-in-church contest, calling for “words that are too hot, too happy, too whatever for the church to handle – yet still need to be said.”

The Revealer

A smart review of religion in the news that winks as it scolds the press for getting religion wrong. Demands better coverage of faith – sharper thinking, thicker description. Mantra: “Belief matters, whether or not you believe.” Editor Jeff Sharlet writes that he was “raised in as many churches, synagogues, and ashrams as his Christian/Jewish parents had friends.”

Busted Halo

Paulist Young Adult Ministries – a Catholic organization – sponsors this hip online mag for 20- and 30-something seekers. Features balanced and though-provoking articles (with titles like “Oxymoron No Longer: On Being Black and Catholic in America”), reviews, and interviews. Cool video and audio clips, too.

Heeb

This satirical Jewish “zine for the plugged-in and preached-out” is so funny and topical that only the most dour of goys could visit it without breaking a smile. Its mission encompasses the prophetic (“a plague on modern-day pharaohs”) and the fun (“a Carnival cruise to the Garden of Eden”). Covers arts, culture, and politics.

A few pages into Don Everts and Doug Schaupp’s I Once Was Lost, 1 Peter 3:15 flashed through my mind. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the middle phrase, which has defined apologetics-driven evangelism for decades: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” Instead it was the entire verse, beginning with “Setting apart Christ as Lord” and ending with “do this with gentleness and respect.”

Everts and Schaupp’s thesis is this: Postmoderns respond best to evangelists who allow for and encourage a process. Though it nods to the mystery of that process, I Once Was Lost attempts to offer practical and specific advice—how-to’s, even—for outreach to postmoderns.

Still, the book departs from a modern, rationalistic model for doing evangelism. It doesn’t offer a manual. It is fresh, real, and based on the authors’ direct experience. The label postmodern is held loosely, meant simply to describe “how things are right now,” rather than to conform to a technical definition.

The authors, both InterVarsity Christian Fellowship leaders, identify “five thresholds” by which most young converts come to Christ. Using the parable of the growing seed in Mark 4:28–29 to frame the process, Everts and Schaupp outline five distinct “seasons”: from distrust of Christians to trust; from spiritual complacency to curiosity; from being closed to Christianity to being open; from meandering to seeking; and finally, entrance over the “threshold of the kingdom.”

The strength of the book lies in the hands-on ministry wisdom at its core. Cognitive and logical strategies of college evangelism simply don’t work anymore; the game has changed.

During countless hours spent with young skeptics, Everts and Schaupp have discovered that today’s adolescents, with their painful and almost constantly precarious lives, are suspicious of hidden agendas. At the same time, they are open to someone who initiates conversation with “gentleness and respect.”

While the authors don’t examine emerging adulthood, many who are following that trend are not surprised by the fruit of Everts and Schaupp’s ministry. There is little doubt that adolescence has lengthened in recent years—as scholars like Jeffrey Arnett and Christian Smith will confirm.

Thus, today’s 22-year-old is the developmental equivalent of a 17-year-old in 1980 (see “Getting a Life,” Books & Culture, Nov./Dec. 2007). The authors’ a priori assumption that today’s college students must be dealt with differently than college students a few decades ago is right on.

Many in college ministry will find this book fresh and challenging. Others will see in it principles and observations in which they already function comfortably. Either way, I Once Was Lost provides an apt reminder that what it means to creatively and respectfully love those whom God loves must change over time.

Chap Clark, professor of youth, family, and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary and author of Hurt: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

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Jeff Elbel attended his first Cornerstone Festival in 1991 while he was living in Champaign, Illinois. The event was 150 miles away in the small Illinois town of Bushnell, and was such a formative experience, he made sure to carve space in his schedule to make the trip for the next two years. Then he relocated to California in 1994 and decided against traveling half way across the country to attend the event—the distance proved more than he could bear.

“The entire week that Cornerstone was going on, I was looking at my watch,” Elbel recalls. He kept track of when his favorite bands were performing, as well as the seminars whose subjects most attracted his attention. The obsession took its toll on his work productivity, and tensions developed at home. “I basically made my wife miserable, so she finally just told me to go from now on.” He hasn’t missed a festival since.

Cornerstone is perhaps best known as the premier alternative rock festival of Christian music, with performance opportunities for a mind-bending range of genres that span punk, folk, metal, jazz, and bluegrass. The event often draws attention for the freedom that many attendees feel concerning their fashion sense, sporting multiple piercings and tattoos while shaping their hair into strange configurations. But those who travel by plane, train, and automobile to spend their July 4 holidays in Bushnell are attracted to something more that what outsiders first notice.

“They’re not coming to see a particular band; they’re coming to be part of the community,” says John Herrin, the festival’s director. Over the years they have shared campsites, the love of music, the notoriously cruel weather, and most of all, a passion for Jesus. The 2008 Cornerstone reunion—from June 30 thru July 5—is extra special for attendees; the festival is celebrating its 25th anniversary.

Building the Foundation

The idea for Cornerstone originated with Herrin in the 1980s when he was the drummer for Resurrection Band (often called REZ or Rez Band), whose members live in the inner-city commune Jesus People USA. While on tour, the band played at the few large Christian festivals that existed at the time, even though they didn’t always fit in. The hard rockers drew their sound more from Led Zeppelin than Pat Boone, with lyrics that went beyond inspirational themes to cover ground that other Christian artists often feared to tread, like the pain of divorce and the injustice of apartheid.

“We were the odd man out,” recalls Herrin. Turns out that was something they shared in common with many of the young people who also attended such festivals, often dragged by their parents. The band was relegated to playing mid-day while acts such as Dallas Holm and The Imperials were the featured evening acts.

Herrin began to envision a new kind of Christian music festival—part church conference, part Woodstock. To the joy of some and the consternation of others, JPUSA succeeded.

Cornerstone was first staged in Grayslake, Illinois from 1984 to 1990. In 1991, JPUSA moved the festival to Bushnell, where they had purchased 570 acres of property—mostly pasture and including a 44-acre lake. As many as 25,000 people have camped there in any given year since.

Some changes will be made to celebrate Cornerstone’s 25th anniversary. On Friday night, for only the second time in the history of the festival, all but the Main Stage will be closed for a combined evening of worship. More than a dozen bands will play during the service, entitled “Worship God with Dirty Hands,” and singer/songwriter/producer/pastor Charlie Peaco*ck will lead communion.

Both Resurrection Band and DeGarmo & Key—another one of Christian music’s leading acts in the 1980s—are reuniting for the occasion. Because of his fondness for the festival, Eddie DeGarmo himself contacted Herrin to see what he thought about the act playing at Cornerstone. “Last year, we were awarded the prestigious Visionary Award by ASCAP. We reunited there and played three songs at the awards ceremony. I must say we can still rock, so we decided to play for the fans again at Cornerstone.”

A Cornerstone for Christian Music

Herrin says the success of Cornerstone stems from JPUSA’s commitment to being authentically diverse. “Cornerstone has the freedom to say we’re not going to try to be everything to all people,” Ironically, it’s that very freedom that enables the festival to do just that.

Cornerstone’s reputation was built in large part on the music. More than 650 bands are scheduled to play on ten festival-sponsored stages in 2008, as well as other stages on site sponsored by groups like Compassion International. Many of Christian music’s biggest groups—as well as some popular mainstream bands—got their start playing at the festival’s new band showcase. P.O.D., Switchfoot, Third Day, Sixpence None the Richer, Mute Math, Underoath—all were relatively unknown when they first played in Bushnell. Many of them have since made repeated trips to play the bigger stages.

Linda LaFianza, co-publisher of the e-zine Phantom Tollbooth, says the event is the most important Christian festival of the year. “The most interesting and authentic music is coming through Cornerstone. MuteMath and Switchfoot won’t play other Christian festivals for fear of being labeled as Christian bands, but are eager to appear at Cornerstone.”

For other bands, Cornerstone is a must-stop destination. Elbel and his band Ping have no expectations of their group hitting it big, but they are perennial performers because they enjoy the bonds formed between artists and audience. “We always feel like we’re part of the community, even when we’re on stage,” Elbel says. “We’re just a couple feet above others, but we know most of the people who come to our shows.”

Beyond the Bands

In addition to the music, the festival has since become known for its seminars and creative outlets for the entire family. That was intentional. Herrin had been as dismayed by the selection of speakers as he was frustrated about the lack of musical diversity. He recalls attending a festival in which one of the speakers on the main stage told the audience that healing was possible for all who have enough faith. “A couple speakers later, Joni Eareckson Tada comes out on stage in her wheelchair. What are people supposed to think?”

Attendees also had no opportunity to ask questions of the speakers. So Cornerstone organizers decided to reserve entire days for multi-session seminars that allowed for interaction between presenters and attendees. The seminars and other educational offerings are as diverse as the music. This year, more than 200 hours of seminars are scheduled. Attendees can sit under a tent and listen to one of the world’s leading theologians, Yale professor Miroslav Volf speak on “Us vs. Them: Identity, Otherness & Reconciliation,” or listen to JPUSA Pastor Wendi Kaiser speak on “Sex, Love, and Dating: Connecting the Dots.”

In past years, attendees also have had the opportunity to hear such varied presenters as Jean Vanier, John Perkins, Stanley Grenz, and Brian McLaren. “We get the best speakers and seminars for this event,” says Glenn Kaiser, best known by many for his solo work and as frontman for Rez Band, also serving as one of the JPUSA pastors. “They’re more important than the music.”

Kaiser laughs as he shares how a speakers sometimes returned to their trailers in disbelief, saying “I can’t believe a guy with a huge Mohawk is taking notes from my seminar.” The fashion styles have been known to initially disorient a presenter.

Years ago, Vernon Grounds, the chancellor of Denver Seminary, quipped, “I feel like I’ve crossed a cultural divide.”

Cornerstone also offers plenty for those who revel in the esoteric. In The Imaginarium, participants can delve into pop-culture themed seminars like “The God Who Loves Monsters,” “Dorothy Sayers vs. C.S. Lewis,” and “Hail Britannia.” Audiences at the Flickerings film showcase muse over the canon of Ingmar Bergman and discuss the merits of “What Would Jesus Buy?” a documentary produced by Morgan Spurlock, best known for his film Super Size Me.

Community for All Kinds of Christians

The festival’s willingness to traverse traditional evangelical boundaries has drawn some harsh criticism and occasional protests. According to Kaiser, some churches won’t bring their youth groups because so many “pre-believers” and “fringe Christians” attend Cornerstone. But just as some adults fear the environment, others bring young people specifically for it. “Parents bring kids who won’t listen to the gospel in any other venue,” Kaiser says.

People come for all kinds of reasons, however, and some have baffled even the organizers. “We’ve had a lot of honeymoons at the festival, which I think is crazy,” Kaiser says laughing. “We’ve even had weddings at the festival!”

Others come because they want to help. The festival is heavily dependent on the volunteers, who help with everything from picking up the trash to managing the events. Elbel runs the Gallery Stage, while LaFianza and her co-editor Shari Lloyd supervise the press tent, where artists stop for interviews.

Organizers need six hundred attendees to volunteer their time to supplement the 300 from the Jesus People community. “There’s no way we could do it without the volunteers,” Herrin says. The festival costs $1.6 million to produce but generally breaks even on the operating costs. “I’m surprised we’ve been able to hang in there financially,” says Kaiser. “There have been plenty of ups and downs, but has God ever been faithful.”

The proliferation of festivals has made putting on Cornerstone more difficult. “There are hundreds of events this year—easily,” Herrin says. As a result, people don’t have to travel as far to hear their favorite artists. Booking the most popular artists can require too much money. In its early days, artists would remain at the festival for days and spend time talking with fans. Tight schedules now necessitate that bands arrive, perform, and leave immediately for the next festival. By helping launch so many artists, says Herrin, “We’ve been our own worst enemy.”

Herrin now notices a gap in the ages of the people who attend. “They come when they’re teenagers. They stop when they’re in the early twenties and starting their families. Later, when their kids are older, they start coming back again.” It is not uncommon for grandparents to bring their grandchildren.

When the gates open, new communities are formed as people renew friendships and make fresh ones. Tents are placed alongside one another and common dining tents might be erected. An annual barbecue brings together roughly one hundred people, some of whom have previously only met online. Bible studies often are held within the communities that are as diverse as the rest of the festival. “You’ll see people coming from the most straight-laced conservative church spending time with the Goth kids,” Elbel says.

Lainie Petersen, who first attended Cornerstone in 1987 and has returned seven times, says the various communities also have a practical purpose. “Camping is tougher than it seems. When you pool resources and support with other people, you make everything that much easier.”

That includes surviving the elements. When veterans talk about the weather, the conversation is closer to the stuff of legends than idle chatter. “There are two kinds of weather at Cornerstone: muddy and dusty,” says LaFianza.

Anyone who has camped at least twice has their own survival story to tell. In 2005, when temperatures soared to 100 degrees, campers resorted to wearing bandanas over their mouths to keep out the dust. Storms that have battered tents and turned the field to mud are not uncommon. One of Elbel’s favorite pair of shoes was a casualty. “My feet had sunk so far in the mud, they got left behind.”

Storms kept Petersen awake way past 3 a.m. one year when she was camping and had no car. “My tiny tent flooded and there was nothing I could do about it. All I could do was stick my head out the tent to keep from drowning and giggle maniacally for the next two hours until the rain stopped.” Having learned lessons the hard way over the years, Petersen wants to make sure others don’t have to do the same. She has put together the website cstonesurvival, which provides all the tips someone might need in order to prepare for the event.

Petersen says she knows high fuel prices may keep some people away, but adds such obstacles can be overcome. “Really the best way to deal with that is to get creative and share resources. Share a car, share camping equipment, share food—it’s easy when you think about it.”

It’s not just easy, but a way of life for the first 25 years of this legendary festival, and for many years to come in the community of Cornerstone.

Visit www.cornerstonefestival.com for schedules, ticket information, and lots more concerning Cornerstone Festival in Bushnell, Illinois.

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The word mystic does not bring to mind edifying images for most Christians these days. It smacks of a vapid, Southern California mindset, readily exploited by marketers of tea and juice and such. For the more historically minded, mystic might suggest the wild–haired, unwashed visionaries off in the wilderness—not, in other words, something of much concern to everyday believers as they balance their finances or play catch with their kids.

But true mystics are far from amorphously spiritual. As Bernard McGinn has put it, “no mystic (at least before the present century) believed in or practiced ‘mysticism.’ They believed in and practiced Christianity (or Judaism, or Islam, or Hinduism), that is, religions that contained mystical elements as part of a wider historical whole.” McGinn’s work serves as the starting point for William Harmless, a professor of theology at Creighton University, whose new book Mystics is a walk through the lives and teachings of eight great mystics: Thomas Merton, Bernard of Clairvaux, Hildegard of Bingen, Bonaventure, Meister Eckhart, and Evagrius Ponticus from the Christian tradition, as well as the Sufi poet Rumi and the Buddhist divine Dogen.

Harmless opens the book by presenting two contrasting views of mysticism. In the early 15th century, Jean Gerson, chancellor of the University of Paris, wrote a two-volume treatise on the subject, the first scholarly study of mysticism. The title alone, On Mystical Theology, shows his view: Mysticism is theology, but more personal and experiential than the scholastic theology of the academy. Gerson defines this mystical theology as “an experiential knowledge of God that comes through the embrace of unitive love,” and he offers a robustly evocative account of the mystics’ writings: “They talk of a jubilation beyond the spirit, of being taken into a divine darkness, of tasting God, of embracing the bridegroom, of kissing him, of being born of God, of obeying his word, of being brought into the divine cellars, of being drunk in a torrent of delight, of running into an odor of his perfumes, of hearing his voice, and entering into the bedroom, and of finding sleep and rest in peace with him.”

A second approach is represented by the modern American philosopher William James and his enormously influential Gifford lectures, published under the title The Varieties of Religious Experience. James believed religion to be a matter of personal experience, not ideas: “The mother sea and fountain-head of all religions lie in the mystical experience of the individual.” The sacred history, tradition, scriptures, and rituals of particular religions are all local outgrowths from this universal experience, and are not necessary for understanding it. At first glance, James’ approach may appear to be quite similar to Gerson’s: both emphasize the experiential character of mysticism. But for James, in contrast to Gerson, theology is strictly epiphenomenal.

Harmless’ own view is squarely, though respectfully, opposed to James’. Indeed, he writes, “James treats history as though it were a stream to be stepped over instead of an ocean we swim in.” As Harmless leads readers through the writings of his eight mystics, he gives the context surrounding each author’s writing and shows how necessary that context—in all its ritualistic, theological, and historical fullness—is for understanding mysticism.

Four of these mystics seem especially noteworthy. Harmless begins with Thomas Merton, perhaps the best-known mystical writer of the 20th century—and the most accessible, if least deep, of the mystics he surveys. Merton attended Cambridge University for a year before being sent down for doing more partying and drinking than studying, and also for fathering a child out of wedlock. After Cambridge, Merton returned to America and completed his education at Columbia, where he was baptized a Catholic. Merton set out to be a professional writer, but soon entered a Trappist monastery in Kentucky. While in the monastery, Merton continued to write, and beginning with his autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain his books became famous. In his early writings, Merton focuses on Catholic theology, advocating the practice of contemplation in a world filled with noise. For Merton, contemplation is “a sudden gift of awareness,” and the quest for holiness is “the quest for one’s true face” as seen in the face of God. Merton’s concept of prayer, Harmless writes, “centers on ‘presence’; it presumes and builds on faith; it praises without words and adores without gesture. It comes up out of the ‘center’—which presumes, of course, that one has found that interior center amid the swirl of one’s inner consciousness.”

Later in life, Merton became more interested in writing on themes of social justice and Eastern spirituality. He even traveled to the East, an extreme rarity for a Trappist, where he had an intense mystical experience while praying before the statue of the Buddha at Polonnaruwa. In the eyes of this reviewer, this marks a distinct departure from the intense, orthodox Catholicism of his early years. There appears to be a difference between the earlier and the later Merton, but Harmless makes no distinction between the two. He concludes with a passage from Merton’s The Sign of Jonas, in which Merton writes of watching for fires on the monastery property one summer evening. The experience, says Harmless, captures Merton as a fire-watcher standing outside modern culture, testifying to the broken nature of the human heart and pointing the way for broken men to be made whole.

Harmless then introduces the reader to Bernard of Clairvaux, the great Cistercian abbot—and celebrity—of the 12th century. Bernard traveled throughout Europe founding monasteries, preaching two crusades, engaging in academic and ecclesiastical controversies, and advising popes. But his greatest legacy can be found in his writings. In On Loving God, Bernard shows how the human desire to love God comes as a response to the love of God.

In his sermons on the Song of Songs, Bernard explores the love of God further. Harmless writes, “Bernard was convinced that the Song of Songs’ central theme—the passions and love play of the wedding night—provides the best analogy for describing the human encounter with the divine. The claim is breathtaking. We today use the term ‘mystical marriage’ without thinking how astonishing it is to claim that God and a human being can so unite as to be married.” While reading Bernard, one is not only moved by the power of his message but also struck by the fact his prose is full of references to sacred Scripture. It is obvious that Bernard was a man who studied and soaked in the words of the Bible and the fathers of the Church, and that one cannot peel away their influence from the core of his writing.

A century after Bernard, a German Dominican named Meister Eckhart was preaching on the nature of God. Eckhart was famous, and controversial, for using strong language to jolt his listeners out of their human conceptions of God. He attacked traditional religious language and names for God, and also diminished the distinction between man’s being and God. For such preaching, Eckhart was accused of heresy during his own lifetime and after death. It is probably Harmless’ greatest work of pedagogy that he makes Eckhart’s writing understandable, and that he shows how Eckhart’s radical theology was not heretical as many took it to be.

Eckhart conceived of God’s inner life as “a ‘boiling,’ a giving birth to itself—glowing in itself, and melting and boiling in and into itself, light that totally forces its whole being in light and into light and that is everywhere turned back and reflected upon itself.” In other words, “God is an inner bursting creativity that spills over as joy, as exuberance, as beauty: ‘God delights in himself. In the delight in which God delights in himself, he delights also in all creatures.’ ” From this lively emanation present in the Trinity emanates creation itself, and therefore all creation ultimately has at its core the same being, that of God. By saying this Eckhart is not embracing monism, but rather reminding the hearer of the full implications of the words “in him we live, and move, and have our being.”

Dogen was a similarly controversial figure in 13th-century Buddhism, the founder of the Soto sect. His primary teaching was the practice of zazen as a means “to drop off body-mind.” One would sit without thinking, but also without not-thinking. Instead, one would practice nonthinking. Once again, Harmless is adept in deciphering what this might mean: “Nonthinking, it seems, lies beyond both thinking and not-thinking; it ‘neither affirms nor denies, accepts nor rejects, believes nor disbelieves’; it is presencing, a realizing of the ‘pure presence of things as they are.’ ” This kind of mystical practice, Dogen teaches, would reveal true human nature and give its practitioner an experience of what Harmless calls “ultimate reality.” So far Dogen’s teaching aligns with traditional Buddhist doctrines, but he departs from them in his definition of what has sacred dignity—what is known in Buddhism as “Buddha-nature.” Christians limit sacred dignity to human beings, and traditional Buddhists limit Buddha-nature to sentient beings, but Dogen extends it to all things. In other words, everything has an innate holiness. Traditional Buddhism also teaches that one should flee the impermanence of the world and seek the purity of Buddha-nature, which does not change. Dogen, however, teaches the exact opposite: the world in its impermanence is Buddha-nature.

At this point the reader is justified in wondering how Dogen could be categorized as mystic in the same vein as Bernard of Clairvaux. If we think of mysticism as the soul’s union with God, or as an exploration of the natures of God and man—Harmless’ preliminary definition of mysticism—then Dogen is not a mystic. But if you broaden the definition of mysticism, as Harmless does in his conclusion, to include profound experiential knowledge of God or of ultimate reality, Dogen and Bernard fall into the same category. The fact remains, however, that the Christian conception of knowing a personal God and the deity-free Buddhist conception of realizing Buddha-nature are markedly different. Indeed, Harmless says that his goal is “to take up and to take on the widespread claim that ‘all religions are all the same at the top,’ that ‘mystics are all experiencing the same thing.’ … I hope I’ve shown here … that such claims are simply nonsense, that those who make them have simply not done their homework.” Harmless has shown this well, but he leaves the reader wanting to know more about how Buddhist and Christian mysticism differ.

That aside, Mystics accomplishes everything Harmless sets out to do. With miraculous clarity, Harmless leads the reader through the select mystical texts and ends by reiterating what the reader now already knows: mystics cannot be separated from the scriptures, liturgy, communities, and history that formed them. Mysticism may be experiential theology, but it is still theology. In making that case with such lucidity, William Harmless has provided the lay reader with an outstanding introduction to the great mystics and their writings.

Nathaniel Peters is a junior fellow at First Things.

Copyright © 2008 Books & Culture.Click for reprint information.

Cartoon by Larry Thomas

I’m in transit to Israel to cover the Global Anglican Futures event in Jerusalem this week. But there has been great anticipation of Sunday’s opening address of Primate Archbishop of All Nigeria Peter Akinola. Akinola is, according to imprecise media reports, the force behind talk of schism in the global Anglican Communion.

But any plain reading of his remarks, which the GAFCON press office released today, indicate that he and other consevatives have a reformist, not a separatist, agenda.

Here are some highlights from Archbishop Akinola’s remarks:

People of the living God, welcome to Jerusalem. Welcome to GAFCON. One of the marks of apostolic ministry is signs, wonders and miracles. There are many in today’s Church, who would lay claim to apostolic authority without holding on to apostolic faith nor do they manifest any of the marks of the apostles. In GAFCON, I have seen signs and wonders. That we are able to gather here this week is a miracle for which we must give thanks to God.

Why are we here? What have we come to do?

The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) holding here in the holy land this week has understandably elicited both commendation and contempt in varying measures from all who claim a stake in shaping the future identity or in destroying the traditional identity of the global Anglican Communion.

Those who failed to admit that by the unilateral actions they took in defiance of the Communion have literally torn the very fabric of our common life at it deepest level since 2003, are grumbling that we are here to break the Communion.

Similarly, those who fail, for whatever reason to come to terms with the painful reality that the Communion is in a state of brokenness and lacked the ability to secure a genuine reconciliation, but simply carried on the work of the Communion in a manner that is business as usual are not happy with us.

And of course there are those who argue that while there may be some justification for GAFCON; why not call it after Lambeth 2008.

But thanks be to God that there are millions of people around the world including members of other denominations and those of other faiths who not only share our concerns but have chosen to partner with us and are praying for us.

For those of us gathered here in the Name of the Lord, and on behalf of the over 35 million faithful Anglicans we represent GAFCON is a continuation of that quiet but consistent initiative, a godly instrument appointed to reshape, reform, renew and reclaim a true Anglican Biblical orthodox Christianity that is firmly anchored in historic faith and ancient formularies.

Be that as it may, we must note that we cannot understand our present circ*mstance without locating it within the context of the controversies of the past decade. Every responsible historian knows that his task is predicated on the treasury of past events – rightly interpreted, as the compass for the present and guide for the future. For this reason, GAFCON takes its bearings from the tides of varied opinions and equivocations that have characterised our Communion in the last few years and exposed our once robust reputation as children of the Reformation to scorn. We were well-known for our stand on Scripture as the foundation stone of our tradition and reason.

The underlying objective of GAFCON necessarily compels a deep and honest reflection on the theological and ecclesiological inconsistencies of the past decade at the highest and most sacred levels of our Communion. While not contesting the right to personal opinions and attitudes to this new situation, we must disabuse our minds of the unworthy views about GAFCON being a monster on the horizon, or even a strange breed of Anglicanism devoid of antecedent factors.

Whichever way you look at it, the Communion is deeply in trouble. This is not only because of the actions of TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada but also because the hitherto honoured Instruments of Communion, in recent years have, by design become instruments of disunity, putting the Communion in an unprecedented brokenness and turmoil.

My back of the envelope analysis is that both the conservatives and the revisionists are placing the blame on each other for the sorry state of the Anglican Communion. At the moment, the bottom line is the schism just isn’t on the agenda for the left or right. There is, however, a struggle for the soul of Anglicanism in this post-colonial, pro-nationalist era.

I sometimes worry we have settled for a little gospel, a miniaturized version that cannot address the robust problems of our world. But as close to us as the pages of a nearby Bible, we can find the Bible’s robust gospel, a gospel that is much bigger than many of us have dared to believe:

The gospel is the story of the work of the triune God (Father, Son, and Spirit) to completely restore broken image-bearers (Gen. 1:26?27) in the context of the community of faith (Israel, Kingdom, and Church) through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the gift of the Pentecostal Spirit, to union with God and communion with others for the good of the world.

The gospel may be bigger than this description, but it is certainly not smaller. And as we declare this robust gospel in the face of our real, robust problems, we will rediscover just how different it is from the small gospel we sometimes have believed and proclaimed.

1. The robust gospel is a story. Jesus didn’t drop out of the heavens one snowy night in Bethlehem to a world hushed for Advent. Instead, Jesus’ birth came in the midst of a story with a beginning, a problem, and a lengthy history. When Jesus stood up to announce the “gospel of the kingdom” (Matt. 4:23), the first thing his hearers would have focused on was not the word gospel but the word kingdom – the climax of Israel’s story and its yearning for the eternal messianic reign. Gospel-preaching for Jesus had the same hope and vision one finds in Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1:46?55), Zechariah’s Benedictus (1:68?79), Simeon’s Nunc dimittis (2:29?32), and John the Baptist’s summons to a new way of life (3:10?14) – namely, the fulfillment of the whole story’s hope, the kingdom of God. This is why Paul defines gospel after its first mention in Romans 1:1 with this: “which he promised beforehand through his prophets, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David” (NRSV). To preach the gospel and to believe the gospel is to offer and enter into a story.

2. The robust gospel places transactions in the context of persons. When the gospel is reduced to a legal transaction shifting our guilt to Christ and Christ’s righteousness to us, the gospel focuses too narrowly on a transaction and becomes too impersonal. We dare not deny transaction or what’s called double imputation, but the gospel is more than the transactions of imputation. The robust gospel of the Bible is personal – it is about God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. It is about you and me as persons encountering that personal, three-personed God.

Indeed, more often than not in the New Testament, the gospel is linked explicitly to a person. It is the “gospel of Christ” or the “gospel of God.” Jesus calls people to lose their life “for my sake” and, to say the same thing differently, “for the sake of the gospel” (Mark 8:35; 10:29). Paul preached the “gospel of God” (1 Thess. 2:9) and the “gospel of Christ” (3:2) and “the glorious gospel of the blessed God” (1 Tim. 1:11). Paul tells us that the gospel is the glorious power of God’s Spirit to transform broken image-bearers into the glory of God that can be seen in the face of the perfect image-bearer, Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 3:18?4:6). In our proclamation, too, the focus of the gospel must be on God as person and our encountering that personal God in the face of Jesus Christ through the power of the Spirit.

3. The robust gospel deals with a robust problem. Genesis 1?3 teaches us that humans are made in God’s image and likeness. These image-bearers were in utter union with God, at home with themselves, in communion with one another, and in harmony with the world around them. When Eve, with her husband in tow, chose to eat of the wrong tree, the image was cracked in each of those four directions: God-alienation, self-shame, other-blame, and Eden-expulsion. Sin results not only in alienation from God, which is paramount, but also in shame of the self, blame and antagonism toward others, and banishment from the world as God made it to be.

The proportions of the biblical problem are not small; the problems are so robust that a robust gospel is needed. The rest of the Bible, from Genesis 4 to Revelation 22, is about these cracked image-bearers being restored to union with God, freed from shame, placed in communion with others, and offered to the world. Any gospel that does not expand the “problem” of Genesis 3 to these cosmic dimensions is not robust enough.

4. A robust gospel has a grand vision. The little gospel promises me personal salvation and eternal life. But the robust gospel doesn’t stop there. It also promises a new society and a new creation. When Jesus stood up to read Isaiah 61 in the synagogue at Nazareth, then sat down and declared that this prophetic vision was now coming to pass through him, there was more than personal redemption at work. God’s kingdom, the society where God’s will is established and lived, was now officially at work in his followers. That society was overturning the injustices and exclusions of the empire and establishing an inclusive and just alternative. We find this in Jesus’ opening words (Luke 4:18?19), the Beatitudes (6:20?26), and in his response to John (Mark 7:22?23). This vision for a just society led to the radical practices of generosity and hospitality in the Jerusalem churches (Acts 2:42?47). Any gospel that is not announcing a new society at work in the world, what the apostle Paul called the church, is simply not a robust gospel.

Check back on Wednesday to read part two of this article.

Originally appeared as part of Christianity Today International’s “Christian Vision Project,” a three-year exploration of how the gospel impacts culture, mission, and faith.

I never imagined Irv Rubin and I would agree on anything. He was the leader of the Jewish Defense League, an organization, founded by Meir Kahane, that took the ADL’s efforts to terrorist extremes and could make an anti-Semite out of Tevye the milkman. I was the archetypal product of assimilation, a liberal evangelical with a Jewish last name and an affinity for understanding all religions.

But a few years back, which coincidentally was a few years after Rubin died in prison, I found myself in his camp. I had set out to write about the propensity for city officials and invited ministers to invoke Jesus’ name in the prayers preceding municipal meetings. Thanks to Irv Rubin, who sued the city of Burbank in 1999 to prohibit sectarian prayers, referring by name to any deity – Allah, YHWH, Jesus, Buddha, the Flying Spaghetti Monster – had been ruled unconstitutional; the state and U.S. supreme courts let the ruling stand.

As a proponent of the separation of church and state, I couldn’t have agreed more. But what I found was that few cities, at least in my community of San Bernardino and eastern Los Angeles counties, paid any mind.

“Lord Jesus, we’d like to give you thanks and praise,” Rialto Councilman Joe Sampson began a meeting, which he later defended because the United States is a “Christian country.”

I assumed that with time this would change. But that has not been the case. In Ontario, Calif., Tuesday, a day after the mayor apologized for “errors in his private life” that vaguely referred to allegations he had an affair with a city employee, Pastor Larry Enriguez invoked Jesus’ words to a mob ready to lynch an adulteress in the eighth chapter of John: “He who is without sin, cast the first stone.”

True words. Very true words when talking about, say, your covetous neighbor. But not when dealing with an elected official who may or may not have been diddling a taxpayer-supported subordinate.

More important, though, is the fact that these words are not appropriate for government meetings. I say this as a Christian who believes Jesus’ message contains incredible power. But I also say this as someone who believes religion should not be forced into the public square. We all know how this ends up for those not in power. And what if the tables are turned? Judge not lest ye be judged.

Think back some 40 years to the release of Nostra Aetate, the revolutionary Vatican document that inexorably changed the nature of Catholic-Jewish relations. It firmly confronted old church attitudes and teachings that Jews suffered under for centuries. It unequivocally asserted the historical and theological dignity of the Jewish people.

Imagine if, a week later, Pope Paul VI stood on the porch of Castel Gandolfo and announced, “There has been a terrible misunderstanding. All we meant is that when we complain, as we must from time to time, about price-gouging around Christmas by pushy Jewish merchants (by that we only mean some of them, of course), we should not go so far as to blame them for the crucifixion. That hurts their feelings.”

In May, the Presbyterian Church (USA) released “Vigilance against Anti-Jewish Ideas and Bias.” Jewish organizations were effusive in their praise. The last decade has seen a spike in violent anti-Semitic hate crimes in Europe. The document could not have been more welcomed and well timed.

The love-fest was short lived. In June, the PC(USA) removed the original document from its website and replaced it with “Vigilance against Anti-Jewish Bias: In the Pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian Peace.”

It would be hard to construct two more dissimilar documents with similar titles. The original pointed directly to problematic PC(USA) overtures and materials, such as overtures “declaring that the Jewish people are no longer in covenant with God … or to blame for the crucifixion.” It was a startling and honest mea culpa that directly addressed Jewish concerns about a steady pattern of criticism of Israel that had morphed into derision of Jews. (The latest U.S. State Department annual report on human rights offered, “The distinguishing feature of the new anti-Semitism is criticism of Zionism or Israeli policy that — whether intentionally or unintentionally — has the effect of promoting prejudice against all Jews by demonizing Israel and Israelis and attributing Israel’s perceived faults to its Jewish character.”)

Ominously, the main focus of the new document is no longer anti-Semitism, but Presbyterian responsibility in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Anti-Semitism has become essentially a sideshow to the main event, which seeks “to call an end to the Israeli occupation … to criticize Christian Zionism … to speak out against the placement of the separation barrier.” (Perhaps the denomination might convince Hamas to end its daily barrage of lethal rockets directed at civilians. That might be easier if the denomination would begin by mentioning them, but don’t look for such mention in the document.) PC(USA) members are now cautioned to mind their Ps and Qs as they pursue their one-sided quest for peace. They are urged to be vigilant against slipping into the language and imagery of anti-Semitism while all references to PC(USA)’s own malfeasance have been purged.

Whereas the old document treated such language as inherently wrong, the new one shifts the blame to the Jews. Using crucifixion language in regard to Israeli soldiers is problematic only because Jews “inevitably construe” such imagery as anti-Jewish. Rather than commit to fight the scourge of exploding worldwide anti-Semitism, the PC(USA) now adds to the one-sided demonization of Israel (“the oppressive force in the Israeli-Palestinian situation”) that fuels it.

To the vast majority of committed Jews, the land of Israel is inseparable from their identity as a people. The May document recognized the “particular gift of land to the Jewish people.” Remarkably, in the very section that criticizes supersessionism, the new document terminates the lease, and awards the land to “the Jewish people and all the descendants of Abraham … [without condoning] an interpretation of the Bible as providing a blueprint for the modern state of Israel.”

The PC(USA) has long been an enigma to Jews. From where we sit, no Protestant denomination has as many vigorous and outspoken loyal critics within its ranks as do the Presbyterians. Websites and publications that offer alternative views to those of church officialdom abound within the PC(USA), whereas they do not in other denominations. Organized, vocal friendship for Israel and the Jewish people is stronger than in any other mainline denomination.

At the same time, no other denomination has a group of apparatchiks — at both national and committee levels — that so consistently and undemocratically thwarts the expressed will of its laity regarding the Middle East as does the PC(USA). When the 2006 General Assembly was on the verge of undoing the damaging divestment-from-Israel resolution of 2004, an 11th-hour move by Louisville leadership desperately tried to forestall it. When that failed, it spent the next two years trying to deny what clearly had been the will of the people: to move to greater balance and evenhandedness in its attitudes toward Israel.

Sadly, it is time for Jews, along with proud friends and allies within the PC(USA), to take off their gloves. Part of our struggle will be to contend with those who can find room to support the national liberation aspirations of every group on earth but the Jewish people.

In a long footnote to the new document, the authors express a revealing howler. The note describes the variegated landscape of contemporary Zionism, from settlers to secularists to Palestinian-rights advocates. Amazingly, it also includes “religious Jews who view human efforts to restore Jewish nationhood as a misguided usurpation of God’s messianic design.” The reference, of course, is to the Neturei Karta lunatic fringe group that equates any kind of Zionism with apostasy, and embraces (literally) Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

How could the folks in Louisville confuse the staunchest anti-Zionists on the planet with Zionists and elevate them to mainstream status? When it comes to Israel, some people in the PC(USA) have little patience for facts, let alone nuance and context. They demonize Israel as an aggressor state, and don’t like to be reminded about invading Arab armies, spurned peace offers, the expulsion of Jews from every surrounding Arab country, terrorist attacks, and the loathsome way that every Arab government has used Palestinians as pawns while denying them the assistance that could have meant meaningful lives for three generations of their brethren. They certainly don’t want to hear about Jewish roots in the Holy Land and a continuous presence for thousands of years.

Which is precisely why the world needed the first document. And precisely why the biases they won’t own up to moved them to rescind it.

Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein is interfaith director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Los Angeles.

Opinions expressed in Speaking Out do not necessarily reflect the views of Christianity Today.

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

“Jewish Groups Angered by Presbyterian Statement on Anti-Jewish Bias” explained that many Jewish leaders see “Vigilance against anti-Jewish bias” as pro-Palestinian.

Recent articles on Christian-Jewish relations include:

Christian Evangelism and Judaism | An exchange of views between a rabbi and a columnist. (April 2, 2008)

Why Evangelize the Jews? | God’s chosen people need Jesus as much as we do. (March 25, 2008)

Pro-Israel vs. Pro-Palestine | A rabbi hopes for a better conversation. (January 23, 2008)

As the archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen leads one of the most evangelical branches of global Anglicanism. After becoming archbishop in 2001, true to evangelical form, he announced an ambitious goal to grow the church. But this call was to all “Bible-based” churches to reach 10 percent of Sydney’s 4.2 million people by 2012. Among other things, these efforts triggered the planting of 60 new congregations and a 30 percent increase in candidates for Anglican ministry—all at a time when Christian growth in Australia has leveled off significantly.

Starting on Sunday, June 22, Jensen will be among the 1,000 top conservatives from around the world to assemble in Jerusalem for GAFCON, the Global Anglican Futures conference. This event was organized quickly after leading conservatives decided not to attend Lambeth, the once-a-decade gathering of the 900-plus Anglican bishops. Many conservatives pulled out of Lambeth in the ongoing dispute over hom*osexual ordination and same-sex blessings. Jensen is serving as GAFCON’s chief organizer. Christianity Today spoke with Archbishop Jensen by phone from Amman, Jordan, where a pre-conference event took place.

What is the purpose of GAFCON?

Two great events have occurred. One is that liberalism in our Anglican Church has manifested itself in such a powerful way in the area of human sexuality. The intention is to export this new teaching right through the Anglican world. Second, as a response, Anglicans around the world have crossed boundaries and have provided protection and care and hope for orthodox people caught up in liberal diocese. That has changed the shape of Anglicanism. What GAFCON is trying to say is: How are we going to live with this? What changes now need to be made in order for us to be able to live in a church that has changed its shape?

GAFCON is not just a conference. It’s a movement. From the very beginning, the emphasis has been on truth and transformation. There’s a very strong evangelical strain in this movement. It’s not only evangelical by any means, but there is a strong evangelical strain. Evangelicals are particularly interested in truth. We believe the truth, that we have access to truth in Scripture, and we believe in transformation.

We believe that people’s lives could be changed. Our interest is not so much in human sexuality as such, but our interest is in that gospel of Jesus Christ, the truth that transforms, and the impact of that gospel in the whole world.

We believe that the current developments actually get in the way of serving that gospel. So that’s what GAFCON’s about. GAFCON is trying to bring together as many people as possible who will serve the gospel of truth and transformation.

What is GAFCON going to look like as a movement?

One of the strong emphases of the leadership team of GAFCON is listening to God, getting together, listening to what God is saying to us, discerning the mind of God, naturally, through the Scriptures, but as they apply to today. It’s premature to answer the question at one level, because we need to hear what we’ve all got to say to each other and listen to God. On the other hand, I would have to say that speaking personally, I would be very surprised if GAFCON didn’t turn itself into a movement with sufficient institutional reality to make it a new force within the Anglican Communion. I don’t hear much interest in breaking up the Communion or splitting it or dividing it further than it is divided. What I hear is the idea of a new force embracing orthodoxy and empowering people to serve the gospel of truth and transformation.

What is your perspective on the crisis within the U.S. Episcopal Church?

All of us would regard this as immensely tragic. Legal proceedings are being taken between Christians. Bishops are being threatened. The irony of this situation is that those who are wanting to leave [the Episcopal Church] are the very people who up to now have been true Anglicans and who have not changed. They are not the innovators. They are simply Anglicans who are adhering to the Anglican faith as they’ve always understood it and have not moved an inch.

What’s at stake for evangelicals worldwide in this struggle within Anglicanism?

Evangelicals find themselves in all sorts of different denominations. The convulsions which are striking [Anglicans], if they have not reached your mainstream denomination, will do so without a doubt. Evangelicals will then have to decide whether their denomination comes first or whether their adherence to the gospel comes first.

So first of all, it’s a question of how deep your evangelicalism goes, which is really another way of saying, How deeply do you adhere to the Scriptures and how deeply do you adhere to the truthful and transforming gospel? Now this great struggle is occurring within the denominations because of very powerful secularizing tendencies throughout the western world. Even though people may live in largely evangelical denominations or even in independent churches, they will find that there’s no place to hide.

There is simply no place to hide. Your children will feel this more sharply than you will. The movement within GAFCON is a tremendously important effort to defend the gospel and to promote true biblical teaching. This is an absolutely essential effort for us, for every evangelical no matter how pure a denomination they may think they occupy.

What is the optimal biblical and Christian response to someone struggling with hom*osexuality?

Evangelicals have been caught intellectually flat-footed in the whole area of human sexuality and indeed of human relations. I think we need to trace this back further to the rise of feminists and to relatively inadequate responses of evangelicals in this area.

Now let me temper that by saying I think that evangelicals in the United States have done far better than we have in Australia and perhaps in the rest of the English-speaking world. I’m very grateful for some tremendous material from the United States, but even so across the border I think we’ve been caught flat-footed on this.

Our problems are not so much to do with hom*osexuality; they’re to do with human nature, human relationships, and the call of the gospel to sacrifice. We have a different view of human nature than that of the world around us. We have a different view as to what constitutes the good life. It’s in those areas that the battle needed to be fought first before we ever got to the human sexuality battle.

Now we’ve reached the point where Christians seem to be saying: “Sorry, what we Christians say as normal, the rest of the world thinks is absolutely impossible and extraordinary.”

Hence, when we say we call upon people whether hom*osexual or heterosexual, to live a life of self-discipline outside marriage, people around us, the world around us, thinks this is some of the most extraordinary stuff they’ve ever heard.

Well, it’s only what all Christians used to believe, and it’s what the Bible teaches.

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

GAFCON.org has live and recorded video from the conference and more information about the meeting.

SydneyAnglicans.net has commentary on GAFCON, material from Jensen, and much more material.

The Anglican blogs, such as Stand Firm, TitusOneNine, and Episcopal Cafe, will have quite a bit of rolling commentary.

More on the widening division in the Anglican Communion is available in our full coverage area.