Emerging Africa

We have seen quite a lot of debate on fundamentals and fundamentalism, sparked off by ill-informed attacks on the Amahoro Gathering last month in the blog Discerning the world.

Now I don't know whether it is fair to characterise the authors of the Discerning the world blog as "fundamentalists". They say very little about what they believe. They say a great deal about what they are against, but very little about what they are for, and that makes it very difficult to have any kind of dialogue. They also make ridiculous lying accusations (did anyone at the Amahoro Gathering hear a single thing about "Maitreya"?). If you want to have dialogue, you need to deal with things that people actually say, and not hundreds of entirely unrelated things that are unjustly and untruthfully attributed to them.

But if that kind of behaviour is bizarre, then let us also try to avoid engaging in it ourselves. The authors of that blog are clearly trying to turn the term "Emerging Church" into a symbol of all that is evil, without being hindered by any inconvenient obstacles such as truth. This has been done with other terms throughout history. Just think of the ideas conjured up in the minds of some people by words like "Inquisition". For many is is the very symbol of evil, yet how many people who utter it in order to create an impression of evil in the minds of their hearers have any idea of what the Inquisition really was?

The problem is that some here have been doing precisely the same thing with the word "Fundamentalist".

I tried to point out the core of what Fundamwentalists believe, and all sorts of people have nevertheless said that what is wrong with Fundamentalists is the way they behave, and are thus trying to create the impression that this kind of behaviour is characteristic of "Fundamentalism", and this is precisely what is wrong with the behaviour of the people at Discerning the World.

Repeat after me: An idea is not necessarily responsible for the behaviour of the people who believe in it.

It is easy to be tempted into making lying accusations. People have also made such accusations against Christianity itself. They have said that religion generally, and Christianity in particular, has been responsible for all that is evil and violent in the world. Without doubt, Christians have sometimes behaved very badly over the centuries, and some Christians have been moved to say sorry for that behaviour. There was even a web site for that, with a little logo saying "Sorry" that you could stick on your blog.

But confessing other people's sins is a relatively undemanding activity, especially when those sins were committed by people whose culture and environment was very different from ours, such as those who were involved in things like the Crusades, the Inquisition and the Burning Times. Rather than confessing their sins, let us seek to confess and forsake our own. Past generations of Christians may have attacked "Saracens", "heretics", and "witches" unfairly, but there is no point in apologising for that if we are going to behave in a similar way towards "fundamentalists" and other groups that we love to hate.

Repeat once again: An idea is not necessarily responsible for the behaviour of the people who believe in it.

In another post I pointed out the chief characteristics of Fundamentalism, the idea that there were certain beliefs that were not negotiable, that were fundamental. The five points listed were dogmas that had been under attack by liberal Protestantism, which is why the Fundamentalists gave them such prominence.

I don't agree with them all, and so I'm not a Fundamentalist. I can agree with some of them, but not the substitutionary atonement as Fundamentalists understand it, and I have my doubts about the "verbal inerrancy" thing.

But we've also seen a new fundamentalism right here. Maybe not Fundamentalism with a capital f, but fundamentalism with a small f, in the Jesus Manifesto. That document advocates a return to what the authors see as the fundamentals, which are the primacy and supremacy of Christ. They see that as non-negotiable.

Like the original Fundamentalists, they are seeking to protect these things against those they see as attacking them. And they list the things they see as rivalling their "fundamentals": “justice,” “the kingdom of God,” “values,” and “leadership principles.”

I don't know Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola, so I don't judge the value of the Jesus Manifesto by their behaviour, just as I try not to judge the Fundamentals of the old Fundamentalists by the behaviour of people like the authors of Discerning the world (especially since I don't even know if they are actually Fundamentalists at all).

If one is going to evaluate such things one must ask at least two questions:

1. Are they true?
2. Are they fundamental?

I have my doubts about the Jesus Manifesto, just as I have my doubts about the Fundamentals. What about the Trinity?

As an Orthodox Christian, I also have some "fundamentals". They are expressed in two hymns that we sing every Sunday. One is after communion:

We have seen the true light
We have received the heavenly Spirit
We have found the true faith
Worshipping the undivided Trinity
Who has saved us.

And the other is the Orthodox "Jesus manifesto":

Only-begotten Son and immortal Word of God
Who for our salvation didst will to be incarnate of the holy Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary
Who without change didst become man and was crucified
O Christ our God, trampling down death by death
Who art one of the Holy Trinity, glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit
Save us.

It might be possible for people to have a dialogue about those things, but preferably not by making them responsible for pogroms against the Jews in Tsarist Russia or the blinding of political opponents by Christian Roman emperors and empresses.

But since I don't qualify as "emerging" or "emergent" (though I am here for dialogue), here's a critique of the "Jesus manifesto" from an Emerging point of view.