I know very little about the global Orthodox Church, but can't help thinking that its growing popularity in America is bound to eventually cause some real strains. The Orthodox mentality, from what I can tell, seems pretty much antithetical to the American outlook of expecting things to constantly change and improve, with tolerance for lots of varied experiments taking place in different places.
Will a lot of these converts eventually get frustrated and give up on Eastern Orthodoxy? I haven't seen any numbers, but I'm wondering if the percentage of cradle Orthodox in America's churches may be dropping closer to that threshold where "the ratio of newcomers to cradle members reaches a certain point, assimilation breaks down and the reverses direction."
Part of the genius of Christianity is its spiritualizing of religion, where cultural practices are no longer supported as religious duties or rites. This gives Christianity a multicultural aspect.
On the other hand, community is also strongly emphasized, and communities always have common practice and develop visible markers of membership.
I think this suggests a diversity of thick communities united to a degree by a shared identity in Christ.
As an aside: The early Christians who articulated Nicene Trinitarianism all came from cultures that would not be expected to produce such an understanding. Neither Greco-Roman culture nor Jewish culture was a good source for that doctrine. It came from reading scripture and trying to harmonize all of the aspects of the nature of Christ, along with the scriptural references to the Father and the Holy Spirit.
I am very conflicted about this article. Some, especially regarding Evangelicalism's lack of rootedness is I think quite valid, but I think there's also a snobbish sneer towards converts to the faith and whether they can really be a part of their tradition.
On the first count, there is a sort of Ugly American tendency I have seen in those coming fresh to church that lacks humility towards what the church is about and its foundations. Such a person is akin to those who visit Europe and rant and rave about having to pay a Euro to use a public toilet when if you're remotely polite if you go to a gas station or McDonalds, you'll either buy gas, pick up a coke or pack of a gum, or a drink in exchange for using the restroom. The cost is the same (probably cheaper in paid-toilet land) but the rules and etiquette are just different.
In Presbyterian circles, it'd be someone that's complaining about why the pastor didn't preach on one of the five points when they're preaching through a section of Leviticus or a Psalm or being really annoyed if someone mentions something like the Sabbath or confessions. In Anglican circles, I'd imagine it's someone who goes ooh and ahh about Liturgy this and Liturgy that but doesn't really think the Book of Common Prayer, especially the 1662, or the 39 Articles, is all that big a deal. In Lutheran circles, it'd be someone who likes it and is offended they can't commune until they agree with the doctrines of the faith or someone who sneers at the Book of Concord. We do have a cafeteria approach to traditions as Americans in particular.
I can tell you from my experience in several more or less confessional bodies, the two groups that most care about the handed down faith are the converts who accept the prickly/harder stuff of that tradition across-the-board and those who were raised in and fully embraced the faith of their ancestors. Both sides have way more in common with each other than they do with the indifferent middle. I literally met one of my friends in a Sunday school class with many aged saints from a mainline-heritage PCA church by butchering a Heidelberg Catechism answer correctly but not especially eloquently, but I was the only one other than her (who had been catechized) willing to speak up on something very basic (the threefold division of the law)
Re: the question about whether someone can truly be Anglican, Presbyterian, or Lutheran, I think the answer is most definitely yes, and in a way that devout practitioners can appreciate.
Thank you for the thought provoking analysis as always Aaron.
I think one problem with using Taylor’s excarnation lens is that it almost inevitably puts Evangelicals down.
Taylor’s whole narrative is written from a Catholic standpoint, where Catholic sacramentality is the measure of "incarnation". Apply that frame and Evangelicals will always look like the most excarnated, regardless of lived reality.
Ironically, Evangelicals often practise some of the most incarnated Christianity on the ground. Almost all of them have small groups, prayer circles, youth ministries, mission trips, shared meals, accountability partnerships, etc. These are thick, embodied, communal forms of faith that actually structure people’s day-to-day lives.
And the drivers were things like: weak parish social bonds, digital saturation (internet and smartphones) crowding out community, parents who don’t model regular practice in the home.
In other words, the tradition with the supposedly rich sacramental, incarnational theology is now haemorrhaging precisely because its lived "incarnationality" paper thin. Instead it's Evangelicals who generate the most embodied, communal Christianity in practice.
Taylor’s categories can be very helpful, but they also embed his Catholic bias. If we use them uncritically, we risk romanticising Catholic resilience while caricaturing Evangelicals, when in fact the reality cuts the other way!
I'm not in the American context, so happy to be corrected as an outside observer, but American Evangelicalism does seem remarkably resilient.
Undoubtedly, he was writing from a Catholic lens. I figured out he was Catholic less than 50 pages into the book. However, I think there's a tendency we all have when we or our group are criticized to circle the wagons and try to deflect or discount what's being said. Given the obviously unhealthy state of American evangelicalism, we ought to be open to thinking about whether some of these outside criticisms have merit, and if so what to do about them.
Paul Vanderklay calls this metagelical, meaning everyone is a little evangelical in practice, whether you are RCC, PCA, SBC, or EO. I notice this in my church, a mini mega church built on the Saddleback/willowcreek model. The tie that binds is not being Assembly of god, Pentecostal, or even generally charismatic, but being non catholic. The liturgy is generally familiar to any non-denominational church in the same way small neighborhood restaurants across the us generally have a similar format and food. This lack of depth allows people to come and go as they please, and practices to come and go as they please. We are beholden to neither people, place, nor practice. There is no one that has that has been a cradle Cornerstoner that remembers the good old days. Thus you get a service that is very expedient and immediate to the tides and movements of the day.
This is a really interesting piece. It is a clear example of why I love Aaron and support his work. Kale Zeldin, a Roman Catholic whose work I enjoy once in a while has a saying that goes something like, "Well, I guess we're all Protestants now." He employed it regularly during the the Pope Francis years and although it may not mean exactly the same thing to him, I see it as an encapsulation of religion in America. It is decidedly protestant no matter what church you belong to. The differences between Latin American and North American Catholicism are stark. In Latin America the church's only interest is to keep people Catholic even if it means keeping them ignorant, subjugated and poor. It is no wonder that Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religious group in Latin America and Catholicism is in the toilet. My personal experience with Catholicism is going to Catholic school and receiving the Marxist Leninists indoctrination the government required. So if you live in Latin America you get Marxist Catholicism. If you live in America you get Protestant Capitalist Catholicism. Will the real Catholicism please stand up. Thanks for noticing, Aaron. And as an immigrant to the US I can attest to the fact the fact that one has to marinade in the culture from infancy to truly belong to anything, nation or faith. I'm a naturalized citizen, but to call myself an American would be a lie. A happy one, but a lie nonetheless.
I remember having a thought a long time ago, when a friend converted from SBC to EO:
"EO, in the context of the US, is a Protestant faith."
Which of course anyone who is EO will deny. Maybe it would be less controversial to say it's sociologically -- and not ecclesiastically -- Protestant. My SBC friend still brings an SBC energy to EO. He approached going EO the same way one might decide between going SBC or PCA.
I think what Aaron is saying is tapping into that same thought. There's not a clear conclusion to reach from this. Maybe EO infused with SBC energy will be an improvement over EO as it exists in its ancestral homelands. Or maybe something essential will be lost: I'm not sure. Either way, EO won't be the same after becoming dominated by Anglo converts.
Christianity is an embodied religion, but doctrine is important; it's more than just correct doctrine.
Is it true that Christianity is an embodied religion? Is this a doctrine?
And does it matter if the Scripture's doctrine teaches that a particular branch of Christianity has significant errors?
Does it matter more, for instance, that Eastern Orthodoxy has some significant departures from Scirpurre or is it more relevant that a convert to EO needs to learn how to "embody" EO?
I ask this because there is a "so what" that a person is a convert to EO if the Church has embodied old practices that are wrong. Likewise, a convert to Roman Catholicism is excited and thinks everyone in the RCC is excited as he is. Is the "excarnational" aspect of his zeal the real problem?
How many years did Epaphrus or Titus need in the early Church before they learned to "emody" Christianity?
Again, I agree that Christianity cannot be boiled down to a set of doctrines and a test, but the "embodiment" I have in mind for true Christianity is the Resurrected and Ascended Christ Who lives and reigns and provides fruit for the Gospel. It is also embodied in the lives of the people, but a good Chruch should never require people to become completely enculturated before they are in and of the Body of Christ.
Good doctrines is necessary for a holy life — it is not sufficient. He said demons know who God is, better than most, but they're not saved. Think of it as Christ has a personal relationship with us to fully reconcile us to God. That includes drug addicts to anyone. The relationship has to include us entirely or it literally has no power to save or reference anything.
I know very little about the global Orthodox Church, but can't help thinking that its growing popularity in America is bound to eventually cause some real strains. The Orthodox mentality, from what I can tell, seems pretty much antithetical to the American outlook of expecting things to constantly change and improve, with tolerance for lots of varied experiments taking place in different places.
Will a lot of these converts eventually get frustrated and give up on Eastern Orthodoxy? I haven't seen any numbers, but I'm wondering if the percentage of cradle Orthodox in America's churches may be dropping closer to that threshold where "the ratio of newcomers to cradle members reaches a certain point, assimilation breaks down and the reverses direction."
Part of the genius of Christianity is its spiritualizing of religion, where cultural practices are no longer supported as religious duties or rites. This gives Christianity a multicultural aspect.
On the other hand, community is also strongly emphasized, and communities always have common practice and develop visible markers of membership.
I think this suggests a diversity of thick communities united to a degree by a shared identity in Christ.
As an aside: The early Christians who articulated Nicene Trinitarianism all came from cultures that would not be expected to produce such an understanding. Neither Greco-Roman culture nor Jewish culture was a good source for that doctrine. It came from reading scripture and trying to harmonize all of the aspects of the nature of Christ, along with the scriptural references to the Father and the Holy Spirit.
I am very conflicted about this article. Some, especially regarding Evangelicalism's lack of rootedness is I think quite valid, but I think there's also a snobbish sneer towards converts to the faith and whether they can really be a part of their tradition.
On the first count, there is a sort of Ugly American tendency I have seen in those coming fresh to church that lacks humility towards what the church is about and its foundations. Such a person is akin to those who visit Europe and rant and rave about having to pay a Euro to use a public toilet when if you're remotely polite if you go to a gas station or McDonalds, you'll either buy gas, pick up a coke or pack of a gum, or a drink in exchange for using the restroom. The cost is the same (probably cheaper in paid-toilet land) but the rules and etiquette are just different.
In Presbyterian circles, it'd be someone that's complaining about why the pastor didn't preach on one of the five points when they're preaching through a section of Leviticus or a Psalm or being really annoyed if someone mentions something like the Sabbath or confessions. In Anglican circles, I'd imagine it's someone who goes ooh and ahh about Liturgy this and Liturgy that but doesn't really think the Book of Common Prayer, especially the 1662, or the 39 Articles, is all that big a deal. In Lutheran circles, it'd be someone who likes it and is offended they can't commune until they agree with the doctrines of the faith or someone who sneers at the Book of Concord. We do have a cafeteria approach to traditions as Americans in particular.
I can tell you from my experience in several more or less confessional bodies, the two groups that most care about the handed down faith are the converts who accept the prickly/harder stuff of that tradition across-the-board and those who were raised in and fully embraced the faith of their ancestors. Both sides have way more in common with each other than they do with the indifferent middle. I literally met one of my friends in a Sunday school class with many aged saints from a mainline-heritage PCA church by butchering a Heidelberg Catechism answer correctly but not especially eloquently, but I was the only one other than her (who had been catechized) willing to speak up on something very basic (the threefold division of the law)
Re: the question about whether someone can truly be Anglican, Presbyterian, or Lutheran, I think the answer is most definitely yes, and in a way that devout practitioners can appreciate.
Thank you for the thought provoking analysis as always Aaron.
I think one problem with using Taylor’s excarnation lens is that it almost inevitably puts Evangelicals down.
Taylor’s whole narrative is written from a Catholic standpoint, where Catholic sacramentality is the measure of "incarnation". Apply that frame and Evangelicals will always look like the most excarnated, regardless of lived reality.
Ironically, Evangelicals often practise some of the most incarnated Christianity on the ground. Almost all of them have small groups, prayer circles, youth ministries, mission trips, shared meals, accountability partnerships, etc. These are thick, embodied, communal forms of faith that actually structure people’s day-to-day lives.
Meanwhile, Catholicism, the tradition Taylor assumes to be paradigmatically “incarnational”, shows the deepest practical excarnation. A recent study (https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/a-solution-to-the-churchs-biggest-problem/) had it at *nine* in ten cradle Catholics eventually stop practising!
And the drivers were things like: weak parish social bonds, digital saturation (internet and smartphones) crowding out community, parents who don’t model regular practice in the home.
In other words, the tradition with the supposedly rich sacramental, incarnational theology is now haemorrhaging precisely because its lived "incarnationality" paper thin. Instead it's Evangelicals who generate the most embodied, communal Christianity in practice.
Taylor’s categories can be very helpful, but they also embed his Catholic bias. If we use them uncritically, we risk romanticising Catholic resilience while caricaturing Evangelicals, when in fact the reality cuts the other way!
I'm not in the American context, so happy to be corrected as an outside observer, but American Evangelicalism does seem remarkably resilient.
Undoubtedly, he was writing from a Catholic lens. I figured out he was Catholic less than 50 pages into the book. However, I think there's a tendency we all have when we or our group are criticized to circle the wagons and try to deflect or discount what's being said. Given the obviously unhealthy state of American evangelicalism, we ought to be open to thinking about whether some of these outside criticisms have merit, and if so what to do about them.
I'd give this 1000 likes if I could.
Paul Vanderklay calls this metagelical, meaning everyone is a little evangelical in practice, whether you are RCC, PCA, SBC, or EO. I notice this in my church, a mini mega church built on the Saddleback/willowcreek model. The tie that binds is not being Assembly of god, Pentecostal, or even generally charismatic, but being non catholic. The liturgy is generally familiar to any non-denominational church in the same way small neighborhood restaurants across the us generally have a similar format and food. This lack of depth allows people to come and go as they please, and practices to come and go as they please. We are beholden to neither people, place, nor practice. There is no one that has that has been a cradle Cornerstoner that remembers the good old days. Thus you get a service that is very expedient and immediate to the tides and movements of the day.
This is a really interesting piece. It is a clear example of why I love Aaron and support his work. Kale Zeldin, a Roman Catholic whose work I enjoy once in a while has a saying that goes something like, "Well, I guess we're all Protestants now." He employed it regularly during the the Pope Francis years and although it may not mean exactly the same thing to him, I see it as an encapsulation of religion in America. It is decidedly protestant no matter what church you belong to. The differences between Latin American and North American Catholicism are stark. In Latin America the church's only interest is to keep people Catholic even if it means keeping them ignorant, subjugated and poor. It is no wonder that Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religious group in Latin America and Catholicism is in the toilet. My personal experience with Catholicism is going to Catholic school and receiving the Marxist Leninists indoctrination the government required. So if you live in Latin America you get Marxist Catholicism. If you live in America you get Protestant Capitalist Catholicism. Will the real Catholicism please stand up. Thanks for noticing, Aaron. And as an immigrant to the US I can attest to the fact the fact that one has to marinade in the culture from infancy to truly belong to anything, nation or faith. I'm a naturalized citizen, but to call myself an American would be a lie. A happy one, but a lie nonetheless.
Definitely Catholicism in America heavily Protestantized. It was part of immigrant assimilation.
I remember having a thought a long time ago, when a friend converted from SBC to EO:
"EO, in the context of the US, is a Protestant faith."
Which of course anyone who is EO will deny. Maybe it would be less controversial to say it's sociologically -- and not ecclesiastically -- Protestant. My SBC friend still brings an SBC energy to EO. He approached going EO the same way one might decide between going SBC or PCA.
I think what Aaron is saying is tapping into that same thought. There's not a clear conclusion to reach from this. Maybe EO infused with SBC energy will be an improvement over EO as it exists in its ancestral homelands. Or maybe something essential will be lost: I'm not sure. Either way, EO won't be the same after becoming dominated by Anglo converts.
I found your thoughts to be mostly confused here.
Christianity is an embodied religion, but doctrine is important; it's more than just correct doctrine.
Is it true that Christianity is an embodied religion? Is this a doctrine?
And does it matter if the Scripture's doctrine teaches that a particular branch of Christianity has significant errors?
Does it matter more, for instance, that Eastern Orthodoxy has some significant departures from Scirpurre or is it more relevant that a convert to EO needs to learn how to "embody" EO?
I ask this because there is a "so what" that a person is a convert to EO if the Church has embodied old practices that are wrong. Likewise, a convert to Roman Catholicism is excited and thinks everyone in the RCC is excited as he is. Is the "excarnational" aspect of his zeal the real problem?
How many years did Epaphrus or Titus need in the early Church before they learned to "emody" Christianity?
Again, I agree that Christianity cannot be boiled down to a set of doctrines and a test, but the "embodiment" I have in mind for true Christianity is the Resurrected and Ascended Christ Who lives and reigns and provides fruit for the Gospel. It is also embodied in the lives of the people, but a good Chruch should never require people to become completely enculturated before they are in and of the Body of Christ.
I didn't find it confused, just balanced.
Good doctrines is necessary for a holy life — it is not sufficient. He said demons know who God is, better than most, but they're not saved. Think of it as Christ has a personal relationship with us to fully reconcile us to God. That includes drug addicts to anyone. The relationship has to include us entirely or it literally has no power to save or reference anything.
I concur...this piece was particularly confused.