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A Case for Abundant Christian Life

Installation Address
The Reverend Javier A. Viera, Ed.D.
Dean of the Theological School
Professor of Pastoral Theology
Drew University Theological School
16 October 2014

 

Although preachers are often given to hyperbole, and I confess to having been guilty of this numerous times over the years, I do not think it overly dramatic to say that we are living in extraordinary, unprecedented times. I recognize that this is a precarious statement to make in a room where there are a fair share of historians, all of whom could likely argue that other moments in human history are equally, if not more extraordinary than our own. So, in order to make my point credibly, I turn to a historian to underscore this claim.

In a splendid paper delivered at Oxford not long ago, David Hempton, the dean of Harvard Divinity School and a historian of Wesleyan/Methodist movements, made the claim that the dominance of secularism is growing at unprecedented rates, and it is growing in sophistication.[1] This insight comes as no surprise to anyone here. Hempton went on to say, clearly troubled, that the worldview which is gaining the most traction in our time is the claim that “Religion is an evolutionary phase in human existence that is long past its shelf life.”

If that is so, then we must ask—what we are doing here today? One plausible response is clearly that we do not believe that this is so. But a more truthful response is more complicated than that because many of us, including the religious professionals in the room, believe that much of the way religion functions in our world is indeed long past its shelf life. Moreover, many of us are daily witnesses to how rapidly ways of being religious, of being Christian even, are evolving. This evolution is so dramatic and happening so quickly that it is difficult to understand or make sense of our current religious landscape.

Baylor historian Phillip Jenkins has argued that a seismic shift is taking place in the Christian world. He observes that in all its history, the Christian religion has never grown as quickly and diversely as it is currently. As a result, he contends that the very nature of the church, and the world as a resut, is about to change. “The fact is that we are at a moment as epochal as the Reformation itself,” says Jenkins.

Christianity as a whole is both growing and mutating in ways that observers in the West tend not to see. For obvious reasons, news reports today are filled with material about the influence of a resurgent and sometimes angry Islam. But in its variety and vitality, in its global reach, in its association with the world’s fastest growing societies, in its shifting centers of gravity, in the way its values and practices vary from place to place—in these and other ways it is Christianity that will leave the deepest mark on the twenty-first century. The process will not necessarily be a peaceful one, and only the foolish would venture anything beyond the broadest predictions about the religious picture a century or two ahead. But the twenty-first century will almost certainly be regarded by future historians as a century in which religion replaced ideology as the prime animating and destructive force in human affairs, guiding attitudes to political liberty and obligation, concepts of nationhood, and, of course, conflicts and wars.[2]

Let me be very clear. I do not believe that our way of being religious is long past its shelf life. As a matter of fact, I believe this is our moment. I believe we are just on the pulse of morning. Yet, I think that Jenkins is right that we are living through a seismic shift in what it means to be religious, what it means to be a Christian, and more importantly for our purposes today, what it means to be an institution that trains future religious leaders and scholars. The ground is shifting beneath our feet, and we have to discover how to navigate the new terrain that is before us. I find the uncertainty of our religious future thrilling, for that uncertainty is forcing a reexamination that our prior cultural dominance could never provoke.

For decades now, religious movements in this country, and Europe before us, have been obsessed with their imminent decline, and yet for all that obsession institutional religious life and practice looks much the same today as it did a generation ago. Theological education, more specifically, roughly resembles what it was almost a century ago. In spite of the evidence before us, in spite of the countless initiatives to try to counter the demise of religious life and institutions, the landscape is essentially unchanged. This is what Lisa Laskow Lahey and Robert Kegan have diagnosed as “Immunity to Change.”[3]

As a result, at least in our part of the world, the mass response has been either eschewing religious practice or vocation altogether, or constructing individual hybrid religious identities that cannot easily be defined or recognized within existing categories. Thus, it seems that as religious traditions and institutions have proven themselves incapable of reform, the response has been to create a new polarity—rejection of religious life or the invention of personalized spiritualties. Neither of these outcomes seem ultimately satisfactory, because in and of themselves they are not sufficiently compelling responses to the profundity and transformative potential the ancient traditions offer.

By contrast, Hempton points out that the early modern period of Christianity produced three strands of the tradition that did have compelling, profound, transformative visions of the Christian life, and I think it wise for our own future to seriously consider this story from our past. The Jesuits, the Pietists, and the Methodists shared four characteristics or commitments that Hempton suggests could provide a direction and sense of purpose as we navigate the uncertain terrain of religious life at this moment in time. I want to highlight Hempton’s historical analysis, and then comment on the four points he makes.

The Jesuits, Pietists, and Methodists shared:

• • • Rigorous spiritual discipline to control self-interest and promote holiness of life and thought. Rather than simply being a school where the mind is nurtured, I believe we must have a clear commitment to shaping and fostering a dynamic spiritual life for all who come to study with us. It is not enough for us to train students to think well, because when facing the intractable problems life will inevitably present, or when confronting the most confounding questions of life, they will need to drink from a deeper well than that which the mind alone can provide. Character, holiness, worship, and discipline are profoundly theological categories, and they are necessary for authentic encounter with God. The early Jesuits, Pietists and Methodists knew this and fostered it and lived it as central to their identity.
    • A vision of the millennial expansion of Christianity to new cultures and places, including thoughtful cultural adaptation to those new places. Hempton argues that early Jesuit, Pietist, and Methodist engagements in overseas missions were a far more sophisticated cultural engagement than later became the case when the Roman Catholic hierarchy and evangelical Protestant missionaries arrived on the scene. These earliest expressions of their movements seemed genuinely capable of fostering diversity and adapting the Christian message in ways that honored the people and cultures they encountered. We know, however, that that reality quickly changed. In a matriculation address in which he discussed the first attempt at genuine democratic revolution on the Korean peninsula, our own Dr. Hyo-Dong Lee said,

The arrival of many forms of Anglo-European Christianity was certainly good news to the Korean people, for they not only provided access to the benefits of modern science, medicine, and education, but also harbored within themselves, despite all the baggage of imperialism they carried, the potential to offer a different yet kindred vision of a new world—Jesus’ vision of the reign of God…What needs still to take place, rather, is an honest dialogue between equals, a conversation between present-day Appenzellers (our own alum who introduced Christianity to the Korean peninsula) and present-day Haewols (the spiritual leader of the first democratic revolution in Korea), both men and women, for they have much to learn from each other.  And that ought to be true in every corner of the world today, if Christianity is to become Christianities, not one World Christianity, with battles yet to fight over the question of where to locate its imperial center.[4]

We need to recover the desire to share the faith, not impose it; to welcome others into the community of Jesus, not to demand it; to call others into a deeper experience of God in Christ, not to dictate it. The wisdom of our Jesuit, Pietist, and Methodist forebears in this regard was to a great degree the secret of their success, though it was not a well-kept secret at all, by design. Sophisticated, sensitive spiritual extroversion, they taught us, is exceedingly more loving and effective than imposing an ideology masked as a gift. Our students and faculty hail from all over the world, and that is something of which we are deeply proud at Drew. But with that reality comes a responsibility and great opportunity, to continue to model in generative ways a Christianity that is as culturally sophisticated and sensitive as the earliest expressions of these three movements.

• • • A comprehensive social agenda. The Jesuits, Pietists, and Methodists all sought to work at the margins of their societies; all understood quite clearly that to preach a purely spiritualized gospel meant nothing if that same gospel failed to transform economic, social, and political realities into authentic expressions of the reign of God. A clear commitment to the poor, the enslaved, the oppressed, the conquered, the addicted, the scorned and marginalized characterized these spiritual movements. That social agenda was at the heart of their evangelical fervor in their nascent years, and in this sense Drew represents the very best of our Christian tradition. Yet, we must be careful not to confuse talking about poverty or talking about oppression or talking about care for the earth with actually doing something to transform these realities. The Hebrew and Christian scriptures are clear in their call to this sort of social transformation, and places responsibility on God’s people to bring about this “new creation”. We will be at our best when we continue to inspire our students and one another in ways that help enable us to respond faithfully in preaching, in scholarship, and in service to the justice of God in this world. Not only is that biblically central, it must remain currently central to our life and work in this community.
    • A remarkable, extraordinary commitment to education. I remember a story my former professor Stanley Hauerwas told about attending the closing convocation of the academic year at Duke only to have one of his faculty colleagues tell the graduating class, “they don’t care what you know; they need to know you care.” A theological non-pacifist, in that moment Hauerwas confessed to being filled with violent thoughts. These students had just spent two, three, and in some cases more years of disciplined, careful study in preparation for their eventual leadership in the church, the academy, or in civil society, and in one careless sentence all of that hard work was categorically devalued. I share Professor Hauerwas’ dismay.

Yes, we want to nurture a deep and genuine spiritual life in this community, but we must remember that this theological school and university were founded in direct response to the cry from the pews for an educated clergy. Methodism itself was founded on a university campus. A life of deep learning and study is in our DNA. After having spent twenty-years in congregational ministry, I can tell you that a well-meaning, caring, but poorly formed theological mind is a potentially very dangerous thing. Just read the daily headlines if you doubt that is true.

Moreover, as someone who has spent the vast majority of my career as a pastor, let me tell you—the life of a pastor is hard, intellectually demanding, and mentally taxing. It is not only the academy that requires, even demands, the best minds for the work I have been describing. If the cultural and religious changes I described earlier are accurate, and I think that they are, we need religious leaders who can deftly navigate the complexities of modern life, and especially modern religious life. Short of this, the church will become a mere shell of spiritual platitudes and self-help philosophies incapable of speaking in relevant ways to the modern person, and its clergy will be ill-prepared to lead in the transformation and healing our world so desperately needs. Yes, it is important that our students develop the capacity to care, to respond appropriately to the people they serve, and to have an authentic spiritual engagement of their own. But it is a mistake to assume that that sort of work in not also highly intellectual and requires careful nuance and a deep capacity to think critically. We are here today because generations before us knew that an educated clergy and well-trained scholars were essential for the flourishing of a healthy Christianity, and for peaceful flourishing of our world.

Surely, Hempton’s analysis is limited in that it doesn’t account for the ways these movements fell short of their ideals and the ways they compromised their efforts by colonialist practices, agendas, and commitments which led to historic failures and atrocities. I do not mean to gloss over those realities for they are as significant as what Hempton emphasizes. Thankfully, I’m proud that we spend considerable time at Drew understanding and deconstructing these tragedies. Yet, I still contend that the positives he highlights are instructive for us today in considering the future of a school like ours, and I believe we should also spend considerable time understanding and building upon them.

All of this discussion brings me precisely to this place and this moment. I have been asked quite often in the last several months, “What’s your vision for Drew?” or, “What’s your vision for theological education?” Those are legitimate questions, and I welcome them. I have been trying to articulate a portion of that vision in naming these four characteristics Hempton has identified. At an even more basic level, however, my vision for Drew Theological School is that it will be the most thriving, spiritually dynamic, intellectually inventive, risk-taking theological school in the world. How is that for a simple vision? Yet, at another level, I’m very clear that the vision of this place is not mine to determine. I come from a place and a people where collective wisdom is highly valued and deeply respected. And so in that spirit, I say that the vision for this place is collectively held, or should be, by all of us, and during my leadership of this school I will relentlessly remind us of that. There are too many great minds and faithful lives in this place to not make use of our collective wisdom and investment in the thriving of our school.

More importantly, as Hempton has reminded us, if Christianity, the church, and the wisdom and gifts of our religious traditions are to thrive in our age, it will not be simply because we have made complex metaphysical arguments, or because we do great good in the world. It will be because we continue to present a compelling vision of abundant life, of compassionate life to violent and fragmented world. That is a purpose that is not long past its shelf life. That is a purpose to which I ultimately want to commit myself here, and about which, I think, places like Drew Theological School and other similar institutions should ultimately be. That is our most essential work and highest calling. Let’s get on with it.