The Next Evangelicalism

Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity

Soong-Chan Rah

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780830878031
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

• 2010 Golden Canon Leadership Book Award winner

The future is now. Philip Jenkins has chronicled how the next Christendom has shifted away from the Western church toward the global South and East. Likewise, changing demographics mean that North American society will accelerate its diversity in terms of race, ethnicity and culture. But evangelicalism has long been held captive by its predominantly white cultural identity and history.In this book professor and pastor Soong-Chan Rah calls the North American church to escape its captivity to Western cultural trappings and to embrace a new evangelicalism that is diverse and multiethnic. Rah brings keen analysis to the limitations of American Christianity and shows how captivity to Western individualism and materialism has played itself out in megachurches and emergent churches alike. Many white churches are in crisis and ill-equipped to minister to new cultural realities, but immigrant, ethnic and multiethnic churches are succeeding and flourishing.This prophetic report casts a vision for a dynamic evangelicalism that fully embodies the cultural realities of the twenty-first century. Spiritual renewal is happening within the North American church, from corners and margins not always noticed by those in the center. Come, discover the vitality of the next evangelicalism.

Part One

The Western, White Cultural Captivity of the Church

1

1

The Heartbeat of Western, White Cultural Captivity

Kelly entered the worship service with great expectations. The past week had been filled with disappointments. Her husband had been preoccupied and inattentive. Her three elementary-aged children had been acting up all week. Every day of the week had been an exercise in testing her patience. Throughout the week, she had been unable to find time to pray or to read the Bible. About two months back, she and her husband had stopped attending their small group meetings. Her husband had lost interest a long time ago, and she was getting weary of hearing about the crisis of the week from various members of the group. Everyone politely nodded their heads as they shared their weekly woes, but nobody was sure if they were nodding their heads in agreement and sympathy or were subtly asking the person sharing to hurry along. The Bible was hardly opened as the group spent most of their time hearing individual stories of struggle.

Her church had been her solace in so many different ways, and she was hoping for a bit more this Sunday morning. The worship team kicked off with a few of her favorite songs, with lyrics that reflected her personal faith, such as: “Here I am to worship, here I am to bow down.” / “I have a living hope, I have a future, God has a plan for me, of this I’m sure.” / “Your grace is enough for me.” When the pastor preached that morning, his sermon spoke to her personal need for spiritual renewal. God is her God, able to meet her needs, and wanting to be her Savior. The closing worship song (“My Savior loves, my Savior lives, my Savior has always been with me”) punctuated the power of God to meet her personal and individual needs.

As she departed the service, however, she felt a bit of a letdown. She greeted the pastor warmly but felt that he had disappointed her somehow. The sermon had scratched her itch but had not addressed the source of her itch. Her world still felt small and her God still felt small—a God limited to the personal realm of her life, rather than a big God able to transcend her seemingly small world. The God of her church was only as big as the individuals in the church and the personal needs of those individuals.

As a pastor, I am often confronted with the sense of letting down a congregation that is expecting a personalized worship service that ministers specifically to the individual member. In the formation of the Sunday worship service, I realize that I often fail to meet the expectations of the individual members of my congregation. On Monday mornings, I often picture the faces of individual members who were disappointed that I did not speak to their specific need for that week. I am also aware that even if I make every effort to meet every personal and individual need, someone will still not have had his or her personal needs met. Maybe a larger and more important question is: why am I trying so hard to meet the specific and personal needs of the individual? What drives me to see the church not as the expression of God’s kingdom but merely as a forum to address individual needs?

Me, Myself and I: The Unholy Trinity of
Western Philosophy

A few years ago, our family was packing for our move from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Chicago. I hate moving, but I actually enjoyed the process of culling through and categorizing my collection of books. During this process, I stumbled across an intriguing little book called Philosophy for Beginners.[1] The book traces the entire history of Western philosophical thought in comic book form. For instance, Nietzsche is portrayed as a superhero (or more accurately as an Übermensch), Daffy Duck narrates the discourse on Hegel, and so forth. So before packing the book for the movers, I decided to read through it to get the comic book overview of Western philosophy. Interestingly, even a comic book was able to discern the central theme of Western philosophy: individualism.

From Hellenistic philosophy to medieval thought to the Enlightenment and postmodernity, each phase of Western philosophy has put forth as its central tenet the primacy of the individual. Whether it is Plato’s philosopher hero emerging from the cave of shadows on his own accord, Rousseau’s prioritizing of the individual in the application of the social contract, the “majority of one” advocated by the residents of Walden Pond, Ayn Rand’s contention of the redemptive value for society of an individual’s selfish egoism or the individualistic reading of Jacques Derrida’s deconstructionism—regardless of the philosopher’s context, the repeating motif of Western culture has been the centrality and primacy of the individual.

Numerous social analyses of American culture reveal our obsession with the individual and our struggle with the effects of an individual-focused worldview. One of the earliest assessments of American society comes from Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America.[2] The French academic postulated that the then-young nation would struggle balancing strong individualistic tendencies with the collectivism required by a democratic form of government. In reflecting on Tocqueville, Herbert Gans asserts that “the United States has changed only slightly in over 150 years, and one of the stable elements is the continued pursuit of individualism by virtually all sectors of the population.”[3] From the earliest stages of American history, individualism has been the defining attribute in understanding our nation’s ethos.

The American church, in taking its cues from Western, white culture, has placed at the center of its theology and ecclesiology the primacy of the individual. The cultural captivity of the church has meant that the church is more likely to reflect the individualism of Western philosophy than the value of community found in Scripture. The individualistic philosophy that has shaped Western society, and consequently shaped the American church, reduces Christian faith to a personal, private and individual faith.

Fundamentalism, Evangelicalism and Individualism

Late twentieth-century evangelicalism owes much of its formation and shape to early twentieth-century fundamentalism, which prioritized individualism at the cost of recognizing the corporate nature and corporate role of Christianity. This emphasis arose out of the cultural norms of American society. Historian George Marsden describes the religious individualism that reflects a central element of fundamentalism. “The individual stood alone before God; his choices were decisive. The church, while important as a supportive community, was made up of free individuals.”[4] Despite its claims of separation from larger cultural influences, fundamentalism built its theological foundation on the central cultural influence of individualism.

The evangelical successors to fundamentalism continued to prioritize individualism as a primary expression. Paul Metzger in Consuming Jesus addresses the role of individualism as the thread linking fundamentalism and evangelicalism. Metzger notices how the two movements are bound up in the “privatization of spirituality, dissolution of public faith, and loss of an extensive, overarching social consciousness.”[5] Less enamored with hard-line doctrinal positions, evangelicals were even more susceptible to cultural captivity and acquiescence to larger cultural influences. “As American evangelicals, we prize the individual and personal relationships. . . . The Bible has much to say about the importance of the individual, personal responsibility, and the need for [personal] evangelism.”[6] A personalism and a prioritizing of the individual can be found at the sociohistorical roots of evangelicalism. Life and ministry in the local church, therefore, became the race to please the individual so that the pews might be filled.

Individuation vs. Individualism

It is important at this time to make the distinction between the negative impact of an excessive individualism found in Western culture versus the healthy role of individuation. Individuation is a valuable Western philosophical, psychological contribution which allows for the healthy and necessary differentiation of the individual from family/society/
culture/people groups/nations. Individuation allows individuals to grow up and make their own decisions—not based solely upon the pressures of society. Individuation allows for an important and necessary process of developing a personal relationship with Jesus. Individuation, therefore, reveals an important aspect of the individual expressions of faith and the need for individual salvation. God is not only a transcendent God that is beyond our comprehension, God is also an immanent God—nearby, close and personal. The individuation of our relationship with God and the personal appropriation of God’s grace are crucial developments of Christian faith.

In my last year in seminary, I was facing a crisis of calling. I was struggling with a deep sense of inadequacy that I would be unable to fulfill my calling as a pastor. During my years at seminary, I had begun to formulate a list of my inadequacies and all of the ways that I did not live up to God’s expectations. I was operating under a covenant of works in order to fulfill my calling as a pastor. The formation of this mental list led me to the conclusion that I should not pursue a pastoral calling. The grace of God was an abstract concept removed from my personal reality. The grace of God had not been able to break through the barrier of my personal history.

When my father left our family when I was in elementary school, we did not hear from him for several years. One day, seemingly out of the blue, I received a phone call from my father. Without too much formality he began to ask me a series of questions. “Are you getting straight A’s in school?” “What level math are you in?” “Who’s your favorite Renaissance artist?” (I think I said Picasso.) I was on the phone for over ten minutes as my father asked me a series of questions. At the end of the phone call, my ten-year-old mind had formulated a conclusion. I have to earn my father’s love. If I want my father to love me, then I need to fulfill the list of achievements and accomplishments he had listed. When I got off the phone, I went to my room and cried.

After that phone call, I began to live out that conversation and internalized the pressure to achieve in order to earn my father’s love. My personal identity and self-perception were shaped by an absent father’s expectations. So I got A’s in school and excelled academically. I got degrees from Ivy League schools. I did the things that I thought would earn my earthly father’s love. Concurrently, I began to look for ways to earn my spiritual Father’s love. I led my church’s youth group, I participated in my church’s evangelistic outreach programs and short-term mission trips, I became involved in campus ministry, I even attended seminary. But the list of “must do to earn my Father’s love” kept getting longer and longer. Eventually this list became a list of my failures.

I have no doubt that in my last year in seminary, the emotional impact of that phone call was still affecting me and playing out in my formation of a list of failures before God. I could not be a good pastor because of all the ways I did not live up to my heavenly Father’s expectations. It was around that time that I attended a conference that was held in Toronto. After the sermon a group of people went around and prayed for individuals. I knelt nearby to pray and I began to rehearse the list of failures in my mind. I began to bargain with God, reviewing the list of my personal failures. “God, how could I ever serve you when my list of failures is so long?” It was at that moment that I heard God speaking: “What list are you talking about?” God had not kept any record of wrongs. No list of failures existed. As people gathered around me to pray, instead of being overwhelmed by tears of guilt, I was flooded with joyful laughter.

I needed to know that my God was a personal God that cared about me as an individual, whose love for me was not based upon the expectations of others. Through my evangelical experience I was exposed to the power of grace appropriated on a personal level. I am personally indebted to Western culture’s expression of an individual faith. Without it, my Christian worldview would not have an opening to the importance of knowing and being loves by a personal God that loves me as an individual. One of Western Christianity’s greatest contributions is the possibility of experiencing the grace of God on a personal and individual level.

However, this individuation does not need to occur at the expense of an appreciation of a corporate point of view. Excessive and hyper-
individualism contrasts to the healthy process of individuation by enslaving the individual to the tyranny of individualism, leading to personalism and privatism. The danger of the Western, white captivity of the church is an excessive individualism and personalism that reflects the narcissism of American culture rather than the redemptive power of the gospel message.

The Bible and Me

The priority of the individual shapes how American evangelicals live out our local church experience, how we study and learn Scripture, how we shape our corporate worship and even how we live and interact in community. For example, our Bible studies become the search for a personal and individualized understanding. If we were to pay attention to the intended audience of the various books of the Bible, we would find that only a handful of books were actually written exclusively to individuals—such as 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon. An overwhelming number of books in the Bible are written to communities: the people of God, the nation of Israel, the church in Colosse and Corinth, the seven churches in Asia Minor, etc. Yet, why is it that our reading of the text centers so much on the individual reading of Scripture versus a corporate reading as the overwhelming majority of the Scriptures demand?

In a typical American church, are we taking teaching intended for the community of faith and reducing it to an application exclusively...