In Ashkenazi Jewish culture much wisdom and (often irreverent) humor is conveyed by the antiphony of the Hebrew and Yiddish languages—the first carrying the enormous solemnity of Torah, its sacred words antedating the creation of the universe—the latter an idiom of common sense, often employed by women and others of lesser education. For example, there is this Yiddish joke: “How can you make God laugh?” – “Tell him your plans!”
Since my last communication with the readers of my blog, I have sort of lived this bitter-sweet joke. I had announced taking a vacation from my blogging. My plan had been to meet commitments to lecture in Germany and Switzerland—first about the role of values in a capitalist economy to an elite group of business leaders, then at a conference of the Lutheran World Federation about the continuing relevance of historic European Protestantism in a world where the majority of Christians now live in the Global South. I had imagined that I would return from these events full of fresh ideas to pour into my blog. As it turned out I never left Boston. I slipped on a smooth surface in the entrance of my condo building, fell and fractured my left hip. Following surgery, I have spent the last three weeks in intense interaction with physical therapists, pondering such issues as how best to put on my trousers in the morning without falling out of bed, rather than the intriguing question of what it means that (as has been claimed) more people attend Lutheran services every week in Ethiopia than in Sweden.
While I can hardly expect to come up right now with exciting new topics, I can at least be gratified that some matters that have preoccupied me in the past continue to be freshly interesting today. Such is the matter of the ongoing assault on the elite culture by American Evangelicals. I have commented on this before. The January-February 2014 issue of Christianity Today provides good evidence of the continuing vigor of the Evangelical offensive. CT has long been a well-run publication, probably the best single source of information about development in the Evangelical world. But it seems to me that of late the magazine has evinced a spirit of intellectual vitality and sophistication. I am not sure about this (I don’t have a mole in the editorial office), but I think the change of atmosphere coincided with the arrival of a new managing editor in December 2012—Katelyn Beaty, who has brought youthful energy and feistiness to the job. In an editor’s note introducing the cover story in the current issue (about the history of Protestant missionaries), Beaty does not beat about the bush: “Our Position on Missionaries – (Almost) everything you’ve heard about them is wrong”. She states: “Our cover story this month lands another nail in the coffin of bad Christian stereotypes”.
The story is mainly about the work of Robert Woodberry, a sociologist who spent years studying the social and political consequences of Protestant missionaries in the 19th century and since. The end result of Woodberry’s work was to show (with all sorts of statistics to boot) how missions positively affected the development of the countries to which they came. This picture of course sharply differs from the conventional one established in enlightened public opinion and the media—the picture setting missions into the framework of “postcolonial” theory, part of Western imperialism, whose ideological justification was supposedly supplied by missionaries. I understand that in 2010, at the centenary celebration of the famous 1910 Edinburgh conference on missions, one European or North American speaker after another got up and expressed repentance and shame for the crimes committed by missionaries against the “colonized peoples”. I don’t know how much this situation may have changed now: For African Christians the very present threat of being murdered by Islamists may have replaced resentment against the alleged cultural aggression represented by missionaries a hundred years ago. Far from being helpers of colonial powers, Protestant missionaries were foremost in revealing colonial crimes in the Belgian Congo and in South Africa, Protestant mission hospitals fought the scourges of tropical diseases, and Protestant mission schools helped preserve indigenous cultures and (not so accidentally) educated the young elites that came to lead the anti-colonial independence movements. The big difference came from missions of “conversionary Protestants”, who came to convert and educate ordinary people, and were free from control by colonial governments.
The most surprising aspect of Woodberry’s findings is the persistence of the “missionary fix”: Once a country has received the proper amount of Protestant infusion, the effects linger on, even a century later, in the country’s relative ratings of such indicators as economic development, health and education, democracy and civil society. It is as if one could advise an African country today, not so much in choosing its ancestors wisely, but in choosing ancestors that welcomed Protestant missionaries and were prepared to be converted by them!
Later in the issue of CT, the Evangelical role in American foreign policy today is explored in an interview with Mark Amstutz, author of a recent book on the topic. Contrary to the widespread notion that Evangelicals abroad are mainly concerned with matters of personal (mainly sexual) morality, Amstutz discusses Evangelical engagement with global poverty, human trafficking, international religious freedom, and (last not least) the survival of the state of Israel.
A different though no less important point about the intellectual status of American Evangelicals is made by another CT article, one by Bradley Nassif about the so-called Filioque controversy. The article provides a succinct explanation what the controversy is all about and then asks why it should be important to Evangelicals. I suspect that most CT readers will never have heard about it; it is significant that the editors find it worthwhile to educate the readership. The Filioque was one of the most contentious points dividing Latin and Greek Christianity, and it still divides the churches respectively headed by Rome and Constantinople. At issue is the definition of the place of the Holy Spirit in the Trinity as originally formulated in the Nicene Creed, which had its foremost concern in assuring the equal divinity of every one of the three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit—against the Arian heresy, that put in question the full divinity of the Son. Here is how the Greek original read: “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.” So far, so good—or so it seemed. Then, several centuries later, a somewhat obscure synod of the Western church messed around with the venerable text, inserting the phrase “and from the Son”/”Filioque”—thus, “who proceeds from the Father and the Son”. The intent was apparently to enhance the place of the Son in the Holy Trinity and to give another knock in the head to the lingering Arian heresy. There may have been other, political rather than theological considerations. Be this as it may, the Eastern church reacted with rage, especially since the Pope endorsed the new wording, which he had no right to do. The churches of the Reformation simply stuck with the Filioque (initially, I believe, with little reflection—Protestants in the 16th century had other worries). The Ecumenical Movement revived the issue in the 20th century; the World Council of Churches convened a multi-year study group of Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic and other Western theologians, which concluded that the Filioque should not be a persistent reason for schism, more or less agreeing that it would make sense to stick with the original Greek wording. Needless to say, the matter remains unresolved.
But the intrinsic theological issue does not concern me here. Rather, I’m interested that this leading Evangelical publication has, as it were, filed a claim asserting its right to deal with the issue. That is very significant indeed. It is as if Ms. Beaty and her colleagues had sent a message to all these ancient centers of Christian learning—in Rome, Constantinople, Geneva, Canterbury: “Hello there, Boys! Please note: We are here too! And we intend to be heard!”.
Will I now resume the regular production of my blog? I would not like to make this commitment. Some days I feel that I could write lengthy essays on my customary themes. Other days I feel like putting up a notice: Leave me alone! I’m going to take a long nap! Post surgery recovery is an uneven business. I’ll try to resume my regular schedule as early as possible. If I miss a date, don’t worry—I’ll be back!