Tyler Hummel’s piece in the North American Anglican is one of those things that surfaces from time to time in the Anglican/Episcopal World. It has the feel of the Palm Beach Old Guard’s worst nightmare: the dread of tasteless nouveaux riches making a statement and getting away with it. As someone who started out in the Old Guard’s premier parish and ventured through Roman Catholicism to end up in one of Classical Pentecost’s premier churches, I think I can speak to some of the issues he brings up.
Let’s start by reviewing the classical Main Line critique of evangelicals, something I have discussed in the past. It goes like this:
- They’re Bible thumpers, ready to pounce with their memorised verses and pushy evangelism.
- They’re impecunious money-grubbers, always pushing for a big offering so their ministers can go off and do God-knows-what.
- They’re judgmental and moralistic, always trying to push their morality on you when in fact they can’t keep it themselves.
- The ones that do get a couple of nickels to rub together are tasteless nouveaux riches (see above.)
- Their hymnody (such as it is) is dreadful and belongs more in a honky tonk or the Grand Old Opry than a church.
- They are totally lacking in discipleship of any kind.
- They don’t drink.
Needless to say Evangelicals had some retaliatory opinions of their own:
- Their people are unsaved, having never experienced being born again or anything subsequent to that (what’s subsequent depends upon the Evangelical.) They have no idea when they were saved or if they are.
- Their Sunday “worship” is a social event rather than a time to really “have church” and seek God. Their religion is not heartfelt. Beyond all that it is boring.
- They never share their faith or lead anyone to Jesus Christ as their personal saviour.
- They’re ignorant of the Bible, they never read it.
- They drink. A lot.
I think any objective observer will note that, with these stereotypes, there is an element of truth on both sides. The sad part is that, instead of learning from each other, both sides are content to use them as weapons rather than to educate themselves about the “other.” The complexities of the last fifty years have muddied the waters for many but unfortunately these divisions persist.
Which leads us to the matter of the Methodists.
Mark Tooley is right in asserting that Methodism is the quintessential American form of Christianity. One evidence of that is the diversity (until now) of Methodist churches. IMHO no other Protestant church has a greater spread of church “types” and socio-economic groups than the Methodists, although that is now falling victim to our social media/either-or culture. People in the Anglican/Episcopal world who would stick their nose up at the Methodists’ current plight would do well to remember their own recent history, and consider that Methodism is simply twenty years behind in the same struggle with which the Anglican/Episcopal world has been consumed. And that lag, I might add, is with a longer history of WO. Hummel’s characterisation that “…it is a church riddled with schism and political controversy at the moment” is certainly not unique to Methodism.
Hummel, however, make another curious statement, namely that this schism is “…likely due in part to the fact that its theology and authority as a tradition were not rooted in tradition or strict hermeneutics but grew as an appendage of the Church of England.” He really doesn’t elaborate on the meaning of this statement, but to be honest it has the feel of a dog whistle for Calvinism. The fact that Calvinists believe their idea is the sine qua non of Christian theology is well known and I discussed it in relation to Anglican theology recently in Kicking Final/Unconditional Perseverance Out of Anglicanism. Anglican theology is sui generis and needs to be treated that way, not only for itself but its direct progeny of Methodism and indirect such as Wesleyan Holiness and Modern Pentecost. I discuss this relationship in my post Liturgy, Pentecost, Wesley and the Book of Common Prayer, Part I: What is a Liturgy? (It’s worth noting that George Whitfield was a Calvinist and that led to strained relations with Wesley.)
His lengthy discussion of Southern religion brings me to a favourite topic of this site, namely the Scots-Irish. He emphasises the “showmanship” nature of Southern Christianity, but I think the evangelisation of the South was a task that was amazing in that it was done at all. As I noted in What Working for the Church of God Taught Me About Race:
Now I’ve spent a great deal of time on this blog on the subject of the Scots-Irish, with controversy following. The point I want to make on that subject here is that, as my Russian friends would say, the Scots-Irish are a very “specific” people, with some very unique cultural qualities that have moulded the life of the church. Don’t drink alcohol? Best way to deal with serious binge drinking. “Clothesline” religion? A counter to provocative dressing from Colonial times to the days of Andy Capp. Like preachers to holler? The custom from the “old country”. Bringing the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ to a people for whom “moderation” was a dirty word was tough, but it was done, and you really have to admire the people who did it.
Ever since the days of William Laud and Jenny Geddes the Anglicans’ inability to effectively reach many of the peoples of the British Isles outside of its English core should be instructive, but sad to say it is not.
There are many things about Southern Evangelicalism that are subject to improvement. But the unravelling of the system that so many worked so hard to achieve isn’t a pleasant business. Much of the political restlessness we see–and that includes Donald Trump–is a result of the secularisation of the culture, not making it more Christian or religious. After years of whining about the Religious Right, we need to start paying attention to the non-Religious Right, which is in the ascendant.
I could go on about other lacunae in Hummel’s piece, especially the lack of mention of the class-stratified nature of American Christianity in general and Southern Christianity in particular. But, as Origen would say, this blog post having reached a sufficient length, we will bring it to a close.
Positive Infinity 