Reading the Jolly Blogger’s response was the first time I was introduced to Barna’s book, Revolution. While I appreciated JB’s reply, my overwhelming feeling was one of horror. After all, while Reformed blogger’s will know better, Barna has been respected by Evangelicals at large. What about other Protestants? Will they buy into churchless Christianity?
That’s why it is great to see that Christianity Today has approximated the same negative reaction to Barna’s thesis (hat tip: Ligon Duncan). I am extremely gratified.
One comment quoted from Barna stood out to me: referring to these churchless revolutionaries who have adopted “a first-century lifestyle based on faith, goodness, love, generosity, kindness, and simplicity,” as opposed to condescending to submit to Church membership. (I’m going to resist the temptation to diagnose the self-righteous moralism inherent in this description.) Does this completely groundless myth of a first-century non-institutional Christian utopia still hold an appeal for Evangelicals? If so, why?
We read in the NT Paul condemning schism, calling the church by the name of Christ, refusing to even suggest separation in churches corrupted by all sort of unchecked error, and insisting that baptism put us in Christ’s body, united us to Him so that we have died and risen in His death and resurrection; and yet anyone can simply appeal to the First Century Church as some kind of unquestionable model of churchless Christianity. How can this be? Margaret Meade’s stories of the Samoans seem far more credible than these “free love” versions of NT anarcho-ecclesiasticism. How has this baseless vision of the First Century managed to get such a hold on our imaginations as to give anti-“Churchianity” the moral high ground?
Whatever the cause, it is quite obvious the Reformed witness that outside the institutional church there is no ordinary possibility of salvation needs to be proclaimed and defended loudly among Evangelicals.
ADDENDUM 12/29/05 – 12:34 PM:For more response
Best line ever penned in the storied history of _Christianity Today_: “The notion of freelance Christians would have made them [the Reformers] spit out their beer.”
Oh my, this is a very common myth. It has its roots in the Enlightenment notion that religion in its purist form is free and unencumbered with ritual and order and institutions. That what begins so simple, over time, becomes polluted with doctrine, ceremony, and all manner of extraneous, external matters that clog the arteries of what was once such an beautiful individual religious feeling. This mythic story betrays philosophical pre-commitments that are at odds with the biblical data. But, of course, never mind the way the Bible appears to present the history of Israel or the Church, because we KNOW that it started out with simple religious feelings and was eventually corrupted with all sorts of social requirements – priests, sacrifices, assemblies, etc. Of course, that’s the JEDP theory in a nutshell, which was an attempt to get behind the biblical history and tell the true story of the corruption of the original religious motives of the early Hebrews. This same grid is forced on the history of the early church as well – Jesus himself being the original wandering religious guru whom his disciples betrayed (esp. Paul) when they transformed his simple religion and lifestyle into CHURCHIANITY. Stupid stuff, IMHO, but not easily countered in our culture.
This is also reminiscent of Harold Camping’s errant (anti-)ecclesiology.
Yes but how many Reformed people really believe that in a practical way. I notice that many are willing to sign off on the WCF but don’t really believe that line in practice. Indeed in our culture it is difficult. I think this is what is most intriguing to me about the Mercersburg Theology.