I’ve always been interested in non-mainline American Protestantism (and a bit in mainline Protestantism as well, of course) simply because I’m interested in religion, period, particularly from an historical and political persepective. In particular, over the past forty years or so, Catholicism has interacted with this type of Christianity (evangelicalism in its broadest sense) and continues to be shaped by that encounter, either through reaction or imitation.
I’m not going to go through the entire “define evangelicism” routine again because I’m just going to trust that you understand that American evangelical Christianity has many houses, some of which are, frankly, at war with one another, never mind the rest of the world. In short, Joel Osteen is not the same as Rob Bell who is not the same as Rick Warren who is not the same as the late James Kennedy who are not the same as TBN who is definitely not the same as Eerdmans Press who is not the same as Randy and Paula White who couldn’t make it past New Testament 101 at Wheaton College.
What I’m very interested in right now is the spinning that is going on within evangelicalism between a number of these houses: The Word Faith people, (basically the Prosperity preachers like Osteen, the Whites, Crefo Dollar, etc, although I think there are nuances there that I don’t quite grasp), the Emergent Christians (who would, I think, call themselves “post-evangelical,” although there is more to post-evangelicalism than that), the megachurch/church growth movement (Willowcreek, Warren – against which the Emergents are reacting in part, I think) and, against all of the preceding, the hardcore…I don’t know..Reformed/Calvinist people. Someone in the comments can perhaps elaborate on this last point. You can also through charismatic/pentecostal movements in there.
 All of these forces and movements cross denominational lines and in a sense make the old denominational lines rather meaningless. I hope someone, somewhere is writing a doctoral dissertation on that very fact, because I’d love to read it.
It’s dizzying and fascinating.
One of the most fascinating points to watch with all of these brands and movements is to see how far they go, what particular angle or aspect of Christian teaching, or even what Bible verses they spin out and expand into the entirety of The Gospel. It’s also interesting to watch the pure market forces at work and how American consumer/marketplace mentality affects all of these movements. And most interesting of all, to me, is to watch and try to think through the whole process on which these folks justify their own teachings and judge others as faulty or even “heretical.”
I’m always left thinking, after reading through series of torrid, hot and angry blog posts in various places, “Well, you got your branch of religion based on individual interpretation of Scripture. So….what? Who are you to judge this person’s interpretation as flawed or even heretical?”
I simply can’t make sense of it. I honestly don’t understand the grounding. They (particularly the hard-core folks who are particularly contemptuous of the more contemporary movements) say that they’re all about the Word of God and preaching the Word and doctrine instead of this mushy seeker stuff or the prosperity gospel or whatever, and while I’m sympathetic, I’m also thinking, “Uh, John 6? People? Is that part of your “gospel?” And you can multiply the examples from there. The whole position seems intellectually untenable. If a properity preacher wants to pick out a few verses from Scripture and warp that into a movement that tells people to expect God to “bless them” financially as a sign of faith, I don’t see how the preacher who picks out a few verses from Scripture to construct a theory of individual justification and salvation and then ignores much of what the New Testament has to say about other matters, not to speak of the apostolic church – what grounds the latter has to say anything about the former. It’s all selective, and furthermore, it’s all rooted, not in the pure Word of God, but in someone else’s filter of that Word of God, whether that be Luther, Calvin or Charles Spurgeon.
I’ll be frank and unecumenical here. I’m not bashing, I’m not, God knows, ignoring the faults of Catholicsm. Longtime readers know me too well for that. I’m not degrading the faith of millions of loving, faithful disciples of Jesus in other Christian denominations. I’m just trying to examine a bigger picture.
So. Imagine defining Christianity based on Catholicism alone. (Remember, Catholicism is more than the Roman Rite, too.) Okay, think about it. Given the struggles and various movements and dynamics and doctrinal development within Catholicism – yes, given all that, you could still come up with an organic, consistent understanding of what Christianity is.
Now take Catholicism out of the picture. Imagine Catholicism didn’t exist any more. And define Christianity based on Protestantism alone – not the individual idiocycratic weirdness of this or that preacher, but the whole thing, from Luther to Pentecostalism to the Episcopal Church USA, and taking in the teachings of the variety of evangelicalism at work in the world today.
What do you have?
What is Christianity?
Anything in particular?
To be honest, as I plow through these conversations, convoluted and heated, I always end up thinking that all of these people need to be Catholic. With their passion for truth, for being disciples – all of that is present, in its fullness, in Catholicism, even if it is not exactly self-evident in every single Catholic parish one runs across in real life.  There is much talk these days about “evangelical Catholicism” which strikes some as odd, but I really don’t see why at all. Catholicism is Christianity which is faith in Jesus who told the apostles to go out to all the world. Being that today doesn’t mean copying evangelical approaches or sensibilities, in my mind. It simply means living out Catholicism in all of its faithful, vivid, life-giving diversity – the completeness and wholeness which any convert from evangelicalism to Catholicism will tell you is exactly what they found