God's Forever Family

The Jesus Freak or Jesus People movement of the late 60s/early 70s has interested me for some time. The church association I was a part up until about a year and a half ago is an offshoot of one such Jesus People movement in the Midwest and still carries some of the enthusiasms from the time. Therefore it was with interest that I read God's Forever Family, a cultural history of the movement by Larry Eskridge, a scholar at Wheaton. In the book, Eskridge argues that the short-lived and intense JP movement has led to many of modern evangelicalism's adaptations and is therefore important to understand even considering its brevity.

The history is interesting, if a bit repetitive. The first group Eskridge keys in on were legitimate hippies, tripping acid and flaunting sexual liberation who came to faith in Jesus, hooked up with a square Presbyterian minister, slowly put away the drugs, and eventually spent their time roaming Haight-Ashbury looking for converts. They were successful to a remarkable degree and, as so much of the counterculture of the time emanated from San Francisco, their blend of oldtime religion and long hair and guitars and flower child affectations spread to the rest of the country.

Some of the colorful characters of this early period are a pleasure to read about (others, mostly the cult leaders, are less of a pleasure, but still entertaining). In a real way they seemed to grasp the gospel and at the same time delighted in confounding their more staid fellow believers. It was a radical time for our country, and in the words of the Bob Dylan Christian-phase song, everyone was serving someone fervently. A bold call to radical discipleship was just one of many bold calls to radical something or other that were fermenting in the period. 

However, it is not long into the narrative before it becomes apparent that the majority of the "converts" to Jesus People Christianity were kids who were raised in the church, but thought it was cool to grow their hair out and ditch the hymnal. In other words, most of the JP folks were young evangelicals who show how steadfast the young evangelical tradition of thinking your parents are doing it all wrong runs historically. The Christianity espoused by the Jesus People was not some liberal, egalitarian mainline strain, but fit for a Methodist tent revival from the prior century. I am not saying this to complain, only to point out that the main innovations of the Jesus People were not doctrinal but aesthetic. In that sense they were less reformers than repackagers. Again, not a complaint, but people tend to treat the era as if epochal change had finally come to Christianity. I am not sure whether it was implied strongly in my early-adulthood but I recall having the distinct impression that Christianity was mired in the muck of conformity and silly tradition from the New Testament church of the early portions of the book of Acts (until they started arguing about stuff) until the post-World War II period.

Indeed, the focus on Acts 2 (oddly neglecting the churches in the epistles of Paul and the rest of Acts) as the sine qua non of true Christianity was one of the central focuses of the Jesus People. One of the top bands of the movement was called The Second Chapter of Acts (!!!THIS IS A SYMBOL!!!). What is striking about this focus is the idea that we can simply attain the communalism and faith of the early Christians in Jerusalem by willing it to happen, as well as the notion that the early communitarian spirit was borne of anything other than necessity given the state of the infant church. It represents an ahistorical view of lived Christianity, assuming that the Christian experience in 1972 Fort Wayne, Indiana is basically the same as 35 A.D. Palestine. Our Savior is the same, but our experiences are different. There is a reason the Apostle Paul wrote different letters to different churches rather than just sending them a copy of his physician's account of the early church and highlighting three verses and telling them, "DO THIS!"

The ultimate undoing or dissolution of the Jesus People (such as it happened) was not caused by sexual scandal or even by the rampant cultic activity, but by one of those inexorable laws of humanity--the early Jesus People grew up. It is easy to advocate communal living and possessions while single, harder when married, nary impossible when you have kids. Further, it is easy to spend your days sharing the gospel when you have no one to support but yourself, and far more difficult when you are married and have kids and read Biblical injunctions about providing for your family. The old hippie saw about not trusting anyone over 30 proved accurate. The hippie generation grew up and elected Ronald Reagan, twice. The Jesus People turned 30 and grew up, returning to their Presbyterian church or the Baptists or joining nondenominational churches that allowed people to live out a non-apocalyptic form of Christianity.

Eskridge argues though that many of the innovations of Christianity since the short-lived Jesus People movement have been linked to the emphases of the movement. Features of contemporary worship like "praise" songs rather than hymns, the growth of contemporary Christian music (CCM) as an industry, the "seeker-sensitive" movement that sought to make church a fun place to hang out on a Sunday morning and hear a pithy sermon about something vaguely Christian, and the focus on harnessing youth energy are all attributed to the influence of JP Christianity. Reading back over this list some of you may wonder whether this should evoke praise or condemnation. I don't think there is an easy answer either way. For many of my generation, having grown up in churches where positive and encouraging seemed to outweigh doctrinal and historical, this seems like a Faustian bargain. You might get people into the door, but what if you have nothing to tell them? And what do you give up to get them to come? But that is far too simplistic. A lot of good came out of and continues to come out of the seeker sensitive churches. This is not necessarily to approve of their efforts or to gloss over the anti-intellectualism, consumerism, and emotionalism they promote, only to acknowledge that God is far greater than our filthy rags whether they be traditional and reformational or contemporary and emotional and that He can save people in a variety of contexts.

The primary lesson for me in this book is that we have to be cautious in what we are willing to do to try to get young people to stay interested in church. In order to placate and accommodate the Jesus People, pastors and elders who ought to have known better rolled over on a number of things more important than hair length, such as proper interpretation of the Bible and the solidity provided by tradition as opposed to temperamental emotionalism. I went to a church in high school that had a separate building for young people so we didn't have to suffer through boring church with our parents. There was a gym and a punk band and fifteen year old kids were actually encouraged to share things at various times in front of the whole group as if any of us had one infinitesimal clue what we were talking about. I made out with a number of girls I met there, including two in the parking lot of the church. I had better luck there than I did at my school. 

Of course this is due to my own insecurities and sin at the time. It is not as if I was actively encouraged by the youth leader, a man I hold in tremendous respect to this day, to make out with girls after youth group. However, the whole content of the service was based on an emotional response, hands lifted high in worship, fervent, unconsidered prayers to NEVER SIN AGAIN!!!. In other words it was like eating candy, especially at an already highly emotional phase of life. I went out hopped up on the sugar rush and crashed by the time I got home. Young people simply cannot conceive of ever not feeling as intensely about things as they feel at the time. Anyone who does not feel as intensely as they do is therefore not as committed or devoted or whatever. Thank God I don't feel things like I did was 15 or 22. People who chase that stuff into their older age are pathetic. Boring has a lot going for it. Also, in actually reading the Bible you find young people repeatedly warned that they are proud and stupid while the elders are repeatedly praised. Thus, contra our culture, the Bible praises age and experience and wisdom over fervency and zeal and stupidity. The Jesus People, admirable as they were in many ways, had plenty of the latter three qualities. Unfortunately, their legacy to the church appears to be the same focus on youth that led to their excesses (Google "Children of God") as well as their quick flame-out.      

The Hammer of God

I just finished an extraordinary novel by Bo Giertz, a Swedish Lutheran pastor from the mid-twentieth century. The book is called The Hammer of God and is actually a collection of three novellas, all somewhat related to the other. Each short story is about young pastors recently entered into parish ministry and the challenges, revelations, temptations, and victories they experience. The first is set in 1820, the second in 1880, and the third in 1940-1. The pattern is fairly easy to discern, right around 60 years in between each story.

This is straight up theological fiction, much in the manner of Marilynne Robinson and her incredible Gilead novels (there is a third on the way!). It is difficult in these books to draw a line between story and theology, and it is clear that one was not intended.

The three stories are parallel in a number of ways. As I have said, each focuses on a young pastor freshly out of seminary in their first ministry assignment, and the challenges they face as they learn what it is to shepherd God's people. Each is something of a religious liberal, spouting the "new ideas" of their time. Each receives an awakening through witnessing the death of a traditional believer, or a conversation with an elder, or through reading the Word of God seriously for the first time. After the awakening each emphasizes strict obedience to Christ and is dismissive of their elder pastors as libertines (for having a bit of brandy at night, or some such minor infraction) and basically make the new believer error of imagining themselves to have discovered Christianity. Thus they fall into self-righteousness. They are then guided by these elder pastors into the grace of Jesus as superior to the works-based Christianity they preach. 

As I started the third novella earlier this week I was a little frustrated. Not this again, I thought. Liberal pastor, awakening, struggle with legalism, finding grace with the aid of a wiser older pastor. But then it occurred to me that Giertz's point in writing three such stories from contextually different vantage points is to emphasize the eternal nature of this battle and this progression for young, university-educated ministers. When new converts become really excited about Christianity they often become very legalistic. They judge everyone who has a drink or watches an R-rated movie (two pastimes I prefer to combine), and they mistake their ignorant zeal for true faith. What needs to happen is almost a second conversion. Away from works to the great grace of Jesus Christ. And from there you live righteously to glorify your savior, not to satisfy your own sense of religious duty. 

What is more, in a culture that deifies youth and youthful pursuits and zeal, it is these seasoned pastors who have often experienced the same cycle in their own faith who guide these young ministers into true, grace-based faith in Jesus. What young people need is not necessarily more zeal, but much, much more wisdom. And wisdom only comes with gray hairs. Giertz, a young man himself when he wrote this book, keeps this in view.

Though it is never explicitly mentioned, the title of the book comes from the prophet Jeremiah: "Is not my word like fire," declares the Lord, "and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?" (23.29). And indeed each pastor chronicled in this book must confront the Word of God, both what it says about salvation and how they will choose to read it. The last story focuses on a young pastor who had believed that Scripture must be read historically. What he meant by this was for himself unclear and it caused certain of his parishioners to chuck any doctrine they found unpalatable on the premise that it was merely historically arbitrary and no longer required of believers (sound familiar?). He is rebuked in this belief at a church service for "readers," congregants who read the Bible and take its commands seriously, after the man he has invited to speak, a new convert, talks about how everyone must be guided by the light of conscience rather than God's Word. After he speaks and they sing a hymn, an older pastor from a neighboring parish gets up to speak and these are his words. I found them wholly beautiful, and they make a fitting epitaph for my review of this book:

"The stone foundation of the human heart and the Rock of Atonement on Golgotha are the two mountains on which a man's destiny is determined. If he remains on the stone foundation of his natural state, he is lost. Only one way leads from the stony foundation to the Rock of Atonement, a firm stone bridge built once and for all. It is the Word. Just as only the divine word can convict man of sin and lay bare the soul to its rocky base, so nothing but the Word can reveal the truth about the Redeemer. The external Word is as inescapably necessary for the gospel as it is for the law. No one who is awakened in earnest would ever be able to believe in the forgiveness of his sins, if God had not built a bridge leading to the Rock of Atonement. The supports on which it rests are baptism, the Lord's Supper, and absolution; the arches are wrought by the Holy Word with its message of redemption. On that bridge a sinner can pass from the stony ground that condemns to the Rock of Salvation. But should a single one of the arches be allowed to fall, then is man condemned to remain eternally under the law's condemnation, either as a despairing sinner or as a self-righteous Pharisee."