I Say Philosopher, You Say - Evangelical!

"Switching denominations is anti-ecumenical" - Utopian Dreams

If you really believe that denominations all point to Christ, and you switch denominations, then you are searching for something besides Christ.

I flirted with a lot of different denominations last year, and fell in love, particularly, with the concepts behind Catholicism and Anglicanism. I spent a month in an Anglican monastery and ooooh my goodness, it was beautiful.

So I went to an Episcolean church here for a month, but -

Kathleen says regularly that we need to listen to God's voice wherever God speaks to us. So I waited patiently for God to speak to me in a brilliant, historical Episcopalian service - I waited for God's spirit to move in me in during the liturgical worship - I waited for the theologically intricate message to reveal deep, unspoken truths to my soul.

I spent a lot of time waiting.

Then I visited a Pentecostal Evangelical church. And damnit, if God didn't speak to me during some silly, dancing in the aisle, anti-intellectual song that repeated the chorus 14 times and said "I FEEL! I FEEL!" again and again, and was everything that I have trained my philosophical brain to hate.

So God speaks to me through Evanglicalism. So what?

Maybe we are called to grow where God places us. I want to go to a "cool" church that I can murmer "mmm! mmm! Yes! We can't discard the historicity of the Trinitarian belief any more than we can move on from our pseudo-Germanic roots as a nation!"

Called to Evangelical.

I disagree with so much of the Evangelical church. I feel antsy when they talk about church history, evolution, politics, Biblical interpretation and literalism, women, and homosexuality. 

But the truth is, I've found that the Evangelical church is full of love, grace, and compassion. I believe that the tenants of Evangelicalism - rooted in absolute personal devotion to the person of Jesus Christ, absolute belief in the reality and importance of the Bible, and the centrality of being involved in the world socially and politically - are beautiful and true. Sure, I disagree with how many Evangelicals believe "absolute authority" translates, and I disagree with how many Evangelicals have chosen to become involved in politics. But the spirit, intention, enthusiasm, and purpose is there. And I'm a Christian because of Jesus, and Jesus finds me in the stadium seating of a carpeted mega-church.

Maybe those of us that are raised in denominations that we come to hate and reject need to think about what "ecumenical" means to us. Maybe we are called to where we are placed, and maybe we are called to transform it. I read The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, and when I finished it, I felt confirmed that I'd never go back to the Evangelical church.

But what happens to the church if all the philosophy majors leave Evangelicalism for Catholicism and Lutheranism and Episcopalianism? For that matter, what if the charismatic worshipers leave Anglicanism for Pentacostalism, and what if all the anarchists and revolutionaries leave Catholicism for Unitarianism, and what if the feminists leave the Baptist churches and join the UCC?

I guess that sometimes people have to get out of an oppressive place (I'm not exactly sure what a feminist would do in a Baptist church, quite frankly), but I think that it should be the last case scenario. Instead of going where we're most comfortable, maybe (maybe) we should try and bring our perceptions and ideas into the church that God placed us in. I think of my activist anarchist friend who is steadily fighting for justice in the Catholic church, and I praise God for him. And I think of my gay friend who is quietly fighting for equality in the Evangelical church, and I praise God for her. Would it be easier for both of them to boot it over to a denomination that already accepts their POV and identity? Sure. But I think that both of them bring grace and truth into the denominations that God has placed them in, and that that grace and truth can only be brought by them.

So I guess that I'll keep being a philosophy major noisily fighting for intellectual discourse in the Evangelical church. Can you be a non-Biblical-literalist feminist philosopher and survive in a Kentucky Pentecostal Evangelical church? I dunno. The Evangelical tradition has a lot to teach me still about grace, humility, patience, and Jesus Christ, and I would hate to leave it now. Even as a philosopher feminist.