Church as the ultimate new social movement
2 Dec 2008
(This post is something I recently wrote for the ‘Church and Pomo‘ site. I’ve reposted it here and included something from the comments conversation that I wish I’d put in the main post)
My PhD research and my daily work as a church planter, and pastor/minister have me located within Political Theology. I’m trying to understand how consumerism and secularism are analogous to religious systems, using key theological discourses of the Church in history, and explore the implications for ecclesiology.
How are people formed, what are they formed into, and how does this compare, intersect and contrast with the nature of Christian identity and formation, and most critically what are the implications for ecclesiology.
As I’ve been surveying my cultural landscape, I’ve come across a few suggestions, usually made with great fervor that ‘New Social Movements’ (NSMs), provide an understanding of human identity and formation, that the church must be located within. The references to NSMs by seem to run along these lines (if I can put them crudely):
1. Western society has changed, for ever. The ways people organise, and structure themselves, in work, play, and family interactions have emerged into a new cultural realities.
2. Church has no choice, it must track these social realities, and form itself around them, or become extinct.
How NSMs are post-marxist, and are the cultural post-materialist concerns of western bourgeois middle class, isn’t something I want to delve into. But I do want to call into question, the methodological and in particular ontological assumptions of this kind of reasoning. In doing so, I know that will make me appear trapped in ‘old skool’ theological methodologies and paradigms, at least to devotees of NSMs.
Yet within this I’m not anti social science and theory, but I do question the headlong rush into sociological methods, and the ‘social imaginaries’ that flow from them by the church, in particular those within practical theology. And I do believe that commodification so completely disconnects beliefs from practice (Vincent Miller in Consuming Religion convinced me of that), that the quest to produce better theologies, specifically better anthropologies to dissect and repel those of consumerism/secularism, won’t solve the churches problems.
But I do believe that theology, should set the ‘social imagination’ of the church, sketch out and narrate a ‘social reality’ of it’s own. Ecclesiology under the spell of NSMs, and other sociological methodologies, seems to have been reduced to a ‘social doctrine’, one so flexible, that the church has become just one option amongst the many voluntary clubs societies and options within the NSMs of western culture.
Maybe the problem isn’t so much that the Church is shouting it’s theology into the howling wind and reality of NSMs, but that the church has lost any ability to articulate and imagine itself, as the ultimate new social reality.
Perhaps Church, the people of God, is not a voluntary choice, within the plurality of choices of NSMs. Church, is not penultimate, but the ultimate choice we make (For example we see this social conception within the household codes of the new testament).
So what might shape our imaginations instead of metaphors of social realities? Whilst we have seen a turn to a narrative theology, that is shaping the imaginations of the church with ‘Cultural-linguistic’ approaches with the Yale school etc, Kevin VanHoozer with his ‘Drama of Doctrine’ (who gives a nod to Lindbeck’s postliberalism), offers a self-conscious ‘canonical-linguistic’ approach to doctrine rather than a ‘cultural-linguistic’ approach.
We need the narrative of scripture to shape our imaginations. Oliver O’Donovan’s 4 movements of the Christ event (that he delineates in “The Desire of Nations), outlined from scripture, offers such a ‘canonical-linguistic’ approach. It’s one that has captured my imagination, and helped me imagine church beyond cultural pragmatics, and aesthetic choices, not matter how important those are.
Until we understand Church as The New Social Movement, shifting culture realities, rather than a Christological reality and ordering of the resurrection of Jesus will be taking shape within and between us.
Tagged: Culture, ecclesiology, Ethics
14 comments
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Comment by Paul
6.56 pm on 2 Dec 2008
thanks Jase. Could you explain for me what a “canonical-linguistic” approach is please?
Comment by Jason
11.15 pm on 2 Dec 2008
Hi Paul,
Cultural-Linguistic is the turn to take culture seriously, and understand how it is narrated through language, and how language works.
‘canonical-linguistic’, is taking language seriously and how people interact, but taking scripture as the framing for narrative, rather than just cultural realities.
Probably no clearer!
Comment by Paul
12.35 am on 3 Dec 2008
thanks Jase, so an example of each would be..?
Comment by Jason
9.31 am on 4 Dec 2008
NSMs would be one example take the social realities of a group, use their metaphors take their reality and seriously and get excited about it, and adopt it for church.
Alternatively take those and run them against scripture, the faithful church in history, and with theology, and locate metaphors that shape a kingdom reality.
Comment by Paul
1.33 pm on 5 Dec 2008
ah thank you
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Comment by Kevin Alexander
10.30 pm on 2 Dec 2008
I find your comments to be incredibly inspiring. We definately need to examine how we are communicating theology in a culturally relevant way, but also not neglect the truth of the gospel. It seems too often we pick one side or the other and go to the extreme. I think the balance is in communicating timeless, eternal, unchanging, and universal truth in ways that are culturally relevant. Truth certainly isn’t relative, but perhaps it is relational. It is fixed, unchanging truth, yet we need to communicate it in ways that relate it to people in understandable language.
As a video production professional and as a theology student, I find this to be an incredible challenge. How do we use modern communication to relate the gospel to people? How can we be more effective, never resorting to dependence on tradition.
If you are interested, please check out the following YouTube clip. It’s something I recently put together to try to communicate our church’s beliefs in a very simple manner. It’s not going to be theologically exhaustive, so please be gentle! It’s our meager attempt to communicate the essence of what our church is about in 2 minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTO2uPfxVyc
Comment by rodney neill
12.32 pm on 3 Dec 2008
Great post Jason,
your analysis is very insighful – it is a message that needs to be urgently taken on board by churches/groups if we our to pass on the Good News to the next generation
Rodney
Comment by steven hamilton
12.47 pm on 4 Dec 2008
i believe we have spoke of this before, but i think this is spot-on, and we must face the challenge of the interaction of Church as the ultimate new social movement with NSMs, in which, both leaders and others in the Church get highjacked/mis-directed as NSM intersect with the ultimate social movement…this is always, it seems to me from a brief survey of history, where the Church finds itself off-course and running down rabbit holes carried along by the frenzied crowd of NSM’s…
anyway, i really enjoy the way your ph.d. is going…
peace
Comment by Rob Waller
8.48 pm on 5 Dec 2008
There are times when NSMs put us to shame. for example, i work for the NHS which whilst not new is younger than the church, and i admire its commitment to care for the old, the sick and the poor. the church has a lot to learn from the NHS as well as vice versa
Comment by Randy Peasley
11.12 pm on 5 Dec 2008
I agree with your line of thinking. While we need to know the culture around us, I don’t believe we should adopt the culture, or at least blindly adopt everything in the culture. One recent example is the denominational splits caused by the adoption of homosexual bishops and priests. Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis makes the case that our cultural moral decline was greatly accelerated because the church compromised its belief in the literal 6 days of creation because the prevailing wisdom said we evolved from an amoeba.
keep up the good work
Comment by James Prescott
5.08 pm on 6 Dec 2008
I totally agree that church needs to be ‘the’ social movement. Church at its best – indeed Christianity at its best – is a movement that should be attempting to re-define and reform our cutlure, and be the leader in taking action in issues like poverty and social justice, or on any issue which matters to God. Church needs to be the change-maker and define our culture. Not in the sense of national religion, but in defining the values that we live by. Doing that is far more powerful than building up some powerful institution.
Good post Jase.
Comment by Andy Rowell
4.27 am on 8 Dec 2008
Jason,
I get it! This is great stuff.
I could be wrong but I don’t think this ‘New Social Movements’ (NSMs) language has jumped the pond yet in normal conversation or ecclesiology! Do some “missional” or “emerging” or “fresh expressions” folk in the UK embrace the term, saying things like, “Our church is so cool–it is a NSM”?
Just as a reference, lots of people here at Duke Divinity School talking about “political theology” but my impression is that it is more philosophical, ethical, and theological than the ecclesiological, sociological and biblical reflection I am doing.
Just in terms of finding common ground and language . . .
Many of the Duke Divinity School professors worked under Lindbeck and some people think the Yale School ( post-liberalism) came here to Duke Divinity School (but only in the best ways!) Along these lines, people here are at Duke Divinity School are reading Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder, Lesslie Newbigin, Karl Barth, Thomas Aquinas, and Alasdair MacIntyre–all emphasize “let the church by the church.” I think O’Donovan and Milbank are also read in this respect here. Vanhoozer has also been read here.
andy
Andy Rowell
Doctor of Theology (Th.D.) Student
Duke Divinity School
Durham, North Carolina
Blog: Church Leadership Conversations http://www.andyrowell.net/
andy
Comment by Jason
6.54 am on 8 Dec 2008
Hi Andy,
I think the NSM language has ‘jumped the pond’ here, but not with that language but rather the embrace of the metaphors of NSMs in a lower idiom.
The embrace of NSM metaphors for ‘ecclesiology’, without any biblical, theological and historical assessment seems the norm for lots of new forms of church.
Outside of on the ground cultural pragmatics, the church is so deracinated, there is is very little conversation theologically about the nature of church, unlike the US.
Political theology is exciting for me because it move theology into the public and real world, whilst attending to the ethics of christian living.
Great to hear from you again, let me know anything you think might be of interest your side of the pond.
Warmly, Jase
Comment by matybigfro
2.56 pm on 11 Dec 2008
i’m struggling to get my head round the terms your using, would it possible to illustrate what your talking about a little more for a lowly imeducated lad like myself.
particular what you mean about “I think the NSM language has ‘jumped the pond’ here, but not with that language but rather the embrace of the metaphors of NSMs in a lower idiom.
The embrace of NSM metaphors for ‘ecclesiology’, without any biblical, theological and historical assessment seems the norm for lots of new forms of church.
Outside of on the ground cultural pragmatics, the church is so deracinated, there is is very little conversation theologically about the nature of church, unlike the US.”
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