09AR14-07
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Apologia Report 14:7
February 21, 2009
Subject: The broad and troubling legacy of Process Theology
In this issue:
CULTURE - a sociological assessment of the church's response to The Da Vinci Code and similar attacks
PROCESS THEOLOGY - the "dominant school" of liberal Christian thought
ROMAN CATHOLICISM - Commonweal magazine critiques Beckwith's conversion story
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CULTURE
"Defending the Faith: Easter Sermon Reaction to Pop Culture Discourses" by David M. Haskell, Kenneth Paradis, and Stephanie Burgoyne -- the abstract reads: "In the weeks leading up to Easter 2006, several books on Canada's bestseller's list questioned traditional Christian beliefs surrounding the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Through a textual analysis of a random sample of Easter Sunday sermons, this study seeks to determine whether Canadian clergy chose to respond to the challenges raised by these contradicting pop culture voices. Secondarily, this study explores the presence of biblical content and generic pop culture content in the sermons in order to determine whether clergy in certain denominations are predisposed to privilege one of the two over the other. Our analysis found 38% of the sermons contained one or more references to popular culture. Works of pop culture that featured unorthodox accounts of Jesus' death and resurrection were cited most often. While liberal Protestant clergy and conservative clergy (i.e., evangelicals and Catholics) referenced and condemned these unorthodox works in almost equal measure, liberal clergy were twice as likely as conservative to cite pop culture in their sermons. Conversely, the sermons of conservative Protestant clergy (and to a lesser extent Catholic clergy) relied most heavily on quotation of sacred text for their content. Implications of these findings are discussed."
For a bit of context, the authors note that "On March 28, 19 days before Easter Sunday ... The Da Vinci Code [1] was released in paperback [and] Michael Baigent's book The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History [2] made its debut." The authors of this essay explain that "Like The Da Vinci Code, The Jesus Papers claimed Jesus - a mortal man - and Mary Magdalene married and had a child. However, it posited that Jesus did not die at the crucifixion but recovered and went into hiding in Egypt, possibly moving to France years later."
Just 10 days before Easter 2006, the National Geographic Society showcased their Gospel of Judas documentary and book [3]. Some brief but interesting stats follow regarding the extent to which the news media picked up on this "publishing phenomenon."
The authors' conclusion includes some interesting observations. "One might have expected clergy, in particular conservative Protestant pastors [to base their objection on] their affinity for biblical literalism.... But, for the most part, they did not. This may suggest that clergy with conservative beliefs feel in order to win over a public steeped (by design or by osmosis) in post-modern thought, they must be willing to challenge the 'secular world' on its own turf, playing by its rules. Perhaps they reason: when the dominant ideology has to a lesser or greater extent persuaded parishioners that truth is relative, it is important that your 'facts' appear more credible than your opponent's. ...
"What did surprised [sic] us was that the sermons of conservative and mainline clergy condemned The Da Vinci Code and other such works in almost equal measure (in fact, the sermons of mainline clergy came out slightly ahead)." This anomaly is assumed by the authors to be due to a predominant rural conservative influence in mainline groups. "We surmised that it could be the religious occasion addressed by these sermons - Easter - that encouraged mainline clergy, usually at ease with popular culture, to use it as a foil." Review of Religious Research, 50:2 - 2008, pp139-156.
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PROCESS THEOLOGY
"The Lure and Necessity of Process Theology" by Gary Dorrien -- a visionary presentation given to the Process Theology Endowment Banquet at Claremont School of Theology on February 15, 2008. Dorrien first addresses the questions: "What is process theology? Where did it come from?" In part he explains that it's "based on the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne [and is] a high-flying enterprise with a complex, opaque, esoteric, and scholastic jargon." Dorrien's overview certainly demonstrates this. Even so, despite PT's "forbidding intellectualism," it was mainly John Cobb who is most commonly noted as having developed it into "the dominant school of thought in liberal theology today."
At the University of Chicago in the 1940s, "Cobb undertook a research program on 'Modern Objections to the Christian Faith.' His idea was to strengthen his faith by confronting modern criticism, but after six months of study, he had no beliefs. His faith was shattered by the modern picture of the world as a meaningless accident and its assumption that God is irrelevant to the pursuit of knowledge. ... In that mood he nearly dropped out of school, but as a last resort he transferred to the Divinity School, just to see if liberal theology had anything to say to him. ... [U]nder the tutelage of [its faculty,] especially Hartshorne, he acquired a second religious worldview, one that featured a credible concept of God.
"For Cobb, the worldview issue was consuming. Certainly, there was more to Christianity than the worldview question, but all of it was pointless if one had to make an exception for a supernatural God." Cobb became an educator.
"In 1958, [after a frustrating teaching experience elsewhere, Cobb's] career turned a corner, as Claremont School of Theology was founded, Ernest Colwell moved from Emory to the presidency of Claremont, and Cobb came with him." Dorrien profiles Cobb's contribution to Claremont and PT at length, concluding: "To preserve and extend John's legacy at Claremont is a fundamental necessity for progressive Christianity as a whole.
"At progressive Christian seminaries and divinity schools like Union, Iliff, Drew, Pacific, and all the rest, we are increasingly clear about what we need to stand for. We need to uphold the best of our traditions of social Christianity, ecumenism, feminism, and liberation theology, and we need to do it in a way that is global, connected to world cultures and societies, involved with Christian movements throughout the world, and engaged in interreligious dialogue and theologies of world religions. We say it all the time, but finding a workable model is very difficult. Here at Claremont you already have one, in the tradition of process theology that gave rise to environmental theology, Christian-Buddhist dialogue, a river of feminist theologies, the engagement with postmodernism, the religion-science dialogue, and now, major programs in China and South Korea. We need new forms of community that arise out of but transcend religious affiliation, culture, and nation. We need a wider community of the divine good. Claremont's legacy of seeking is not merely something to admire or commend, but to build upon." Crosscurrents, 58:2 - 2008, pp316-336.
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ROMAN CATHOLICISM
Return to Rome: Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic, by Francis J. Beckwith [4] -- Presbyterian (PCUSA) reviewer William C. Placher is not impressed. Beckwith discusses his frustrated efforts to gain full professor status at Baylor. It bothers Placher that Beckwith "never explains the issues behind his tenure battles." This leaves one wondering if such conflict precipitated Beckwith's abandonment of Protestantism.
Placher muses: "Indeed, he looks back cheerfully on a life that must have included more than its share of controversies, convinced that none of those fights were about matters of great importance. He sadly recognizes that many Evangelicals may see him as a traitor, but he sees no reason why he should not be both a Catholic and an Evangelical.
"Return to Rome is thus a conversation narrative with no dramatic conversion. Beckwith gradually realized that his theology was more Catholic than not."
The book "shows signs of hasty composition; under attack, [Beckwith] clearly wanted to get his side of the story out quickly. Still, even making allowances for that, I was struck by its essential superficiality. Cardinal [John Henry] Newman this is not. ...
"Of the greatest theologians of the twentieth century or the accomplishments of the ecumenical movement, Beckwith shows scarcely any knowledge. He describes his most important research into Catholic theology as done 'while surfing the Internet.' ... From someone with the credentials of a theologian, it is at least disappointing."
Digging a bit deeper, Placher notes that "Beckwith continues: 'Remember, the Reformed view asserts that good works follow from true conversion and are part of one's postjustification sanctification. Presumably, if one claims to have been converted to Christ, i.e., justified, and no good works follow, then one was not ever really justified. This means that for the Protestant view of justification, good works are a necessary condition for true justification.'
"Well, actually, no." Placher explains his frustration with Beckwith's conclusion, further noting that "Beckwith seems not to know that Luther and Calvin both accepted a doctrine of the Real Presence in the Eucharist. ... Once he accepts the teaching authority of the church, he has a way of authorizing [the Marian doctrines and purgatory], and he seems not to have thought very much about the theological implications of their content. ...
"I hope his colleagues [at the University of Notre Dame] teach him more about Catholicism than he seems ever to have learned about Protestantism." Commonweal, Jan 16 '09, pp24-25.
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Sources, Monographs:
1 - The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown (Doubleday, 2003, hardcover, 454 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/bcfhc9>
2 - The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History, by Michael Baigent (HarperOne, 2006, hardcover, 320 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/caxwtp>
3 - The Gospel of Judas: Second Edition, Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer, and Gregor Wurst, eds. (National Geographic, 2008, paperback, 224 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/ale82l>
4 - Return to Rome: Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic, by Francis J. Beckwith (Brazos, 2008, paperback, 144 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/c48e33>
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