Happy Reformation Day!
October 28th, 2008 -- Posted in Believe, Grace, Grow, Remember, Speak | 23 Comments »The Gospel of grace is the end of religion, the final posting of the CLOSED sign on the sweatshop of the human race’s perpetual struggle to think well of itself. For that, at bottom, is what religion is: man’s well-meant but dim-witted attempt to approve of his unapprovable condition by doing odd jobs he thinks some important Something will thank him for. Religion, therefore, is a loser, a strictly fallen activity. It has a failed past and a bankrupt future. There was no religion in Eden and there won’t be any in heaven; and in the meantime Jesus has died and risen to persuade us to knock it all off right now. . . .
The Reformation was a time when men were blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late Medievalism, a whole cellarful of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred-proof grace — bottle after bottle of pure distillate Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel — after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps — suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started. . . . Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, nor the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.
Robert Capon as quoted in Brennan Manning’s The Ragamuffin Gospel
I’ve never actually celebrated Reformation Day before. Not formally or corporately, at least. Hearing the pipes this past Sunday actually made more sense than it has in years. Up until now, there’s been very little from the British Isles that is recognized in our home. Oh sure, we have a Westie. And somewhere in the world there’s a bolt of tartan with my (married) name on it (literally!). But I’ve never heard my own heritage in that drone. Now I get it. Now, as a Presbyterian.
I got called a “Neo” the other day. No, no, it’s not a super-cool Matrix reference (I wish!). It’s short for “Neo-Evangelical.” Evangelicals never actually call themselves “Neo-Evangelicals” anymore. Now it’s always a devil-term lobbed from a Fundy toward an Evangelical.
It’s an old term too. Like calling a Hillary Clinton a “libber.” At the very root, “Neos” are people who support Billy Graham. ::gasp::
I’ve never understood the Fundy fear and trepidation for Graham. My grandma listened to him back in the day. He does preach the Gospel — albeit a very Moody-esque, Keswickish, revivalistic Gospel which is identical to BJU’s, so that’s not the problem. As I read primary documents from his early days, it’s interesting to watch the falling out. I mean, my alma mater sent students to sing at his Hour of Power! But all of a sudden after 1952 (after he integrated his crusades maybe?), Graham is persona non grata.
Strange.
And because my current church supported Graham back in his 1966 Greenville Crusade — two years before I was born — it, too, is a persona non grata to my previous employer. So that now makes me a “Neo” too, I guess.
The practical difference between Fundies and Neos, according to the Fundies, is preferred Bible translation. Or a strict insistence that women wear modest clothes. Or music. For BJU fundamentalists, music is the big boundary marker that includes a continuous and mysterious harangue about how things over here are drastically different and superior to things over there.
So in my now-Neo church a scandalous NIV translation is the pew Bible. I wear “immodest” pants to worship. ::shudder::
But the music? It. is. exactly. the. same. In fact, some of the very same musicians accompany the congregational singing. And my darling hubby hums along with all the choir numbers. I love hearing the tenor part perfectly and quietly in my ear.
Well now, there are a couple of musical differences. Their corporate singing of “And Can It Be” sounds more like a dance than a march. And in all my years of singing “Amazing Grace,” neither my Masters-in-Church-Music husband nor I have ever learned this verse:
The Lord has promised good to me,
His Word my hope secures;
He will my Shield and Portion be,
As long as life endures.
Where has that been? That promise of God’s goodness? Why was it missing? I, like all my fellow Fundies, know very well how to change the words in Newton’s last verse. But why was this verse so easily dropped? We messed up Old Hundreth too!
The differences between my previous worship life and my current one really struck me Sunday as we celebrated the Reformation. For all the talk about Machen’s Warrior Children, these people don’t seem as jingoistic. Maybe their fight is older. Maybe they’ve moved on. Maybe I just can’t perceive it yet.
Maybe there’s a robust enough culture that the more irenic themes are still organic:
You cannot antagonize and influence at the same time.
John Knox
Either way, I’m going to have to get some Lewis plaid ties for my little Reformers for next year.
