What Book(s) Changed Your Life at OBU?

We've hit pretty hard lately. Our post on the religion/ministry dean's unilateral search for a fundamentalist Bible prof is already the most-viewed post in Save OBU's history.  We've revealed President Whitlock's departure from the rigid orthodoxy of SBC elites on women deacons and the Baptist World Alliance.  I'm sure his boss, Dr. Jordan, and his friend, Dr. Norman, have corrected his liberal heresies by now.

Time for a softball question -- one that I hope many of you will answer.  In Friday's post on OBU's new Women in Ministry course, an anonymous commenter noted that his/her life was changed after reading The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan.  I received several emails to the same effect.  (Let's see how long it takes for Provost Norman to ban the book from OBU's curriculum...)

It got me thinking... What books changed my life at OBU?  And I want to ask: What books changed yours?

To me, it seems overly dramatic to describe reading a book as life-changing.  (Maybe I just haven't read the right books?)  Maybe the problem is that I tend not to read many novels.  Since college, I've probably only read 8 or 10.  It's hard for books on sociology or politics to change your life!  But one book from Western Civ has loomed large in my mind and imagination over the years.  The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton is a beautifully-told story of a young man who struggles to reconcile the desires of his heart with the expectations and obligations of his family and community.  It's one of the few books I've read multiple times.  For many emotionally difficult years of my life, I resonated with the angst of the protagonist, a young lawyer named Newland Archer.  Ultimately, I hope to find the right balance between reason and passion, monotony and adventure, responsibility and excitement -- all themes the novel explores.  Also, though there is no sex, the story oozes with sexual tension.  Kind of like Bison Hill, haha!

It sounds cliche, but the most life-changing book was and is the Bible.  I had read it a lot over my 18 years, but usually only a sentence or two at a time.  At OBU, I really read the Bible.  OBU encouraged me to read the text seriously rather than literally, and I guess you could say my life was never the same after that.  I also read books about the Bible that helped me synthesize my new knowledge with a theology that I could believe honestly and with integrity.

While on a date with my girlfriend at Zio's in Bricktown, we met a waiter who mentioned that his pastor was preaching a series of sermons about a new book, Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity.  The book made sense of what I was learning and what I had experienced.  It argues that the divide in American religious life is between legalistic and compassionate religion --- between the "Church of Law" and the "Church of Love."  I eventually ended up accepting this stranger's invitation to attend his church, where I worshipped regularly during the later part of my time in Oklahoma.  Though I am unknown to him, I count the church's minister, the Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers, as the pastor who influenced most greatly and most positively.

Around the same time, I came across the writings of the Rt. Rev. Jack Spong.  On a summer road trip to Alaska in 2001 with my best friend from back home, I read Spong's book, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture.  In this book and a dozen others, Spong lays out a vision for what theology might look like if we take the Bible seriously rather than literally.  Of course, few of my classmates affirmed this kind of thinking or believing, and none of our professors would have endorsed it.  But for me personally, as I was struggling to reconcile what I was learning about the Bible with what I believed about God, salvation, ethics, and the church, Spong was tremendously helpful to me.  On page 24 of this book, Spong writes,  "A literal Bible presents me with far more problems than assets.  It offers me a God I cannot respect, much less worship; a deity whose needs and prejudices are at least as large as my own.  I meet in the literal understanding of Scripture a God who is simply not viable, and what the mind cannot believe, the heart can never finally adore."

So, that's my story.  Now I'd like to hear from you.  Please share in the comments below, or on Facebook or Twitter, what book(s) changed your life at OBU!

A Review: The Center of a Christian Worldview

This week, we are reviewing a series of essays in the Baptist Messenger (BGCO newspaper P.R. publication) on the concept of Christian worldview.  Five of the 6 commentaries are written by new (Whitlock-era) religion faculty and administrators.  Other posts in the series include:

• Will the Real Christian Worldview Please Stand Up? (Intro)
• "Christian Worldview and Divine Revelation" (Rev. Dr. Mark McClellan, Dean and Professor)
• "The Importance and Impact of Worldview" (Rev. Dr. Tawa Anderson, Assistant Professor)
• "The Creationist Worldview According to the Bible" (Rev. Dr. Ishwaran Mudliar, Associate Professor)
• "A Christian Worldview and Human Sinfulness" (Rev. Dr. Stan Norman, Provost and Executive Vice President for Campus Life)

This is the only article in the Baptist Messenger's worldview series not written by an OBU professor or administrator.  I don't know anything about Prof. Wilder or his work other than what can be gleaned from his online SWBTS profile.  As post-Takeover SBC seminary professors go, he's definitely one of the legitimate ones committed to scholarship over Baptist politics.  He is a member of the mainstream Society of Biblical Literature, which fundamentalist "scholars" regard as apostate.  But he hasn't been involved with the SBL in over a decade, instead aiming his scholarship mostly toward evangelical and fundamentalist publications and conferences.  On a personal note, Wilder's son will be attending Union University in the fall.  (Which brings up an interesting idea: Just as fewer OBU ministry and religion grads than you would expect go on to the post-Takeover SBC seminaries, I bet shockingly few SBC seminary professors send their children to OBU -- but that's another question for another day.)

After the absolutely shameful treatment Randall Lolley, Roy Honeycutt, Russell Dilday and other SBC seminary administrators and faculty received from fundamentalists in the Takeover years, I have a build-in prejudice against people who have chosen to affiliate themselves with these institutions in the post-Takeover era.  But Prof. Wilder was studying in the U.K. and teaching at Midwestern seminary (the "least bad" of the 6 SBC seminaries, I'm told) during those years.  He's only been at Southwestern since 2010.  Hey, everyone needs a job -- even Baptist academics whose careers unfortunately (and by no fault of their own) overlapped with the SBC's deliberate degradation of its own educational institutions.  I wouldn't work for (SWBTS President and original SBC Takeover architect) Paige Patterson for all the gold in China.  But I'm going to give Wilder the benefit of the doubt.  He's done significant service to Baptists and to his profession over many years.

His worldview essay is concise, clear, and about what you would expect.  Wilder refers back to essays by Tawa Anderson and Stan Norman to help bring some internal coherence to the series.  In opposition to previous essays that regard the Bible, not Christ, as God's supreme revelation, Wilder maintains that Christ is at the center of the Christian worldview.  Sensibly, he qualifies this by saying "a thoroughgoing view of the world must operate from a biblical standpoint."  At the end, however, Wilder ups the ante on Bible-as-revelation: "The will of God is grounded in and upon the written revelation of the Bible."  It seems like a lot of Baptist leaders today want to demote Christ from the Trinity and put the Bible in his place (ESV or HCSB translations preferred).  Still, I think Wilder finds a better balance between God, Christ, and Scripture than the others, who seem to say "God so loved the world that He gave us the Bible, and whosoever reads it the same way I do is a real Christian."

Another subtle but significant difference in Wilder's writing is his occasional use of the indefinite article: "A Christian worldview."  He lapses into "the Christian worldview" later on, but he seems willing to at least partially acknowledge that there is no one definitive "Christian worldview," and nowhere does he imply that he has a monopoly on how to define it.  So, that's refreshing.

Wilder contrasts "a Christian worldview" with a variety of other philosophies and -isms.  But he maintains that if we do not adopt a Christian worldview "we will follow whatever system or combination of beliefs are trendy, meet our needs or satisfy our desires or passions, and they are usually those which hold us least accountable for our actions and decisions."  This statement is pretty surprising and even insulting.  First of all, the prevalence of "cheap grace" in contemporary evangelicalism makes the idea that no one outside the Christian fold has any notion of moral or ethical accountability completely laughable.  Furthermore, this kind of holier-than-thou attitude is precisely the kind of thing that drives people away from Christianity.  Many (if not most) non-Christians live with a very deliberate and rigorous moral seriousness.  It's beyond insulting (and factually untrue) to imply that they are unaccountable hedonists living according to the whims of their desires and "trendy" belief systems.

To his credit, Wilder locates Christ at the center of the Christian worldview.  You'd think this would go without saying, but with today's en vogue Southern Baptist intellectuals, nothing surprises me anymore.  Yet Wilder emphasizes Jesus' death, apparently to the exclusion of his life and teachings (at least in this brief essay): "I would maintain that it is the person of Jesus Christ and what He has done on the cross that leads us to see the world from a Christian perspective."  Personally, I'd like a Christian worldview to at least acknowledge major emphases of Jesus' teachings: neighbor love, the kingdom of God, the Sermon on the Mount, etc.  But in today's SBC, if you have the audacity to insist on the teachings of Jesus, they just label you a liberal and cast you out.

Thank you, Professor Wilder, for contributing to the Baptist Messenger "worldview" series.  We're reviewing the series in the context of our ongoing concerns about OBU's troubling new direction, mutually draining relationship with the BGCO, and true mission and calling in the context of post-Takeover Baptist higher education.  Since you're only tangentially involved in our specific concerns, we trust you will take our comments with a grain of salt and hopefully some grace.  Best wishes to you in your life, teaching, and ministry.

A Review: Christian Worldview and Divine Revelation

This week, we're reviewing a series of essays in the Baptist Messenger by OBU's Whitlock-era religion hires.  You may find the original article for this review here.

Unsurprisingly, this article is a pretty straightforward introduction to the concept of a Christian worldview. The author argues that worldview is something which comes from God-- by means of revelation, which he defines as the Bible. A worldview, the author continues to say, is like a pair of glasses. It does not change our surroundings but allows us to see other things clearly, as they really are. Thus, it is important to stand on the truth of scripture as the foundation for our lives. The author gives another image, that of a puzzle. The Bible is like the picture on the box and everyday we put in more pieces as we put together the puzzle. But we have to be careful not to get mixed up with pieces from other puzzles. The author finishes by concluding that our theology determines our worldview and the Bible determines our theology.

As a student of theology, I am encouraged endlessly to "think theologically" about all aspects of life. (It's even something of a joke at Brite, how much of a catchphrase that is.) So that aspect of worldview, I understand. And quite right, as Christians, our theology determines much of how we see the world.

What is interesting to me in this article is that there seems to be only one way to understand scripture, and one type of Christian worldview.

I began to understand more of the author's theology when the second word of the article reminded me that God is indeed male. (For those of you keeping score at home, a masculine pronoun was used for God 10 times in this short 950 word piece.)

For those of you who are convinced that I am a feminist nit-picking because I am left with little else to quibble with, I assure you, that is not the case. First, the implied "worldview" the author seems to be advocating for all Christians follows the usual post-Takeover route to being oppressive to women. (Oh, and look for that pattern throughout the series.) 

Secondly, the use of the masculine pronoun emphasizes something I said yesterday; this is evidence of the echo chamber. Again, as a student of theology, I can tell you that no one is going to publish anything that uses masculine pronouns for God unless they are evangelical. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with being evangelical (although I maintain the language is oppressive), I'm just saying that maybe the author is talking only to an increasingly insular subset of Christians.

Further, the author proves to have continued the trend of the post-Takeover 2000 Baptist Faith and Message. In 1963, the BF&M maintained that "The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ." But this sentence was removed in the fundamentalist-inspired 2000 revision. Thus, Jesus is no longer the fullness of God's revelation, but God is found in the words on a page.

Don't get me wrong. I have dedicated my entire life to understanding those words on the page. But the Word of God (capital W intended) is Jesus Christ, the Word became flesh. I am not saying that the author would not affirm that Jesus is indeed the fullness of God's self revelation. I am only saying that he presents the only necessary revelation for a worldview to be the Bible.

Suddenly, it is no longer sufficient for Jesus to be the Truth (John 14.6) but we can only stand on the "inspiration, authority, and total truthfulness" of scripture. Now, I'm not disagreeing with any of those things, I'm simply pointing out that pragmatically, it makes a huge difference whether one is standing on Jesus as the Truth or upon affirmation of the words on the page.

The problem with saying there is one Christian worldview and that it is based on scripture is that scripture has been understood so variously throughout our history, that statement is impossible. When someone says, "The bible says...(x, y, z)..." what they really mean is, "My interpretation of the bible is... (x, y, z)..." There is no such thing as objectivity. And so even though the Bible may be inspired and authoritative and totally truthful -- none of us know what it means. 

200 years ago, people (even Southern Baptists) held up the Bible and proclaimed that God did not intend for the races to mix in marriage.

At some point we need to acknowledge that that was our action based on words in our holy book-- and that we messed up. We read it wrong. All of us did. And certainly we haven't figured it out between now and then.

We all see in a mirror dimly, we all know only in part (1 Cor. 13:12).

If the Bible was easy to understand, why would we have seminaries? And why would we have so many denominations? All of those splits have come from different ways of understanding the same words on the page.

So, I am skeptical of an author who claims that the Bible is like glasses that make us see everything else more clearly. Surely, that is my experience sometimes. But so often, I read the Bible and it makes everything more complicated.

I am 100% agreed that all aspects of my life and thought life ought to be put under the lordship of Christ. But I am not sure what that means all of the time, and I don't think that anyone else does either. Last time I checked, all of us had a really old book that didn't come with any other instructions than read it, try your best, and trust God -- because God is faithful.

Claiming that one way of reading that book is authoritative is not the firm foundation we need. 

I like the metaphor of the puzzle. But if the image on the box is God -- that's a box I'm not going to see this side of glory. So I'll just trust that the pieces that fit belong in the picture.