"Sheilaism" vs. Evangelism

"Sheilaism" vs. Evangelism

I was brought up in the Episcopal denomination of the Christian Church. During my formative years, this particular denomination seemed to occupy a place of balance between Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Protestantism -- a place defined as much by theological reason as by tradition or fundamentalist ideologies. Indeed, the long-accepted metaphor for the structure of the Episcopal Church is that of the "three-legged stool," illustrating the equal necessities of Reason, Scripture, and Tradition to stand.

The point of all that preamble is to establish that my "home church" was always a place I perceived to be a refuge for those who'd been disenfranchised either by the rigid doctrines and preponderance of ritual in the Roman Church or by the rigid dogma and lack of ritual coherence in the more Protestant branches of Christianity. A haven, if you will, for those folks who were too intellectually and spiritually savvy to subscribe to untenable, literalistic interpretations of Scripture on the one hand, yet who embraced the Protestant notion of establishing and maintaining a personal relationship with Jesus Christ without the need for an institutional intermediary on the other, with a nice mixture of formal ritual (especially for "high holy days") and informal, contemporary worship and fellowship. The Episcopal denomination has consequently been, as an institution, a bit more comfortable with theological or doctrinal "uncertainty" than some other denominations. By "uncertainty," I mean essentially "room for individual interpretation," within the contexts of Scripture and the Tradition of the Church.

Given that, when I was growing up it was rare, indeed, to hear of "Episcopalian evangelism." As Eddie Izzard brilliantly pointed out in his satirical observations regarding the Church of England, the Inquisition would never have worked in such a context. But in recent years, social and political ... challenges ... have sparked some reactions and consequent changes within the denomination that would have seemed impossible to me a decade ago.

For example, a few years ago, there was an article in the monthly newsletter from my local church which exhorted us, as members of the Church, to be on guard against "Sheilaism." Now, the article defined Sheilaism using a quoted passage from the Very Rev. Peter Cook, who had commented on the so-called phenomenon of Sheilaism in an editorial piece tracing the "failures" which the Rev. Cook sees as having contributed to the current state of the Church (and one can only assume that he does not feel the current state of the Church to be especially positive). Here is the quoted passage:

"Here's how Sheilaism goes: Church beliefs or doctrines are fine, as long as they agree with my own opinion. The bible [sic] is fine, as long as it says what I want to hear, or what relates to me. I believe in God, as long as he's [sic] kind, loving, and supportive, not if he [sic] is judgmental or what I consider vindictive. The only moral ethic we need from the Bible is that we love and are kind to our neighbor; that, and perhaps a list of "social justice" issues to provide an agenda for church programs or church mission. You see, life changes, culture changes, cultural needs change. What the Old Testament or St. Paul says was immoral in their day need not be immoral today." (from The Living Church, 23)

Now, there are several significant problems with that passage. The first and most glaring is that it is a textbook example of the "straw man" fallacy -- a fallacy of logic which involves setting up a fictitious version of an opposing argument in order to tear down that fictitious argument, thus making one's own argument seem stronger than it actually is. It's a fallacy because it allows the writer to dodge the *actual* argument of his opponent.

Folks, the term "Sheilaism" was first coined in the context of a book by communitarian sociologist Robert Bellah, entitled Habits of the Heart: Individualism in American Life, in which Bellah explores the ways in which religion both contributes to and detracts from America's common good. What Sheila (Larson, a woman interviewed by Bellah for his book) actually says of her own religious experience is this:

"I believe in God. I'm not a religious fanatic. I can't remember the last time I went to church, but my faith has carried me a long way. It's Sheilaism. Just my own little voice."

Obviously, that's a far cry from what the Very Rev. Peter Cook *claims* that Sheilaism is. Of course, I and my fellow Christians can find just grounds for criticizing Sheila's actual statement, but it takes an awfully vivid imagination to leap from what she's saying to the "I like the Bible as long as it agrees with my personal whims" picture painted by Rev. Cook. The good reverend is attempting to criticize an "-ism" that he himself seems to have created out of whole cloth.

However, there are other, even more profound problems with Rev. Cook's comments that thoughtful Christians ought to notice. First and foremost is the disdainful tone with which he dismisses the fundamental Biblical moral ethic that we should "love and [be] kind to our neighbor..." Rev. Cook claims that, if we accept Sheilaism (as he defines it), then that is the only moral ethic we need to take from Scripture.

I cannot help but wonder, what other moral ethic does Christ Jesus charge us with? Does our Lord not explicitly tell us that the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves is second only to that which calls us to love God? Christ tells us plainly that the first and greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, all our mind, and all our soul; the second is "like unto it," and instructs us to love our neighbors as ourselves. And then Christ goes on to tell us that all other commandments -- indeed, the entirety of the Hebrew Law and Prophets -- rest on these two injunctions. Thus, if one adheres fully to these two commandments, he or she will inevitably live in accord with every other commandment, Divine Law, and moral ethic sanctioned in the Bible. Yet the Rev. Cook dismisses the second of those commandments as if it's not really worth considering.

And he employs the same disdainful, dismissive tone when he mentions that those who practice so-called "Sheilaism" might also draw from the Bible a "list of 'social justice' issues" with which to guide individual or corporate (i.e., church) activity. That is disturbing as well, given the portion of His earthly ministry which Christ devoted to such trivial "social justice" issues as feeding the hungry, tending the sick, and ministering to prisoners, outcasts, lepers, tax collectors, etc. Indeed, one could make a very compelling argument that, unless one devotes oneself to social justice, one is quite likely missing the point of Jesus's Gospel and ministry. Yet the Rev. Cook dismisses the very concept of social justice as if it is negligible, as if it is at best irrelevant to Christianity ... as if it's a bad thing.

Rev. Cook also casually dismisses the notion that cultures -- and thus, cultural needs and cultural definitions of concepts like "morality" and "immorality" -- have changed over time. Let me assure you, cultures do indeed change over time, and those changes include the definitions of culturally-determined values such as what is socially/morally acceptable behavior and what isn't. Anyone who's taken Anthropology 101 can confirm that fact.

In the Hebrew culture that eventually produced the texts of the Old Testament, a man was morally obligated to marry his brother's widow. Such a practice would hardly be seen as acceptable, much less "moral," in our society today. Likewise, the Old Testament is riddled with examples of polygamy, the use of concubines, the owning of slaves, assassination, etc., practices which are both illegal and generally considered to be immoral by our current societal standards. One must wonder if the Rev. Cook is picking and choosing which bits of Biblical culture should be preserved and which should be "allowed" to change...

My point there is not to suggest -- as the straw-man version of Sheilaism would, according to Rev. Cook -- that the defined morality of the Old Testament (or of St. Paul's epistles) should be tossed aside by the modern, "educated" Christian. Not remotely! My point is that if the modern Christian wants to understand what these texts are actually saying about morality, then one must study the texts themselves within the cultural contexts in which they were composed. Once cannot simply take "the morality of the Old Testament" and try to stamp it onto modern American (or any other) culture -- not without doing some cultural translating, first.

Now, why should that be? Is God's Word not eternal and unchanging? Of course it is! However, our human ability to understand God's Word can -- and does -- change all the time (hopefully for the better!). The Bible gives extensive evidence of that fact. There is but One Truth; however, it is revealed in different ways and to different degrees at different times and to different peoples. The Truth of God never changes, but the human capacity to perceive Truth definitely does. Thus, it is absolutely deadly, in a spiritual sense, to lock oneself into a one-sided, literalistic (i.e., fundamentalist) interpretation of morality. Doing so severely restricts the possibility of spiritual growth.

And that is a concept that traditionally makes fundamentalists pretty uncomfortable, because it requires both the Church and the individual to have the courage to say "I do not know, with absolute certainty; this is what I believe to be the Truth right now, but my understanding can certainly change down the road." The intelligent reader will no doubt see the vast difference between that attitude, and the straw-man version, which would say "Well, since I can't know for *certain*, I guess anything goes! Hey, it's all 'moral,' right?" But fundamentalists often have trouble seeing the distinction between those two.

And now there are voices within the Episcopal Church, the refuge for those who would leave behind such rigid and short-sighted misinterpretations of Scripture and theology, who are making it difficult even for non-fundamentalists to hold that distinction clearly in mind. And that is a sad thing, indeed. For it is fundamentalist attitudes, more than anything else, which have the effect of insulting intelligent and spiritually perceptive individuals out of the Church, much to the detriment of the Church itself.

But that is actually a microcosm of the larger-scale troubles that mainstream Christianity is currently facing. Rapid social change (upheaval, really) tends to generate a backlash in the form of the resurgence of fundamentalism, as people struggle to find some bit of surety to latch onto in the context of an unpredictable present (to say nothing of a less predictable future). However, that is the last thing that Christianity as an organized faith needs to give in to just now.

Indeed, the Church needs to redefine its current circumstance, not as a time of unsettling social upheaval, but as a time of unprecedented opportunity to redress those stances and viewpoints which are not tenable, to revise the voice through which it seeks to speak to humanity, to dig in and perceive a greater portion of God's unchanging Truth than has previously been possible, not by rejecting changes outright, but by earnestly seeking to perceive the Hand of God within the constant change that defines our human existence.

So, that's what I think. Let me know what you think!

Peace,

Chris