Recently Fr. Orthohippo posted:
An evangelical is slow to understand how a person could know God (including Jesus) from birth, even if they lapse and leave their faith for a time, and return later. A Catholic or Orthodox wonders how an evangelical can ignore the wisdom and history of the Church and insist on individual decision as final authority. Cultural blinders.
I can remember listening to an evangelical pastor who would sometimes almost apologize for having no strong conversion experience! I know him personally. He eventually became Orthodox and is now an archpriest.
He had been raised in a very strong Christian family and had never known a time when God was absent in his life. He had never gone through teenage rebellion and had always had God in his consciousness from childhood on. He had gone on to become an evangelist and worked on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ. But, he had never had a crisis conversion experience.
This created some internal tensions, but only because other Christians, of a particular persuasion, had trouble with his not having had a crisis experience of commitment. Particularly in Campus Crusade for Christ, this was an oddity. And, so, he learned to partially apologize and to explain his lack of a crisis experience. The sad part is that he had to do so.
But, this makes a good introduction to the theme of popular religiosity. Why do I say that? Well, none of the great evangelical theologians insist that one must have an emotional crisis experience in order to be a Christian. Now, it is true that credo-baptists insist on an adult commitment. But, and this is very important, none of the great evangelical theologians insist that there must be a crisis experience. None of the great theologians deny that a child can grow up in a Christian home in such a way that the transition to adult Christian commitment is fairly smooth and crisis free. What they insist on is the necessity of an adult commitment.
So, how do we, in the USA, end up with the idea that one must have a crisis conversion experience. Well, that is the result of “revivalism” in the USA. But, even more than that, it is the result of popular religiosity. What is popular religiosity? Tune in tomorrow and you will find out.
That’s pretty much exactly like me! I am the son of an Assemblies of God pastor, and I like to say I was “saved” from the womb. There was never a time when I did not feel Jesus intimately close; and I have had to “apologize” sometimes as well.
I’m well over apologizing though. I am so grateful for how I was raised.
Next time someone wonders about your “crisis” experience, relate to him/her the Scripture from the Gospels about John the Baptist being filled with the Spirit from his mother’s womb. 🙂
Not sure if this is the same idea or parallel. Since I stopped attending an Orthodox parish I’ve a slow, dawning realisation that I am a “lapsed” Orthodox. All I need to do is go to confession and start again.
In some faith communities, having “backslid” so far, I’d be out the church door and have to start over again.
I’ve been amazed at the grace of God.
In fact, there is an interesting aside to being “lapsed” for me. Roman Catholics consider me a lapsed member because I was raised RC. When I was leaving The Episcopal Church, I was in a quandary between RC and Orthodox.
The RC bishop told me that there was no need for any ceremony or study or transfer, etc. The RC’s do not formally recognize Anglican ordination. So, I was simply a lapsed lay Catholic, and all I would need to do was to go to a local RC parish, go to confession, join it, and begin to participate. If I wished to be ordained a deacon someday, I could apply with the same status as any married lay Catholic. The pastoral provision for incoming Anglican clergy does not apply to me or to anyone who was ever RC, even as a minor. It only applies to those Anglican clergy who have never been RC. Why? Because as an RC child I had received all the graces of Christ through the Church, and my return to the fold would have been simply a confirmation of the Church’s ministry. And, as a former RC, even as a minor, I knew that married clergy were not permitted within the Latin or Byzantine Rites in the USA. Therefore to use the pastoral provision would have been to reward my willful sin.
Interesting to consider the American (or Western) phenomenon of emotionalism. It’s in the West where we’ve had “Great Awakenings”. It’s in the West where we had Finney explicitly emotionalising the gospel. As one who came to Christ in my young adulthood (more than once, actually — does that mean I’ve been born again again?), I empathize with the dramatic and emotional conversion experience (may Billy Graham RIP). What’s interesting is how that conversion experience (have you been born again?) came to be the normative way in which once could become a Christian. Blame Finney, I say.
Heh heh, every time that the Church seems to get “dry” some type of “emotional” response springs up. Perhaps a more accurate way to say it is that when the Church over-balances towards the intellect, a movement springs up that brings the balance back by over-balancing towards the emotions or towards mysticism, etc.
This is from a song that I don’t know the title of, and this is all I could find of it on the internet. But I’ve always remembered it, since the one time I heard it.
“There’s not much to tell whenever I’m compelled to share my testimony.
No hair-raising tales of hell-raising days or of demons hanging all over me.
I never smoked dope, or swore at the pope, or spent the night with a shady lady.
I just walked in bold when I was six years old and said, ‘Preacher, I want Him to save me!'”
ROFL, do you remember Denise joking about being a motorcycle mama when she was five years old?
Hi,
I came across a post from the evangelical (sort of) side on this subject and thought you might be interested. Like the guy who wrote these posts, I’ve come to appreciate Orthodoxy because the Orthodox understanding of the cross as cure (healing us) rather than the western legal view of satisfying justice (fixing God) makes much more sense to me.
Anyway, his posts talk about the eastern and western view of salvation and are quite good. I hope they will be a good way to start a conversation about this.
http://sharktacos.com/God/2009/03/why-im-still-not-orthodox-besides-silly.html
http://sharktacos.com/God/2009/05/why-im-still-not-orthodox-pt-2.html
Ok, thanks, I will click on links and read the posts.
For my part, I was not raised as a Christian, so I did have a ‘crisis’ conversion. However, my children, are being raised in a Christian home, so this is still a very interesting post to me. I’ve been thinking some about this and it seems that, and least in the Baptist denomination, there are a couple of things going on.
1. A belief that you must recognize you are a sinner under God’s judgement before you can accept Christ. This is the ‘bad news’ that the modern evangelical feels he must deliver before he can you the ‘good news’. Most people who worry if they’re child is too young or don’t see a ‘crisis’ usually wonder if the child really understands they are a sinner.
2. An attempt to avoid raising someone who is merely a Cultural Christain. There is talk about avoiding this all the time. Parents worry that thier children may think they are ‘Good Christians’ simply because they go to church. They attempt to avoid this by pointing out sin whenever they see it, but many kids usually end up being a cultural christians any way.
3. The passing nod to human free will. No parent in an evangelical church wants to overtly make the choice for the child, but in reality the environment doesn’t leave much room for any other choice.
It is not just among the Baptists that concern for the children expresses itself in church culture. Think about Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Lutherans, etc., who have rites of Confirmation. Look at the word. It means “to confirm.” Confirmation, the completion of Holy Baptism, developed a separate identity in the West as the Church faced the “problem” of children raised in the faith.
In one sense, the Baptist push towards adult baptism around middle-school age is a full parallel, and totally identical in the hopes and wishes held by the parents, as the more liturgical rite of Confirmation.
What it comes down to is that the Church in the West has developed the conviction that there are two important moments in a person’s life. One is when they are born and the other is when they are capable of giving informed assent.
We celebrate the birth of a child to Christian parents by either dedication or Holy Baptism. We train (and push) our children to make an informed commitment to the faith by either baptism or Confirmation. But, developmentally, it is the same idea. There are two very important moments in a person’s life with regards to their eternal salvation.